Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Before the debate is resumed on this bill, I remind the Committee that, pursuant to the resolution agreed to by the House on 10 May 2011, this order of the day will be debated concurrently with Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2011-2012 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012.

Debate resumed on the motion:

That this bill be now read a second time.

to which the following amendment was moved:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

“while not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) condemns the government for incorporating in an annual appropriation bill provisions to increase the limit on government borrowings above the total of $200 billion;

(2) recognises that a special case must be made for such a significant increase in borrowing limits and that the government must explain any special circumstances that it believes justify such an increase; and

(3) demands that the parliament be given the opportunity to consider separately and vote on the proposed increases in borrowing limits set out in Part 5 of Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2001-12."

Geoff Lyons (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Our strong economy is boosting incomes and creating jobs. But with unemployment heading down to 4.5 per cent, capacity constraints are emerging from some groups and they are at risk of being left behind. From budget measures it is easy to see what the Labor Party stands for. That Gillard Labor government is a government that is assisting those Australians who have been left behind, untouched by the dignity of work. We are reaching out to disadvantaged and marginalised groups who risk missing out on the benefits of a strong economy.

Australia emerged strong from the global financial crisis as a result of our financial management. In this budget, we had to make some tough decisions to bring the budget back into surplus in 2012-13 despite the impact of recent natural disasters that have devastated families, cities and towns. The human tragedies are foremost in our minds, but there are economic consequences as well. The high Australian dollar hurts tourism and manufacturing industries, especially small businesses. This, unfortunately, is a consequence of a strong economy and unemployment of 4.5 per cent. Australia's economy is in transition. We often hear the phrase 'patchwork economy'.

Labor is working hard to address the chronic skills shortages and waiting lists caused by ineffective Liberal governance. For 11 long years our health system was neglected and strangled by the Liberals in government. Labor will spend $1.8 billion over six years on refurbishing or rebuilding new country hospitals, clinics and health facilities all over the country. In cities and in rural and regional Australia, Australians are benefiting from our health reforms. There will be improved health services in every state and territory of Australia.

In my electorate of Bass, the Launceston General Hospital is currently undergoing a $110 million upgrade, partly funded by the Gillard Labor government. This has facilitated the creation of hundreds of jobs and has seen a real boost to the Tasmanian economy. Partnered with the BER projects, the Tasmanian community has greatly benefited from the infrastructure projects initiated by the federal Labor government.

Labor is about jobs. Labor is delivering the largest expansion in rural health care in several decades, repairing the neglect of the Howard years. We will rebuild and deliver new hospitals, cancer centres and dental clinics in every state and territory. Labor is investing $10 billion over 10 years to build new and better services for regional and country Australia, neglected by the National Party and the city-based Liberals. The 2011-12 Labor federal budget includes an extra $500 million for regional universities and training institutions; $28 million for aerodrome safety construction works in remote and Indigenous townships; an extra 16,000 skilled migration places to help fix labour shortages, including mining and agriculture; and $60 million for digital technology projects in regional towns.

There is a clear difference between the Australian Labor Party and the National-Liberal coalition. Labor are delivering $10 billion over 10 years for regional Australia; building the National Broadband Network; increasing regional university funding by $500 million—lifting regional enrolments by 10 per cent since 2009; delivering major road and rail projects in the eastern seaboard and Western Australia to connect our regions, promote export industries and create country jobs; providing 3,000 nursing locum positions so that rural nurses can take time off for study and to advance their careers; and, providing $222 million for the Royal Flying Doctor Service to replace older aircraft and improve basic buildings. The Liberals by comparison should be ashamed. In 2010 their policy was to cut $1.8 billion from rural and regional road, rail and port projects and abandon the NBN. They doubled out-of-pocket expenses for country families needing health care during the Howard government. We now know that the Abbott-led Liberal Party cannot be trusted to deliver sensible budgets.

On 14 May this year, the Australian commented, 'Abbott and his shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey portrayed an almost comic lack of seriousness in their budget response this week.' Yet this man thinks he is capable of leading Australia. But how can the Australian people trust the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, when he was a senior minister in the Howard government that introduced the most antifamily legislation in our nation's history—Work Choices—and gutted health care.

The government are also determined to support families. I was pleased to see that the budget included new measures to help provide for the cost of living pressures, particularly for low-income families with kids at school. Three thousand nine hundred local families in the electorate of Bass could be eligible for $4,200 per child for children aged between 16 and 19 years. The Leader of the Opposition and the Liberals are too big a risk for Australian families.

These are the right policies for the right time. We support the Australian promise that if you work hard you will not be left behind. The Australian Labor government was right to step in and support the economy during the world downturn. It is now right to step back and make room for the private sector to step up to the mark. I commend these bills to the House.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These appropriation bills confirm the sad and sorry story of a government with a budget position that has spiralled out of control and is going down the drain. This budget provides little support for families hard hit by ever-increasing costs of living from new taxes and rising interest rates. These budget bills reveal just how high the government's deficit has risen. In November, we were told the deficit for 2010-11 would be $41.5 billion. On budget night, it was revealed to have blown out to almost $50 billion. In November, we were told that net debt would peak at $94 billion. On budget night, it was revealed that figure is now $107 billion. This net debt is set to stay above $100 billion for at least the next four years. Labor's reckless spending and borrowing have seen interest rates higher than they would otherwise be, resulting in Australia having the highest interest rates in the OECD and among the highest mortgage rates in the world. In less than four years, Labor have beaten Paul Keating's record—he left the Howard government with a $96 billion debt in 1996. It took the coalition to repay the debt and we will repay it again. Labor's spending as a percentage of GDP is 25.2 per cent, almost three per cent higher than in the last year of the Howard government.

This budget saw family benefit changes which will impact many families who receive the family tax benefit, having their indexation of family tax benefit supplement frozen. To add to this strain on families, Labor's cuts especially hurt those families in the higher income bracket at a time when they are struggling as well.

Small business is a core employer in my electorate and is finding it costly and difficult to access new capital to grow and expand or just to get through present difficult trading conditions. These issues arise from the fact that the government continues to borrow at a rate of $135 million per day, which in essence means there is $135 million per day less in the capital markets available for business. Now the government wants to increase its debt ceiling from $200 billion to $250 billion. This capital would be far better allocated and utilised by business as it would seek to utilise that capital productively to employ staff, manufacture goods and make profits. The release of the budget saw the government pocketing $365 million as a result of axing an important microbusiness tax incentive which leaves more than 400,000 business people in Australia with further financial stress. The entrepreneur's tax offset, delivering up to $2,500 in support and encouragement to Australia's smallest businesses as they get off the ground and grow, was also cut from this year's budget, showing the government's obvious disdain for small business, one of the cornerstones of our economy.

This government has wasted billions of dollars on ill-fated, poorly managed and poorly thought out green programs to deal with the great global warming swindle. This absurdity has now been compounded by the Prime Minister's plans to introduce a carbon tax from 1 July 2012. The Prime Minister has broken her election promise to the Australian people that there would be no carbon tax. We should not be surprised, as Labor consistently mismanages and wastes taxpayers' money. With electricity prices rising, the Prime Minister's proposed carbon tax will only make Australian lives more difficult.

We can look to Europe for the painful examples of what will happen with a carbon tax. Spain, for example, has pursued the folly of this action. In Spain they discovered that, on average, for every green job they created they lost between two and three jobs in the normal economy. In addition, each green job created required approximately $174,000 in various subsidies, leading to a suffocating national debt and a double-digit unemployment rate.

As I am sure members in this House are aware, the UK has raised its carbon targets to a 50 per cent reduction over the past week or so, leaving many businesses worried about having to close their doors. A number of businesses have already come out in the past week and said they are going to shed jobs, particularly British Steel owned by Tata from India which announced it was going to retrench 1,500 people. Some of those people are employed in areas in Britain with high unemployment rates already. Is that just an example of what we are going to face here in Australia with the introduction of a carbon tax?

It is worth reviewing some points with regard to the carbon tax. Australia is responsible for only 1.2 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. A price on carbon intended to reduce Australia's emissions will have little effect globally, particularly when global emissions are increasing at a rate of approximately three per cent per annum, mostly driven by China and India. Australia's unilateral reduction in carbon emissions brought about by a price on carbon will be wiped out by increases in emissions in the rest of the world in only 22 days. The question I pose is: at what cost to our economy and our lifestyle?

As an example of that, one of the local businesses in my electorate, a linen and commercial cleaning business that currently employs 200 people, has advised that based on a carbon tax of around $26 a tonne its estimated costs will increase by $1 million a year. They say at that level it wipes out all of their profits and they will put 200 people out of work. As they are a local business and they are not trade exposed, they are not going to have any compensation. Whatever compensation the government offers is not going to be sufficient to cover the fact that these 200 people will be out of work.

This government's record is replete with examples of waste and mismanagement of the taxes Australians have currently been paying and the money that they have entrusted to the government. The government seems to think that imposing taxes will get them out of their financial problems, but it is not for the people of Australia to pay for the government's mismanagement. Take for example the pink batts scheme, which turned out to be a monumental waste of time and money. Not only was there enormous financial loss to all concerned, but there are still risks of fire due to faulty installation, all of which are yet to be identified by the program as the government refuses to complete inspections on all homes.

The government spent approximately $2½ billion on the pink batts scheme, which is to cost taxpayers yet more money to fix. In addition, numerous small to medium businesses, some of which have been in the industry for many years, have suffered significant losses and in some cases gone out of business altogether. The number of jobs created was fewer than promised and the ones created did not last as long as promised. A review in 2010 found a third of the 14,000 properties surveyed appeared to have faulty or dangerous installation, resulting in the loss of any potential environmental benefits.

Another example of waste and mismanagement is the Building the Education Revolution program, which has seen cost blowouts, inappropriate or poorly designed buildings and a lack of consultation. It is important to understand the coalition is not against spending on school infrastructure. As with the Howard government's Investing in Our Schools program, we would like to see the money spent through school communities rather than via state bureaucracies. The government is so unconcerned with education that it decided to cut back on funding for important research facilities in the budget. For example, a cooperative research centre suffered a $33½ million cut over the forward estimates, a breach of Labor's 2010 election policy, which was still to cut funding but by a lesser amount. A cooperative research networks program which aids smaller and often regional universities network with larger research institutions has also had a funding cut.

This government is one that lacks empathy and expects everybody else to pay for its mistakes. The health sector is yet another area that has suffered in the latest budget due to funding cuts. The mental health sector, to the government's credit, has had some additional funding, although the majority of that has been delayed to future time periods. This funding only came about as Labor was shamed into its decision by the Leader of the Opposition, who understands the importance of mental health facilities and the important work that professionals in that area do. Hidden in the details of the budget is $580 million in cuts to mental health programs coordinated by GPs, an important front-line resource for identifying people at risk of mental illnesses. This is a far cry from the empathetic coalition plan, which sees an additional $2 billion over four years. The mental health sector will go backwards from day one under these new arrangements.

The budget has shown the arrogance of the Labor government by failing to take expert advice in cutting crucial new drugs from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Due to the government's reckless spending and empty bank accounts, patients with chronic disabling pain, schizophrenia, lung disease and blood clots will either go without necessary medication or pay hundreds of dollars for drugs instead of the PBS co-payment. This government's financial mismanagement shows its willingness to hurt its own citizens.

This government is a wasteful and reckless government that continues to treat Australians with contempt and as fools by counting new or higher taxes as savings, continuing to deliver policies that lead only to a higher cost of living for all Australians and doing nothing for the future prosperity of our nation by leaving a legacy marred by debt, the interest on which will rob future generations of their wealth.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the government's Appropriation Bill (No.1) 2011-2012 and cognate bills. It is a pleasure to speak on these bills and, in turn, the budget because it is, as we said, a great Labor budget, particularly for residents in McEwen. In my view, the 2011-12 federal budget can be characterised by its focus on supporting and providing opportunities for all Australians, no matter where they choose to live. This budget will create jobs and spread the opportunities of the mining boom. It will deliver better hospitals and health care and make investments in our education system, support families with cost-of-living pressures and invest in Australia's regions—the heart of our nation.

This budget demonstrates how the Gillard Labor government is investing directly in Australian families, because we know that by supporting Australian families and providing them with opportunities we are strengthening the Australian economy and Australia's future. This budget supports families in McEwen and it continues to support the recovery and rebuilding efforts in my community following the Black Saturday fires.

Last week I was joined by the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, to confirm that the government would deliver $2.25 million to build the Black Saturday memorial stadium in Wandong. This stadium will continue to boost morale and investment in the local region after the fires, which devastated our community. The new stadium will be in a place where locals can come together to enjoy themselves, to socialise, to play sport and to hold large gatherings. It will also include a sprung timber playing surface, competition standard lighting, a portable stage, seating, change rooms, storage facilities, car parking and landscaping.

Not only will this stadium be a much needed asset to the local community but also it will ensure that in years to come our community's history will never be forgotten. About 100 local people will be employed to build the new stadium and about 40 permanent jobs—local jobs—will be created once the stadium is built. Therefore, this budget is proof that this government is directly investing in my community to help strengthen our economy and to get us back in the black by 2012-13. I am pleased to be delivering on this important election commitment to the people of Wandong and pleased that it is the Gillard Labor government that is continuing to support the rebuilding efforts in my community.

The budget has also delivered a huge injection of funds—$10 million—to the Kilmore and District Hospital as we continue to deliver on our national health reform agenda. The funding will go towards expanding the Kilmore and District Hospital and ensure that my community has the best health services and facilities around. This fantastic budget allocation will fund the redevelopment of the theatre suite with day procedures and a recovery unit, the expansion and enhancement of the acute inpatient facility to provide expanded acute care services and increase the number of acute care beds from 30 to 60, and the construction of a new outpatient facility to deliver comprehensive, integrated primary health care. Not only will this funding go to improving and strengthening our local healthcare system; it will also provide opportunities for training and development and will stimulate our local economy by creating more jobs for more local people. Finding room in this very responsible budget for local projects has been challenging, but the $10 million provided to the Kilmore District Hospital shows what a high priority our community's health care is for the Gillard Labor government. In addition to the funding to expand and upgrade the Kilmore hospital, the Wallan community will benefit from an extra $2.6 million in funding for the construction of a new primary health centre to be integrated into the Wallan GP superclinic. This is the GP superclinic that the Liberals said that they would not build. Again, this is further evidence that health is still not a priority for any Abbott-led Liberals. The project is part of our ongoing commitment to improve regional health services and it will ensure that regional Australians can go and see a doctor close to home. The new integrated primary health care centre in Wallan will promote better health care in the community, and as I said it builds on the $3.5 million that the Gillard government has already committed and already delivered to the Wallan GP superclinic.

This new health centre will also provide a strong training and research element. There will be a health resources hub, clinical education and training facilities using modern things like telemedicine and teleconferencing, and a dedicated research area. What this means is that we have the opportunity to have our best and brightest who are training in the medical research area and in the medical field work close to home and keep our communities growing by making sure that our young families stay there and deliver for the future. Funding for this project is going to include consulting rooms and a health resources hub, with a focus on children and adolescent health services; clinical education and training facilities; office space for clinical placement coordination; and a dedicated research area with full network capabilities and connections to universities. It is a growing partnership between Mitchell Community Health Services, the Gillard government and all those that are involved in our healthcare professional networks like universities, GP associations and the specialists that we need to provide us with services locally in our community.

McEwen has a high rate of tradesmen and apprentices, which is why I am thrilled that our government and our budget is investing in an apprenticeship system that works for more Australians and in long-term reform to drive productivity. As a qualified tradesman myself I have always believed in the need to support apprentices and drive first-class training through things like the trade apprentices income bonus. Over 3,172 apprentices in McEwen will benefit from the following investments. They will benefit directly from the $100 million to be invested in a national apprenticeship mentoring program to support apprentices finishing their training. They will benefit directly from the $100 million to develop new apprenticeship models that deliver high-quality skills quickly. This is part of our commitment to end the skills gap shortage. The skills shortage that we had is a legacy of 12 years of underinvestment by the Liberals when they were in power. There is a $281 million support package for additional tax-free payments to encourage apprentices in critical trades to complete their qualifications.

As I mentioned earlier, this budget is about jobs, jobs, jobs. It is about creating jobs, it is about skilling Australians for jobs and it is about ensuring Australians stay in jobs. In McEwen, unfortunately we have 1,212 very long term unemployed people who have been without work for two years or more. To help these people prepare for and to find work, the Gillard Labor government has provided an additional $2.7 million over 2012-15 to support local employment services in McEwen and to provide the long-term unemployed with the training and work experience they require to be able to get them into long-term employment. It is Labor who is taking action to ensure all Australians are skilled, trained and ready for work. We have already created over 700,000 jobs. That is in stark contrast to the 200,000 jobs that would have been lost had the Liberal Party had their way. Mental health has been a headline of this budget and it is something I am proud we are doing. Recently the Victorian adolescent health and wellbeing survey was released in Mitchell Shire in my electorate. The findings stated that mental health was a real issue, with 7.9 psychiatric hospitalisations per 1,000 adolescents during 2009-10. Almost 80 per cent of Mitchell adolescents felt, however, they could access mental health support services if they needed to. I have no doubt that this budget's focus on mental health and early prevention will assist in decreasing psychiatric hospitalisations and ensure that all Australians can access mental health services, with the Gillard government's budget making a huge investment in a more integrated mental health care system. We are serious about mental health reform and I am proud to be part of a government that has appointed Australia's first federal mental health minister. It just shows the commitment we have to ensuring that we help all Australians who are suffering from mental health problems, something that we know is a huge priority that needs to be addressed. That is why this budget invests $2.2 billion into the government's national mental health reform package, to support our communities and provide a total of 90 Headspace clinics as well as early detection to support young people who struggle with mental health. The government's mental health reform package is not only good news for my community but for all Australians no matter where we choose to live.

I was proud to be part of this budget, a Labor budget. It is a Labor budget because it supports Australian families, invests in education, invests in training, invests in skills to boost jobs and invests in our economy. It is a Labor budget because it increases health services, infrastructure, education and jobs. It is a Labor budget, importantly, because it supports all Australians no matter where they choose to live, whether they live in the suburban growth corridors of Moondah and Craigieburn in my electorate or in regional areas like Kilmore and Seymour.

What would constitute a Liberal budget? A Liberal Party budget based on what we have seen from those opposite would slash funding to schools, would axe the National Broadband Network and in turn abandon regional Australia, leaving them without the critical infrastructure they require for work, businesses, e-health and education. A Liberal budget would cut jobs, about 200,000 Australian jobs directly. The member for North Sydney, during what he terms his budget reply, said at the National Press Club that the global financial crisis was just a hiccup. What an insult to all the Australians who lost their jobs or had their hours cut through one of the biggest economic downturns the world has seen. The member for North Sydney should apologise to families across the country, particularly those in my electorate of McEwen, for comparing their job losses, their financial hardship, their loss of income, to a hiccup. Just because he may not have been affected, he should not assume that all Australian families were not. His remarks are just further proof that the Liberal Party does not understand the needs and concerns of everyday Australian families. The Liberals have not forgotten Australians, they just do not care to remember them.

I would like to ask the member for North Sydney how he and the Liberal Party would have cured the economy during this so-called hiccup. Would they have told Australians to stand upside down on their heads, hold their breath, have a glass of water? I know the people in my electorate who have been affected by the GFC do not view this as a hiccup. It is outrageous that the Liberal Party shadow Treasurer does not take the struggles of ordinary families seriously. Would the member for North Sydney call 20 per cent unemployment in countries like Ireland and Spain a hiccup? Maybe the member for North Sydney views it as a hiccup because of the swift action taken by this government to make sure we did not end up like countries like Spain and Ireland, to ensure that Australians stayed in work and our economy was stimulated. Unlike the Liberal Party, we took the GFC seriously. We took action, which is why we are fortunate to have a steady 4.9 per cent unemployment rate—the lowest among most developed nations. We took immediate action to create over 700,000 jobs, because we did not view the GFC as a hiccup. This is in contrast to the 200,000 jobs that would have been lost had the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer had their way.

Unlike those opposite, this Labor government will get us back into surplus in 2012-13, because we have a plan and a vision for this country. That is why I commend these bills to the House so strongly.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise today to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012 and its cognate bills. I am pleased to give my electorate of Bonner a voice on this budget. This is a government that expects everyone else to pay for its mistakes, and that message is clear in this budget. The first budget of the Gillard government is no different to any other Labor budget—more borrowing, more taxes and yet another big deficit. On behalf of the overwhelming number of families in my electorate, I can tell you that they summarise this Labor budget in one word: disappointing. They summarise this budget as disappointing because, despite all of the pre-budget talk about this being a tough budget, this government has been tough on no-one but families. These are families who are working hard to meet the increasing cost of living. Many of them are struggling, and this budget seems to have ignored that fact.

The response from my constituents in Bonner since the delivery of this budget, only a couple of weeks ago, is that the government is out of touch with everyday people. My constituents tell me that they are struggling to tighten the family purse strings and that it is especially disheartening that the government is clearly not tightening the budget purse strings, because it is continuing with its wasteful spending. Families are paying for Labor's failed border protection policies through cuts to family payments. My office has been inundated by families who are desperate to understand what the freezing of the indexation of family tax payment supplements will mean for them. It is incomprehensible that the government would gouge $2 billion from families at this time. Not only that—this budget has revealed that Labor has not been able to keep control of the deficit and debt, and both of these have increased even further. The government continues to borrow $135 million a day, and interest on Labor's debt will be an incredible $7 billion a year. The government's reckless spending and borrowing have seen interest rates rise higher than they would otherwise be, and this just compounds the pressure on the overall cost of living.

As I mentioned in my first speech to this parliament, Bonner is, not surprisingly, attractive to a higher than average number of retired or semiretired people, given the relaxed and tranquil paradise along our beautiful bay side. Just as this budget is out of touch with the realities for families, this budget is out of control with the reality faced by many seniors and the semiretired. This government does not understand the cost-of-living pressures that pensioners, the semiretired and self-funded retirees are facing. It is not about the need for set-top boxes; it is about being able to manage the increasing costs of petrol, electricity, groceries, health and home repayments. A post-budget survey revealed that 60 per cent of pensioners do not even want set-top boxes, and we know that Gerry Harvey said that he could provide and install them for $168, compared to Labor's budgeted cost of $350. This government's record of delivery is certainly not one to be proud of, given the debacle seen with the Home Insulation Program, computers in schools and Building the Education Revolution. Australians should be genuinely outraged that the government has not learned any lessons and is again proposing another incredible waste of taxpayers' money.

I also want to talk about another group of Australians that this government is out of touch with. A number of my constituents have highlighted to me the situation of self-funded retirees. They have reminded me that self-funded retirees have been the hardest hit by the global financial crisis but have never received anything from this government. Most self-funded retirees have been able to be self-funded because they have been extremely conscientious in investing for their old age. However, the income for self-funded retirees has been hit in several ways. Their superannuation funds went into a downward spiral, dividend income went down, the value of their share portfolios went down and interest on their savings went down. At the same time as their income went down, the cost of living has soared in the opposite direction.

They are faced not only with another budget that will put further pressure on the cost of living but also with another tax—a carbon tax. There is no doubt the carbon tax will push the cost of living even higher. While this is true, the government has made no mention of the carbon tax and its implications in this budget. This is another tax that Labor should be ashamed of. Worse than that, this is a budget they should be ashamed of for the financial negligence of not including the carbon tax revenue and associated spending, estimated to be in the order of $11.5 billion, in this budget.

The carbon tax will destroy jobs and increase the cost of virtually everything. Overwhelmingly, residents of Bonner do not support it. What they do support is access to fast, affordable broadband now. I note that Labor plans to borrow $18.2 billion for the NBN over the forward estimates. Given that my constituents in Bonner will not have access to the NBN for at least another eight years, the potential for waste in this project is frightening. Again, the government's financial negligence is astounding when the borrowings for the NBN are shown in this budget but the money does not hit the bottom line because Labor says it is an investment. When I was running my own small business, and as any business in my electorate would agree, I would never make such a huge investment without a cost-benefit analysis. But, astoundingly, this is exactly what this government has done. The coalition has a clear alternative plan for the delivery of high-speed broadband that will be much cheaper than the government's monopoly that it tenuously hopes will one day be an investment.

Finally, I acknowledge the disappointment of many in my electorate about the government's mental health package in this budget. While creating the illusion that the government was outspending the coalition's election promise in this most important area, the detail reveals that there is only $1.5 million in new money over five years. The coalition remains committed to its mental health policy that will deliver $2 billion over four years. Again, we have seen a typical old-fashioned Labor budget that is big on taxes and big on spending but fails to help households battling a high cost of living with petrol, electricity, gas, grocery and health costs and home repayments. It is a budget balancing on a knife edge.

The most salient point about Labor's budgets was made by my colleague the member for Longman, Wyatt Roy. In his lifetime Labor has not delivered a budget surplus and, unfortunately for my electorate of Bonner and for all Australians, I am certain that when we are celebrating the member for Longman's 30th birthday this statistic will remain unchanged.

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2011-2012 and strongly affirm the record of the Gillard government of responsible economic management. This is a budget that will positively benefit many individuals and families in my electorate. In addition to facing up to the overall challenges that are facing our national economy, steering the ship of state through the global financial crisis is a challenge in itself before we even consider the natural challenges presented to this government over the last six months in the form of the Queensland floods, tropical Cyclone Yasi and other natural disasters. As a Labor member of parliament, I believe that our economic health and good fortune needs to be shared by all Australians, but particularly those who are vulnerable and disadvantaged. They need opportunities, including the opportunity to be employed, to have a fulfilling career, to receive and benefit from a quality education, to self-advance and to lead a fulfilling life. This is what this budget is all about. I welcome and rejoice in Labor's commitment to training that is a centrepiece of this budget.

My regional electorate will benefit from the $558 million National Workforce Development Fund designed to deliver 130,000 new training places over four years. Since being elected as the member for Robertson, I have been acutely aware of the need for more apprenticeships and traineeships on the Central Coast. Our area is clamouring for opportunities for our young people to get on the ladder of success and advance their lives. I have worked closely with organisations like Central Coast Group Training and Youth Connections, who are doing an amazing job in engaging and retaining apprentices and supporting them in their training.

The best way to support our youth is through a pathway to employment. At a recent presentation by the Central Coast Research Foundation, I was proud to hear it acknowledged and confirmed that Labor's nation-building stimulus had protected my region from what would have been catastrophic effects of the GFC. I barely needed to be told because every week I go to the opening of a new BER hall or classroom, and I meet the builders and architects who worked on these projects. I know how vital the stimulus was for the Central Coast. Our local economy is still standing, our local businesses are still operating and our local people are still working.

In the budget for 2011-12, we are setting the foundations for a stronger Central Coast by investing in our greatest resource—our people, particularly our young people. Improving educational outcomes for our youth is so crucial for the Central Coast. Increasing the number of apprentice and trainee positions on the Central Coast is a cornerstone of any positive future for our region. Since having been elected the member for Robertson, the member for the Central Coast, I have worked with Central Coast Group Training to achieve this. Last year, I wrote to several thousand local businesses on the Central Coast, encouraging them to participate in CCGT's apprentice drive. I am pleased to say that CCGT succeeded in targeting employers and 30 apprenticeships were found in 30 days. I know that CCGT will be continuing with its efforts to find apprenticeships for its young clients throughout the entire year. I am proud of the heavy emphasis on training in the budget because it will have such a positive impact on the Central Coast.

In addition to the National Workplace Development Fund, there is the $101 million national mentoring program to help 40,000 apprentices finish their training. It is vital that as a government we continually strive to improve completion rates for apprenticeships and traineeships. From an educational point of view, a learner's identity can change significantly on the journey from commencement of their training to the end of their training. What they believe about themselves, what they believe about the future—all these things can change.

In a climate where we have such carping negativity by those opposite in the public space, the impact on business sentiment and consumer confidence should not be underestimated. We have a great country; we have a great future. We survived the GFC. We more than survived it. We have actually benefited our country for a whole generation through the assets that have been gained by schools. Instead of acknowledging the positive achievement and success which I find celebrated at every school that I go to, we have carping negativity in the public space and a loss of confidence. This can be enough to dissuade an uncertain learner from continuing their journey. I would advocate that those opposite cease and desist from their negativity.

