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

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."

John Forrest (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There can be no more important issue for my constituents than their health. They have been inundated with filthy water, composed of biota, filth and animal waste. In urban areas they have had raw sewage flooding their gardens and going all through their homes, particularly in Mildura, Red Cliffs, Irymple, Charlton and Donald. They have had to contend with arbovirus, with so much water now lying across north-west Victoria now and with mosquitoes. And they have had a plague of locusts. Biblical stuff is happening. So they read with great concern that this budget closes so many of their Medicare access facilities. I would like to read them into the record. These are famous towns in the Mallee. Medicare offices are to be closed at Goroke, Hopetoun, Murrayville, Woomelang, Manangatang and Murtoa. Those are all isolated communities. Then there is Merbein, a satellite city in Sunraysia; Ultima; Kaniva; Beulah; Sea Lake; the home of my youth, Red Cliffs, another satellite city of Sunraysia, which was inundated in March; Rainbow; Nhill; Wycheproof; Leitchville; Robinvale; Cohuna; Warracknabeal; Edenhope; St Arnaud; and Birchip. There are only three Medicare access points left intact that members of the now opposition worked so hard during the Howard-Fischer-Anderson years to get into those isolated rural communities. To see them all close now is sending a terrible signal to my constituency, which is extremely worried about its health. On top of that, there is a threat of closure to healthcare facilities, particularly aged-care facilities, and, in the case of Charlton, which I have already mentioned, the loss of their hospital as well.

I mentioned at the start of my remarks on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-12, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2011-12 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2011-12 how startling it has been to witness the ideological positions of members of the government and members of the opposition as we speak on these bills. The government seems to shy away from the responsibility of telling their constituents how all this is to be paid for. It is fine to talk, as they have, of huge amounts, record amounts, of capital being spent in their constituencies, but it is members of the opposition, of the conservative parties, asking the questions about how this record amount of money borrowed—it is not like it has grown on a tree; it is borrowed from international locations around the world—is to be paid back, how it is to be sustained, how the interest that services an enormous amount of payments is to be met; that just gets wasted.

This is not being explained by government members but it is a high priority for my constituents. They remind me that, when the opposition were in government until the end of 2007, as individual constituents and taxpayers they had money in the bank. It was money put away for a rainy day. It was money put away for the flood or the critical circumstances, or even a cyclone, because these things happen. They happen at the small business level, at the micro level, and they happen at the national level as well. So I am speaking to the amendment that Mr Robb has moved, bringing to attention the responsibility of increasing the Bankcard to an unprecedented level of $250 billion. A billion dollars is a one with nine noughts. You have to say it slowly and emphasise the 'b'—one billion. We are now talking as a nation about extending our credit card from $200 billion to $250 billion. My constituents, who are predominantly from small business and primary industry backgrounds, know what a crippling level of debt can do to a business. They are worried how that is going to extend to the nation. I am disappointed that government members are not being responsible and reminding their own constituents how this 'unprecedented level'—that is what they say—of capital to be spent on roads and infrastructure and on interest payments to people around the world are going to deplete government revenue. I rest my case by saying that this budget has let my constituents down badly.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to speak here today in support of Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-12 and cognate bills. While many countries around the world are still struggling to pick themselves up from the global financial crisis, Australia's economy is strong and unemployment is low. Make no mistake: we would not be back in the black by 2012-13 if it was not for this Labor government saving Australia from recession during the global financial crisis. This budget will deliver a strong economy, a sustainable environment and a fair society that provides every Australian with the opportunities to prosper and succeed in life.

Our first priority is keeping the economy strong, because that creates jobs for Australian families. With a strong economy, the government is making sure that the opportunities and benefits flowing from the mining boom are shared with all Australians, making sure that no Australian is left behind. Over 750,000 more Australians are in jobs today than were in jobs when the government first took office. That is in stark contrast to the 30 million jobs that were lost globally during the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Walk through Detroit or Athens and you will see the businesses that have shut down and the desolation that that has created through the unemployment that has affected thousands of families and children around the world.