By supporting young people and enabling them to finish their training, we ensure that youth employment increases. In the longer term, we can ensure that employers are much more willing and able to make the commitment to take on an apprentice. These programs are vital in ensuring that we can address youth employment in addition to ensuring that we have the skilled workers for the future that we need. These issues are of vital economic importance. Despite the mindless negativity of those opposite, it was absolutely necessary that this government provided a comprehensive and effective stimulus in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The Reserve Bank Governor, Glenn Stevens, has stated that the size and speed of the government's fiscal response was one of the critical factors that supported private demand in the months succeeding the global financial crisis—leadership by a Labor government. Since these decisions were made, those opposite have criticised the stimulus measures on the basis of a wilfully misleading campaign that plays into fears and ignorance about government debt. These arguments are flawed and businesses are alive to the fact that they are getting a lot of misinformation from those opposite.

I am also pleased to observe, as many others have, that this budget will put Australia on track for a surplus in 2012-13. It is perhaps a little un-Australian to crow about success, but it is important to get this on the record. When we look around the world at the economic situation in so many countries following the global financial crisis, Australia has an outstanding outcome. Our Treasurer's actions are applauded at every convention where the GFC is being discussed. Australia's economy is being applauded. We in this country have an amazingly strong economy and we owe that to the quick and timely response of the Labor government, which acted on its belief that people need to have work. People need jobs. We continue that commitment to the Australian people in the budget this year.

The Building the Education Revolution program was particularly important on the Central Coast in ensuring that local jobs were retained, families kept their income and we maintained demand in our local economy. Additionally, I will always champion the most comprehensive modernisation of our schools in my lifetime. Since being elected the member for Robertson, I have yet to go to a school that was not appreciative of the BER funding. Indeed, I have highly valued the chance to visit schools to see how the BER has modernised facilities and opened students' sense of what is possible and opened teachers' sense of what is possible in learning as well.

A beautiful space in which to do our work as teachers is critical in building the capacity of our nation, but there are two prominent examples that spring to mind from my recent visits to Green Point Christian College and Chertsey Primary School. I went to Green Point Christian College just last Friday. It is an independent Christian school that through the BER initiative engaged in building a creative and performing arts centre. It was a wonderfully managed local project. In my discussion with the architect and those who participated in making sure the project was brought fully to completion—and in a very timely manner, I might add—the architect indicated how important this work was for him and his business. I heard a series of anecdotes from people who attended the opening day, explaining how trucks had been coming through. People had been moving the dirt. People had been bringing in supplies from local suppliers. There were 300 local people working in that context, bringing their money into the local economy, keeping the local newsagency operating, keeping a roof over their kids' heads, paying the mortgages. These are the things that matter to us as Labor members of this House, and this budget is about continuing to make sure Australians have the security of a strong economy. It was a privilege for me to be able to visit such a wonderful school and see our policy in action.

Another school I had the pleasure to visit, as I mentioned, was Chertsey Primary School. This is a model example of a school operating as a caring community centre. It operates on the basis that each child should receive the best possible opportunity, and this approach extends to its comprehensive and well-establish unit for autistic and deaf children plus its innovative after school care that links into the local community. This school was operating a unit for deaf children out of a 14-year-old demountable that was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. They had great teachers and learning happens there, but there is such joy in the community because of the new facilities they have to work in. At the same time, they saw all of the utes pulling up each morning, all of the tradies getting in and doing their jobs. Those kids saw the work in that industry up close and personal. I think it might have been a little opportunity for a bit of work experience and an encouragement for lots of those young people to think about future work possibilities for themselves in the construction industry. As the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once said, 'It takes a village to raise a child.' On the Central Coast we are a region, but we are still a collection of villages. Schools like Green Point Christian College and Chertsey Primary are empowered to do their work because of a Labor initiative. I completely endorse this government's commitment to prudent fiscal management in the aftermath of the stimulus package. The savings of $22 billion found in this budget are vital in ensuring that a return to surplus occurs.

Furthermore, these savings were made in a manner that ensured that the most vulnerable in our society were not unduly burdened. In managing the macro-economy, however, we need to acknowledge that the negative impact of inflation and interest rates on families is very real. Also, it impacts significantly on retirees on fixed incomes. Because we understand that and because we do genuinely understand families and retirees, who are such a part of the Central Coast seat that I represent, it is for these reasons that prudent and effective fiscal policy is absolutely needed to ensure that government spending does not lead to increased inflation. Issues of inflation are particularly important in my electorate, which contains such a high proportion of retirees, many of whom have moved from metropolitan Sydney. I therefore strongly support this government's commitment to returning the budget to surplus.

I also endorse this government's commitment to making a lasting difference in the area of mental health. For too long the area of mental health has been overlooked by state and commonwealth governments. I welcome the commitment by the Treasurer to make room in this tight, responsible budget to commit $1.5 billion in new initiatives, as part of a $2.2 billion package to deliver better care for mental health.

Recently, I visited headspace in Gosford, on the Central Coast. It is an organisation whose mission it is to reduce the burden of mental illness in young people, aged 12 to 25. I saw firsthand the immense positive benefits of early intervention in addressing mental health issues in our youth. Also, by visiting headspace Central Coast, I observed the importance of treating mental health in a very compassionate and easily accessible manner, which was directed at youth.

The Gosford centre is the second busiest in Australia, seeing around 150 clients per month, which just goes to show how critical this service is for our community. I met an amazing girl Melanie— whom I happened to meet a couple of days later at the citizenship ceremony; I think her mum was becoming an Australian citizen—and her life has been transformed by headspace. She is now a passionate supporter of the program. I was moved by her uplifting success story. The support she received from headspace, when she was just 15 years old, was a powerful change agent in her life. Melanie took herself along to headspace, and it was touching to hear just how effective headspace was for her in removing the stigma around mental health issues. I am pleased to say that, through the support she received there, she returned to school. Because of this budget and our investment in education and training we have great stories for our young people in the future of this country.

I am delighted that the government has recognised the importance of early intervention in addressing mental health issues in young people. Specifically, I also support the government's commitment to invest a further $419 million in headspace and early psychosis prevention.

I appreciate that the government was able to make this commitment in a tight and well-disciplined budget. I am also delighted that the government will deliver almost $2 million to three local disability organisations: Fairhaven, Lasercraft and Terama Industries.

As a member of parliament, representing a regional electorate, I strongly support the rollout of the National Broadband Network. I have been campaigning with my federal colleague the member for Dobell. The National Broadband Network represents an equalisation of telecommunications.

There are so many things in this budget for the coast and I commend the bill to the House. (Time expired)

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Deputy Chairman , Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012 and cognate bills, the fourth budget from this Labor government, delivered by the Treasurer, Mr Swan, it is right and proper to reflect on the fiscal failure of this government and the Treasurer, on the level of confidence in the delivery of budget programs and on the level of honesty of the Treasurer himself. In this wide-ranging debate on these appropriation bills, it is right and proper that the House reflect on what the government has promised in the past, that the House reflect on the government's ability to manage the budget and the economy and that the House reflect on the value of the government's word, and indeed the value of the Treasurer's word as the person responsible for the budget and the government's approach financially. Each appropriation debate, we get this opportunity to reflect and I want to start on the most obvious issue in the budget—that is, the position of the budget and the government's fiscal strategy.

We have heard the Treasurer talk about the government's planned fiscal consolidation, spruiking that if all goes to plan this will be a very fast fiscal consolidation—and my friend and colleague the member for Bradfield in the chamber with me has heard speaker after speaker on the other side talk about this. Of course what they fail to mention every time is that they presided over a very fast fiscal deterioration. You only need to go to the detail of the budget papers to see the true picture that has emerged under this Treasurer. Our debt position is a good starting point. On the government's own budget figures, Australia's net government debt this financial year will be $107 billion. You would not have found that figure in the Treasurer's budget speech. But you would know from the Treasurer's budget speech, if you were watching, that there is a percentage of GDP in there. But in mentioning that figure alone and not mentioning the net government debt dollar figure, we know that that is the Treasurer's history and form. He deliberately does not mention the dollar figure of the debt and his colleagues, like the previous speaker, will never mention the dollar figure of the debt because they do not want the Australian public to know the level of their financial failure and incompetence.

The Treasurer did not mention the $107 billion figure in his budget speech. He went from his budget speech to a series of television interviews. In one of them on Sky News on budget night, he was asked to name the dollar figure. His response was that he did not have the figure with him. From this we are led to believe that the Treasurer of this country either does not actually know the dollar figure for net government debt without it being brought to his attention in his own budget papers or—and I think this is really the case—will go to any lengths to conceal it. The member for Bradfield may not agree with me on this, as good friends as we are, but even this Treasurer would know the level of government debt in dollar terms. I think this Treasurer will go to any lengths to conceal the truth. He will engage in any amount of trickery to conceal the facts and those opposite will engage in any level of juvenile behaviour and never mention the figure.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We don't like talking figures.

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Deputy Chairman , Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right. I am glad you do not like talking figures because you would get a headache if you talked figures. The unwillingness of the Treasurer to mention the $107 billion of debt follows a consistent history for him. We remember, in his budget speech two years ago, he refused to mention the level of the projected deficit at the time—projected at $57 billion. Now we know that he still will not mention that level of debt. That $107 billion is much higher in dollar terms than the $96 billion debt which Paul Keating left this country, but the story is much worse than that. The Treasurer of this country did not inherit a zero balance; the Treasurer of this country inherited money in the bank.

For those opposite who are not, by their very nature, interested in detail—and it is a point which their electors, including those in Eden-Monaro, will be interested to know when it is pointed out to them—they might like to turn, on behalf of their electors, to page 10.8 of Budget Paper No. 1, which shows the historical table. What they will find is that when they came to government they inherited $44 billion in the bank—nearly $45 billion—and that at the end of this year net government debt will be $107 billion. So the fiscal deterioration is of the order of $150 billion.

It pains me to say this in this appropriations debate. There has been a lot of criticism, rightly so, of this Treasurer, but we have now seen his performance in concealing the level of debt; in not knowing when Labor was last in surplus, in that shattering performance up in the ABC studio; and in his refusal yesterday to acknowledge the ridiculous situation he had got himself into in denying on ABC radio that he knew anything of the Western Australian government's plans on royalties—only to be confronted with the fact that he had been told, he had been written to, he had received a minute and he had been rung. Short of a message coming by carrier pigeon, it is hard to think of how else the Western Australian government could have communicated with the Treasurer.

When you look to the worst Treasurer in Australian history some people would nominate John Kerin. I think that is a little unfair. I think that, if you look at the whole sweep of history, most people would settle on Jim Cairns—most people except for the two opposite—that famous Treasurer in the Whitlam government whom even Gough Whitlam sacked. Jim Cairns clearly, by the length of the straight, had the title of Australia's worst Treasurer. In question time on April 15, 1975, when Bert Kelly asked:

If printing money is a good solution to the unemployment problem why not print more of the stuff and get rid of unemployment problem altogether?

Jim Cairns famously replied:

We might do precisely that.

But, while it pains me to say it, I think Jim Cairns has now been overtaken by Wayne Swan. I really do. I have thought about this long and hard, but I think if you consider the level of honesty—Jim Cairns was not straight about the loans affair—and the level of competence, what we have from this Treasurer is a combination of incompetence and dishonesty. When he is asked in the parliament what the projected outcome for his own four budgets is, he cannot answer. And when he is asked what he was told by the shadow Treasurer, he says he was told nothing, when every piece of evidence before him shows he was told everything. To a large degree, you can measure the cost of this incompetence by the level of debt. For those opposite $107 billion of debt is just a number. The member for Monaro is not interested in numbers: what do they mean? I will tell you what the cost is. It is $5.5 billion a year. That is just to keep it; not to pay it off. It is going to rise to more than $7 billion a year every year. That does not matter to those opposite. That is just $5 billion, $6 billion or $7 billion every year that cannot be spent on important programs.

The Australian public, though, have lived this debt journey before. They lived it following the accumulation of $96 billion of debt, which took place at the end of the Hawke and Keating governments. I will give the governments of Hawke and Keating one thing: the debt that they accumulated—as incompetent, reckless and dishonest as they were—happened at the end. Australia's level of net government debt in 1989-90 was somewhere between $25 billion and $30 billion. All of that blow-out occurred in the last five or six years. The problem with this government is that they have had no good beginning. They have started off at an incompetent level. And the public will keep paying the price.

Even when it comes to the programs of priority, the government still cannot find it within itself to be straight. With their mental health package—something all members would agree is a priority area—we have the minister refusing to acknowledge the fact that the majority of his money is back-end loaded. The figures are there in the budget: most of the new money is in the fifth year. But faced with reality, he denies it. Why this government would continue to do that when the public are so awake to it, and when it is so wrong, is beyond me.

Mental health is a priority area. Our leader and our shadow health minister have put it on the agenda. They did so before the last election with a real commitment over the forward estimates. In the local electorate of Casey there is a desperate need for the sorts of initiatives we have put forward. I would say to the government that if they are serious they will look at headspace facilities in the Yarra valley centred in Lilydale. There is an absolute area of need servicing thousands of square kilometres.

The government should at least accept an application. They should look at this as a priority area—I just use this as one example because there are so many—but it is not a good start if the minister and the Prime Minister cannot be straight with the funding and the figures in this important area. But it follows in the tradition of the Treasurer, who cannot be straight about the budget position. Two years ago he could not even mention the deficit figure, the outcome, and this year he cannot mention the debt figure. (Time expired)

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to follow the comedy routine from the member for Casey, who regaled us with an interesting history lesson. It seems to have been a very selective history lesson. I recommend that the member for Casey have a good read of the terrific article by George Megalogenis in the Australian, whose headline read:

ALP best manager of money, history shows.

It was very interesting to note that that article highlighted the fact that during the years Costello was Treasurer in his last seven budgets, between 2001-02 and 2007-08, he increased real spending by 3.3 per cent a year. And in his final term, between 2005-06 and 2007-08, the figure was 3.6 per cent a year. And this was at a time when fiscal restraint was essential because of the booming economy and the overheating of the economy. It was one of the reasons why we saw those 10 interest rate rises in a row, peaking at two percentage points higher than where the rate stands today. The coalition has demonstrated that it simply does not know how to manage an economy through the cycles. It would like to pretend that recessions do not exist and that you do not manage your way through a recession.

The story that we can tell through the four budgets that this government has produced is that we have been the most successful government in the history of this country in economic management. The article by George Megalogenis does show that history of fiscal responsibility stretches back a long way, but most importantly is that recent history. We have been the only government in Australian history that has managed to avoid this country going into recession in the context of a global recession—the only time in the country's history that that has been achieved. How was it done? Because we learnt lessons about how to deal with recessions from the past. Unfortunately, the coalition learn nothing. They just keep repeating the same mistakes, which is one of the definitions of insanity.

The situation with the recession this time around is that we understood that the main story in a recession, and preventing it, is that household consumption is a key factor. It is 55 per cent of the GDP story. The advice was: go hard, go early, go households. We had to get that injection of funds and expenditure that would have the biggest impact in the short term on household consumption, and that is what we did—and we were successful. We not only avoided going into recession but also avoided, most importantly, the human cost of the unemployment that would have been generated. Treasury has highlighted that we would have lost 200,000 jobs had it not been for the government's stimulus measures. That is 200,000 people—all of that social dislocation, the social disruption, the tragedies that flow from that as people then fall into that trap of long-term unemployment.

Long term unemployment is an issue that this government seriously wants to do something about. This budget starts to bring home a lot of those themes. One of the key missing pieces of the coalition's puzzle was its failure to address our key infrastructure and skills needs during those overheating years when the rivers of gold were flowing.

A government member: The Reserve Bank was warning them.

Absolutely being warned several times by the RBA and doing nothing about it. We saw ships piling up at our ports and we saw the serious industry skill shortages being neglected. On the other hand, we have been investing in infrastructure and skills and this budget, once again, highlights that very significantly—$36 billion expenditure on key roads, ports and rail issues and a massive package to address those skill shortage needs. In an electorate like mine, that is going to have a significant impact. In the skills package and the support for apprentices, I have 3,202 apprentices in Eden Monaro who will benefit from this scheme and who are supporting our local industry.

Other measures that relate to the infrastructure needs of the country are also well illustrated in Eden Monaro. We have a situation on the Princes Highway around Bega where the choke node there has prevented the traffic of B-doubles through the town without them uncoupling and coupling again. It has been a real problem that has added enormously to the impediments to business. The construction of the Bega by-pass, which will commence in the new year, will remove that choke node, that impediment to business, and also provide safety and amenity of life to the town of Bega. This budget commits $10 million to the commencement of the construction of that project that will ultimately be funded to the tune of $85 million. This is critical infrastructure investment that this country really needs.

The opposition talks about debt, and talks about it in isolation, as though you do these things, implement these strategies to avoid recession, magically somehow without going into short-term debt and deficit. This country is the envy of the developed world in how we have managed that part of the equation. Our net peak debt will be 7.2 per cent of GDP, whereas in other parts of the developing world we are talking about removing that decimal point, because it is going to be 72 per cent in many cases and higher in some cases. Our extremely manageable debt is the envy of the developed world. It will be resolved through a very clear-cut set of progressional inputs over the period of the forward estimates and beyond, and the deficit situation will be resolved by 2012-13 as we have forecasted. We are the envy of the development world. I should also highlight what was at stake—

Mr Fletcher interjecting—

Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Bradfield, your name is on the list of speakers and you will have ample opportunity to have your say.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wanted to highlight what was at stake at the last election for communities like mine. When I surveyed my electorate I received over 7,000 responses from my constituents. Overwhelmingly, the No. 1 issue they highlighted was health. During the campaign last year my coalition opponent was running around making certain promises about health in the region. Of course, we found out that none of those promises were budgeted and almost all of them were completely inadequately costed. One in particular related to the Bega Hospital, which is our only C1 hospital in the region and is a key piece in our health matrix. My opponent promised funding of $1 million for the creation of a certain number of beds. We worked out that it would have actually cost $5 million, but in the end it was not even in their budget estimates.

Through our major health reform that is transforming the health picture right around this nation, in this budget the federal government will be committing $160 million to rebuilding the C1 Bega Hospital on a greenfield site. That hospital has been neglected for decades, which has left a serious gap in addressing the health needs of our community. There have been so many false starts with this but now it is done. This government has decisively acted to make that happen by providing $170 million in funding, with a $10 million contribution from New South Wales. I secured that commitment from Carmel Tebbutt before the state election. She also put in a superb submission as we worked together to put it at the top of the list of New South Wales requirements. I was personally involved in helping with the land transaction between the state health department and a local landholder, and I was also involved in explaining to the executive and my federal colleagues the need for the hospital.

That $170 million contrasts with the $1 million that was offered by the coalition because they had no health reform capability within the context of the offerings they made. We were then all shocked and stunned by the $11 billion black hole that was highlighted by the Treasury. There was an incredible circus when the Leader of the Opposition was unable to explain the budget options that he should have been presenting to the electorate. He famously handed it off to Joe Hockey, whose inability to present a credible story was embarrassing. He once again did the hospital pass to Andrew Robb. At the end of that chain of passing we saw Andrew Robb do the big knock-on as his advisor frantically waved from the back of the room in an attempt to kill off Andrew Robb's disastrous response.

Have we seen any improvement on that? This year, of course, they cut short the chain of passing. There was no Andrew Robb at the end of the line to do the knock-on. It stopped at Joe Hockey and he staged the big knock-on. It was just so embarrassing to watch that and the Leader of the Opposition's speech. It was a farce. It showed utter contempt for the people of this nation and for the serious journalists who have since been tearing the coalition's position apart by emphasising the double counting, the fraud and the failure in what they have presented as a story to sell them as credible alternative economic managers.

They have revealed a few other things through what they have said. Joe Hockey has been consistent in saying that they would apply the 12,000 job cuts that would devastate my region and devastate the ability of the government to deliver services. He not only continues to emphasise that he would stick to those 12,000 job cuts but also emphasises that it would just be a start. So we would see the same devastation in my region that we saw in 1996 when thousands and thousands of jobs were cut from my region and which sent my region into a mini recession of its own. The impact of our economic measures is that we now have a time of great employment, development and prosperity emerging for Eden-Monaro, and it shows the real risk that was at stake there.

We have also heard the opposition talk about broadband and whether it is a waste of government money. It is incredible what their ignorance has revealed about the importance of this infrastructure. They would only have had to watch the wonderful Four Corners program to understand what this means to our region and to rural and regional Australia in general. Instead, they keep talking about downloading movies and digging holes in backyards, which exposes just how shallow and ignorant they are about this important national infrastructure measure. What is even more embarrassing about their attitude is that Mr Hockey talks about the difference between a Bentley and a Commodore. He says we cannot afford the Bentley and we have to go with the Commodore, but what he is actually saying is that the cities will get the Bentley and the regions will get the Commodore. So, once again, rural and regional Australians would be treated as second-class citizens. The opposition are saying: 'You are too stupid to really take advantage of the full potential of an NBN anyway with all that speed and capacity. You don't need it. Just get by.' It is the same as saying: 'Okay, we're not going to roll out electricity to the bush, either. You can just get by with kerosene lamps. What would you know about using electricity to its full capacity?'

This is a shameful position from the coalition. They have in their ranks the National Party, who claim to represent rural and regional Australia but who have only embarrassed rural and regional Australia with that claim and abandoned and betrayed the bush by taking that position. We will not sit still on it. Eden-Monaro understood the importance of this vital piece of infrastructure—it was a key factor in the election. A good example of that is a company that came to see me recently who want to set up a high-end service call centre. They provided me with a chart: on one side, it gave a list of connection speeds and, on the other, a number of employees. The number of employees was directly related to connection speeds. At the top of that list, at 20 megabits per second, they can employ 50 people—something that could not be delivered by a wireless stand-alone network, particularly in a region like mine with its terrain and vegetation issues. It highlighted again how embarrassing is the Opel proposal that the coalition presented. They do not understand the needs of my community and they do not understand the potential of the National Broadband Network for rural and regional Australia.

Finally, in my own portfolio of agriculture, fisheries and forestry, I am delighted at the commitments that have been made in this budget: the $44 million to continue investigating the drought policy that needs to replace the old exceptional circumstances system, which has been a terribly blunt instrument. It has, of course, delivered emergency relief and that has been gratefully received, but we need to move from a consequence management model to a risk management model, and this investment in drought policy is welcome. I welcome also the $84.2 million for environmental stewardship programs, which our farmers and community have taken great advantage of and which are producing tremendous environmental outcomes as well as productivity gains on the land.

One other measure, which I will speak more on later today, is the introduction of the carbon farming initiative, at $45.6 million. It is going to be a tremendous opportunity for our producers. It will contribute not only to our action on climate change—Garnaut and others have highlighted the benefits to be gained and the opportunities in the bush for sequestering and abating carbon—but also to the opportunity for farmers to diversify their incomes and achieve significant productivity gains. We will work very hard now to roll that out through our landcare facilitators. Workshops will be conducted with landholders and farmers to show how they can take advantage of this scheme. The scheme will also need to be underpinned by a carbon price. A carbon price will be essential to upholding that market, as it will be to unleashing the investment that we need in all of these renewable energy options that are so important. In my own region we have a $700 million wind farm project, which would have been under construction within the next couple of months had we a carbon-pricing mechanism in place. I am delighted to support these bills. This is a successful government that is hard at work. (Time expired)

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Booker prize is one of the world's great prizes for works of fiction. I think the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, might want to consider lodging the 2011-12 budget as an entrant in the Booker prize as a work of fiction, because the numbers in the budget bear very little relation to reality. For one thing, we are told repeatedly that there is to be a carbon tax introduced in Australia, but the budget makes no reference to either costs or revenues associated with the carbon tax.

Another gaping omission in the 2011-12 budget and in the forward estimates is the National Broadband Network—this policy which we are told is one of the centrepieces of what the Labor government is delivering to Australia, likely to cost some $56 billion on the latest estimates. Yet, if you try and work out where, in the underlying cash balance, the contribution from the National Broadband Network is to be found, you will search in vain because those numbers make no reference to the National Broadband Network. What you can find are some statements about the amounts of capital to be injected into the National Broadband Network. In particular, at page 342 of budget paper No. 2 it is disclosed that the capital contribution in 2012-13 will be $4.4 billion. If that number were treated appropriately as an expenditure, it would have the consequence that the projected budget deficit for 2012-13 would disappear, because $4.4 billion is more than the projected surplus for 2012-13.

I want to make three points in the brief time available to me today. Firstly, the basis on which the moneys to be paid by the government on behalf of taxpayers, on behalf of citizens, into the National Broadband Network are not included in this budget is conceptually extremely shaky; indeed, a less charitable description would be to call it straight-out misleading. The second point I want to make is that the National Broadband Network shows every sign of being, in financial terms, a disaster. That is something that all taxpayers and all citizens ought to be very concerned about, because we are all compelled to have our collective funds invested in this venture, notwithstanding all of the signs that the return we will get on that investment is going to be highly unsatisfactory. The third point I wish to make is that the root cause of this looming financial disaster is decisions about the broadband strategy for this country which are needlessly extravagant. There is no question that our broadband infrastructure in Australia needs to be upgraded, but there are vastly more cost-effective ways of doing it than the ill-advised strategy which this government is pursuing.

Let me turn firstly to the question of the justification for not including within the budget, within the numbers that make up the underlying cash balance, the expenditure which is to be made on the National Broadband Network. I put to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that it has been done for one reason and one reason only: a desperate desire to try to make the budget look better than it actually is. I might incidentally make the point that even the numbers which have been included in the papers that are provided only provide for government funding of $18.2 billion to go into the National Broadband Network by 2014-15. If you look at the corporate plan of the NBN Co., it assumes funding of $30.2 billion. That is a $12 billion gap. Where is that money to come from when we know that the only source of funding for the NBN Co. is the government, is the taxpayers of Australia? That is a question as to which so far no answer has been provided. There is a $12 billion gap by 2014-15 and no answer has been provided.

If we turn to the core question of why this money is being spent but does not appear in the budget, there is a very illuminating parallel with the practices of investment banks such as Bear Stearns and others which collapsed in 2008. You could look at Enron some 10 years ago. All of those companies followed the practice of having so-called off-balance sheet vehicles which spent real money but pretended that in some way the parent entity was not liable. That was a fallacy then, and the approach being taken in this budget in relation to the National Broadband Network is a fallacy now. Taxpayers are on the hook for this money. This is real money which is being spent. It is being spent every year. There are billions of dollars being spent out to 2014-15. As I have demonstrated, there is a yawning gap compared to what NBN Co. seems to expect, and yet none of that appears in the budget. We are simply deluding ourselves if we think that for some reason, based upon the numbers that Treasurer Swan has put forward, there is going to be a genuine surplus in 2012-13. There will not be.

Is there any theoretical basis for the proposition that this money ought not to be included in the underlying cash balance? The claim is that this is an investment by taxpayers, by government, and in due course a return will be realised. But what a threadbare claim that is when you look at some of the realities. Firstly, even the returns that it is claimed NBN Co. will generate, in the order of six to seven per cent a year, are extremely low rates of return which no private sector investor would accept. Even those extremely low rates of return are based on highly unrealistic assumptions about the number of people who will take up this service.

But there is another reason to be deeply sceptical about the application of the theory that this is an investment and in some way taxpayers can be confident that the government is going to get this money back. Last year legislation was introduced and passed which set out five detailed steps which need to be completed before NBN Co. can ever be privatised. Those five steps include a declaration by the communications minister, an inquiry by the Productivity Commission, a parliamentary joint committee, a declaration by the finance minister and parliament not disallowing that declaration. All of that has been done to appease the Greens, whose stated position is that NBN Co. should never be sold. So now we are supposed to treat as an investment an asset which is in practical terms constrained from being sold with alacrity. In reality, there is real reason to doubt it will ever be sold at all.

Let me make another point here. In addition to the $27.5 billion of equity investment in NBN Co., the corporate plan also assumes that there will be a further $13 billion of debt issued by NBN Co. What private investor is going to want to acquire this paper? The only condition on which a private sector investor is likely to invest in these debt securities is if they are either explicitly or, at the very least, implicitly guaranteed by government. So there is another significant element of public commitment and government commitment to this project which ought to be included in this budget and has not been.