Let us not forget that those opposite in the National Party and the Liberal Party opposed the economic stimulus packages. If their opposition had succeeded, we would have seen over 200,000 people out of work across Australia. In an electorate like Hindmarsh, that would have affected many thousands of families—children, siblings and partners. I have a stadium in the electorate called AAMI Stadium, where the AFL is played. The number of unemployed that there would have been would have filled four such stadiums. You can imagine the devastation that that would have caused in Australia. That would have seen many families collapse under the stress of being unable to meet their mortgage repayments and unable to deal with the cost of living. That is something that I am very glad did not happen in our communities across Australia.

In my electorate, from Somerton Park to Semaphore Park and from West Beach to Richmond, Torrensville, Lockleys and Mile End—wherever I go—my constituents want to know that they will be part of a future full of opportunity and that they will have a secure job now and into the future and that their children will have every chance to succeed, no matter what they choose to do. That is why we on this side are very proud to stand here today and say unequivocally that this Labor government has kept the economy going strong through the global financial crisis and through the natural disasters that we saw during this last summer. Not only that, we are bringing the budget back to surplus in 2012-13 as planned.

This year's budget will get us back in the black by making savings. In fact, this is the first time in 20 years that government spending is forecast to decline in real times. A strong budget means that we can deliver better services for Australian families and in this budget that included a transformation of our skills and training system and a record investment in mental health services—announced a couple of weeks ago in the budget. There is $22 billion worth of whole-of-government savings in the 2011-12 budget, continuing the government's strong track record in identifying efficiencies and making tough savings decisions. By delivering these savings the government has met its key fiscal commitments, including returning the budget to surplus in 2012-13. The spending decisions in this budget are more than offset by savings, meaning policy decisions deliver a net improvement to the bottom line of $5.2 billion across the forward estimates.

Just about every aspect of this year's budget will positively impact the lives of my constituents, so I would like to outline some of the most significant budget policies that were announced. First of all we are helping to ease the cost of living by providing tax relief for families and people on low incomes. In my electorate of Hindmarsh alone up to 3,000 families will be eligible to receive up to $4,200 extra each year per child aged between 16 and 19 under changes to the family tax benefit part A. That is 3,000 families eligible to receive that in my electorate. Thousands of my constituents on low incomes will benefit from getting a little bit extra money in their pay packets every week instead of having to wait until the end of the year, under changes to the low incomes tax offset. We have also lowered the tax you have to pay on your savings. You will get a 50 per cent discount on interest income up to $1,000. We have also introduced a standard deduction to make tax time simpler for four million Australians.

The second big part of this budget is the way we are supporting jobs and training in a way that has never happened before. This government is building Australia's workforce with $558 million to deliver tailored, quality training places through the National Workforce Development Fund. Nearly 3,000 apprentices in my electorate will be provided with a $1,700 tax-free trades apprentices income bonus which will encourage them to complete their critical trade qualifications. We know how important it is for apprentices to complete their training. We know that many drop out in the first year, less drop out in the second year and so on as they go through their years of training. We know those first 12 months are extremely important, and this will assist those apprentices to stay within the training and remain there and get their certificate and finish their plumbing, electrical or mechanic course, whatever apprenticeship they are doing. So the income bonus will encourage them to complete their critical trade qualifications. In my electorate 1,238 very long-term employed will also be offered assistance to prepare for and find work under the new work participation initiatives.