Let me turn to the second proposition I want to put, which is that all the signs are that the National Broadband Network is going to be a financial disaster. The first point to substantiate that claim is that the network design choice which has been made is enormously expensive. Building a fibre-to-the-premises network is hugely expensive. The build cost, we are told, will be $36 billion and a return needs to be generated on that capital. One of the practical consequences of that is that the pricing will need to be sufficiently high to accommodate that return, and of course the higher the pricing is the lower the take-up will be. We also know that the build plan is a very lengthy one. It is not to be completed until mid-2020, and again that delays the rate at which customers can come onto the network and start to generate revenue.

We also know that the take-up assumptions to achieve even the paltry six per cent return which is promised are exceptionally optimistic. The corporate plan assumes that 70 per cent of homes passed will take a service. One of the core issues here is the extent to which homes and householders will choose to be connected to this network or will choose to take a wireless service, including a fourth-generation wireless service, likely to be delivered by all of the major mobile operators after the coming spectrum auctions. We know from the NBN Co.'s corporate plan that already 13 per cent of homes are wireless only—that is, they do not take a fixed broadband service. Yet there is an assumption in the plan that that number, 13 per cent—which has grown from four per cent in less than 10 years—is going to conveniently taper out at 16 per cent and miraculously everybody else will take a service from NBN Co. Therefore, the revenues will be secured and we need have no concerns. I am deeply sceptical. No private sector investor would accept the proposition that it is plausible that this network is going to achieve a 70 per cent take-up and, in turn, therefore, no private sector player would be persuaded by this corporate plan to put in the kind of money that the government is proposing to compel all taxpayers collectively to invest in this venture.

Indeed, even on its face, the corporate plan reveals that this venture will lose investors money. The corporate plan notes that the weighted average cost of capital for a venture of this kind is typically around 10 per cent. It might be plus or minus a bit, but it is typically around 10 per cent. We also know that the return on investment is a little over six per cent. It is a basic proposition of corporate finance that if your return on investment, your internal rate of return, is lower than your weighted average cost of capital then the net present value of the project is negative. This project loses money. The corporate plan of NBN Co. makes that absolutely plain on its face.

Overlay that with the fact that there is increasing evidence that the project is already running behind time. For example, there is an assumption in the corporate plan that the deal with Telstra will be both signed and approved by 30 June this year when in reality we are almost at the end of May and the deal has not yet been signed. Even if it were signed tomorrow, the approval process would take several months.

All the indicators are that the company is struggling to meet its optimistic assumptions as to the costs it will be able to achieve. A key cost is building out the network. The company has tried several times to secure a deal with construction partners which gives it a price for homes passed which is low enough to meet the overall parameters of the corporate plan. It has not been able to do that. The reality is that the NBN Co. is facing construction costs materially higher than it has assumed.

Let me turn thirdly and briefly to the underlying problem behind this financial disaster which is increasingly afflicting the budget of the federal government and will affect it to a greater extent with each passing year until such time as corrective action is taken. Yes, we need to improve the broadband infrastructure in this country. That is not contested on our side of the House. Indeed, it is vigorously supported as a proposition. But it makes no sense to choose such an extravagantly expensive design. Where is the case for the applications which require 100 megabits per second? We have seen very little evidence. For the kinds of instances that have been put to, for example, the House Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications, such as the Hunter nursing trial—a very impressive trial involving home monitoring of patients—we were told that the speed required is 512 kilobits per second in each direction. Why are we pursuing a policy of building out immediately everywhere? Why are we not making good use of existing infrastructure such as the HFC networks, which pass almost a third of homes and can already, or with very little upgrading, deliver 100 megabits per second?

In conclusion, this budget is a fiction because it excludes the National Broadband Network expenditure. This will be a growing and increasingly serious black hole for Commonwealth budgets for years to come unless corrective action is taken. (Time expired)

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak today in support of the three appropriation bills—Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2011-2012 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012—and to discuss the responsible economic management credentials of this federal Labor government. We have delivered a responsible budget; it is a budget true to the values of Labor and true to our commitment to equality and opportunity for all. But, as the Treasurer has said, it is also 'a budget for the times'. As he has noted, we have been Keynesians while the economy was on the way down and we will continue to apply Keynesian thinking while the economy is on the way up. As a government, we have successfully navigated the waves of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Of the world’s 33 advanced economies, only three maintained positive growth after the onset of the global financial crisis, only two avoided recession and only one had growth over one percent. Gross government debt in the OECD is forecast to exceed 100 per cent of GDP by the end of this year, reaching heights of 158 per cent of GDP in Greece. Ours is the economy that avoided recession and recorded growth of more than one percent. Ours is the economy with net debt which will peak at 7.2 per cent of GDP—a tiny fraction of the comparable countries mentioned. I congratulate the Treasurer on his management of the Australian economy in such turbulent times.

The recent OECD report, Restoring public finances, observes:

The Australian economy has been one of the most resilient in the OECD ...

That’s because we made the tough decisions when we needed to. We implemented fiscal stimulus programs that protected an estimated 200,000 jobs and tens of thousands of businesses. We injected $42 billion worth of cash, consumer confidence and infrastructure spending into the arteries of our economy in 2008. We guaranteed bank deposits and we invested in the long-term prosperity of our nation. We saw Australia’s top trading partners fall, like dominoes, into recession.

In Newcastle, my electorate, even though our commodity based exports provide 32 per cent of the total exports of New South Wales, the global financial crisis still posed a real danger to local jobs and local families, particularly in the construction, hospitality, manufacturing and retail sectors. As unemployment in America and the European Union soars towards 10 per cent, our unemployment rate nationally, and in Newcastle, is steady at around five per cent. We have not seen dole queues like those in Ireland, nor have we seen the levels of youth unemployment witnessed in places like Spain. Losing your job, we understand, is a life-changing experience.

Individuals lose more than just a source of income; they lose stability, their identity and the dignity that attaches to having a job. Hunter labour markets have been resilient, too. We are a very diverse economy. We hit unprecedented heights of workforce participation when, last year, the total number of employed residents rose to 335,500—a record for us. But I note that the shadow minister for finance, Andrew Robb, the member for Goldstein, still refers to Newcastle as a 'one-industry town'. I have to say: where has he been for the past decade? We have one of the most diverse economies in Australia, and we have one of the most resilient economies in Australia. Our one industry that he is perhaps referring to, BHP steelmaking, closed over a decade ago. I think that perhaps typifies an opposition that remain somewhere lost in space when it comes to responsible economic management and their understanding of this country, particularly regional Australia.

Our government, though, has had to make tough decisions, but the decision to invest in skills and training has been the right decision. As Bernard Keane wrote in Crikey last week, the government’s stimulus and nation-building measures ‘are the reasons tens of thousands of Australians, maybe hundreds of thousands of Australians, kept their jobs’. He is right. Since we took office in 2007, we have created over 750,000 jobs; that is an average of more than 550 jobs per day. Further, this budget anticipates the creation of more than half a million jobs over the next three years, and we will see our unemployment rate fall to 4½ per cent by mid-2013. But it has not been easy.

A patchwork economy creates patchwork pressures such as higher interest rates, a stronger Australian dollar and rising costs that all need to be managed. This budget balances the needs of regions and sectors where investment and growth are booming and businesses face a tight labour market, with the demands of sectors like manufacturing under stress from the rising dollar and the retail sector suffering from decreased consumer spending, particularly in some regional centres where unemployment is high. That is why we are making changes to the taxation of small businesses, allowing them to claim up to $5,000 as an immediate deduction for motor vehicles purchased in 2012-13. That builds on our tax concession to them of $5,000 as well. That is why we are providing $7.1 million to continue the Small Business Support Line, which I am told has already received 30,000 calls and emails since it began operating in September 2009. That is why we have created a $558 million National Workforce Development Fund to support more than 100,000 new training and workforce development places over four years. This is how we are addressing sectors such as construction and aged care, which are particularly at risk of a skills shortages. We have a proud record of strong economic management and job creation. In Newcastle it has been a particularly satisfying time as we see so many projects made possible by federal funding beginning to take shape. I make special mention of a new regional museum at Honeysuckle due to open in the next few months, where we contributed $8½ million; the Empire Skate Park, a very popular facility now; the Hunter Medical Research Institute, which we contributed $45 million to build and which is now under construction; the Australian Solar Institute; the Smart Grid, Smart City trial; and the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources. These are particularly satisfying. They represent an investment in the stimulus packages or else an investment in regional Australia and infrastructure projects.

Similarly, with many of my colleagues I have had the great pleasure of attending official celebrations at many schools to mark the completion of new buildings and facilities under the BER project. I make mention of and thank the following schools for the wonderful celebrations I have been part of: Tarro Public School, St James Primary School, Newcastle East Public School, Newcastle Grammar School, Waratah Public School, Alesco Learning Centre, St Dominic's Centre for Hearing Impaired Children, New Lambton Public School, Waratah West Public School and Thornton Public School. And there are many more coming up. I am also delighted that the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, Mr Garrett, was able to open the new Wetlands Environmental Education Centre at the Hunter Wetlands Centre. Our economic growth and prosperity has been assisted greatly by this government and its responsible economic management.

I am also very pleased that this budget makes health, particularly mental health, a national priority. We are investing $2.2 billion over five years to deliver better mental health care and prevention services, including $443 million to tackle suicide and $492 million for prevention and early intervention mental health services for children and young people. Added to this is $1.8 billion over six years in regional health infrastructure, bringing our investment in this area over the past three years to $2.9 billion.

Following on from the GFC, this budget, as the Treasurer has said, is part of the fastest fiscal consolidation of the modern era. This budget has government finances moving back into the black by 2012-13, ahead of every major advanced economy. This federal budget will keep the national economy strong and that is always good news for my electorate of Newcastle. It is not a high spending budget, but it is a responsible budget. Yes, for the first time in nine years there were no income tax cuts and none of the handouts that the former government was so fond of, but it was a fiscally responsible budget.

Since our election in 2007, federal Labor has already delivered in my electorate more than $1.7 billion in funding, and that is not including the economic benefits that will flow to Newcastle from the $1.5 billion Hunter Expressway now under construction. Interestingly, I note that the member for Paterson stated in his speech that I take my electorate for granted. Well, you wish, Bob. The people of Newcastle have $1.7 billion worth of reasons to know why that is not true. Despite some belt tightening, this budget has Newcastle on track for jobs and growth. By leading us back to surplus the budget will keep our national economy strong, and that is good for the national economy and jobs growth in Newcastle. Indeed, job seekers and apprentices will be among the biggest winners in my electorate. Around 6,547 people in my electorate stand to benefit from federal Labor's investment in training and incentives for apprenticeships. The 2,000 long-term unemployed in Newcastle will also benefit from an additional $1.4 million being invested in training and work experience in Newcastle.

I am also pleased the budget delivered sorely needed resources for cancer treatment in the Hunter region. I have spoken in this place before about the considerable concern in my electorate about access to oncology services in the Hunter region. Cancer has touched the lives of almost all members of this place and all members of the community. For some time now, constituents in Newcastle have approached me expressing concern about unacceptably long waiting times in the Hunter region to see specialists or to receive life-saving treatment. That is why I was delighted this budget paved the way to grant a Medicare licence to the very recently installed MRI machine at the Calvary Mater hospital. It is due to start scanning later this month. I have campaigned hard for some time for this important resource to be provided to the Hunter community. As many would know, Calvary Mater is one of the largest cancer service providers in the Hunter region. Securing a fully-functioning and partially Medicare-licensed machine has been an important priority for management, staff and patients at the hospital.

MRI machines, as people would understand, are particular effective in diagnosing cancers and working with diseases such as cancers and strokes. Like the other seven new licences for MRI machines in regional areas granted in this budget, the Mater’s new licence will become effective next year. It will support Medicare subsidised services for a specified range of conditions, including common cancers like breast and cervical cancer. This will significantly reduce the cost of scans to patients and bring Medicare funded services closer to home for those who need them. In this case it will complement other MRI machines in the region at the John Hunter Hospital, Hunter Imaging in Cardiff and the private hospital in East Maitland, which have full Medicare licences.

The federal Labor government has a proud record of delivering improved cancer services to the people of the Hunter region. In 2008-2009, the federal Labor government provided $1.5 million in a one-off grant to support upgraded PET services at the Calvary Mater hospital. At that time a further $700,000 was granted to fund Medicare rebates for the additional PET services from the improved facilities. This state-of-the-art scanner is now making a real difference to the lives and early diagnoses of countless cancer sufferers in my electorate.

I would also like to put on the record my appreciation to Minister Roxon, who, in response to my concern regarding recent media allegations of inequitable cancer services and longer waiting times in facilities in Newcastle compared to facilities in other parts of New South Wales, has written to the New South Wales Minister for Health requesting a briefing on this matter so that we can see that the investments we have made are delivering improved cancer services in my electorate.

Of course, in his usual style, the shadow minister for regional development and tourism, Bob Baldwin, chose on Monday to misrepresent this important gain for the people of the Hunter and claimed that the Calvary Mater had 'missed out' on an MRI scanner. That is untrue. That was just another futile effort by the member for Paterson to mislead the people of his own electorate, who will also benefit from this new MRI licence at the Mater, as they do from the licence we granted to the MRI machine at East Maitland.

This is a budget that maps a path for the future prosperity of our nation. This is a budget that delivers on core Labor beliefs in creating jobs, creating prosperity and ensuring that every person in Australia has the opportunity to advance themselves and aspire to the wealth and prosperity that all Australians should enjoy. I commend the bills to the House.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Treasurer's budget, Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012, a budget that was so good that the Minister for Foreign Affairs decided to turn his back on the Treasurer after he delivered the budget. Today, I would like to focus on some critical areas in this budget. As the federal member for Cook, I am keen to focus on the impact of government debt imposed on my constituents in southern Sydney to pay for Labor's waste. I am interested in focusing on the impact of the government's changes to the fringe benefits tax arrangements, which will impact on small business in my electorate of Cook, in southern Sydney, to pay for Labor's waste. I am interested in focusing on the impact on changes to family benefits that have been put in place by this government to ensure that families in my electorate will be forced to pay for Labor's waste. I am interested in focusing on the changes to the private health insurance arrangements where, in my electorate, there are 102,578 people who are covered by private health insurance. I am keen to stand up for them because they are being asked to pay for Labor's waste in this budget. The biggest area of government waste that has been brought to my attention in this budget has been the government's failures in the area of border protection. This is a waste, as a result of the government's policy failures, that people in my electorate of Cook will have to pay for. These are measures that the government has brought in, not as savings to reduce a deficit, not as savings to reduce a debt, but as savings they are forcing on Australian families and small business to pay for their waste. The waste and the exorbitant expenditure are exhibited in no greater area than in the government's border protection failures and what they have meant for our detention network and the costs that come.

The costs of paying for Labor's waste are particularly being sheeted home to those who this government thinks are rich, who this Prime Minister thinks are rich. Those on a household income of $150,000 are in the thoughts of this Prime Minister as being rich. I can tell those opposite and I can tell the Prime Minister that she must be so out of touch with the cost of living for Australian families, more generally, but specifically with the cost of living for families living in Sydney. She must know very little about the cost of living for families who are living in southern Sydney, in my part of the city, or in western Sydney or in north-western Sydney or even as far north as the Central Coast and other places. If she thinks a family living in a household in Sydney on a combined household income of $150,000 is rich, then she is dreaming and, clearly, she is completely out of touch with the cost of living for people living in Sydney.

I know that the Prime Minister does not live in Sydney and I know most of the senior ministers, particularly those who make the decisions, do not live in Sydney, and they are completely unaware, I think, of what the real costs of living are for people and families living in Sydney. As a proud Sydneysider and someone who has lived in Sydney all of my life, I need to tell the Prime Minister that she is out of touch with those who live in Sydney and particularly those who live in my own electorate who are being forced to pay for this government's failures and waste.

In the area of border protection, since August 2008, 11,357 people have arrived illegally on 227 boats. Labor has gold and silver when it comes to illegal boat arrivals in Australia—4,706 people this financial year and 5,614 last financial year. These are 'gold and silver performances', to quote the former Prime Minister when he used to hand out medals for these things, and those medals are now squarely and fairly owned by this government because of their failures. They have attempted many things to try to address their failures, but their ideas are mainly forged in this climate of denial about border protection and what is required.

We can all remember the asylum freeze from April 2010 which led to 1,200 additional people coming, processing times tripling and the number of people in detention doubling. That was the first attempt. Then of course we had the regional processing centre which the Prime Minister triumphantly announced before the last election in East Timor. She has finally admitted that that is going nowhere, the last person on earth to work out that that ridiculous proposal was never going anywhere. The previous Prime Minister, whom she rolled, told her that. She chose to ignore him and has learned through bitter experience how ridiculous the proposal was.

But we find that $130 million has been secretly put into this budget for a regional processing centre. This was revealed in Senate estimates over the last two days—$130 million has been set aside for a regional processing centre. It was not listed as an additional measure or a new measure in the budget. It was not in Budget Paper No. 2, it was not in the portfolio estimates; it had to be uncovered in Senate estimates.

The interesting thing about this $130 million is that it was put aside for a regional processing centre for a country they could not identify, of a size they could not nominate. It was a phantom regional processing centre. We know that it is a phantom regional processing centre because the negotiations, they say, are for a regional processing centre in Papua New Guinea and it was confirmed in Senate estimates that it is nothing of the sort. The proposal for an offshore processing centre in Papua New Guinea is not for a regional processing centre; it is to deal with irregular maritime arrivals to Australia. It is, as outlined in Senate estimates, the rebirth of the Pacific solution that this government, when opposition, condemned. This Labor Party had condemned it for the last decade and now they have been brought to a stunning recognition of the failures of their own policies and are now seeking to embrace the Pacific solution. But that process of embracing has been absolutely tortuous. This government has been trying to buy a stairway to John Howard on border protection, but the process has been absolutely tortuous. It has been characterised by desperate, half-cooked, panicked deals rushed out for a headline by this government prior to the budget to distract attention from nothing other than the budget that we are now debating. That is what they have sought to do. It has been characterised by a government that have been dragged kicking and screaming to a realisation that their policies have been the reason we have seen so many people seek to come to Australia illegally by boat.

Australia has the problem. This region does not have a regional problem. It has an Australia problem, not the reverse. The Prime Minister's rhetoric on all of this is nothing more than disguise for the fact that this government, at least now, I hope—and I can only deduct this—are seeking to change policies and to admit that it is their policies that were actually the problem. For three years we had denial. We had a nonsense argument about push factors, when the number of asylum applications around the world today is almost half what it was 10 years ago, when the coalition government faced this problem. The government have finally admitted, dragged kicking and screaming, that it is their policies that have actually created the issue that we have before us.

I cannot understand why this government does not put its pride aside and go the full measure. If you want to move towards our policies then by all means do so. But stop this tortuous agonising process of denial and trying to pretend you are not going to do it when clearly you have worked out that that is the direction you need to head in. Why not just pick up the phone to Nauru? They are ready and willing to do it. I spoke to the Nauruans last week. They are ready and willing to take up an arrangement for an offshore processing centre in Nauru, but this government continues to live in denial and pride and refuses to get on with the job.

We will see what the result is of the measures that the government have introduced, in particular their move towards reintroducing the Pacific solution in Manus Island, a long-held strong view of the coalition, which should be taken up. We will see what the outcome of those measures is. But what cannot be hidden is the cost of denial and obfuscation for the past three years. That cost is seen absolutely everywhere. It is exhibited in particular in our immigration detention network. The government cannot hide the mess and chaos that have been created as a result of their failed policies. That is the cost of Labor's denial. That cost is measured in the collapse of our immigration detention network under Labor and in critical incidents. Critical incidents include fires, riots, self-harm and even death. More than three critical incidents have been occurring in our detention centres every single day, and they include rooftop protests. We learnt yesterday in Senate estimates of the bizarre farce when on the same day, ironically and coincidentally, that there were protestors sitting on the minister's own electorate office roof in his own electorate, miraculously a deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration, in an extraordinary measure, went down to Villawood and, standing on top of a box, popped his head up into the roof cavity to negotiate with detainees who had been protesting on the roof for some 10 or 11 days.

It was an extraordinary situation, and what were those detainees told? They were told that if they got down from the roof they would not be sent to Silverwater Prison, where 22 others had been sent without charge. The minister can pretend all he likes that there were no special deals, but the same DNA that was in the special deal of the Oceanic Viking was in this minister when he sat there and watched those protesters sit on a roof for 11 days. He did nothing until protesters came and sat on the roof of his own electorate office, and a deputy secretary of the department was, miraculously, all of a sudden poking his head up in a roof cavity—as I am sure deputy secretaries do routinely when they negotiate with people who are protesting and detainees who are defying lawful instructions for those who are in detention!

It was a very special set of arrangements. It was a sad farce and an indictment of the way detention is managed in this country. A damage bill of $9 million was revealed from the Christmas Island and Villawood riots. There have been 133 charter flights, costing $15 million, undertaken in this year alone. There has been a tripling of the time spent in detention, from 61 days to 174 days. People have been accommodated in motels and hotels at an annual cost of $4,500 per person per month. There has been a tenfold increase in staff numbers. This is why we need to have an inquiry and why the coalition is calling for one.

The cost of asylum seeker management has gone from less than $100 million a year to more than $1 billion a year in the short time that this government has been in office. That is a record it should not be proud of. If you go through this budget in careful detail, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I have done, you will see that since the 2009-10 budget was handed down the impact of the government's retreat, abandonment and demolition of the Howard government's regime—which the government now admits it has to restore but which it is just too slow in doing—has cost the taxpayer $3.2 billion in blow-outs, including capital. That is since the Howard regime was rolled back. More than $2 billion of those blow-outs is in this budget alone. Asylum seeker management costs have increased from less than $100 million a year to more than $1 billion a year.

This is a government that thinks that the Australian taxpayer should now have to shell out in cuts to family benefits and in higher taxes for those who are driving utes. Let me tell you about those who drive utes in my electorate. Because of the state of the economy, they used to be able to get plenty of work, where they are tradies, around the shire. These days they have to travel out to Western Sydney, up to northern Sydney and down into the Illawarra. They are spending more and more time in their utes to chase work, to get the contracts they need to sustain their businesses and to put food on the table for their families. That is what they are doing. But this government says, 'You should be taxed more.'

When I look at this budget I see a very sinister theory or principle being displayed by this government. It is that those who have worked hard to give their families a better deal and a bigger opportunity in life—those who have made sacrifices to give their families and their children a better standard of living—are being told by this government that they need to make sacrifices for this government's inability to control its expenditure and stop the waste. The issue that has probably been raised more than most others in my electorate, along with border protection, is the television set-top box issue. People cannot understand why they should have to pay more and more in taxes but receive less and less in support from this government. This government thinks they are rich and should be paying for the failures of this government and for its inability to control the borders and its expenditure.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The federal Labor government is committed to a strong economy, a fair society and a sustainable environment, unlike those opposite. The previous speaker, the member for Cook, talked about taxes and about expenditure and waste. Let us talk about the coalition's appalling record on the economy. Let us get a few facts on the table. In the peak period of the Howard government, tax as a percentage of GDP was 24.1 per cent; in 2011-12 it will be 21.8 per cent. Real government expenditure in the next five years will be one per cent, the lowest since 1980. During the last five years of the Howard government it was 3.7 per cent. Underlying inflation in March 2011 was 2.3 per cent. At the end of the Howard government period it was 3.5 per cent. Returning the budget to surplus by 2012-13—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Look at those opposite! The Treasury found an $11 billion black hole after the last election, and a $1 billion black hole as a result of their response to the Queensland, Western Australian and Victorian disasters. They could not even agree in their party room about how they should respond to those disasters. Where was the economic response in the shadow Treasurer's speech at the National Press Club? Where was the economic response from the would-be Prime Minister opposite? It was nowhere to be seen, because they have given up on running an economic argument against us. Where were the questions yesterday in question time about the economy? Nowhere to be seen. Those opposite are a big risk to the economy, they are a big risk to the future surplus and they are a big risk to employment because in my electorate they failed to invest when they were in government for 11 years. I will talk about that in a minute. They are a big risk because of the policies they took to the last election. They wanted to get rid of trade training centres and bring back Work Choices. We know they all want to do that because we see opinion pieces from those opposite that they want to do it. They would have ripped $1 billion out of the hospital system. That is what they proposed. They would have got rid of the NBN. Yet all the councils in South-East Queensland want the NBN, including many of those opposite. The member for Groom should have a talk to Peter Taylor, the mayor of the Toowoomba Regional Council. The member for Wright should have a chat to John Brent, the mayor of the Scenic Rim Regional Council, and also Steve Jones, the mayor of the Lockyer Valley Regional Council. They love the NBN. They want the NBN there, yet those opposite oppose the NBN. All the business committees and chambers of commerce in the Somerset Regional Council want the NBN. That is the reality. Those opposite should have a look at this. The truth is that they opposed our GFC response. There would have been 200,000 jobs put at risk by those opposite. They wanted to adopt the New Zealand National Party attitude because they thought that was the way to go. But there would have been unemployment in the retail sector and the construction sector.

They opposed the BER response, including $109 million in my electorate alone. Yet I see conservative councillors turning up to BER ceremonies everywhere. I bet those opposite have gone to plenty of BER ceremonies in their electorates but they would not tell the principals, the P&Cs, the schools and the schoolkids that they opposed it. They have done that every step of the way. There has not been a roads funding bill introduced into this House since I was elected that the opposition did not oppose.

There is clear evidence in my electorate of the opposition opposing road infrastructure that is so important for South-East Queensland. I will talk about that in a minute. Negativity is all that we have got from those opposite—opportunistic negativity, no plans, no alternative ideas on what to do. Every time they promise something they do not deliver. The last time we were here, the shadow Treasurer was parading, posing and preening around the press gallery, saying, 'I'll get the budget back into surplus in 2011-12.' Where was one word of how they would do that? There was not a scintilla, not a jot, not one little bit of evidence that they would do it. They did not have any plans to do it—none at all. Yet they come in here supporting, allegedly, the mining interests. And then there was that farce yesterday. If there had been a Labor government in Western Australia doing that to a coalition government here, they would have been screaming absolute blue murder, but they supported their colleagues and comrades in WA because we know the WA Liberals actually wag the dog.

Let us have a look at what we have done in my area that they oppose. There is, for example, the local employment coordinators, such as Samantha Wilson. We have the Ipswich Logan area coordinators; those opposite would oppose that. They would oppose the trade training centres that we see in Ipswich—$6 million has been provided for that in the budget. They would oppose the GP superclinics that acted so wonderfully well in the flood response. The BER halls in Esk and Fernvale acted as flood evacuation centres. They opposed every single assistance we gave to flood affected Queensland as well—all the emergency relief, the mental health funding and all the additional health assistance. Was there one word from those opposite about that?

The Leader of the Opposition could not even get the electoral demography or the flood geography of Queensland right when he got up in the chamber to talk about the floods. He thought the floods in Queensland were in Redcliffe, for crying out loud! He thought the member for Petrie had floods in her electorate. That is how little he understood of what went on. And as he drove out to Grantham, which he did a couple of times, he would have travelled on the Ipswich Motorway. The Ipswich Motorway is a $1.95 billion project linking Ipswich and Toowoomba. This is one of the projects that all the mayors and councils in South-East Queensland supported—even the LNP in Queensland supported it—but the Howard coalition government refused it forever. They opposed the Ipswich Motorway upgrade year after year after year.

In fact, if the member for Wide Bay, if he were on the treasury benches as the roads minister, would close the construction of the Ipswich Motorway, putting at risk 10,000 jobs. We put $155 million in this budget for the completion of the Dinmore to Goodna section. The farmers know it, the miners know it, the councils know it and the chambers of commerce know it: those opposite should support it. But they voted against every single bill in this place to fund the Ipswich Motorway. That is the truth. They have also said nothing about the Blacksoil Interchange—the intersection of the Warrego Highway with the Brisbane Valley Highway. The council of South-East Queensland mayors—led recently by the alternative Premier of Queensland, Campbell Newman, who was the mayor of Brisbane—wanted to support seven projects in the last election. Number one on the list was the Blacksoil Interchange. Did we hear one word of support for that project from those opposite? For the 11½ years they infested and sat on the treasury bench, did they support the upgrade of the Blacksoil Interchange? No—not once did they provide funding for it and yet it is a major intersection for the Lockyer Valley-Ipswich-Somerset regions. All the councils in South-East Queensland know how important national highways are. Kids go through this intersection, parents go through it, farmers go through it and mining company trucks go through it. When we committed to doing this work Steve Jones, the mayor of the Lockyer Valley Regional Council, supported it. So did Peter Taylor, from the Toowoomba Regional Council. Paul Pisasale from Ipswich City Council supported it. Graeme Lehmann, the mayor of the Somerset Regional Council, supported it. They all supported it. John Brent, mayor of the Scenic Rim Regional Council, also supported it. The only one of those people who is a member of the ALP is Paul Pisasale. The rest of them have been or are members of the LNP.

The truth about this is that those opposite failed. They talk about regional Queensland. The Regional Infrastructure Fund, the money we are putting into regions, totals $4.3 billion. Those opposite failed with road funding. Let me give a few facts. When they were last on the treasury bench, under Roads to Recovery Ipswich City Council got $1.18 million. In this budget, they are getting $1.31 million. That is a pretty good increase. Let us look at the Somerset Regional Council. The member for Dickson and the member for Fisher represented those areas for some time. In the last year of the Howard government, under Roads to Recovery Somerset Regional Council received $357,000. Do you think that is alright? It is the biggest land area in South-East Queensland, although the fewest number of people live there. In this budget we are contributing not $357,000 but $653,000—a massive increase; almost double. Those opposite will not fund the Blacksoil Interchange but we have put $54 million into it and the state government is putting $16 million into it.

Those opposite will not support the minerals resource rent tax that gives my home state of Queensland $2 billion in regional infrastructure funding, but we know that is important for small business and superannuation uplift. It is an important infrastructure spend. So all those members of the LNP opposite—the member for Groom, the member of the Wright and all the others—should hang their heads in shame for their failure to support infrastructure in South-East Queensland. They continually failed to do anything when they were in power.

In this budget we are investing a record $8.5 billion as part of our Nation Building Program across the whole period, from 2008-09 through this budget to 2013-14, to renew and expand Queensland's road, rail and public infrastructure. That is not bad, when you consider that the Howard coalition government gave half of that over the same period. They come into this place and say that they are standing up for regional Queensland and rural Queensland and seats like mine, but the facts do not bear that out. Look at local roads funding, the Blacksoil Interchange and the Ipswich Motorway, and the overall roads, rail and port infrastructure in Queensland. The LNP members in this chamber know very well that only we have invested in regional infrastructure across Queensland. They would not make any commitment to any of that. They opposed the Ipswich Motorway upgrade and failed to support the Blacksoil interchange.

Let us talk about the Warrego Highway, between Toowoomba and Ipswich. They put a pause on the money they gave to the Queensland government to maintain the Warrego Highway. Yet we have the state member for Lockyer all the time bleating about it. The member for Wright bleats about it as well, and the member for Groom talks about it, but they paused the funding for it. We massively increased the funding for the Warrego Highway, and the state government is putting in improvements all along the Warrego Highway. It is not perfect; a lot needs to be done. But the member for Wright, in the Gatton Star, said he could not find one good thing in the budget for his area. He knows that thousands and thousands of his constituents drive through the Blacksoil interchange, drive along the Ipswich Motorway, day after day after day. Those opposite should hang their heads in shame when it comes to road infrastructure in South-East Queensland. They should hang their heads in shame. I see the member for Capricornia. She knows very well that it is only the election of a federal Labor government that has helped Rockhampton and those areas. Those opposite failed in that regard. They are a risk to jobs. They are a risk to health. They closed down the Ipswich GP superclinic. The Queensland Times newspaper editorialised: 'Hands off our GP superclinic'. Those opposite want to shut it down. They would not support the local employment coordinators. They would not support the BER. They would not support the 10,000 jobs on the Ipswich Motorway. They will not support the Blacksoil interchange. They will not support the Roads to Recovery funding that we put in. They are a risk to the budget, a risk to the cost of living.

They are also a risk to health services across my area. Did they support our funding for the Kambu Medical Centre and the Ipswich General Hospital? Have they supported us with Medicare locals? The divisions of general practice in Brisbane's south and Ipswich and West Moreton want it, but those opposite do not want to support what we are doing in primary care infrastructure or local primary care. They will not support that either. The doctors in my area, through the western corridor from south-west Brisbane all the way to the Lockyer Valley and way up into the Somerset, all support it. We put in GP superclinics and upgrades to primary care infrastructure for local GPs in Flinders Peak. Dr Shera runs the practice there. There was $300,000 for that in my local area. Did those opposite support it? No, they did not. It took a federal Labor government to seriously invest in mental health and disability. There is $2.2 billion in this budget. Those opposite say things. When they were there for 11½ years, did we see massive increases in funding? We did not. Look at their record. They failed.

Local organisations in my area have warmly welcomed this. We have some fantastic initiatives and some fantastic organisations, like Focal Extended, AusCare, Spiritus Kinections, Jacaranda Clubhouse, Booval Community Service, Southern Cross Community Service, the Ipswich Regional Advocacy Service and many, many others who help people with disability who are suffering from discrimination and problems, help people with their lifestyle, provide respite care and tenancy advocacy, help people transition from education to work, provide accommodation assistance and more. These are wonderful organisations that we see locally. There are organisations like CATS Inc. I was there at their recent opening of a service in Raceview. They help young people, 16- to 24-year-olds, make that transition. These are great organisations that got money from the federal Labor government. My area was neglected for 11½ years by those opposite—roads, schools, health, disability services and mental health. They should hang their heads in shame for what they did to the people of the western corridor, Ipswich and all those areas represented by conservative members of this place.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are now approaching almost one year since the Prime Minister admitted in a very rare moment of honesty that this Labor government had lost its way. Since then, this government has gone from bad to worse, with the Prime Minister taking our nation further and further off course. Due to the most reckless and irresponsible spending in our nation's history, in just over four budgets this Labor government will run up combined deficits of over $150 billion. To put this number in some perspective—$150 billion of combined deficits—let's take a $100 bill. If you laid out $100 bills from end to end, to get to $150 billion they would stretch around the globe not once but six times. Then we have the grand promise of returning the budget to surplus. Let's just assume all the planets align and Labor are actually able to deliver their first and only budget surplus in a generation, of $3 billion. To clean up the mess that they created and to pay back the Labor deficits created over four years, they would need to duplicate this budget surplus projected for 2012-13 year after year for the next 50 years. Despite claims of belt-tightening and a tough budget, the reckless spending of this government continues unabated. To fund this, they are continuing to add to our mountain of debt by $135 million every day—day after day. This is what the Prime Minister calls moving forward. I have been allocated 15 minutes for this speech. In this 15-minute period alone, this government will have borrowed another $1,400,000. And they will continue to do so for every 15-minute period day after day, night after night, weekday and weekend, to add to our mountain of debt.

In November last year, we were told that net debt would peak at an incredible $94 billion. But then on budget night it was revealed that it had actually blown out to $107 billion. That is $107,000 million. If you look at this number quickly, it is easy to overlook how much it is. But what this debt means is that every year going forward we need to pay an interest bill of over $6 billion. That is $6,000 million every year forever until we start paying off the debt. What this means for the future is that, before we spend one single dollar on our hospitals and roads and to support our children with disabilities, we will need to pay off $6 billion in interest on Labor's debt. And this debt will mainly be paid to foreigners.

Many other members on our side have detailed the shameful waste and mismanagement of this government and the attitude of doing whatever it takes to cling to power and the future be damned. One could talk all week and only be scratching the surface of this government's waste and mismanagement. Just one of the many examples of waste and mismanagement that I would like to raise is the farcical creation of the position at the ACCC of a Petrol Commissioner. If you were looking for one of the most useless positions in our country, it would be the Petrol Commissioner. Can anyone say exactly what the Petrol Commissioner has achieved for motorists, other than being an apologist for the big oil companies and the supermarket duopoly? Consumer and competition law expert Professor Frank Zumbo has said that the position was a 'costly gimmick' and should be scrapped because of budgetary pressures. But in last week's budget it was announced that this Labor government would continue to provide another $2 million over two years to continue the Petrol Commissioner's role. This is just one example that demonstrates this government does not have a clue and is prepared to compromise our economic prosperity to cling to power.

If we are looking for ways for our nation to repair the mess that Labor has put us in and to dig us out of the hole of Labor's debt, the burden will again fall on small business. History has shown that it is small business that leads the fight back. History has shown that small business is the creator of real new jobs. History has shown that small businesses come up with the innovations to create the new products and new inventions that we rely on for our economic prosperity. Again, the nation will need to call on small business to lead us out of this Labor induced mess. But the problem we have is that Labor, being ideologically hostile to small business, has launched a jihad against the small business sector. Already, since Labor has come to power, 300,000 jobs have been lost in the small business sector.

To further demonstrate Labor's attitude to small business, the backbone of our economy, we used to have a small business minister. But this Gillard government has disgracefully downgraded the small business portfolio to that of a parliamentary secretary. Now we have the person in charge of small business, the member for Lindsay, who seems so confused that he thinks his job is to make small business smaller. He seems to be doing very well in that role with those 300,000 jobs having disappeared.

Further, what is highly disturbing is that the RBA figures show that since Labor has come to power there has been a slashing of bank lending to small and medium sized businesses by an estimated $56 billion. Further, and even more disturbingly, the Treasurer foolishly and naively allowed St George Bank, when they were taken over by Westpac, to be eliminated as a competitor to the big banks in approving loans to small business. The evidence is that the big banks have been able to bulk up their profits by gouging small business.

The RBA numbers are highly disturbing. While the banks' interest rate margins for loans to large businesses have remained steady at around two per cent, the margin on loans to small businesses—loans secured by mortgages over residential properties—has blown out to over five per cent. This means that the entire Australian small business sector is paying interest rates around three per cent higher than they would in a normally-functioning, competitive market. This is putting Australian small businesses at a competitive disadvantage against their larger competitors and, as a ball-park figure, we now have an annual profit transfer from the small business sector to the big banks of around $9 billion. And the government continues to do nothing to repair our broken competition laws to protect consumers and provide equality of opportunity for small businesses. This government's jihad on the small business sector is going to have serious repercussions for our long-term economic prosperity.

No Australian wants to see this inept government continue on its present path of stumbling from policy disaster to policy disaster. From Fuel Watch and Grocery Watch to pink batts, BER waste, solar rebates, green loans and the set-top-box giveaway the list goes on and on. And now we have the looming financial disaster of the NBN and the self-inflicted punishment of a carbon tax.

With a mountain of debt, already north of $100 billion, this country simply cannot afford this ongoing series of rolling policy disasters. So what can the most inept government in our nation's history do to get out of its current rut and prevent further damage? A good suggestion I have for every member of this government is to go and watch an old episode of the Seinfeld sitcom entitled 'The Opposite'. In this episode George Costanza sums up exactly what Labor are going through when he says:

It's not working, Jerry. It's just not working ... Why did it all turn out like this for me? I had so much promise ... every decision I've ever made, in my entire life, has been wrong. My life is the opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have—

in every aspect—

It's all been wrong.

I am sure almost every member of the Labor Party, both federally and in the states, can identify with these comments. However, Jerry Seinfeld gives George the answer. He says:

If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.

So George then resolves to start doing the complete opposite of what he would normally do. He orders the opposite of his normal lunch. He boldly goes up and introduces himself to beautiful women. He stands up to bullies and he even starts to tell the truth, even when it is uncomfortable. And within a few days George Costanza finds himself dating beautiful women, he has landed a top job with the New York Yankees and he has won new-found respect with family and friends. And George credits his new-found success:

... it's all happening because I am completely ignoring every urge towards commonsense and good judgment I've ever had. This is no longer just some crazy notion. Jerry, this is my new religion.

Clearly this government should follow the lead of George Costanza. If they want to get the best results for this country then every instinct they should do the complete opposite. Think, for a minute, about how much better shape Australia and also the Labor Party would be in if they did the exact opposite of their natural instincts.

For example, when the proposal for a grocery watch scheme was floated, rather than following their natural instincts and throwing away millions in building a useless website, if they had done the exact opposite they would have saved themselves embarrassment and the taxpayer $7 million. The same goes for the pink batts scheme, the cash for clunkers, the solar rebates and the green loans program et cetera.

Then look at border protection. Of course the natural instinct of this Labor government was to abandon the policies of the Howard government. Again, if they had done the exact opposite of their natural instincts, billions of tax dollars would have been saved. Look at the Prime Minister's promise of the Epping to Parramatta rail link during the last election. I am sure the Prime Minister's natural instinct was that this would be a great political stunt, but in effect all it did was tie federal Labor more closely to the political disaster that was the New South Wales Labor government. Clearly, if the Prime Minister had done exactly the opposite of what she thought, Labor would be in a better position. Then take the set-top box program. Giving things away for free at taxpayers' expense for well above market price is a natural instinct of Labor. I am sure all Labor members thought this would be a good idea. But, as normal, it has turned out to be a farce, with Labor being lampooned from coast to coast and the public reminded of their reckless spending.

Moving forward, I call on this government to do the opposite. Rather than kowtowing to the Greens, they should stand up and oppose the carbon tax. Rather than blindly pushing ahead with the NBN, they should stop and call a cost-benefit analysis. Again, doing the opposite of what is their natural instinct will put our country in a better position. And, rather than inflict on our nation a pointless carbon tax, such a self-defeating mechanism, they should again do the complete opposite, say no and look for ways of direct action to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions.

In conclusion, for the rest of this term, no matter how long or how short that may be, if this government are going to avoid the continuation of their irrational and incompetent economic policies, the answer is very simple: they should take every instinct they have and do the complete opposite.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The contribution from the member for Hughes was not dissimilar to contributions often made by the Leader of the Opposition—full of rhetoric, full of one-liners, no substance, no policy and, probably one of its biggest failings, no economic plan for the future. It comes back to the fact that we are debating the Labor budget here today because we have an economic plan for the future. We have an economic plan that will see 500,000 jobs created. That is right. I did not hear about jobs in the contribution from the member for Hughes and we have not heard much about jobs from the members of the opposition in this debate. But we will talk about jobs. We want to talk about jobs because we believe that is the right thing to do. In fact the budget that the Treasurer put forward is all about creating jobs and giving Australians a good, prosperous economic future. It is about bringing the budget back into surplus and ensuring that we have a sustainable footing for the future.

We have heard a lot from the opposition about set-top boxes. That was something that they supported. In fact, Senator Nick Minchin and the member for Mayo, Jamie Briggs, are on the record as supporting it, making sure that we do not have people left in the dark. But it is not uncommon for the Leader of the Opposition to support things and then think: 'Gee, I'm actually supporting something that the government is. I can't do that. I've got to be negative. I've got to disagree.' The Leader of the Opposition is all opposition and no leader. He could not lead anything if his life depended on it. What we have had from the opposition is rhetoric but no plan. We saw that clearly in the budget reply, when the Leader of the Opposition got up and did some one-liners and then, when he got to the point where we thought—we were ready for it—he was going to outline his economic plan, he said: 'Oh, look, I'm not going to outline an economic plan tonight. I'll do that closer to the election.' Clearly the Leader of the Opposition is exactly as he was described—that is, bored by economics.

Today I am going to talk about the significant investment in my electorate since this government was elected. People in my electorate, which is in the outer suburbs of Adelaide, were neglected significantly by the previous coalition government when it came to infrastructure. It took the election of this Labor government for them to start really investing in infrastructure and building. A lot of people talk about congestion. It has been this government that has actually started to address the issue of congestion in the outer suburbs of Adelaide. I'll start by saying that I am very pleased that the Victor Harbour Road, Main South Road intersection is now complete. This is something I committed to in the 2007 election; the opposition did not. The two intersections are now complete. Along with safety improvements, traffic congestion has been significantly reduced and this has ensured that there is good flow up to the beautiful area of McLaren Vale on long weekends. Rather than having to sit for a long time there is now a lot less congestion and better infrastructure has been delivered for the local area.

Another commitment that was made after the election is the Noarlunga rail extension to Seaford. This is something that, perhaps, the opposition calls waste. It is not waste to the local residents who desperately need this rail extension. I am very pleased that significant work has began on that rail extension. Work will begin shortly on the bridge that will span across the Onkaparinga to allow the rail extension to get to Seaford. This bridge is going to be slightly longer than the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It is certainly something that people in the southern suburbs have a lot of pride over. More than pride, it will ensure that Seaford gets the rail extension that it so desperately needs. We have seen the southern suburbs of Adelaide grow significantly. After being promised for many years by many governments that they would get this rail extension, it was this government that delivered the $291 million to fund it. It is this government that has awarded the major contract and is getting on with the job of building this. It will make a significant impact. It is expected to attract approximately 6,000 trips per weekday and around 1.7 million trips per year. This, once again, is an area where it took the election of this government to actually address the issues of public transport and congestion. This is the type of stuff that the Liberal Party is calling waste. Far from it, this is the type of investment that has been sorely needed for a long time.

I would like to talk about another investment that includes the McLaren Vale overpass, and which will improve safety for residents in the southern part of Adelaide. It is an $18 million upgrade jointly funded by the states and territories. The federal government is putting in $14 million. This intersection is an important road linking Adelaide to the tourist and commercial area of the Fleurieu Peninsula. Over 18,000 vehicles use the Victor Harbour main south road to McLaren Vale. The junction's current poor safety record is the reasoning behind the upgrade, and sadly there have been over 12 casualty crashes at the junction since 2005. Currently the state department of infrastructure is in its consultation phase. This project is on track to further improve safety and ease congestion in one of Australia's premium wine regions. It has been this government that has begun the investment in rail and road, and certainly my local electorate is benefitting from it.

There has been a lot of discussion in this place about the NBN. The previous speaker talked about what we could do for small business. Then in the same breath he suggested we should scrap the NBN. I can tell the member for Hughes that, if he goes out and actually listens to what small business needs in my electorate, he will see they are telling me they want to be connected to the world, they want to have the opportunity to compete in global markets through the NBN. They are telling me that the biggest impediment to expanding their business is not having access to broadband. We often hear the opposition say they are the party of small business. If they were the party of small business they would listen to small business and hear that in fact the NBN has the potential to revolutionise. Instead we hear the Leader of the Opposition completely ridiculing the NBN. He is clearly not listening to small business—they want this, and they want this now. I am very pleased that Willunga is a first-release site in my electorate. We have seen over 95 per cent of people sign up to be connected to fibre and to have test services that will start within months. There is a lot of excitement from local residents, but in particular from businesses. The Southern Economic Development Board has said that broadband is the number one impediment to small business expanding so this is exciting.

But this excitement, this expansion, this economic development will not happen if the Liberal Party gets its way and builds its fibre-to-the-node plan, which has been discredited by experts around the globe. What the opposition fails to understand is that the problems with broadband in my electorate, as in many other electorates around the country, is that there is not enough copper in the ground. That is why so many residents cannot even get ADSL2. They are on pair gains or have a whole range of problems because of insufficient copper and not enough services. So to do fibre to the node, which is the opposition's new plan, will add to their 21 failed broadband plans. It will not get broadband to the people that need it, people in Hallett Cove—

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is why we have a specific policy for those areas.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Aston interjects, but what he does not understand is that significant suburbs with thousands and thousands of people do not have enough copper so, if you are going to dig it up, why wouldn't you put fibre down?

Mr Tudge interjecting—

Why would you just put copper? Why would you put in an old technology—dig it up and spend the money. If you talk about waste, why would you dig up the ground and lay another bit of copper, that is yesterday's technology. Why wouldn't you put fibre in the ground? That is the ill-thought-out Leader of the Opposition's plan on fibre.

To be quite frank, the Leader of the Opposition has not had much input into this plan because he is not interested. He did not even turn up at his broadband policy launch at the last election. I have a little advice for the opposition: saying that you are going to cut our National Broadband Network is not a vote winner in outer metropolitan areas. I do not want to give them too many tips for the next election campaign, but scrapping the National Broadband Network probably is not the right policy to have. Once again, it is about building that critical infrastructure, whether it is roads, whether it is rail or whether it is broadband. This is what this government sat down to do.

I have to talk about another project in my local electorate that is incredibly important. Obviously being a member from Adelaide and from the state of South Australia, I consider water a particularly important issue. I recognise that it has been this government that has had to take up, once again, after neglect from the previous government, the issue of water and the management of the Murray.

For a while there I thought this might be a bipartisan issue. Certainly when the Leader of the Opposition came to Adelaide during the election campaign he inferred it was going to be a bipartisan issue. He was going to sign up to the Murray-Darling plan. Of course, after the election he made it clear that he had no such intention to do anything like that. In fact, in his response to the Queensland floods, he indicated that he would scrap the buyback of water, that he did not think buying back water was important. Now that was of great concern for people of Adelaide. Not only is restoring the Murray critically important, but once again the Leader of the Opposition had gone back on his election commitment.

This Labor government is getting on with the job and, in terms of infrastructure, I am very pleased that this federal government has invested into two projects—Waterproofing the South, Stage 1, and Waterproofing the South, Stage 2. In Waterproofing the South, Stage 2, the federal government has committed $14 million to develop stormwater harvesting in the Onkaparinga Council area. There will be a number of sites which will harvest stormwater and stop it from going out into the sea, which does affect the seagrasses, harvest it and then use it for watering parks and gardens. So is a very exciting project. There is a contribution from the council, $7 million, and $7 million from the state government. This is an example of how state government, federal government and local council can work together constructively. It might not be known to the Leader of the Opposition that one can work constructively and not just be negative about everything. Good outcomes can be reached for the Australian people. In this case good outcomes on water conservation were achieved for the people of Kingston, so this is a particularly important project.

There has been a significant increase in investment in local infrastructure in my electorate. One in particular is the Woodcroft Library and Neighbourhood Centre—whose opening I was very pleased to be able to attend—which was funded by the council with a contribution by the federal government under the Green Precincts Fund. This is an incredibly exciting centre which has solar electricity and hot water systems, a rainwater harvesting system, smart building controls and artificial lighting and air conditioning that are set according to outside conditions in order to reduce energy. It is a wonderful, energy efficient building. It is an opportunity not just for the building to be energy and water efficient, but for local residents to go down and look at some of the things that have been done and to take some ideas away. It is trying to extend that information. This is, once again, investment in local areas that have not been invested in before. I am pleased that this budget builds on that investment, ensures that there is investment in the areas that are important—training, hospitals, healthcare, roads and rail—and continues to build our nation and to build, support and create jobs, just as we did during the global financial crisis. I commend the budget and continue to support the important initiatives in my local electorate.

Sitti ng suspended from 13:02 to 16:01

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, As a long-term friend and one who came into parliament with you, it is very much a pleasure to appear before you this afternoon.

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You may not like what I have to say though, Mr Deputy Speaker, which is understandable, because I believe that on budget night the Labor government delivered a budget with a blowout of $50 billion. Before budget night, this Gillard government talked about surpluses. However, this government now has a net debt of $107 billion; and Labor has certainly got form on that.

It is very interesting that not a lot of people in Australia realise that the government is actually borrowing $135 million per day. The interest on Labor's debt will be about $7 billion a year. That is $7 billion a year is unfortunately going to banks. It is not going to services, it is not going out there to provide infrastructure; it is just debt that is lost to the Australian people. Think of all the worthy projects that could be funded by the money wasted on those interest payments alone. For just over $1 million this government could fund three regional hospitals that are facing closure in South Australia. If you have not already heard, the South Australian Labor government has cut funding to Keith, Ardrossan and Moonta hospitals. If the Keith hospital closes its doors the next closest hospitals will be Bordertown, about 50 kilometres away; Naracoorte, 100 kilometres away; or Murray Bridge, 170 kilometres away.

On top of forcing residents to attend already overbooked hospitals, this will leave a large stretch of notoriously dangerous highways without a hospital—180 kilometres of the the Dukes Highway and 240 kilometres of the Riddoch Highway. To understand how important the Keith Hospital is to that local community, if you lose your hospital your community starts dying. It is that important.

On 1 February this year I introduced the motion that called on the federal government to fund these three hospitals and reduce the state government's national health care specific purpose payments by the amount that these three hospitals will be directly funded. It is very interesting. Even doing it that way will not cost the federal taxpayer one cent. What it will say to the state government is: you have made a bad decision and you need to fix it up; if you are not prepared to do that we will do it ourselves.

Despite the government letting the motion pass on the voices without dissent, three months on, the hospital has received no help from federal or state Labor. Yet two weeks ago we saw a budget that had a $50 billion blow-out. It just does not make sense. Ten years ago the state government was funding Keith hospital to the amount of 35 per cent of its total costs and the other 65 per cent was funded by the Keith community—unlike other community hospitals, which are 100 per cent funded by the taxpayer. Over 10 years this figure has been whittled down to about 25 per cent of total costs, with 75 per cent funded by the community. That was already unsustainable when the state government announced it would cut funding further, by a whopping 60 per cent, meaning the state government was going to fund the Keith hospital only to about 10 per cent of its total costs, compared to 100 per cent for other community hospitals.

This is silo economics at its worst. It is looking only at the savings and not at the costs. The costs will actually end up being five times more than the so-called savings. Yes, members, it will cost the federal and state governments at least five times what the state government thinks they are going to save. This is a hospital that has received over $1 million in capital infrastructure funding from both the Howard government and the Rudd government in recent years, firstly for aged-care infrastructure and then for the doctors surgery. But that will be totally wasted because the aged-care facility of 18 beds will close if something is not done and the doctors surgery will close because the patients will go elsewhere. The St John Ambulance volunteering service will close, and the state will be forced to put in a paid service 24 hours a day on one of the busiest highways—if not the busiest—in South Australia, which is well known for its accidents. They will have to travel further distances.

Between federal and state Labor governments, regional South Australia is slowly being ripped apart. Down in the south-east of my electorate the timber industry is feeling the pain of the Labor Party's sting. The south-east of the state, and my electorate, are built on the timber industry—that is, they were before the state Labor government decided it could sell the forestry assets to refill its coffers. To sell three rotations of forestry, 100 years of forestry, is like selling the family silver and not being able to use that silver for 100 years. It is a mindless decision by the state government, who have overspent because they are following Labor federally. The community has been depressed since the state government announced it would proceed with a forward sale of forestry assets. The region wants to expand and grow the industry. The state Treasurer cannot guarantee that jobs will not be lost as a result of the sale. It really is a sad situation to see the community in. The funds from the sale will, more than likely, be used to prop up the state government after its spendathon in the city. Like most Labor governments, they are citycentric.

Another issue in the south-east—and all over my electorate, for that matter—is youth allowance. Yesterday the Prime Minister and Minister Evans made an announcement on youth allowance. The minister and the Prime Minister think they have done a good job of youth allowance. Both were pleased with their efforts. I am certainly not so convinced, because I have spoken to students and parents who are concerned about Labor's changes. The coalition has been pushing for the government to make the criteria fairer. The maps currently used are ridiculous and do not reflect the difficulties that students from some areas have in getting to university. For example, at Mount Gambier the closest universities are in Melbourne or Adelaide, both about 350 kilometres away. Obviously, you cannot drive there and back every day to go to university—you have to leave home to attend university. But if you live inside the city boundaries you are treated differently than if you live across the road outside the boundaries. We have this really ridiculous set-up, not based on educational criteria but on medical criteria—nothing to do with education, but on medical criteria. So, we have this really ridiculous set-up of two classes of student depending on where you live in the country.

The government has agreed to bring forward a review of the payments to deal with this issue but this is not enough. The answer is simple: the government must commit to changing this unfair legislation so that all students can have equal access to further study. This is not a new issue. Labor cannot plead ignorance about this one. I have spoken in support of regional students many times in this place.

Also down in the south-east is Millicent, a town with a little over 5,000 people. About 700 of those are employed in the Kimberly-Clark factory. The factory uses a lot of our wood products that I spoke about earlier. It produces tissues, toilet paper and that sort of thing. The mill is currently winding down production, which will ultimately result in job losses, because the Labor government has let dumping occur in Australia.

Mr Champion interjecting—

Labor commissioned a report into dumping in Australia and Nick Champion, the member for Wakefield, knows all about this—in fact, he knows very little about this. The Productivity Commission report, commissioned by your government member for Wakefield, said that there were other countries dumping a quite extensive amount of tissue and toilet paper in Australia, at up to 60 per cent below the cost of production. Under any ordinary WTO rules and regulations, we would be entitled, because the product has been dumped at less than the cost of production, to protect our industry from that unfair dumping with a tariff. But what did this government do? Absolutely nothing.

Mr Champion interjecting—

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Wakefield will desist from interjecting.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

All of the carping and interjecting from the member for Wakefield will not belie the fact that this government did absolutely nothing. It is very interesting that the member for Wakefield suggested that Kimberly-Clark has not invested very much down there. He should actually go and visit the factory because it has world-class production there now. To suggest and deride Kimberly-Clark, saying that they had not invested in the future of their company, is just absolute poppycock. You should go and see the situation before you make stupid comments and make a bigger fool of yourself than you already have.

Mr Champion interjecting—

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Wakefield will desist from interjecting. He knows it is disorderly.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But the Labor government did not take any action. The local community was hugely concerned about the job losses and the effect that it would have on this small country town of Millicent that relies on this mill. The Gillard government was not interested at all in hearing about the Millicent community's concerns, which were evident, because it took no action then and has not taken any action since.

Instead, the Labor government has offered a patch-up solution. This is simply not good enough. Last week the Labor government announced that the budget would contain an initiative to support workers at the Kimberly-Clark mill. Labor has called it the South East South Australia Innovation and Investment Fund. The government says it will provide $10 million over two years together with $7 million from the state government and that the fund will focus on manufacturing and manufacturing services to help create new sustainable jobs and opportunities for the region.

I am hugely concerned that this funding is a patch-up job. This funding would not have been needed if the government had done its job in the first place. If the Labor government had taken measures to protect Australian industries like Kimberly-Clark, that employ so many people, then the community would not be dealing with such a huge loss of jobs and this extra funding would not be needed. In this budget the government spoke about extra funding for roads in South Australia. As a member for a large electorate, I have a lot of roads, as you would imagine, and I always support funding initiatives that make our roads safer. Labor announced $2 million in funding for the Dukes Highway, which is the gateway from Victoria right up to Adelaide. It also links to the Riddoch Highway that heads down to the south-east and Mt Gambier—very important areas. Guess what? At the corner of those two highways is the Keith Hospital that I spoke about earlier. At the 2010 election the coalition announced $10 billion to duplicate the highway from the Victorian border all the way to Adelaide—not $80 million, as this Labor government crowed about.

This is a very important and necessary upgrade of a dangerous highway. So when Labor announced funding for the Dukes Highway in this year's budget I am sure you can understand why many people's ears perked up, including mine. However, when I looked into the detail, as you must do with this government because the truth is in the detail, I found that this funding announcement was not a new one. In fact, when I looked into it further I found it was another re-announcement, so much so that the work that was funded through this program announced in the budget has already been commenced and nearly completed on the Dukes Highway. It was actually announced two years ago. So it was a re-announcement; it was not new money. The Labor government has failed regional Australia once again.

It would seem that this Labor government has a habit of rebadging funding. There was a substantial amount of funding in this budget that was no more than re-announcements. Last week the Gillard government pledged $118 million towards the Lower Lakes and Coorong. I understand how important the Lower Lakes and Coorong are—both are in my electorate. The Murray-Darling system is the lifeblood for so many communities across the country, and at the end of the system are the Lower Lakes. (Time expired)

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I listened very closely to what the member for Barker said about Kimberly-Clark and factories in his electorate. He asserts that I have never been in a Kimberly-Clark factory. In fact, I have. I went to the nappy factory down in Lonsdale a couple of—

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How long ago?

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would have been about four years ago now, because the plant closed. It was not just me asserting that Kimberly-Clark had not invested in South Australia. Kimberly-Clark themselves on ABC radio admitted that they had not invested greatly in many of their plants in the south-east.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's rubbish; they wouldn't say that.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Barker will desist from interjecting.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They admitted that they were investing in other parts in the world—in South-East Asia, in particular. We note that this is a big problem where companies do not make vast capital investments in factories in Australia and then close them. I have some experience with this because that is what happened at Bridgestone. Sure, they invested in bits and pieces, but they did not upgrade the plant in any substantial way. Then, of course, when the going gets tough, they shut these plants and leave workers in the lurch. It is often left to the government to push these companies to make industry assistance packages to help the workers.

I would have just said to the member for Barker if he had not left the room that in my electorate we worked very hard with Bridgestone workers to make sure they did get jobs again after that redundancy situation. We were very successful. We did not harp on about the packages that were offered by the government. We actually worked with Job Services Australia providers, the company and the community to make sure everybody was re-employed.

This budget is really about the new jobs that we are creating in the economy. Since coming to office, this government has seen the creation of more than 750,000 jobs, and we expect to see a further 500,000 new jobs created over the next two years. That has currently delivered to Australia an unemployment rate of 4.9 per cent, which stands in pretty stark contrast to: the United Kingdom, which has an unemployment rate of 7.8 per cent; the United States, which has an unemployment rate which is persistently high at nine per cent; Germany, which has an unemployment rate of 6.5 per cent; New Zealand, which has an unemployment rate of 6.8 per cent; and Canada, which has a similar resources based economy to our own and an unemployment rate of 7.8 per cent. During the global economic crisis world growth went back by 1.1 per cent and the world shed six million jobs. That is six million tragic stories of families being without an income. So this government is very proud of our record on creating jobs. Jobs are of course the best defence against any cost-of-living increases, because if you do not have a job, if you suffer from unemployment, you suffer greatly with the cost of living. Employment is any government's main strategy to prevent people suffering hardship.

We are basing our budget strategy on jobs, skills and training. That is why there are measures in the budget to retain apprentices and to ensure that people complete their apprenticeships. We want to upskill Australians and we are funding about 130,000 training places over four years. This is industry driven training where industry identifies their business needs and then applies for funding to support the training of existing workers and to bring new workers into areas of need.

We are reforming the vocational education and training sector. That is a major priority for COAG in 2011. We have had a new report and are acting on that report to ensure that we get value for our money. The VET sector is worth $7 billion over five years. We are funding more than 30,000 places in language, literacy and numeracy programs to make sure that people have the basic skills that are essential for a job. This is very necessary in my electorate of Wakefield, in northern Adelaide, because only 40 per cent of the population has completed year 12, compared to the national figure of 50 per cent. When you go doorknocking in my electorate you meet a lot of people who desperately want to take up work. They want the opportunities in mining, defence manufacturing or skilled manufacturing but cannot find work because their skills do not match the vacancies that exist. Then when you see employers they tell you that they cannot readily find people and are suffering skills vacancies. It is a terrible, immoral dichotomy.

The government are ensuring that we address this dichotomy that occurs around the country and in my electorate. Recently, we invested $149 million in Holden, the major manufacturer in my electorate, through the green car fund to support the production of a low-emissions small car, the Holden Cruze, which is an excellent vehicle. On 20 May, the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Carr, announced that $39 million would go towards producing a new, highly fuel efficient Holden Commodore. That is based around producing lightweight aluminium panels designed for the next generation Commodore, which will reduce fuel consumption by about seven per cent, saving some 3.6 million litres of fuel and reducing carbon emissions by around 9,000 tonnes. Holden is at the forefront of the green economy, combining blue-collar and green-collar jobs and producing highly sophisticated manufactured goods in Australia.

What is great about Holden is that they are not just providing jobs and investment in the local community and going about their business; they have made an effort to reach out to one of the most disadvantaged groups in my electorate: the long-term unemployed. Recently, Holden introduced a program where they guaranteed 20 jobs specifically for long-term unemployed people, but linked it to a three-month, five-days-a-week training course. This training course was funded through the Department of Further Education, Employment, Science and Technology, which is a state government department, and through TAFE SA, which designed a pre-employment program which was relevant to Holden's skills requirements. They got referrals for the program which were sourced from federally funded Job Services Australia providers. The course was based around skills and employability, personal presentation, meeting employer and industry expectations, and literacy and numeracy skills. It included two weeks of real work experience on the production line at Holden and participants were required to go through Holden's normal recruitment procedures to get a job. So they met the same standards as anyone else, but they went through a course to get them there. Many of these people had been unemployed for a very long time and many of them found it very difficult to get jobs normally in the market.

They had a couple of hundred applications for this program—43 people started it, 36 made it to the final two weeks of the course, 16 people were offered a three-month contract and eight were offered one-year contracts. Those who were not employed by Holden were not left for the scrap heap but continued to get help. As I understand it, every single one of them has found employment in the local area. That is a huge success story. Holden have reached out to a very disadvantaged group—people who felt they had been locked out of the real economy and who felt they had been left behind after a decade of economic growth. Holden reached out.

The following people deserve great credit for helping to change the lives of 40 people: Mike Devereux, Managing Director of GM Holden; Terry Cubley, employee development manager at Holden; Tim Hutchinson from SA Works and DFEEST; Gail Sulicich, Executive Officer from Northern Futures; all the Job Service Australia providers; and from the AMWU, John Gee, vehicle division secretary, and John Camillo, the overall secretary of the South Australian branch. They transformed the lives of people who had very low expectations and very poor prospects who now have employment prospects, hope for the future, a higher income and a much greater ability to deal with life's pressures. The prospects for the families of these people as well as the prospects for their communities have also been improved.

The idea that Holden is hiring again in disadvantaged communities like Elizabeth South and Davoren Park is a very great thing. It is a great message to send to those communities. The Local Messenger reported that a young man, Blair Ford, 25 years old from Andrews Farm, had been unemployed for 12 months prior to doing the course. He had been knocked back for job after job. The training and job skills helped him to regain his confidence and he got a job at Holden. We know that that young man's life has been changed.

Holden is not the only good news story in my electorate. Civil Train, which is the training arm of the Civil Contractors Federation in South Australia, runs 'live work' sites. Basically, people do varying amounts of training. They get practical experience doing earthmoving, civil construction, horticulture, concrete and landscaping work. This is a unique program. It is not done anywhere else in the country. Civil Train have a contract with Playford Alive with the Land Management Corporation of South Australia, a state government body. Basically, they do real work on real land developments and they train people for real jobs. The federal government has invested $8 million to help provide Civil Train with a mobile facility that can go to places like Port Lincoln, the Pitjantjatjara Lands and Millicent in the south-east—which the member for Barker will be talking about—and teach people how to drive graders, do earthworks and get a job in civil construction. That is a hugely important operation. It means people do not have to come to Adelaide. It means people can train in their local communities and train from real jobs. This is a very important investment. Civil construction is the fourth-largest industry employer in northern Adelaide. This program makes people job ready. The federal government has also been involved in helping Civil Train get a simulator, which basically reduces the amount of carbon emissions and reduces the amount of time one has to spend on earth-moving equipment. The Prime Minister was down at Civil Train looking at this simulator and having a drive of it, as many of the trainees at Civil Train are doing every day of the week. These are investments in high-quality training, training for an industry which will need more and more workers as time goes on.

South Australia is currently going through something of a renaissance. Fifteen years ago when I came out of school and university there were not many jobs around. It was very hard to find work. We now find that with the exploration boom in our state, with the prospect of Olympic Dam opening and with the vast amounts of land development, commercial development and industrial development occurring in places like my electorate, we are going to need more and more people to do this work. It is just great that we have key people like Christopher Reynolds, the Civil Contractors Federation president; Andrew Young, the treasurer; Tony Baulderstone, the national deputy president; and Andrew Haste and Andrew White, Civil Train business managers. They are engaging with the local community and engaging with individuals to get jobs.

I am very keen on this area. We have recently signed a pledge with Northern Futures to get more employers to find jobs for local disadvantaged groups, for long-term unemployed people, for people who have been locked out of decades of economic growth—to give those people a chance in the job market. It is something the government want to do, it is something I am very committed to doing and it is something that I think will transform lives, families and communities.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We heard an extraordinary set of words from the Treasurer in question time today. I know he has been a bit rattled and is a bit nervous these days, but it was really quite an extraordinary comment. He said, 'Business employs a lot of people.' Well, you have got to be Sherlock to get that one, don't you—that business employs a lot of people! He might need a few other economics lessons as well. It is actually the real world out there that creates wealth and creates income. As governments, we do not do that. Governments and parliaments do not create wealth. Those members of parliament who get the opportunity to form government actually take money away from the businesses who employ people and redistribute it. They are the wealth creators—the real world out there and the business community. So thank you, Treasurer, for stating the obvious, that business employs a lot of people. But what you are doing in your budget and with your carbon tax is ensuring that business employs a hell of a lot fewer people.

Do not believe the coalition; do not believe me—all you need to do is visit manufacturing hubs right around the country. Go from one end of Australia to the other, to a small or medium sized family firm, a successful firm that is innovative, that has evolved, that competes, that works on a very small margin. Ask them whether they will be able to employ a lot of people when your carbon tax comes in. Ask a large steel fabricator whether they will be employing a lot of people when the carbon tax comes in. You know what? They will tell you that they will not. They will tell you that they do not live in a protected economic environment. They will be priced out of the market by imports that do not have a carbon tax imposed on them. So this is a tax on Australian innovation and on Australian business and it will not reduce emissions. By sending them to less efficient countries, by sending manufacturing to countries that do not have the same environmental laws as we do, what will happen is that we will actually increase emissions. This genius of a Treasurer, who admitted today that business employs a lot of people, is doing his damnedest as part of the minority Gillard government that is beholden to Bob Brown and to those loopy people who occupy those Green spots in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, and is beholden to their less than mainstream approach, shall I say, to job creation in this country.

We knew that the Treasurer was in trouble on budget night. In the over nine years it is now that I have had the privilege of representing the people of Indi in the House of Representatives, there is one thing I have seen on budget night. That is the Treasurer's own colleagues, at the conclusion of the budget speech, applauding him. They applaud him, go up to him, pat him on the back, give him a hug and some of them give him a kiss. Guess what was missing from this year's budget: there was no applause. The galleries were empty, the Labor backbench was rather morose and you knew that poor old Swanny was in for a very difficult time. Perhaps the problem is that he is out of his depth. He is out of his depth if he has only just realised that business employs a lot of people. He is out of his depth in delivering a budget that will enable Australians to be innovative, to build businesses and to take this nation to even higher living standards and greater employment.

It is quite fascinating that, for a government so obsessed with spin and symbolic gestures, they failed on this occasion with that very symbolic gesture—that is, giving poor old Swanny a clap and a pat on the back.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Indi will refer to members by their title or the electoral division they represent in this place.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I will do so. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It was an admission of course that the back bench and, indeed, the front bench do not harbour confidence in the Treasurer that the Labor Party have appointed. I am sure they can do better, and I am sure there are discussions about how they can do better and about who is the best possible option amongst their ranks to take over the position.

What was heartening was the fact that there is a glimmer of hope for the Australian people—that, in that silent protest without the clapping and the pat on the back, just perhaps there was a reflection of the protest out there in the community against the carbon tax and against the direction the government is taking this country. I know there are good people on the other side who care about their communities, who care about employment and who care about financial security for families in their electorates. They know that the path on which this Treasurer and this Prime Minister are taking the country will damage, sometimes irreparably, some of these industries and will cause severe financial anxiety and crisis for families who work in manufacturing and who lose their job. It is a time for those members to have their voices heard.

The ego of one member of parliament, even if they are the Prime Minister, should not override the considerations and concerns, and in fact the responsibility that we have, that we make the best possible decisions. People trust us. They do not think that their governments would willingly make decisions and enact laws that would damage their country. They still like to believe that a government will make laws that will improve this nation, that will improve our way of life and our standard of living and that will unlock to a greater extent the potential that we have. What they are seeing is a government that is deliberately, wilfully, recklessly, negligently going on a path that it knows will destroy jobs and industries in this country for the sake of one person's political ego. It is very difficult to see a situation where the current Prime Minister, having had a very successful go at backstabbing and frontstabbing the former Prime Minister to have his job, will have the courage to say she got it wrong as well.

So it is against this background of great anxiety and concern and increased costs of living across the board in this great nation of ours that we contemplate the budget and the issues raised in it. We see normal, ordinary Australian families paying the price. Make no mistake: for every budget blow-out, there is an equal cut somewhere else. In last year's budget, Labor's asylum budget blew out by a massive $1.75 billion, or a 240 per cent increase on last year's estimate. Interestingly, there has been a $2 billion cut to family assistance payments by way of a freeze of the indexation of the family tax benefits for three years. What this means is that a quarter of a million families will be worse off. Even families struggling to make ends meet on incomes of $45,000 will be hit. This is a boat tax on Australian families. Why? Again, because of the Prime Minister's vanity and inability to say she got it wrong; that maybe other political parties—other governments of different hues—have good ideas; that Nauru was in fact a good option and a good idea; and that she might perhaps pick up the phone to Nauru. But no: her political vanity will not let her do that, and history will judge her for that.

In a desperate attempt to deliver a tiny surplus in 2012-13, the Labor government need to offset any cost blow-outs with equal or larger cuts elsewhere. With their absolute failure to provide basic competence in the protection of our borders, we are now seeing this impact on Australian families. From a practical perspective, what this means is that the rising cost of living will hit families even worse.

Labor like to claim that they are making record investments in regional Australia, and as a member who represents a rural and regional area I take a keen interest in policies and grants that purport to assist electorates like mine. But this budget actually tells a very different story. Far from increasing new investment, they have actually cut regional funding by a whopping $500 million. This budget proves that the government's so-called commitment to regional Australia is nothing but some more spin. Just two months ago, the Minister for Regional Development, Regional Australia and Local Government promised $1 billion for the Regional Development Australia Fund, but the budget papers show that just $150 million of this fund will be spent before the next election. We have seen $350 million cut from the Priority Regional Infrastructure Program; $100 million cut from the Building Better Regional Cities program; and $50 million redirected from the Regional Development Australia Fund for projects in the seat of Lyne. When the Labor Party talk about delivering for regional Australia, this is actually code, because what they really mean is that they are delivering ransom money to those who have kept them in power.

Another major announcement in this budget was funding for mental health. The coalition are extremely proud that we have shamed the government into acting in this very important area and are pleased to see some new money directed towards mental health. But, as the member for Sturt has pointed out, the actual investment is not quite the $2.2 billion that the government would have you think they have invested. In fact, there is only $583 million worth of new money. While we on this side of the House are pleased to see the government actually start to take notice of this very important issue that causes great for so many communities and families, I know that many of these families and communities feel let down.

In slashing the MBS patient rebate for GP mental health plans to help fund the mental health package, the government has devalued the role of the family doctor, which effectively means people will now have to pay more to see their family doctor for vital mental health care advice and referrals. Again, this is policy on the run, robbing Peter to pay Paul, rather than long-term planning or ideas about how to deal with this insidious problem of mental health in our community. So, whilst we do welcome some extra funding here, there is more to be done.

It should be remembered that during the time of the Howard government it was Tony Abbott, as Minister for Health and Ageing, who extended Medicare to psychologists and social workers in a package worth $1.9 billion. Also, we took a $1.5 billion mental health package to the last election that represented a very real boost of new funding—not repackaged money cut from elsewhere but new funding. So we have a genuine record on this and a genuine commitment going into the future.

An issue close to home in my electorate is communication black-spot funding. I share the disappointment of my constituents in north-east Victoria who are frustrated by poor mobile phone, radio and television coverage. It is quite clear that basic communication issues are nowhere near the government's radar. The obsessive focus on a gold-plated, overpriced NBN has meant there is no money available to address critical deficiencies across many parts of rural and regional Australia, particularly in bushfire and disaster prone areas.

Whilst I welcome Minister Burke's investment of $845 million in this budget towards irrigation infrastructure, I will watch very carefully to see if this is actually invested. The Howard government set aside $5.7 billion and to date we have only seen around $500 million of that being invested in irrigation infrastructure.

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is interesting to discuss the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012 in the context of the government's budget this year, which was delivered by our Treasurer. There has been much discussion about this budget. There seems to have been a collective amnesia about what transpired in our country over the past three years which has led in many respects to the way this budget has been framed.

On reflecting on my contribution to the debate today, I cast my mind back to what was actually occurring in 2008, because it does have a very profound bearing on the responsible budget that was delivered by our Treasurer. It is probably worth reminding those here and people more broadly about what was occurring. We basically had the collapse of, initially, the United States banking system, which then spread like a contagion throughout other countries, including and particularly in Europe. As I recall, during that period there was great uncertainty within the Australian community and concern, I might add, amongst governments around the world about whether the world financial system would hold up or collapse. There were banks in America that would not lend to each other; effectively, capital dried up in America and then almost throughout the world. As I understand it, on as many as three occasions during that turbulent period of time in 2008, policy makers, legislators and governments from countries around the globe were effectively looking at the collapse of the global financial system. Here we have escaped the ravages of that global recession, as has been discussed elsewhere. Let's look at what was occurring within Australia before the introduction of the—much-criticised by some—stimulus packages. We had a situation, for example, on a weekend in October where our government through its SPBC, Strategic Priorities and Budget Committee, had absolute evidence that, were we not going to introduce a bank guarantee, there was going to be a run on our banks. That evidence was not just anecdotal, it was evidentiary and it was conclusive, which led to the Australian government underpinning our banks with the bank guarantee—and it did.

I was actively speaking to people in my electorate who, had we not issued that guarantee on that weekend in October, were going to take enormous amounts of money out of their banks, and these were solid banks with triple A credit rating at that time—these were our four banks. These business people saw what was occurring globally and they were effectively reflecting that onto our existing banking system, notwithstanding the fact that it was underpinned by fundamentals. But at that stage when you are dealing with consumer confidence, you have to take measures that restore consumer confidence, so that bank guarantee was put in place and it actually stopped a run on the banks.

The second issue that we dealt with at that time from talking to a number of major employers around the area was that they were tremendously concerned about that consumer confidence and what was actually going to occur, which was major employers in my electorate were going to lay off workers. In fact, they were going to lay off thousands of workers. I would meet very regularly with groups of employers around the Dandenong region, major manufacturers and major retailers, and they would be effectively saying that the government needed to take action; we needed to spend money; we needed to stimulate the economy—and we did through two stimulus packages, and as a consequence of that we saved many thousands of jobs in the south-eastern area.

It is instructive to recall the background which led to these stimulus measures being taken, which have been very heavily criticised but in reality saved a lot of jobs in our region and delivered much-needed social infrastructure in our region as well. It is important to note that in that period of time, notwithstanding the global financial crisis and its potential impact on Australia, as a consequence of the actions that the government took we created over 300,000 jobs in this past year alone.

But one thing we should take note of, and the budget looks at, is that there are still 320,000 young people who are not in education, who are not in employment and who are not in training. In my electorate of Holt, which is one of the fastest growing areas in the country, there is an ever-increasing need to invest in education infrastructure to support the needs of families in our area. According to the statistics provided by our local council, the city of Casey, there are approximately 23,000 Casey residents attending primary school and 17,000 attending secondary school, which adds up to about 18.4 per cent of the Casey population. There are approximately 5,000 Casey residents attending university and an equivalent number attending TAFE.

Now as these statistics indicate, with a large population of young people in my electorate, it has been imperative for our government to invest in education infrastructure in the local area as well as supporting families coping with increasing educational costs. As I have said, in my electorate since 2007 we have delivered 101 educational projects at a cost of more than $129 million. We have seen the construction of new multipurpose halls, performing arts centres, trade training centres and improved sporting facilities at many schools in my electorate.

Before looking at how these projects have made a real difference—and they have made a very significant difference—to the local community, let us look at some of the other measures we have taken in terms of delivering further opportunities to people in our area and ameliorating some of the cost of living pressures that we know they are experiencing. For example, the $1,700 trades apprentice income bonus will be provided for up to 3,005 people in Holt to encourage them to complete critical trade qualifications. There are up to 8,700 families in Holt that could be eligible for the extra $4,200 per child for kids aged between 16 and 19 under the changes to the family tax benefit. With the educational tax refund, which is very important in terms of families in my area, we are increasing the government's investment by $460 million. In addition, payment advances of $1,000 will be provided to meet unexpected family expenses, which happens a lot particularly in areas like mine, and give parents the choice to receive child care support fortnightly.

There are other significant investments, one of which I was particularly proud of and that I think would be supported by those on the other side—that is, the $222 million to support the National School Chaplaincy Program. I presume that that is being supported. I think that is a much needed program that delivers essential support.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not think we were dragged screaming. We have been a very strong advocate for some period of time. Many people and many schools in my area will be talking about this. I do not think we were dragged screaming; I think we were the ones that initiated it and guaranteed it in the forward estimates.

In terms of some of the local infrastructure effected by the stimulus spending, I was certainly proud earlier this year to attend the BER opening of a new multipurpose facility at the Southern Cross Primary School, which was established in 1983. At the opening I had the pleasure of recognising Principal Averil Nunn for her hard work in ensuring the project's success, having worked closely with parents and tradespeople to deliver this important project in Endeavour Hills. I was delighted to open this multipurpose facility and witness firsthand the impact that its construction had on the community and to hear of the many practical functions that the facility will be used for by this school and the broader community. One of the community programs the hall will be used for is the Community Culture Group. So the hall is providing facilities not only for the students but also for the broader community, which was the intention of these projects. The Community Culture Group aims to facilitate the integration of non-English speaking families through dinners, get-togethers and information sessions for up to 50 people. The group was established four years ago and it has grown so much that they now require a bigger space in which to meet. Prior to this group being formed the participants had limited contact in the community. The participants, most of them parents now, have real bonds within their community. The program has also been successful in bridging potential misunderstanding between cultures. It is a real chance for the participants to engage in the community.

Other programs that will be run at the facility include the Mindfulness Meditation Program, financial counselling and classes and parenting help sessions. Principal Averil Nunn has stated:

This project—

the BER project—

has opened the door for the community to strengthen ties and provide role-models to our community, showing that we understand and trust each other.

It is great to see how a new multipurpose facility at this school can have such a positive impact on our local community.

Another facility that I wish to talk about, and one which we certainly initiated, was the trade training centre, particularly the Hallam Valley Trade Training and Skills Hub, which will benefit seven local schools. The federal Labor government has committed $10 million to this project, which is part of Labor's economic plan to provide world-class job-ready training for our young secondary students across the region in traditional and emerging trades. The Hallam Valley Trade Training and Skills Hub is a cross-sectoral trade training centre that aims to provide high-level training in traditional and emerging trades for senior school students at Hallam Senior Secondary College, Fountain Gate Secondary College, Gleneagles Secondary College, Endeavour Hills Secondary College, Hampton Park Secondary College, Narre Warren South P-12 and St Johns Regional College.

The participants in the program will have the opportunity to experience a wide variety of vocational skills training whilst at the same time continue their studies for entry to university or higher education at their local secondary college. We know that our long-term prosperity is dependent on investing in a world-class training and education system and that is why we have made investments in projects like these. The feedback has been extremely positive with respect to this trade training facility and the demand for a facility of its type in this area. We want to give them opportunity. It is one of the great things that our previous Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said in the famous 2007 election campaign, where he spoke about a trade qualification being the equivalent of a university degree. I think this government has been putting its money where its mouth is with respect to that by providing an opportunity for our young people to go to these sorts of facilities. As I said, a lot of the genesis of the trade training centres came about from seeing the work that people in some of these schools had been doing and responding to their needs to provide those comprehensive facilities.

There is one more thing that I wish to discuss—another BER funded project: the River Gum Performing Arts Centre. During Education Week, which was last week, I had the pleasure of officially opening the River Gum Performing Arts Centre, which is located at the Hampton Park Secondary College.  This was funded through the BER and the National School Pride Program.

The performing arts centre is being constructed on the Hampton Park Secondary College site, and is a shared facility between River Gum Primary School and Hampton Park Secondary College. It is the first facility of its type in Hampton Park, allowing community use for events such as drama school, musicals and other performances. The project overcame some significant hurdles—particularly at the start, because it was not built on the site of the River Gum Primary School; it was actually built at the Hampton Park Secondary College. After extensive negotiations, the project was accepted—it was within the guidelines—much to the delight of the school members and the Hampton Park community and residents.

The principal of River Gum Primary School, Roma McKinnon, basically was thrilled with the opening, because it was the culmination of years of hard work and it is used not only by the students of River Gum Primary School and Hampton Park Secondary College but also by the community. We had Christmas Day performances, graduation ceremonies, and a 'movie with mum' event for Mother's Day this year.

This performing arts centre which had been discussed by many for some number of years came to fruition as a consequence of this federal government funding through the BER program. I was absolutely delighted to launch that facility.

These are just a few examples of the investment that the federal government has made in much-needed social infrastructure in this region—driven by the financial exigencies of the time, driven by the fact that we needed to be putting money into the system. These projects are magnificent projects. They are delivering the community what they want and what they need.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Brisbane: I rise today to also speak to the appropriation bills. Every day, we hear of the increases in the cost of living—electricity, gas, petrol, housing and health—and it is a sad indictment of the Labor Party that their carbon tax, the universal slug on all Australians, will make everyday living much more difficult for everyday families.

This budget confirms just how out of touch the government is with Australian families. There is nothing in this budget for Australian families doing it tough. All the budget does is deliver more deficit, more debt and more pain. The government's failure to rein in its wasteful and reckless spending will lead to higher inflation and higher interest rates. Because of the budget's avoidance of the elephant in the room, Labor's great new carbon tax, this budget is not worth the paper it is written on. The government's claim to deliver a surplus in 2012 and 2013 cannot be taken seriously. The carbon tax is not fair. But the budget is certainly carbonated. It is just all fizz. Strong leadership provides certainty. This government is weak, unstable and directionless; it lacks the leadership to do what is right for Australian families and businesses.

This year's budget deficit has soared to $49.4 billion. The forecast deficit in 2011-12 has blown out from $9.6 billion to $22.6 billion. Net government debt has climbed to a record $107 billion in 2011-12 and is forecast to remain above $100 billion over the forward estimates. This amounts to more than $4,700 for every Australian. Again, we have seen a typical Labor budget that is very big on taxes and big on spending but it fails to help households battling higher costs of living in terms of petrol, electricity, gas, groceries, health costs and home repayments. The government is launching a $2 billion assault on families by freezing the indexation of key family tax payments and income thresholds for three years. This measure will have a profound effect on many people in the electorate of Brisbane.

Small business is another area that has been slugged. Having owned and operated in various small- and medium-size enterprises over my career, I think I know a little bit about how to plan for the future, how to run a tight balance sheet and how to keep the cash flowing through the till—a concept that seems to have been lost on those on the other side of the House. The new arrangements for taxing company cars will slug small-business operators and tradespeople and will increase costs at a time when they are already doing it tough. Business today continues to be swamped—and swamped is the word—by tax and by red tape. The claimed cash-flow benefit resulting from the instant write-off of the first $5,000 of a new work vehicle requires a small business to spend nearly $34,000 to receive an extra tax benefit of $1,275 in the year of purchase, according to the example promoted by the Treasurer. It is a lot to spend to get a little, but the measure comes at the expense of over 400,000 of Australia's smallest businesses and self-employed who are set to lose up to $2,500 by the scrapping of the entrepreneurs tax offset.

Changes to vehicle fringe benefits tax, and particularly the rules governing that, risk leaving small businesses that provide employees with vehicles, and themselves, up to $3,000 worse off in increased tax as a result of this government's caving in to the Greens on changes to fringe benefits tax. I was at the Holy Cross fete on Saturday of last week and a couple of disturbed and upset business people came up and talked to me about this particular measure and how it was going to impact on their small business when they are already doing it tough.

The business people I speak to across the Brisbane electorate inform me that their major issue over the last operating year has been dealing with unnecessary forms, the lack of access to credit for business development and a sense that both federal and state Labor governments are not listening to their concerns and have no answers. Without this consideration, the government has begun making poor and illogical decisions that are now going to affect business. For instance, the plan to scrap the entrepreneurs tax offset and replace it with a $5,000 tax incentive for a new car purchase has not been thought through very well. The offset was a tax incentive for people to set up their own business and it seemed to be making a worthwhile contribution. More than 400,000 start-ups and microbusinesses have utilised this offset.

Not only are the government punishing small business by scrapping of the entrepreneurs tax offset but they are taxing our small-business operators in flood ravaged suburbs in Brisbane through the flood levy. From day one of the flood tax announcement, I fielded calls from small businesses in Rosalie, Paddington, Albion and the city who were struggling to clean out the mud and rebuild their lives, only to find out that their wallets had been cleaned out by the Treasurer. Fancy their dismay to hear Mr Swan was going to tax the very people whose lives and livelihoods are under significant stress. These businesses deserve better.

Perhaps the greatest failure in this budget is in relation to families and the cost of living. As reported yesterday by ABC Radio and also in the print media, a new report by the Queensland Council of Social Service, QCOS, said that the increased cost of living pressures means that at least a third of all Queenslanders are living in poverty or dangerously close to it. A third—that is inconceivable. This figure, in a nation that is as prosperous as Australia, is both shameful and alarming. The report says that electricity, gas and water costs are up more than 60 per cent and that rent is up 35 per cent. Public transport costs rose nearly 50 per cent.

Families today in Queensland are going without fresh fruit and vegetables just to provide extracurricular activities for their children. We have seen reports of families having to default on the cost of childcare fees. The sector estimates that roughly 11 per cent of families are struggling to pay childcare fees. It is important that we support the family sector, and the budget that was meant to help these people does nothing to help them in this regard. Over 6,000 families in Brisbane will be impacted by the changes to family tax benefit part A, and 5,000 families will be impacted by the changes to tax benefit B.

The increasing cost of living is making the great Australian dream of owning a home a nightmare for many, and it is not just struggling families feeling the pain. The many people I speak to in my electorate, when I go around and visit shopping centres and do community corners, are telling me that they have great concern about making a home purchase because they feel very uncertain about the economy and what the future will bring. The prospect of the added burden of a carbon tax and its flow-on effects to living costs will no doubt cause further and greater harm to the housing sector.

The higher education needs and costs to families are also front of mind for many of my electors in the Brisbane area. Almost immediately after the government leaked its intention to cut the HECS discount in the 2011-12 federal budget, I began to receive correspondence from many of my constituents, who were only too keen to voice their overwhelming concerns. Whilst coming from many different people from many different backgrounds and suburbs, the overall tone of the complaints they made for me was very clear: this was yet another blatant attack on the middle class and working families. I would like to read just one email that was sent to me regarding this issue. One particular constituent wrote to me, saying:

… our two daughters have paid their HECS through sheer hard work and determination, not because we are a rich family. Now we can expect an even harder financial road for our son when he finishes year 12.

These are just ordinary families who have been frugal, who have saved, who have tried to help their children, and they have been severely disadvantaged by the cuts to the HECS discount. This sentiment is true of all families, and indeed students, who will be hit very hard by this government—families who have worked hard all their lives, parents who go without life's luxuries to provide for their children, families who are given no assistance. Families in the Brisbane electorate are tired of working hard, only to keep having one arm tied behind their backs. Amazingly, in this budget, the Treasurer has managed to hurt just about every sector with these proposals, including the phase-out of the dependent spouse offset.

Health is a very important issue and, for many years in this House—previously as the member for Petrie and currently as the member for Brisbane—I have been an advocate for health issues, medical research and continued, appropriate paediatric care in Brisbane. I believe we need a health system that concentrates on preserving wellness; a system that puts patients first; a system that values and supports its workforce; and a system that gets hospitals and services right. This budget fails all these tests.

I have stated before that the people of Brisbane and all other citizens across Australia need and should demand a world-class healthcare system. This would necessarily involve appropriately funded medical research centres and specialised treatment facilities in our major hospitals. With this in mind, the budget is genuinely shameful. There was widespread aggravation and concern from directors of health research institutes and from the community at large over the attitude of the Labor government towards the health sector in the lead-up to the budget. I have met with each and every one of the directors of health research institutes in my electorate, and I join them in protesting the severe, mooted cuts that have occurred. Thank goodness the government had the sense not to proceed with the cuts to a very valuable sector that provides not only investment but also life-saving discoveries and cures. The government should also be ashamed of their scant regard to expert advice regarding crucial new drugs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Those with chronic disabling pain, schizophrenia, lung disease or blood clots will either go without new drugs or pay hundreds of dollars for drugs rather than the PBS co-payment of $34.20. As Medicines Australia has said, the government is penny-pinching to get a budget surplus and they are using people, they are using patients' medicines, to do it. This government's financial mismanagement has a direct and costly and painful result for all Australians. It is a government that is prepared to hurt its own people.

Across Brisbane, people are telling me that they will leave their private insurance provider if there are dramatic changes to the 30 per cent private health insurance rebate. All Australians want a health-care system that puts the patient first. Part of putting the patient first is addressing waiting times for surgery and access to specialist services. Means-testing private health insurance rebates will ensure that our waiting times are longer. We are being asked to change the incentive for people earning over $80,000 per annum, but the long-serving school teachers, nurses and police officers in my electorate are fuming that they are considered high-income earners when the cost of living is skyrocketing. The coalition will not support any changes to means-testing private health insurance.

Mental health reform has been very important to me and the electors of Brisbane, so I was pleased to see that many of the initiatives that the coalition had led the way on in mental health funding, particularly in 2006 with a $1.9 billion investment, were continuing, but then I looked at the budget papers and saw that there had been merely a reallocation and that, sadly, the government had done this by ripping $580 million from GP's mental health services and allied health treatments. So there is a little bit of creative shuffling and, again, it will hurt the very people who really need to see a GP and it is their first point of call.

It is a sad fact that Labor is borrowing $135 million each and every day. Our net government debt will climb to a record $107 billion in 2011-12, which is more than $4,700 for every Australian family. This is an economy-destroying budget.

David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to be able to join this debate to inject some facts into the discussion. We heard from the member for Brisbane who comes to this place not as a new member but as someone who served previously in this place and was part of a government that failed this country in so many respects. I was interested to hear her talk about mental health. What she did not talk about was the complete failure of the previous Liberal government, of which she was a part, to invest in mental health. We have heard the discussion about Mr Abbott proposing this or proposing that, when they had a chance in government. When they had a chance in government, they did absolutely nothing. In fact, when the Leader of the Opposition was last the health minister, he ripped a billion dollars worth of funding out of the health system.

Let's have a look at some of the facts. This is a budget that is about getting the budget back into surplus. We are charting a pathway back to a surplus in 2012-13. We hear so much about debt and deficit from the other side. Let's look at the facts. When it comes to debt, national government debt in this country is amongst the lowest in the world: 7.2 per cent of gross domestic product. That is 10 times less than that of the UK, at 75 per cent, or the US, at 72 per cent. The comparison is 7.2 per cent to 75 per cent and 72 per cent. They come in here and lecture us about that. The thing that the opposition seem to have forgotten is that there was a global financial crisis. There was a global recession, and we as a country managed to escape sinking into recession. There was a reason why that occurred. That is because we invested in jobs in this country. This budget is a further investment in jobs. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were created during our response to the global financial crisis, at a time when comparable countries elsewhere in the world were shedding jobs by hundreds of thousands. If we look back to when the stimulus package was being voted upon, we see that Mr Abbott was not even in the House. At the time, the Daily Telegraph correctly reported that he was having a few glasses of chardonnay with the then member for Higgins. We can go back and pull out the article. Not a lot of attention was paid to that. The point is that the jobs of working Australians were not at the forefront of his thinking then and they are not at the forefront of his thinking now.

This budget is good for jobs. It is about recognising that we now have an unemployment rate of less than five per cent. Our unemployment rate in this country has a four in front of it, but we are not finished yet. We know that the massive challenges that this country faces in the future will be about confronting the supply challenges and the various skills and labour shortages that this country will face as a result of mining boom mark II.

We remember the more than 20 warnings that the Reserve Bank gave the previous government about the need to tackle these chronic shortages or we would have upward pressure on interest rates. They failed to act. That is why we had interest rate increase after increase—10 of them in a row. We hear the talk about the cost of living. There is no question that families are facing challenges when it comes to costs of living, but let us look at the facts. When it comes to official interest rates, when the Liberals lost office, rates were at 6.75 per cent. They are now at 4.75 per cent. So, when we talk about cost of living pressures, we know how much greater those pressures would be if the opposition had their hands on the treasury benches and were able to carry out the sort of economic vandalism that we have seen put forward in the various proposals from the opposition. In fact, to their credit, at least this time they did not even attempt to put up an alternative budget. They did not even attempt it. There was not one mention of what they would do if they were in government.

We saw what they did at the last budget. Mr Abbott squirmed out of it by passing it to Mr Hockey. Mr Hockey turned up the Press Club, where everyone was waiting with baited breath, and flicked it to Andrew Robb. When Andrew Robb gave that much-celebrated press conference that ended up being cut short by his staffer signalling that it was time to bring this production to an end by gesturing a cut across the throat, we saw what a debacle that was. What a debacle!

If that was not bad enough, when it came to the election costings and the commitments that were being brought forward before the election, we had an $11 billion black hole. Mr Abbott and those on the other side thought they could fool the Australian people with this one, but let us be absolutely clear about this. There are two reasons why the Liberal Party is not in government at the moment. One is because of the shonky costings. They were eventually caught out by Treasury costings that occurred at the request of the Independents after the election. That shows the sort of gross economic mismanagement this country would have been subjected to had their commitments—with an $11 billion black hole—ended up being foisted on the Australian people. At least that crisis was averted.

The second reason was the National Broadband Network. That continues to be a significant investment that this government is making in our future. It is about giving people in communities all around this country access to high-speed broadband with sufficient bandwidth to ensure that we are competitive and that economic opportunities are opened up to people regardless of where they live in this country. The NBN will one day be seen as a visionary program. The sort of criticism that we hear from the opposition today is the same sort of criticism that big projects of national significance have always faced from those who did not have the courage to bite the bullet and do what the nation required in the longer term.

Let us have a look at the budget. The member for Brisbane said that there was nothing in it for families. That is just not right. With regard to the improvements to our tax and transfer system that have benefited families, just have a look at the election commitment that we made and are now implementing in relation to family tax benefit part A. We have extended it to those families with teenagers. We recognise that, in this day and age, for families that have dependant children, that dependency stays on right up to the end of the teenage years and indeed, in some cases, well and truly beyond that. We have sought to fix an anomaly in the system to ensure that those families with teenagers at the older end of the spectrum have better access to the family tax benefit system. For some families, this will mean up to $4,200 extra per year. Mr Abbott runs around from fish markets to door manufacturers to grocery stores to the town of Whyalla. He went to Whyalla and said he would wipe it off the map. How irresponsible was that? It is irresponsible because the sort of fear and smear that is being spread in relation to the pricing of carbon pollution in this country is appalling. The day of reckoning will come for Mr Abbott, because people are going to see that if this is implemented it will not have anywhere near the sort of negative impact that he is suggesting. The member for Mayo comes in here and he has all the arguments in the world, but deep down in his heart of hearts—and I know he has one in there somewhere—he knows that we need to price carbon in this country.

There are big economic calls that governments and political figures have to make on occasion. Sometimes you get them right and sometimes you get them wrong. But when they are the really big ones, if you get them wrong then they are like an albatross that hangs around your neck and sits with you for the rest of your political career. The member for Mayo knows that because he was one of the architects of Work Choices and he wears that almost as well as he wears that resplendent red tie that he currently has on. He wears it around his neck. But he equally will wear around his neck the ongoing damage that will come from having opposed what is one of the most significant reforms that this country needs. He knows that we need to price carbon. He knows that we need to do it. The fact is that others in his party do not have the political courage to do it. I can understand why they might take the coward's option, but when people know that this is what needs to happen and they choose not to do it they should be condemned for it.

We will price carbon because it is important that we do that so that we put a price on pollution. The big polluters will have a price signal to do what they do—to provide energy, to provide goods and services across our economy—in a way that is less dependent on fossil fuels, less dependent upon the carbon emissions that are damaging the climate not just here in Australia but right around the world. We need to take action. Other countries in the world, even countries governed by conservatives, are taking genuine action. History will judge them well. History will not be so kind to those on the other side, who oppose everything and will stand in the way of making one of the most significant changes that we need to make.

Mr Briggs interjecting—

I am always encouraged when the member for Mayo tells me to move on to another topic, because it means to me that he does not want to talk about this topic, and I can understand that. I can understand why the member for Mayo does not want to talk about pricing carbon. To his credit, he is one of the more talented people on the other side. It must frustrate him to see some of the fossils on the front bench supporting this proposal to continually oppose taking action on climate change. I think he actually believes in climate change, unlike a very large contingent within his party.

But the reality is that, whichever way you like to look at it, the coalition have a pretence of a policy when it comes to carbon pollution. They say they want to reduce emissions by five per cent, but they do not have a plan that will do that. The only thing they have is a plan that will be business as usual and will require us in the end to fork out money to import carbon offsets from other countries. It will cost families $720 a year. It might not be with a new tax, but I tell you what: services will be cut or their taxes will ultimately have to be increased. That is the dishonesty of their argument. They will not acknowledge that there is a significant cost to their proposal. But their proposal will not do anything. It will not cut emissions and, at the same time, it will cost families $720 a year and there will not be one dollar of compensation. We will get on with the job of pricing carbon, with or without the support of the member for Mayo. Let him and his colleagues stand condemned if they oppose what is going to be a significant reform.

I have observed some of the more significant figures that we have seen in recent times in the political debate. For example, I will give credit to John Howard. There were occasions when major reforms were being proposed by the Labor Party and, in opposition, he acknowledged that these reforms were in the long-term national interest and he actually supported them. He offered bipartisan support. In fact, one of those proposals was to have an emissions trading scheme. This is one of the perversities of what we currently have. We have the current opposition being more brown than the Howard government. The Howard government had committed to introducing an emissions trading scheme and, had they been elected in 2007, by the end of this year we would have an emissions trading scheme in place. We would have the Howard emissions trading scheme in place. Instead of the Howard emissions trading scheme, we have a proposal called the Abbott subsidies for polluters scheme, and the member for Mayo knows what a sham of a policy that is.

I want to spend the remaining time talking about a couple of projects that have been funded in this budget in my local electorate. I want to draw the House's attention to the investment of $1 million in the Western Sydney regional hockey facility, which is located in my electorate. This was a commitment that was made by the government during the election, and the funds have been delivered. Hockey is a significant sport in our local area. For a very long time, the facilities have been very poor and inadequate. This funding will ensure that improvements will be made.

Opposition members interjecting—

I hear some interjection about the New South Wales government, and that is an interesting segue that I would like to make into talking about the massive investment that we have made into our hospital system through the Health and Hospitals Fund. The Nepean Hospital now has an investment of over $100 million being undertaken in relation to the construction works being carried out there. Ninety-four million dollars has been committed by this government, the Labor federal government. I see that shortly after being elected the new Premier of New South Wales, Barry O'Farrell, came out to Nepean Hospital and stood out in front of the construction works that our government has funded, and he talked about how hospitals will be much improved as a result of investments that his government is making. I do not think anyone in the community is silly enough to think that within a matter of months any government could inject money and get construction works underway, but Mr O'Farrell seemed to think that, by standing in front of construction works and talking about investments he purportedly is going to make into hospitals, he was going to get some credit for that. It is a disgrace. Labor has delivered and will continue to deliver for the health and hospital services in my electorate. (Time expired)

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I might, unlike the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, speak about the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012 and cognate bills, which are before the House. I know there is a practice that we can talk about a wide range of issues in this place, but I thought it was quite ironic that the member for Lindsay, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, the third in charge and third in line—after, of course, the Assistant Treasurer, who is desperately hanging out there waiting to be the Treasurer for just one day—could not actually bring himself to talk about the budget until about the last minute; his speech was about a hockey field. What he was talking about was the carbon tax, which, of course, ironically is not in the budget; it was left out of the budget, which makes these figures a complete house-of-cards-based assessment of where the national fiscal policy will be at in a couple of years time. So it was quite ironic that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer could not talk about the Treasurer's own budget—probably an endorsement of the performance of the Treasurer. We saw again today the Treasurer not being able to answer direct questions about what is in his budget.

I think it reflects upon the nervousness of the members on the other side that they continue to try and play this nasty, negative campaign that we saw the Prime Minister leading on Saturday about the Leader of the Opposition, who is out there day after day talking about the challenges that Australian families and businesses face and proposing policies which will deal with them—policies that we have now had in place for some 18 months and that we took to the election. We had there in the election the direct action policy to deal with climate change, and we still have it today. I know it is an unusual approach for the Labor Party, because of course the Labor Party were for the emissions trading scheme before they were against it before they were for it; it was just that there was an election in the middle there where they did not tell the people quite the full truth about what they intended to do if they were re-elected. That was absolutely difficult to deal with, what with the challenge of the economy. Plus there was a stimulus package put in place which we supported. That was the first stimulus package. The second stimulus package we said was too much debt and deficit. But the first stimulus package we supported because there was estimated to be a big loss in revenue and we were not sure how much that was going to be. The estimate was $210 billion. It turned out to be about $90 billion. The deficits at the time were estimated to be around $50 billion, around the same amount as what they are now. So there is a missing $90 billion there. I will tell you what happened to it. They spent it.

The problem with the budget is not the revenue side; it is the spending side of the budget. It is the payment side of the budget. The claim that the global financial crisis meant that they had to go into $106 million of debt is wrong. There was an estimated $210 million loss in revenue over the forward estimates; it turned out to be only about $90 billion over the forward estimates. If they had managed it properly, if they had not gone and spent the $90 billion that they actually had and did not estimate having, if they had not wasted that money on roof batt programs, overpriced school halls, set-top boxes double the price of what Gerry Harvey could do, Green Loans, more public servants—should I go on with all these programs?—then we would not be in the deficit and debt situation that we find ourselves today.

I hate to say that the member for Dobell is predictable, but I am guessing that he might get up and, like some of his colleagues, talk about how the government will supposedly return to surplus in 2012-13. I have just a sneaking suspicion that the member for Dobell might say that this budget is about tough decisions, jobs in the future and returning to surplus in 2012-13. I thought I might make a point about that too. This is interesting. If you look at the spending and the revenue base of the government, the claim in this tough budget, with its tough decisions and so-called reduction in spending—which actually turned out to be tax increases, whether they be a mining tax or a freeze on family tax benefits—is that the revenue will go from $272 billion in 2006-07, the second last Howard budget, to an estimated $378 billion in 2012-13. That is an increase of about $100 billion since 2006-07. The spending side of the budget in 2006-07 was $253 billion. The spending side of the budget in 2012-13 will be $372 billion, an increase of $120 billion.

In other words, just to flesh out the picture for the member for Dobell, they are getting more and they are spending more. They are spending more year upon year, and that is why we have $106 billion in net debt. We have $106 billion of debt above savings because they spend more. They plan to spend $120 billion more in 2012-13 than was spent in 2006-07. That is because they cannot make hard decisions. When they find a problem they throw money at it, and they always spend double the money. They cannot do anything without spending double the money that is actually required to do the project in the first place.

There are no better examples than the overpriced school halls, the Green Loans or the roof batts—the disastrous program where workers died. It is quite clear that the deficit and debt situation is not because of the GFC. It is not because the government inherited some terrible budget situation. They of course inherited a $20 billion surplus in savings at the bank. It is because the Labor Party spend too much money. They cannot make hard decisions and they make policy decisions which make things worse.

One of the worst policy decisions this government has made—and I am sure in his quieter moments the member for Dobell would probably reflect on this—was in August 2008 when they changed the border protection laws in this country. The outcome of that is that in this budget there is a $1.7 billion blowout in detention costs. I am someone with a detention facility in my electorate. The only budget promise which directly affected spending on infrastructure in my electorate was for the Inverbrackie detention facility. The outcome of that is in this budget: a $1.7 billion blowout in detention costs. It is one of the worst outcomes you could ever imagine from a government policy decision. They came to government and the situation was fixed, and they created a problem. Now they are desperately trying to thrash around. The minister for immigration, who is fundamentally a nice person, is stuck desperately hoping he gets moved out of this portfolio at some point because it is killing him. He has watched his career wash away. The decisions made by a former minister and by a former Prime Minister are holding this government to the situation where the boats keep coming.

They are trying to be hard. The member for Lindsay of course was the famous admiral on the ship out of Darwin just before the last election. He was out there on coast guard. He had the hat on. He was ready to take them on himself. He was going to stop the boats. He was going to be part of the process to stop the boats. But of course he did not stop the boats, because the other side is trying to look soft and nice and humanitarian in dealing with the issue. You cannot be both. It is costing the budget $1.75 billion more than what it should every year. More waste, more Labor spending, more Labor deficit, more Labor debt—that is the real story of this budget.

The country faces genuine challenges. We have a huge opportunity in the next few years with increased revenue because of the international circumstances because of the Asia-Pacific century, because China is growing so rapidly, and we should take advantage of that. I am not a pessimist about the Chinese growth. I am not a pessimist about Australia's opportunities which come from that. We must make the most of those opportunities. But spending more than what you get is not making the most of those opportunities. Looking at the out years of this budget, it is a disgrace. You get an increase on spending by 2012-13, in just six or seven budgets, of $120 billion. This is a disgrace and it will saddle our future generations with massive debt when we should be investing the proceeds of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we find ourselves in now. We find ourselves in this position because of growth in our region and we should take advantage of it.

I do not have today the opportunity to go through the inflationary impacts of all this extra spending, or the inflationary impacts of the re-regulation of certain laws in this country. But at another opportunity I will talk about that, because these are the risks, the decisions that have been taken by this Labor government, this incompetent, hopeless Treasurer, as we saw during question time today. This budget is a disgrace.

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Mayo. He had his angry pills today. He was becoming quite personal in his criticism. I had a whole range of things I was going to talk about but I have to start with a critique of his contribution. Can I say in the first place, to call it a contribution to this debate is raising it to a level well beyond what it actually was.

Let us start with those from the opposition more generally. They are serial deniers. For some of them the global financial crisis was just a small event. At least the member for Mayo actually tried to face up and have a bit of a discussion about the global financial crisis. He does try to downplay it too, which is consistent with the opposition leader. Generally we do not hear anything from those opposite about the global financial crisis because it is an inconvenient truth to them in relation to what has actually occurred and to the state of the Australian economy right now. So they tend to be serial deniers—whether it is about the global financial crisis, whether it is about climate change, whether it is about their record when they were in government, they deny the truth of what actually happened.

I am going to take the opportunity to do a little bit of a comparison between the record of this government and the record of the previous government, at the invitation of the member for Mayo. He got so much wrong that I know he will appreciate having the correct position put on the record so that when he makes future contributions he can correct his errors from today. First of all, when we look at the taxation record of the previous government—well, let us be radical. Let us not look at just the previous government, let us look at the taxation record of the previous government compared to all governments since Federation. Which government comes out as the biggest taxing government?

The previous government. Not once, not twice, not even three times, but four times they took the record as the highest taxing government in Australia's history. For them to come here and lecture this government about taxation issues and say that we are a higher taxing government completely ignores their record as the highest taxing government four years in a row. Their solution to issues, when they were in government, was to tax as much as they possibly could. No wonder they had surpluses. This occurred during mining boom mark 1. The lazy former government did not have to make any hard economic decisions; they merely rode the mining boom, taxed the heck out of the Australian public and then said at the end of the day: 'We made all these surpluses. Aren't we economic geniuses?' If you were the heaviest taxing government and you had the quite extraordinary mining boom that we had last time, of course you were going to be in that situation.

This government faces a very different set of economic circumstances. We faced the worst global downturn in trade and the economy since the Great Depression. This government took hard decisions to make sure that ordinary Australians were looked after in electorates like mine, on the Central Coast, and that of my good friend the member for Shortland, where unemployment is always an issue. This government took the position that jobs come first and that we would make sure that we kept people productive and in work. If you look at the record of this government and how we were able to achieve that through the two stimulus packages, compared to what happened around the world, you will see that this government stands in marked contrast to most governments and economies around the world. It certainly stands in marked contrast to the opposition, whose proposition on the global financial crisis was: 'Let the market rip. Let's see what happens, if we lose a few jobs, that's fine.'

There are other approaches we could have taken. We could have taken the US approach; we could have taken the Spanish approach, and ended up with 10 or 20 per cent unemployment; or we could make a difference and intervene in the economy as we did through our stimulus packages to make sure people had jobs. That was good not just for the people who kept their jobs but for their communities and the economy. It is what was needed by Australia and it is why we are the envy of the world.

Our record on managing the economy stands in stark contrast not only to the record of those on the other side but to those of many other countries around the world. Our prudent economic management made sure that Australia's economy did not collapse like others did around the world. We did not go into recession.

We heard from the member for Mayo about so-called pressures on interest rates from inflationary pressures. Interest rates—official cash rates—are some two per cent lower now than they were when we came to government. Under the previous government there were 10 interest rate rises in a row. They were warned repeatedly by the Reserve Bank about constraints, or bottlenecks, in the economy and about the need to invest in skills, training and jobs. They did nothing. In fact they cut investment in those vital areas. This government's budgets have been about investing in skills, training and jobs, because job creation is the engine room of our economy. To make sure that people continue to be able to work, we invest in education and we make sure that industry can keep ticking over. We are increasing participation rates, getting everyone who wants to work in a job, and making sure they can be productive for themselves, their community and the economy. Those are very important, stark differences.

The other issue I want to raise in comparing this government's budget this time and the previous government and, more particularly, the opposition at the moment and their proposals, is that this was a hard budget, a budget where we had to make some hard decisions about where we would put our resources. We were not out there willy-nilly promising money everywhere, as we saw at the last election with the Leader of the Opposition, who refused right up to the day of the election to have his promises costed. What we found out, of course, after the election was that there was an $11 billion budget hole in their election promises. So if those on the other side had been delivering this budget that we are talking about here today we would have seen higher unemployment, we would have seen this country go into recession, we would have seen a bigger deficit because of unfunded promises from this lazy opposition coming out of a lazy previous government, the Howard government, that was not prepared to work hard on these issues.

The last critique I wish to make of the member for Mayo's contribution relates to migration policy. A point he made was that it is impossible to be humane and also to be tough on borders. That is a proposition I totally reject and I think everyone on this side of the House totally rejects. Certainly you can be humane in the way in which you deal with asylum seekers as well as making sure that you have policies in place that are going to provide the greatest protection for our borders. The way you do that is by making sure that you look at regional solutions that break the people-smuggling-chain business model, and that is what this government is about doing. I think it is a vulgar position to put that governments have to make a choice between being tough on border protection and being humane in the way they treat asylum seekers. It simply is not the case, and that view has to be utterly rejected. I did think that the member for Mayo was better than that, but it looks like the early promise he showed when he first came here has drifted away as his leader has drifted more and more to the right, has lacked any real policies or humanity but has maintained the slogans. Unfortunately, I think the member for Mayo has fallen into that very dangerous web. One can only hope that when he does listen to this speech and reflects on his comments he will come and make a correction to that assumption that you need to choose between those two positions.

Not just in this budget but in previous budgets this government has addressed areas like mine, areas of need, that need to be supported. This budget builds on that tradition of the Labor government of making sure that those most in need get the assistance they need, the opportunities to be able to work and the opportunities through educational advantage to reach their full potential. The area that the member for Shortland and I share was one of 10 regions in the country to receive extra help in the budget for the difficult long-term unemployed who have often missed out, who have fallen through the gaps and whose lives have made it difficult for them to break out of that cycle. Often it is families and generations who have been caught in this unemployment trap. This government is determined to make sure that every Australian who wants to be able to be productive is given the opportunity to do so. The $304 million in this budget to help break the cycle of unemployment in these 10 areas is a very important initiative. What is particularly important about it is that we have learned from previous federal government initiatives that sometimes the best solutions are local solutions, solutions that are found and moulded locally. That is what the funding of these 10 regions is all about. It is to develop solutions that suit the local employment situation, matching employers with those who seek jobs and looking at the different circumstances of different areas and tailoring schemes accordingly.

This is a very important initiative. It is one of the most important initiatives to occur in our areas in a long time. The member for Shortland will agree with me that for too long people in our areas have spoken about high unemployment and how it is impossible to break that sort of cycle. This government is determined to do that, to break that cycle. The budget measures that were announced the other night are part of making sure that we are able to help people back into employment, to be productive, to contribute to the economy and to gain that self-esteem. The budget measures are aimed at helping to build communities by ensuring people have jobs.

This budget also saw a commitment of $2½ million to a jobs incubator in Wyong. This is going to provide businesses that operate from home with the opportunity to step out of the home and into an environment where they can get resourced and assistance to grow. If every small business were able to employ one more person through schemes like this, unemployment would be a thing of the past for our area. This budget provides over $9 million to trade training centres across my electorate and the electorate of the member for Shortland through the Lakes Community Trade Training Centre, which is based at Wadalba but also includes Lake Munmorah High School, Gorokan High School, Wyong High School and Northlakes High School. It is a terrific coming together of resources and schools in our electorates to give young people the training opportunities that they have been missing out on for a long time.

In this budget we put money aside to refurbish surf clubs—two to be refurbished and two to be completely rebuilt. Often neglected, surf clubs are a vital part of the Central Coast community. We have the best beaches in Australia, but we have not always had the best resources. This budget addresses those things. Most importantly, this budget also continues to make sure that resources are available for the NBN. For regions outside the metropolitan areas, such as ours, the NBN is one of the single biggest life-changing initiatives. This is a Labor budget because it is about looking after communities. It is about making sure that all communities get a fair go. It is something that all on this side of the House should be very proud of.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What will the Australian people remember about this Labor government? People will remember the massive deficits, the debt, the uncontrolled borrowings, greater taxes, unprecedented waste, appalling mismanagement and sheer unmitigated incompetence. Taxpayers know that they will be paying for this unmitigated incompetence for years and years to come. Under this government, Australia will have its biggest debt ever—record debt of $107 billion. The government will be borrowing $135 million a day, with daily interest payments of $18 million. It will increase government debt with a budget deficit of nearly $50 billion as it continues its reckless and wasteful spending. It just goes on and on.

Not only can we not afford to increase the government's gross debt ceiling from $200 billion to $250 billion as outlined in these appropriation bills, we cannot allow Labor to waste even more taxpayers' dollars. This government has made, unfortunately, an art form out of throwing around taxpayer dollars like confetti, wasting billions and billions on the endless litany of the latest Labor thought bubbles.

This is appallingly obscene for an Australian government. For example, the government has revealed a massive $1.7 billion blowout in managing asylum seekers. It plans to borrow $18.2 billion, just for starters, over the forward estimates for the NBN. It failed to provide detail in the budget about the proposed carbon tax. The Labor government's budget will add more financial stress on families and small businesses and put more pressure on interest rates. Any south-west individual family or business that has borrowed money faces increases in interest rates of up to one per cent in the next 18 months as a result of Labor's reckless borrowing and spending. But, unfortunately, Labor are totally oblivious to daily cost of living pressures or the issues facing small and larger businesses. This was graphically demonstrated by the member for Banks, who said, 'I know there is a suggestion that interest rates may go up in the next 12 months.' Well, interest rates go up and down. This just demonstrates how arrogant and out of touch the Labor government are. What an insult to every Australian who will be affected by those interest rates going up. This is the same group of small business operators, tradesmen and farmers in regional areas who will be hit by the new arrangements for taxing company cars, increasing their costs at a time when they are already doing it tough.

This budget has also failed to address the discrimination against students, classed as inner regional when they apply for youth allowance. We actually care about the higher education opportunities of all regional and rural students, not just the winners chosen by Labor. On a number of occasions the coalition introduced legislation and motions that would have allowed inner regional students to access youth allowance under the same criteria as other rural and remote students. However, Labor and the Greens voted against these measures.

The Prime Minister personally made the decision to discriminate against many students in my electorate and has had the time and opportunity to fix the problem. It is an absolute tragedy for the students and their families. They contact me constantly, but the Prime Minister has not done so and continues this discrimination at the same time she is wasting billions and billions of dollars. Regional and rural students deserve a fair go and, as many in this House would be aware, I do not intend to give up on my efforts to ensure young people have equal access to independent youth allowance.

Another focus of mine since I was first elected has been mental health issues in the south-west. At last it appears that the Labor government have followed the coalition's lead to invest in mental health. But I will keep working with key stakeholders to ensure that one of the proposed headspace facilities is actually delivered in the south-west. But Labor continues their attack on private health insurance in this budget and private health insurance is clearly on the Labor-Greens hit list. Private health insurance is not about having two tiers of service; it is about people taking personal responsibility for their health and their lives as well reducing the cost on the public health system.

The coalition want you to have a choice in your health services. Those who can or want to invest in their own health must be encouraged to do so. The coalition government encouraged people to take responsibility by ensuring private health insurance premiums were affordable. But Labor and the Greens want to drive people out of private cover back onto the public system, which will cost taxpayers even more. It is a lose-lose situation. Many of those with private health cover will no longer be able to afford it and will not be able to choose which service that they need. Many of those without private cover will have to wait longer for services in the public system as more people leave the private system, increasing the queues. And everyone will be worse off. The Greens might be happy, however, because the agenda of eliminating choice and undermining personal responsibility will take another leap forward.

One of my top five priorities for my electorate was infrastructure and these are some of the areas where appropriately prioritised spending would have made a difference and not just been wasted by the billion. The south-west of Western Australia is a 11.9 GDP region. It could and should be producing more with billions of dollars of investment planned in the area. However, we need investment in roads, rail and the port of Bunbury. But there is no mention of federal funding to commence stage 2 of the Bunbury outer ring-road in the budget, in spite of the fact that the Western Australian government allocated $131 million for the project in its 2011 budget. Stages 2 and 3 of the Bunbury outer ring-road were most recently costed at $365 million, and as yet it is unfunded. These roads are a priority for the economic and social development of the south-west. I was extremely pleased to see the Liberal-led government in Western Australia invest even further in the Coalfields Highway in 2011, something the Labor Party have continually refused to do.

However, my plans and the infrastructure needs in the south-west go much further than this project and how targeted funding and prioritised funding, not wasted billions, could have assisted. Like the Bussell, Vasse, Coalfields and South Western highways, there are the important rail lines in the south-west. With the growth of mining and minerals processing in my electorate, additional capacity on the Pinjarra and Collie to Bunbury lines are required. However, the federal government are ignoring these needs. I also note that funds allocated for regional infrastructure have largely been allocated out to 2014. The government must prioritise the needs of the south-west as a matter of urgency and not continue to waste billions on other programs.

Another area rejected by the Labor government in this budget is tourism funding. The tourism sector has been in great difficulty. We have responded to their concerns with our policy to increase federal investment in Tourism Research Australia by 40 per cent—had we been elected. That would have meant another $2.25 million. I recently took the shadow minister for tourism to the tourism hotspot of Margaret River in my electorate, where we were told by a restaurateur that they could not get the staff required to open for both lunch and dinner. How can this restaurant be profitable if it cannot open for both sittings? How counterproductive and short-sighted it was of the government to remove cooks and chefs from the skilled occupation list.

Agriculture and the environment work together. The natural symbiosis that exists between land managers who use their land purely for nature conservation and those who use their land for both agricultural production and conservation is obvious. In Western Australia more tree planting occurs on private property than on public lands, and private sector spending on salinity control outstrips government funding dramatically. It is therefore beyond belief that this Labor government should undermine both agriculture and the environment by abrogating its responsibility to protect Australia's borders against weed, pest and disease invasion at the same time as it undermines the community's ability to respond to such invasions at a local level. Unfortunately, Labor prefers to waste billions and billions of tax payers dollars rather than prioritising practical policy decisions.

Labor's 2009 federal budget slashed $35.8 million from the quarantine and biosecurity budgets, leading to the loss of 125 jobs and reduced inspections of arriving passengers and cargo. Also, $58 million was slashed from the Customs budget, leading to 4.7 million fewer air cargo consignments being inspected each year and 2,150 fewer vessels being bordered on arrival. This is deliberate, calculated neglect and it sets a trend which has been continued in the current budget.

In 2011 another $32.8 million has been cut from the operational budget of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, reducing the department's capacity to deliver services to Australian agriculture. Unfortunately, the government continues to demonstrate its contempt for farmers and Australia's biosecurity by ignoring the threats to our borders. The example of the slack quarantine standards being imposed by Biosecurity Australia on the importation of New Zealand apples means, unfortunately and drastically, incursion by exotic disease is no longer a matter of if, but when.

At the same time, the Labor government has slashed the natural resource management budget going to local communities that might have been used to combat weeds and feral animals. The funding that the previous Howard Liberal government delivered to regional community groups across Australia to fund on-ground control of invasive species has been left in tatters. Clearly, this is not a priority for this government, which unfortunately would prefer to waste billions of dollars on pink batts instead of spending on practical outcomes that actually work.

Indeed, the Australian landscape, both environmental and agricultural, faces a feral future. In addition to the threat of phytophthora dieback remains ignored, with no significant action since I raised this issue a year ago. I support the amendments by the shadow minister for finance condemning the Labor government for not only increasing the government's borrowings above $200 billion but for failing to explain the special circumstances justifying any increase. The parliament must consider and vote on proposed increases to borrowing limits every time the government seeks to increase Commonwealth debt above that $200 billion mark. There are very serious issues that affect my electorate. Every time I see another program that involves even more waste—unfortunately, we have seen this repeated over and over by this government—I look around my electorate and I can see so many practical programs, including infrastructure and agriculture. It is the most diverse electorate in Australia—as I said, an 11.9 GDP region—and it has the capacity to grow and deliver even more. Those are the sorts of projects that the government should be engaged in, rather than in continuous wasteful spending and mismanagement and, unfortunately, the incompetence that we have seen to date.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always good to follow the member for Forrest. It is interesting that at the commencement of her speech she raised the idea of thought bubbles. Unfortunately for the people of Australia, the opposition are incapable of thinking or having any thoughts at all that will lead to constructive policies. I understand that she could be quite anxious about the fact that we are constantly thinking and revising and looking at policies that will benefit Australia, and bringing down budgets like the budget we have before us, because her side of this parliament are unable to come up with any ideas. All they can do is be negative. The member for Forrest also mentioned interest rates, and I would like to just remind her that, up to the time the Howard government was defeated, there had been a long series of interest rate rises. Interest rates were going one way, and that was up. It was only when Labor came to power that interest rates started to go down. I am sure the member for Forrest appreciates me pointing that out to her!

This is a good budget and I commend it to the House. I have been contacted by people in my electorate and people that I work with who deliver services to the community, and one of them was very excited about the budget. He said it was a great budget and 'one that will really help our area'. He is involved in the area of employment, and I will touch on that little bit further on in my contribution to this debate.

This is a budget that is in line with the government's plan to bring Australia back into the black by 2012. It is a budget for the future, one that tackles the hard problems and does not ignore them or blame someone else for them. For years we have had a skills shortage in Australia, and this budget is designed to address that issue, not just push it aside and hope it goes away and then blame somebody else for it—for example, blame employers for not training apprentices. The coalition blame anyone they get in their sights. This government is about addressing that skills shortage, about working for the future and about making sure that Australia is in a sound position as it moves through the 21st century.

This approach is in stark contrast with that of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer. I was exceptionally disappointed by the budget response from the Leader of the Opposition. I would have to say it was not a budget response. There was nothing outlined in it. There was no vision. It was very negative. The only commitment he made was to take away from the bottom line of the budget and put a little bit of money into some of his pet areas. If we take that as the opposition's blueprint for the future, we should be very, very worried. There was no vision, just negative attacks and taking money away from the bottom line—as opposed to the budget that was delivered by the Treasurer, moving towards bringing Australia back into the black by 2012. It is interesting when I hear the opposition talking about taxing because, as the member for Dobell said, what government was the highest taxing government in not the last decade, not the last two decades but in Australia's history? And not once, not twice, not three times but four times the Howard government was accorded that prize as the highest taxing government in Australia's history.

Now we have the Leader of the Opposition, a man that is negative and that puts out misinformation. His only solution to the problem is an election and saying to the Australian people, 'Elect me, elect me, I want to be in the Lodge.' We have the problems between the Leader of the Opposition and his shadow Treasurer. It is quite a worry for the Australian people that we have a situation where we have a dysfunctional opposition that cannot give the Australian people anything positive, that cannot give them a view for the future but rather just gets out there giving negative messages and misinformation. I think the Leader of the Opposition works on the principle that if you say things often enough people are going to believe what you say, no matter how outlandish it is or how incorrect it is.

The government steered Australia through the global financial crisis. In the Shortland electorate a number of schools benefited from the investment that the government made in schools. I think in excess of $85 million went into my local schools. But it did not end with the investment in the schools. I have had a number of building companies and tradespeople come into my office and say that if it wasn't for the government's initiative and stimulus package they would have had to close down. Many of these people were not Labor voters. They were straightforward with me and said, 'I am not a Labor voter, but this helped me to survive.' This is once again in stark contrast to what the opposition would have done.

There is going to be an ongoing investment in more MRI machines. We will not see any repeat of the MRI scan scam that happened under the Howard government in the time of Dr Wooldridge. In actual fact, cscan, a group within the Shortland electorate has been given a partial MRI scan, and the Martyr hospital in the Hunter has also benefited under this investment. These will come into effect in November 2012.

This budget is about families; it is about jobs; it is about our seniors; and it is about delivering ground-breaking mental health services. That is something that is vital for our Australian communities. This budget has delivered an increase in family tax benefit A for older teenagers. That benefit has gone up by $4,208 a year, which is an extra $121 a fortnight. That is delivering to families with students who are 16 to 18, a time when they incur a lot more costs than they do in their younger years. So that is a really good initiative in this budget. There is an extension of the education tax refund to cover school uniforms, which once again is a great initiative that will help struggling families. It is an initiative we promised to deliver in the lead-up to the last election. There is $53 million to improve access to dental health. That will train more dentists in our public hospital and have an intern system that will really skill up a new generation of dentists and put in place a system to ensure that all Australians have access to good quality dental care. And, as I mentioned, there is a $2 billion package for mental health services. Prior to becoming a member of Parliament I worked in rehabilitation and did work with people that were involved in the mental health system. I know that for a very long period of time there has not been enough support. This program will put in place mentors, it will put in place programs that will develop living skills. The aim of it is to move people from being dysfunctional within the community with no support to actually finally being able to participate in employment. So the mentors and the services will help them develop the living skills and get the vocational training to be able to enter the workforce and live a more fulfilling life. The $20 million that is going to support school students with disabilities is really needed because there is an increasing number of young people that have disabilities and we need to recognise that and put in place support for those students.

Some of the really important initiatives in this year's budget were the initiatives surrounding employment. There has been a greater commitment to apprentices with $100 million for a national mentoring program, $100 million investment in a more flexible training model for apprentices. That is something that has been asked for by apprentices and employers for a very long period of time. The tax-free bonus for eligible apprentices who reach their key milestones in their training is also something that will encourage more apprentices to train. There is $281 million for additional incentives to help apprentices train. There are plans to reform and update vocational education and training.

In the Shortland electorate, as the member for Dobell also mentioned, there is a cluster of high schools that are working together with trade training centres and the Australian Technical College. The government has put money into that. Previously under the Howard government there was a plan that never came to fruition to put in place an Australian technical college on the southern part of the Central Coast. It would have done nothing to benefit the young people in Shortland electorate. In the northern part of Wyong Shire is the area where there is the highest level of youth unemployment. It is an area where young people have trouble with transport. By putting the facilities in the local high schools, training the teachers, having tradespeople actually working in those schools, it has been so beneficial for the students in that part of my electorate.

The other initiative that is very important which the member for Dobell referred to is that Wyong Shire is one of 10 regions to share in the $304 million that has been allocated to train long-term unemployed. I see the member for Throsby in the chamber and I note that his area has also been identified as one of those areas. It is an area where long-term unemployed will get special assistance in case management and their needs will be looked at. It is all about people that have been unemployed for a very long period of time, and maybe even their parents or their grandparents were unemployed, giving them the skills and training that they need to actually get jobs. As somebody who comes from an employment background, I know how important it is to address those issues on the ground and address them now. The investment and the ongoing viability of the NBN is very important to the people I represent in this parliament. I must also mention that the funding allocation to the Active After-school Communities program is vitally important, particularly in those areas of the electorate that are disadvantaged.

No matter where I look in this budget I can find things that are really good for the people I represent in this parliament. It is a good budget. It is a Labor budget. It is about inclusiveness, community and every group within our community. Businesses, individuals, seniors and families have all been taken into account in the budget. I commend the budget to the House.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak tonight on the three appropriation bills we are debating concurrently. Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-12 is the primary bill to appropriate funds from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the ordinary annual services of government and related purposes. The total appropriation under this bill is $72.8 billion. Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2011-12 allows annual appropriations from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for services that are not the ordinary annual services of government, which includes payments through individual portfolios to states and territories. The amount sought is $7.39 billion. Significantly, this bill seeks to raise the government's gross debt ceiling from $200 billion to $250 billion—a reflection of their propensity to spend. Finally, via Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2011-12, $180 million is sought for the Department of the Senate, the Department of the House of Representatives and the Department of Parliamentary Services.

I stand here at a time when the international community is experiencing significant economic uncertainty. The world's largest economy, the United States, has over $14 trillion of debt and was recently forced to raise its debt ceiling. Significantly, the global credit rating agency Moody's fired a warning shot at Washington, saying that the AAA sovereign credit rating was at risk unless dramatic action was taken to curb ballooning budget deficits and rein in government debt. So too in Europe, unsustainable debt levels in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom have rattled international markets, forced urgent refinancing and necessitated painful and far-reaching government cuts.

The messages for Australia are clear: 'Big government is bad government' and 'Live within your means before it is too late.' Unfortunately, those messages are not getting through. Both the Rudd and Gillard governments have displayed their addiction to debt. While historically this is not uncommon for Labor governments at federal and state levels, this federal government takes the cake. Net government debt has blown out from $94 billion to a record $107 billion in 2011-12. Government borrowings are $135 million a day, or $1 billion a month. Interest payments have grown to an astronomical $7.5 billion a year, which is already $12.5 million a day and they reach $20 million a day in 2014-15.

That is a lot of hospitals, schools and roads that could easily have been fully financed on the interest payments alone. This year's budget deficit blew out by more than $8 billion to $49.4 billion—the second largest since World War Two—and the 2011-12 budget deficit is forecast to rise by $10 billion to $22.6 billion. For this government, another billion dollars in debt is just a rounding error. It would be laughable if it was not so serious. Australia's future prosperity is today on the line. It is no wonder that we cannot take seriously the government's commitment to surplus in 2012-13. Labor has not delivered one in 21 years or, as the coalition's rising star, the member for Longman, Wyatt Roy, so tellingly pointed out in the House, 'Not in his lifetime.' What is more, Labor's failure to rein in spending is occurring at a time of low unemployment and a China-led boom. If the government cannot take the hard decisions when the terms of trade are their strongest in more than a century, then they will never do it. They promised a tough budget, but it was anything but. As editorialised in the Australian:

…the only time he—

the Treasurer—

has wielded a knife is when he helped to bring down Kevin Rudd.

The Treasurer's announcement of $22 billion of savings out of a total spend of $1,500 billion over the next four years was just about matched by its new spending spree. Next year, for example, the government is spending $2 billion more than it will save. In the words of Australia's distinguished former Treasurer Peter Costello, 'This year's budget was a major lost opportunity.' Peter Costello should know. Today, revenue is rising to unprecedented levels and expenditure by 2014-15 will be up by more than 23 per cent in real terms from when he was at the helm.

This dangerous addiction of Labor to spending will only send interest rates one way—up. Already, seven rate rises since October 2009 have punished homeowners and those dreaming of entering the market. Expectations in the market are of worse still to come. Moreover, this government provides no relief. This is the first budget in eight years without tax cuts, meaning the thresholds in 2015 will be the same as those announced by the Howard government in 2007. Tax cuts, no; but tax increases, yes.

The government's carbon tax is the latest impost from a government that in just a few years has given us a mining tax, an alcopops tax and higher taxes on cigarettes and luxury cars et cetera. While the mining tax was announced by the Labor government without consultation with those in the industry most affected, the government's carbon tax has been a metaphor for consultation. The only problem is that those consulted are not the families who will face higher costs of living but Labor's political partner, the Greens, who see a historic opportunity to close down important energy intensive industries and distribute wealth according to their own social agenda. The Greens are today's modern-day Luddites.

With electricity prices up by more than 50 per cent, water up by more than 45 per cent and gas up 30 per cent—all since Labor came to office—the public have made it clear they can ill afford a carbon tax, which will only exacerbate their existing hardship. As the Leader of the Opposition has said, the carbon tax should have been detailed in this budget, for it is a massive economy-wide reform with ramifications for the government's expenditure and revenue forecasts. The government's failure to do so means its forecast budget surplus for 2012-13 is not even worth the paper it is written on.

One does not have to look deeply into this budget to see dangerous signs of waste and mismanagement. More than $300 million has been set aside for high definition television set-top boxes at a cost of nearly $400 each. Given Harvey Norman can provide the equivalent technology, delivery and instalment for half the price, it should remind every taxpayer that this program is another pink batts and school hall fiasco just waiting to happen.

The $1.75 billion blowout on asylum seeker management is also a reminder that this government has failed to protect our borders. Christmas Island, Villawood and other detention centres are at breaking point and the government has stubbornly refused to adopt John Howard's successful Pacific solution. On this issue and on many others, Labor has no answers.

The freeze on indexation of family tax benefits part A and part B supplements will hurt Australian families to the tune of $2 billion and has been criticised widely. The axing of the entrepreneurs tax offset, which delivered support to small businesses around the country, will damage a sector already struggling from the loss of more than 300,000 jobs since Labor came to power. The tighter eligibility requirements proposed for the private health insurance rebate are also a retrograde step. People who take up health insurance are in effect saving the taxpayer money and reducing the burden on the already squeezed public health system. The cuts to rebates for general practitioners delivering mental health services, and cuts to the number of Medicare-funded visits patients can make to their psychologist, have been widely criticised by professionals working in the sector. The government was shamed into allocating new money for mental health, but at just over $500 million it was less than a third of what was promised by the coalition. What is more, the government has back-ended the money at a time when more mental health services are urgently required.

Aged care was also inexplicably ignored by the Gillard government at a time when our population demographic is undergoing rapid change. Around 13 per cent of Australians are today over the age of 65, a figure that will double by 2050. This government provided no new money for the aged-care sector. Despite the Productivity Commission's Caring for older Australians report, scheduled to be out in June, the government missed a vital opportunity to demonstrate with new funding its commitment to the sector and the millions of older Australians dependent on aged care.

Somehow this government can find the money for its political priorities, like the 24,000 new public servants employed by this government since 2007 or the nearly $50 billion it plans to spend on the National Broadband Network without even a cost-benefit study, but when it comes to helping aspirational Australian families it simply remains silent. It was former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who said, 'The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.' The Australian Labor Party may not be the socialists Thatcher originally had in mind, but its willingness to nationalise industries, intervene in the market and live beyond its means indicates that this Gillard government is not far off.

Just four years ago, Australia's balance sheet was the envy of the world: no government debt, low unemployment and inflation, and a vibrant private sector sitting alongside a relatively effective public sector. But things can so quickly change. Under this Labor government, our competitive advantage has been squandered, our savings have been spent and we are now left to ponder how much more damage this Labor government will do before the Australian people have their opportunity to vote them out. It cannot come soon enough.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow the member for Kooyong. Perhaps he would like to take his philosophy of the market being the best option, apply it to consideration of the carbon debates in this place and reconsider the direct action policy of his leader as the most appropriate way to address the climate change challenge. I look forward to the reassessment, as I understand some of his colleagues would probably be keen to get in behind him on that. So I anticipate that with great pleasure.

I want to take the opportunity to speak today in the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012 and cognate bills, as most of us do in this place, and to pull together a view of where we have gone since the last budget and, indeed, where our budget sits within the context of a series of budgets in our economic progress. In my first term in this place, in discussing the budget of the then government, obviously there were various points that I took issue with that government on. That is not surprising; that is why we sit on opposite sides of the House. But I well remember—it never leaves me—the intense debate we were having about how this nation managed the mining boom. We had seen across the nation the great advantages that came from the mining boom creating significant problems for other parts of the economy.In particular, as a member of the House Standing Committee on Economics, I was a member of two important inquiries initiated at that time by Peter Costello as the Treasurer to look at the effects of the mining boom on two important sectors of the economy: the manufacturing sector and the services sector. Certainly, there was clear evidence that the great growth and the black hole effect of the mining boom was sucking resources, investment and skills out of the broader economy. While that was great for that sector, and we all benefited from the wellbeing of that sector—and we would wish it to continue its wellbeing—we also have to acknowledge the effects that it had across the broader economy.

The result of that was that we saw significant messages coming from places like the Reserve Bank about the inflationary pressures that were being put into the economy from both skill shortages and infrastructure bottlenecks. It has been on the agenda of the Rudd and then Gillard governments to address seriously those major breaks in our economy, and in particular with this budget to look at significant ways in which we can facilitate a broader range of people—that is, individuals and regions—to participate in the future economy.

I think this budget stands the test of this place within that process. It is, indeed, about addressing the patchwork national economy, and despite the natural disasters which we saw, very sadly, on our screens and in reality for too many of our members in this place and the people they represent in Queensland, northern New South Wales and regional Victoria, our economic prospects are strong. The economy is expected to grow over the next two years, we are enjoying the highest terms of trade in 140 years and we are in the midst of an unprecedented mining boom.

Given its nature, the mining boom will generate significant strong employment growth, including in my own area and that of my colleague sitting here with me, the member for Throsby. We see that. I well remember uncles in the mining industry saying to me in the 80s that the biggest most recent skill they had developed was rewriting their CV to add another closure on it and to look for work elsewhere. We had several members of our family have to move out of the area. That is not the case now; there is good strong employment in that sector.

But this does place pressure on the capacity of the economy more broadly, and that daunting challenge remains where we have to manage to add to supply and demand in the economy at about the same time. It is for this reason that the government is determined to return the budget to surplus in 2012-13. The government will turn around a deficit into a surplus of $3.5 billion in 2012-13, increasing to $3.7 billion in the 2013-14 year, and consolidating the surplus at $5.8 billion in the 2014-15 year.

This fiscal consolidation—an unprecedented achievement, completely ignored by those opposite—will keep pressure off interest rates, which will help families with mortgages and businesses. I would remind people more broadly of the 10 back-to-back interest-rate increases that occurred at the end of the Howard government era as a result of their failure to address the warnings that were coming about inflationary pressures.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They were blind!

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Exactly right—the member indicates that they were blind to those, and they were indeed. And they were not spread over time; they were not a response to gradual changes and a tapping on the brakes. They were back to back, and they were devastating for people.

In describing the budget, the economics editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Ross Gittins, said in his column on 14 May 2011:

Sound like a weak effort to you? It's a turnaround equivalent to 3.8 percentage points of gross domestic product - 2.1 points in the coming year and 1.7 points in 2012-13.

This means that, in the simple way most economists (including those at the Reserve Bank) measure it these days, the "stance of policy" is highly contractionary.

He goes on to say:

The budget's net contribution to demand is negative - contracting rather than expanding - thus leaving more room for private sector demand to expand without generating as much inflation pressure.

It should be indicated that what has been missing from many of the contributions of those opposite is the fact that we have been through a cycle of a global financial downturn of great significance. We in this place all listen with great interest to those opposite. The whole global financial crisis, which is critical in most discussions that occur about the international economy, has been completely missing from their conversations about the economy over recent years. We have come through that much stronger than most other advanced economies and we are recovering much more strongly as well. The opposition cannot seem to agree with itself, indeed, on whether the 2011-12 budget was too tough or too soft. On the one hand, we had the spectacle of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer claiming that the budget was too tough on families. On the other hand, they were trying to play to the economic and political commentators by saying that the budget was far too weak.

The Leader of the Opposition in his effect non budget reply simply ran to half an hour with a negative message and a reheat of the coalition's 2010 election policy platform. That does not particularly help us in assessing his economic view for the future of the nation. The shadow Treasurer fronted the National Press Club to give a rather dismal performance of last year's comedy. At least we did not have 'pass the baton' this time round. But there was not much of any great substance to assist us, either.

I will leave the best independent observation to Mr Gittins. He said this on 11 May, the morning after the budget was handed down:

It could have been more excruciating—economists are hard to please when it comes to inflicting pain—but it's tougher and more courageous than all but the first of the 12 budgets the now-sainted Peter Costello delivered.

The facts are that the 2011-12 budget will keep tax revenue as a proportion of GDP lower than the Howard government managed—21.8 per cent compared to 24.1 per cent in 2005-06. Real government spending is one per cent over the next five years, while the Howard government spent nearly four per cent in its last five years. The government has cut personal income tax, as the member for Throsby reminded us previously, leaving an income earner on $50,000 a year better off by $1,750 annually and an income earner on $100,000 nearly $2,000 better off. We will cut corporate tax to 29 per cent for small business in the year that we bring the budget back to surplus and for all other businesses from 2013-14 as part of the government's reforms in taxing superprofits from resources.

Small businesses, including those in the Illawarra, will benefit from a $5,000 upfront tax break, as well as the instant tax write off for the first $5,000 of any car purchase from next year. The coalition, by contrast, maintained a 30 per cent corporate tax rate. The government will increase the retirement incomes of workers from nine per cent to 12 per cent, sustaining not only the retirement of workers but importantly—and this is one of the great strengths over the long term of our economy—adding to national savings through the superannuation pool.

The budget delivers a further downpayment to all Australians. The government recognises that the patchwork economy is placing pressure on the cost of living of Australians. From 1 July 2011—only about 13 weeks away—the government will increase the proportion of the low-income tax offset delivered to 6.5 million Australians. This provides an income earner on an annual income of $30,000 an extra $300 during the year in their regular pay, rather than making them wait until the end of the financial year.

The government will expand the work bonus from 1 July, enabling an age pensioner to earn up to $250 per fortnight extra without it being assessed under the income tax laws. So on top of the permanent built-in increase that we have provided to age pensioners so that they do not have to wait each year in expectant hope as they did during the Howard-Costello period that some largesse would fall out of the budget we have provided them with the capacity to earn an extra $250 per fortnight before it is assessed. Age pensioners are continuing to benefit from the inbuilt increases that are worth $128 per fortnight for single pensioners and $116 per fortnight for pensioner couples combined.

Self-funded retirees remain eligible for the seniors supplement, providing $806 for single self-funded retirees and $1,216.80 for couples combined. The government will also deliver a 50 per cent discount on the up to $1,000 of interest earned as income on savings products, including bank accounts, benefitting both self-funded retirees and age pensioners.

We will expand the education tax rebate—and this is very welcomed by families, and particularly by those in our area in the Illawarra—to include the cost of school uniforms. The payment of the childcare rebate will be made fortnightly to either the childcare provider or families to assist in reducing the upfront costs. I well remember under the old Howard scheme families coming to me because they were having to wait two years in reality before they got the refund because of the way that the tax claim system worked.

We will also, importantly, increase family tax benefit A for 16-to-19-year-old teenagers who are in school or an equivalent vocational qualification by about $160 per fortnight. For families who are trying to keep their kids in school and on to year 12, when we know how significant that is to their long-term wellbeing, then this particular payment continuing after the age of 16 is significantly important. In my role heading the education committee, when we looked at young people combining work and school—not work and post-school study—the capacity to earn an income in many of those families was critical to support the family income. Those kids were trying to study for their senior years at the same time.

The budget goes further. It touches on an area that is of great significance for our long-term future, and it is of great importance to me, and that is the skills agenda. There are several very significant initiatives with $3 billion in skills by placing industry at the heart of Australia's training effort and, in particular, another round of great investment in our Australian apprenticeship scheme. I think all of those will be very, very welcome. Certainly in my area of the Illawarra the importance of youth employment and apprenticeship opportunities will be very, very welcome.

More broadly, I should indicate that the member for Throsby and I sit on an apprenticeship committee in the Illawarra, and I want to take this opportunity to commend the work of that committee in targeting the most at-risk young people in our region and getting them into apprenticeship opportunities. It is work that we will continue to undertake.

In the short time that I have left, I want to do a little bit of parochial messaging. There is a view, I believe, that is very wrongly expressed on occasions in the Illawarra, that we get ignored by various governments. I would remind local people that in fact over time we have delivered from the Commonwealth government over $498 million into the federal electorates of Cunningham, Throsby and Gilmore in the process of fighting off the global financial crisis. It is worth recapping that there were jobs fund programs for 14 projects of over $7 million, and this supported nearly 300 jobs, 58 traineeships and 107 work experience places. We invested nearly $6 million in the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program in my electorate, including the magnificent Blue Mile project, which will support local tourism for a long time into the future. We put $83 million into social housing in my electorate, not only creating job opportunities for tradespeople but also providing housing for the most at-risk. It should be acknowledged that we put significant money into the Illawarra Care Centre at Wollongong Hospital with its outreach in the Shoalhaven of over $12 million in the hospital. These are all serious and significant investments in my electorate. I am sure they will continue, and I will continue to lobby for them with my colleague the member for Throsby. We will never, ever allow our area to be taken for granted. We have the greatest confidence that this government, unlike the Howard government, will take those calls seriously. I commend the appropriations bills to the House.

Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the three budget appropriation bills that are currently being debated. Without doubt, the most unsettling aspects of this budget are the omission of the carbon tax and the attack on ordinary Australians. How can Australians have faith in a budget that does not make mention of a significant new tax that will cost jobs and will make life tougher for families? How can Australians have faith in a budget that is ripping billions of dollars from families at a time when cost of living pressures are placing an almost unbearable strain on the budgets of families?

This is a budget from a Labor government whose only vision for the future of our country is one of new taxes. My electorate of Longman stretches over 1,239 square kilometres between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. Economic drivers of the region include tourism, light industry, farming, retail and small business. It is an electorate in the heart of Queensland's fastest-growing region. It is close enough to Brisbane for people to commute there to work. It is also close enough for people to enjoy the lifestyle, beautiful beaches, the Pumicestone Passage, a stunning hinterland and above all else a strong sense of local, smaller town community that make it one of the best places to live. It is, of course, not surprising that people are moving into the area. There has been an increase in population in Longman of about 30 per cent over the past 10 years. It is little wonder, then, that each time I drive around Longman I see new houses being built and new subdivisions being developed. I have recently been actively seeking the views of my community on the issues that matter to them. I have issued an electorate-wide survey to which I have received thousands of responses and I have held many listening posts all over Longman. Despite what many would rightly say are our natural advantages, people are often brutally disillusioned with the current Labor government. Without doubt, the federal issue that is of most concern to the people of Longman is the imposition of a carbon tax and what this will do to family budgets, local employment opportunities and how small businesses will survive. The state issues that the are the most concerning are the chronic failure to deliver local health services and the dreadful state of the D'aguilar Highway and the Bribie Island Bridge. The picture I paint is one of a community whose boundless potential is being hamstrung by uncertainty, a lack of trust in the federal Labor government and a lack of faith in a disastrous state Labor government that has neglected our community for too long. This budget has done nothing to generate confidence in my local community. This budget has done nothing to harness the opportunities of growth or to plan for the future.

Let me first turn to the carbon tax. I have repeatedly voiced my concerns about this toxic new tax after the Prime Minister broke her promise to the Australian people that a government she would lead would not introduce the carbon tax. Since the Prime Minister's announcement, I have had call after call, email after email and survey response after survey response and have been stopped countless times in the streets, at shops and at schools as locals express dismay at the introduction of the Labor/Green carbon tax and the Prime Minister's breach of faith with the Australian people.

As I have already said, life is getting tougher for the forgotten families in my community and they are struggling to make ends meet as the day-to-day essentials are increasing in price—something the Labor Party fails to understand. I will repeat what I said in March this year: the price of water has gone up. The price of electricity has gone up. The price of fuel has gone up. The cost of public transport has gone up. It is getting harder and harder for ordinary Australians to make ends meet. When ordinary Australians have reasonably expected to own their homes and aspire to a life better than that of their parents, under this Labor Government, this is increasingly not the case. Ordinary Australians have to work harder and harder. And for what? Is it to live a better life? Is it to give your children a better life? Is it to get ahead? No. Ordinary Australians work harder and harder not to achieve the aspirations we have previously taken for granted, but to pay more taxes to pay off the debt incurred by this Labor government.

Ordinary Australians do not have extraordinary expectations, but they do and should expect a government that will make their lives easier, that will stand up for them and that will look after their interests. Not under this Labor government. Under this Labor government, the lives of the locals in my community get harder, not easier. There is nothing in this budget for the many families in Longman who are doing it really tough. At a time when the cost of living is soaring, this Labor government has ripped the rug out from under the feet of ordinary Australian families.

Small business is undeniably the engine room of the Australian economy. It is the driver of employment and the realiser of potential. Yet small business in Longman is suffering from a crisis in confidence brought about by inconsistencies and incompetence in Labor government policy that seems to urge them on to failure, not to success. The carbon tax is causing an unsettling amount of uncertainty for small businesses. They are worried that their spiralling costs are going to climb even higher under the imposition of another tax and the harsh reality is going to see some of them close their doors.

Post budget, small business owners in my community are saying that the budget is a wasted opportunity that has done nothing to encourage employment or to engender confidence in the market place. Small business owners are saying to me: 'Can the government just get out of the way and support some of us so that we can thrive and employ more people?' The budget has not provided any relief or any reassurance that this is going to improve confidence in my community. The challenges facing small business, such as difficulty accessing credit, have not been addressed and interest rates will invariably go up as a result of the deficit, waste and mismanagement of this Labor government.

In my local community people just want a job and it is a vibrant small business community that will deliver this opportunity to them, not new Labor taxes. The Labor government will never understand the value of a hand up over a handout, that a meaningful job is the best form of welfare and that you cannot compensate someone who has just lost their job. Like the community at large, life for small business is destined to get harder under this Labor government. Given the growth in the Longman area and the potential generated by that growth, I want to see my electorate as an area of boundless opportunity. I want it to be a productive, vibrant community with its potential fully realised. I want it to be a powerhouse for the region and a place where people live, work and play. That is what growth should mean. We should not be afraid of it, we should embrace it as a way of responsibly growing our economy and providing jobs and increased opportunities for our community.

But for this to occur we need a plan for the future, not to play catch-up and not to use bandaid solutions. We need to ensure that the services available are adequate. We need to make sure that the community is confident that when they are sick they are going to be able to receive the care they need. We need to make sure that the commute to Brisbane, if that is where you work, is as easy as possible. We need to make sure that the major roads servicing the regional areas of my electorate are up to the task and are safe. We need to make sure that we have a culture of opportunity, where the greatest equaliser in our society is equality of opportunity, not subsidy. There was a time when Labor was led by a Queenslander who said he was here to help. This budget is not helping the ordinary Australians in my community.

It is crystal clear to me and the locals in Longman that infrastructure has simply not kept up with growth, starting with health. We have a hospital that is plainly stretched well beyond its capacity. I have talked about the Caboolture Hospital in this place numerous times and I will continue to talk about it over and over again. The locals deserve to be confident that when their child has a raging ear infection after hours they are not going to have to wait most of the night to be seen. When you are taken by ambulance to the hospital with an acute emergency you should not be ramped or redirected to another hospital across south-east Queensland. My constituents deserve better access to mental health services so that they can receive the care they need.

The expansion of the Caboolture Hospital is of fundamental importance to Longman. Everyone wants it. Locals want it, the doctors and nurses who do such a fantastic job at the hospital want it, I want it, and it is one of the things that I am determined to continue fighting for. The hospital needs more beds; it is as plain as that. The hospital has 187 beds servicing the region and 21 beds in the accident and emergency department. With the population of the region expected to grow to 200,000 by 2026, we are estimated to need some 600 beds and 52 emergency bays, with more than half of that by 2016. Together with increasing the hospital's capacity we need to redirect patients to other places to relieve the pressure on the hospital in the short and long term. Before the last election I was working with the Moreton Bay general practice network to help facilitate real after-hours care and expand after-hours GP services. This model has the benefit to begin support by GPs, allowing access to the family GP for after-hours consultations and relieving pressure on the emergency department of the hospital. It is a win-win model for the whole community. I remain committed to a commonsense, practical solution around issues of access to health care in Longman. I am sure that local GPs and healthcare professionals will always understand the needs of locals more than bureaucrats in Canberra do.

Mental health is an area of significant concern and an area close to my heart. I am told that mental health affects one in five people every year and one in two people across the course of a lifetime. We are in urgent need of early intervention services that are able to provide support before people require acute mental health care. At the last election, with my colleague Peter Dutton, shadow minister for health, I was proud to announce $60 million of funding for the establishment of an early psychosis prevention and intervention centre in Caboolture. This would have provided services to those who most need them and have relieved pressure on the hospital. I remain committed to the establishment of an EPIC in Caboolture. In this budget, the Labor government has provided only $2.9 million for expenditure in the next financial year for the whole country, and only $23 million in the following financial year—again, for the whole nation, not Caboolture. If we really want this critical service delivered in Longman, we need to change the government

I have also spoken in this place on numerous occasions about the woeful state of the D'Aguilar Highway and the Bribie Island bridge. The D'Aguilar Highway, like the hospital, is straining under the pressure of increased demand. It has, quite frankly, become a deathtrap. It needs to be upgraded urgently to cope with the increased growth in the region. The solution to this problem needs to be a combined state and federal effort. During the last election campaign, I announced a coalition commitment of an additional $12 million of funding to fix the black spots on the deadly highway, but more needs to be done. Passing lanes would also save lives, and I have repeatedly called on the Queensland state Labor government to urgently address this issue. After all, this is a state government road. The Bribie Island bridge is another arterial that is straining under pressure. It is the only access to and from the island and was designed decades ago to meet the demands of a small population. Bribie Island is now a large community that swells during the summer, and the bridge is plainly inadequate and needs upgrading. I am committed to ensuring upgrades for both pieces of infrastructure. If it were not for the waste and mismanagement of Labor governments, infrastructure and essential services would be delivered for my local community.

Longman is a growth corridor and warrants effective infrastructure to support it for the future as it inevitably grows. Now is the time to plan and prepare. Longman cannot afford to be left behind. I want Longman to be a community looking to the future with optimism and energy and looking towards opportunities. I do not want it to be a community that is consistently overlooked, with health services and infrastructure requirements overlooked. It is the forgotten people of Longman who are again being overlooked and neglected by this Labor government. I want my community to be a place where people want to settle and raise a family, where they will stay because there is work to be had, and where there is a great sense of local community. That is why I will continue to be a vocal voice in this place and elsewhere so that I can give voice to my constituents and strive to have their concerns addressed, something this Labor budget plainly fails to do.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the next member, I think the chamber should congratulate the member for Longman on his momentous occasion, his 21st birthday today. He will probably be the only person in the place to ever see his 21st birthday while here. Congratulations.

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is very timely; I was persuaded this week by my federal electorate council to start sending out cards to people on their 21st birthday. The thrust of the budget, of course, is around necessary measures towards reducing middle-class welfare. I think we know that over the period of the Howard government, when massive infrastructure needs in this country were ignored, there was large expenditure in this area, and it has been quite interesting. My electorate particularly would be appalled by the emphasis over the last fortnight on the sad state, as the opposition apparently regards it, of those people on $150,000 a year—how sad their situation is and how basically we should not move money elsewhere to help those more in need. Another thrust, of course, is mental health, the need to support low-income families, and regional health and education infrastructure.

I want to talk about two areas that particularly affect my electorate of Werriwa. They are the question of training, skills and apprenticeships; and the issue of mental health. Both these affect people personally close but are, in the broader sense, crucial issues in the electorate of Werriwa. People speak about a two-pronged economy—states that are progressing well in regard to raw materials and those such as New South Wales in particular that are lagging. We have a different concept of a two-state economy, as this country has only 4.9 per cent unemployment, a very good record by the standards of the advanced industrial countries, and it is predicted that over the next two years 500,000 jobs will be created. However, within that situation, we have 230,000 people who have been out of work for at least two years. On the other hand, we are also seeking an increase in skilled migration because of the dereliction of duty that has characterised the way in which skills and apprenticeships have been ignored over a period of time. I remember the rhetoric of the previous government in parliament day after day carrying on about how there were too many aspirations for working-class people and that they should not all be going to university. That was just code for people not going to university from working-class areas; it was not a promise by the previous government to actually do anything about apprenticeships, about TAFE and about vocational education. If it had been, they would have more credibility.

We have a situation here today where only 50 per cent of apprenticeships are completed. It is no wonder that a major aspect of this government and this budget is to do something in regard to training. It is important in my electorate, which is a young electorate in far contrast to my previous electorate with families consisting of two working parents on many occasions, a significant number of children and a large youth population. It is also on the edge of Sydney and involves very significant cross-city movement of people, congestion et cetera because of the availability of jobs in other regions of Sydney. So this is important.

We see in this budget over $100 million going towards mentoring 10,000 apprenticeships to make sure that people actually complete them. I have indicated the abysmal completion rate of only 50 per cent. Something has to be done about it. That is a major initiative in this budget. A similar figure is going towards accelerated apprenticeships. Obviously we should be concerned if there is any deterioration of standards in that acceleration process. It is a way in which people can be brought into the work force, set up for life and for establishing families, and at the same time they can be accelerated through the award payscales that otherwise would stretch for many years. So there is a degree of attraction for a person to come towards apprenticeships if this succeeds where their apprenticeship will be completed earlier. People will be able to utilise those skills at an earlier point and thus able to get higher income. There are special measures that give grants to employers in crucial skilled areas.

In addition, $560 million will go to a National Workforce Development Fund, and a significant amount of that will be spent working with industry to make sure there is a national workforce capability and an agency will be established to give independent advice to the government. It should not be conceded for a moment that, despite these very significant initiatives by the government, little has been happening in the interim because in actual fact there has been a doubling of funding on apprenticeships and to employers since 2007.

In this budget we see $143 million over a four-year period going towards language, literacy and numeracy. We all understand this is a significant problem for individuals, for their families and for their lifestyle but it is also a major difficulty for our country in regard to productivity in that large parts of our workforce are not able to fully utilise their skills and are not attractive to employers because they lack these skills. So we see money that is very necessary going into that area.

Even for people in employment, and this is a situation which has deteriorated in this country. I remember the days a few decades ago particularly in Victoria—where most progressive action on this front occurs—where the Italian, Turkish and Greek workers were fighting for workplace English. It has fallen by the wayside under both sides of politics in the interim. But in this budget $20 million is going to workplace English for people already in employment whose situation is precarious because of their lack of English.

An amount of $80 million is going towards an endeavour to get job training for 30,000 sole parents. People on the other side of politics stigmatise, attack and assail people in this situation, but the reality of life is that many of these people do not have options because of a variety of circumstances. This government is going to try to do something about it.

For vulnerable job seekers, there is nearly $20 million to help 5,000 people whose situation in the workforce is vulnerable maybe because of technology, because of the disappearance of some jobs or because other people are available in the workplace. This will go towards increasing their skills, making sure they have more possibilities. There is a very strong emphasis on the direct partnership with industry to try to make sure that 130,000 new apprenticeships are provided through that cooperation. One thing that I am not as attracted towards is the proposal in this budget that COAG work towards vocational education. That sounds nice, and let's be hopeful that the outcome is positive. It speaks about catering to employers' needs, and that should always be a significant factor but not predominant. It talks about high quality training and an investment in the right skills. Again, that is laudatory that we try to get the right skills, but it speaks about a degree of choice for people. They can supposedly choose training organisations that perform best and meet their needs. I for one am a very strong defender of government provided technical education in this country.

Under the previous government we saw one of the biggest immigration disasters that has ever occurred in the way in which they handled the international student situation. Hundreds of thousands of people came into this country, essentially attracted not by education but by the possibility that they could live here for the next 50 years. One of the situations that the current government had to deal with in that area was the growth of very questionable private sector colleges. This government has had to go out and require all of those to be certified again. I am not highly attracted to the private sector education-for-dollar concept in this area. I hope that what happens in COAG does not go in a direction which says that education in TAFE is too broad, too humanistic, that it covers too many subjects the employer does not want and that it is cheaper to do it through these private providers. Quite frankly, we will get a third-rate outcome. So I very much commend the government's initiatives in this area. It is something that my electorate needs very much.

I want to mention another initiative of the government. I recently attended with the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations, Senator Chris Evans, the opening of an extension to the Macquarie Fields TAFE. I saw young people there who obviously wanted to go into the building sector and they had a site available where they could construct buildings on site. I met a young woman, an inspiring person, who worked at Bunnings, decided that she knew a bit about carpentry and decided to go into that career. She was the spokesperson on the day for all the students and it was truly inspiring to see the opportunities she will get in life to be a female carpenter. She very much stressed that the TAFE providers were in no way gender discriminatory.

Another matter I want to deal with in the limited time is the question of mental health. Again, for me this is very different in my new electorate. I represented an electorate of many migrants and new arrivals and there was often a bit of a tendency to hide mental health problems behind doors. All the statistics indicate that. In this new electorate, because of the higher prevalence of public housing, it is even more of an issue than in my old electorate. When you have a high public housing presence, you have a higher level of disadvantage and a consequent preponderance of disabilities and mental health issues. I have been surprised in my area to see organisations such as Beautiful Minds, the Campbelltown Mental Health Service on Brown Street, Waratah House at Campbelltown Hospital and the Liverpool Hospital Mental Health Centre. I do not think any other electorate in this country has such a plethora of disability and mental health organisations working in the community.

It is indeed important to my electorate that one of the central focuses of this budget is mental health. There is $2.2 billion over a five-year period. It is aimed at areas most in need. There is intensive support, better coordination. Funding is devoted to those people who have severe and persistent problems and complex needs. There is an accent on support for areas and communities that are socioeconomically disadvantaged because, as I noted earlier, that is where there is a preponderance of these problems. There is also a very strong emphasis in this budget on looking at early detection, supporting young people and ensuring that people get options in life and have the possibility of participating in the workforce. One thing that was great which I saw in the last few weeks was the relevant minister, the member for Sydney, coming to my electorate to open a centre where a large number of services will be provided at the one site. This seems to be increasingly emphasised by the government in the area of workforce participation.

There will be a mental health commission which will directly report to the Prime Minister and will provide, for public scrutiny, an annual report. The fact that those reports will be going to the Prime Minister reveals her commitment to it and the priority it will receive, and this is shown by this budget.

I think the previous member spoke about Medicare Locals and there will be a responsibility for them to better coordinate services with significant NGOs. There is funding towards headspace and to provide far more early psychosis prevention and intervention centres to give young people the possibility of resilience in that area. I want to commend that area of the budget because, as I say, it is very significant locally.

Foreign aid is another facet of the budget. I noticed that Caritas Australia very strongly commended the decision by the government to move its foreign aid commitment to 0.35 per cent of gross national income, which is a step towards to the commitment to 0.5 per cent. It is a step forward, but I and many other members of this parliament will continue to advocate for the government to place an even higher priority on it. Caritas also noted that despite this significant advance it still places Australia only 14th out of the 23 OECD countries, and these are the countries we should compare ourselves with. They said:

The responsible increase of aid and development spending, announced tonight, will see Australia increase the delivery of life-saving development initiatives in some of the world’s least developed countries. When the Government is in belt-tightening mode, Caritas Australia welcomes AusAID’s commitment to prioritise the poorest of the poor.

It is interesting that some emphasis has been placed on expanding assistance to Indonesia. I have to note the lamentable performance of the opposition when they recently decried the government spending money on education in Indonesia to try to build moderate Islamic schools as an alternative to Saudi-financed extremist schools. While the opposition members nod their heads, I advise them to go and see their foreign affairs spokesperson to get their message across.

There is also an emphasis on improving education in the Pacific, eliminating violence against women, and improving water, sanitation and hygiene. I commend the budget to the House.

Debate adjourned.

Main Committee adjourned at 19:28