I frequently receive calls in my office, as I suspect all members do, from constituents who want to go back to do some part-time work but are worried that they will lose their eligibility for disability support pensions if they do. That is why I was delighted that the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs has delivered fair and flexible new arrangements which will allow people on the disability support pension, the DSP, to go out and do more hours without losing their eligibility. This will help encourage more people to give work another go. We are also reforming the vocational education and training system with a further $1.75 billion on offer to partner with state and territory governments. Despite a tough budget, we have managed to deliver a health-care package as well which has the potential to significantly improve the lives of our constituents and the lives of the Hindmarsh residents in my electorate through record investment in health care, mental health, diagnostic imaging services and public dental services. There will be more access to GPs, more after-hours services, more money to train our nurses and funding to introduce individual electronic health records so that patients, doctors and all the medical professions can have information at their fingertips when they need it most. But, out of all the initiatives, the granting of a new MRI licence to a clinic in my electorate is particularly exciting, as it means that there will be more affordable MRI services for my constituents closer to their homes, especially for patients with common cancers such as breast and cervical cancer. I would also like to make particular note of the new $53 million package to improve access to public dental services, particularly for people on low incomes. Better public dental care is something that many of us on this side have fought for over many years, and I know that for many people in Hindmarsh these services have been a very long time coming. For their sakes, I am proud to have helped deliver some of those services.

These budget measures, from training opportunities to tax cuts, are going to make a really positive difference on the ground in my electorate of Hindmarsh. Hindmarsh is a wonderful community. It is full of passionate individuals working day in, day out towards their dreams and their goals. Small business owners in Hindmarsh can also look forward to more tax relief and simpler tax systems, which will give them more time to do what they do best and which mean less time slogging through paperwork and tax forms. Schools are also getting a better deal. We are determined to make every school a great school, with $425 million to reward top-performing teachers and an extra $200 million to support students with disabilities.

This budget is fantastic on a whole range of levels. It is getting us back into the black while, at the same time, making targeted investments where they matter most: in health and education, jobs and skills, and helping to ease the cost of living. I look forward to the people in my local community feeling the full benefits of the changes in this budget—people like Bob Owen, from the Netley Residents Association, who stood shoulder to shoulder with me for many years while fighting for an aircraft noise ombudsman and who continues to be a strong voice for his local community, and like Peter Bijok and his father, John Bijok, who campaigned alongside me for many years for the new King Street bridge in Glenelg, the construction of which has already started. These people are quiet achievers, but they represent the people of Hindmarsh. They are passionate, they are hardworking and they are deserving of a strong government which will deliver what they need most: a strong economy, job opportunities and great health and education systems.

I have worked with many people over the years to deliver for Hindmarsh, including $4.5 million for a new King Street bridge; $1.5 million for Surf Life Saving South Australia's new headquarters at West Beach; CCTV cameras for Glenelg; a new aircraft noise ombudsman; and the Glenelg to Adelaide recycled water pipeline, which will deliver recycled water all around the metropolitan area. But what gives me most pride is knowing that the federal government has delivered another budget which is responsible and fair and which provides those services for our communities that are most in need. Over the last few months I have been going around to different schools in my electorate opening BER, Building the Education Revolution, projects in many schools. It is quite plain, and you can see it quite bluntly. When we look back a few years at the global financial crisis and how we got out of it, we only have to visit a few of the schools, look at the infrastructure that is being built in those schools, and talk to the builders and ask them how many people were employed on each site. The answers that we get are anything from 20 to 70. When you multiply that across all the infrastructure projects, which number approximately 26,000 across the country, you can see how many jobs were created and you can see why we got out of the global financial crisis. As I said earlier, the Liberal-National Party opposed the injection of infrastructure and, had it succeeded, we would have seen thousands of people unemployed. We are the envy of economies from all over the world. When I speak to people from overseas, the first question they ask is: how did you fare so well with the global financial crisis? The answer is that we acted decisively, we acted quickly and we ensured that we stimulated the economy through infrastructure projects all around the country. As I said earlier, 20 to 70 jobs were created at each project. When you multiply that by 26,000 across the country, you can see why Australia did so well. I am very proud to be part of this Labor government. I am very proud to support the appropriation bills and this budget. I am very proud of the fact that we will be back in the black in 2013. I urge the members opposite to also support the budget. (Time expired)

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-11. Once again we are seeing a typical old-fashioned Labor budget. It is big on taxes and big on spending, but fails to help households battling higher costs of living. That is before we even get to a carbon tax. This government has abandoned its citizens, who are struggling to make ends meet because of spiralling prices for petrol, electricity and gas, groceries, health costs and home repayments. Beyond that, this dull and unimaginative document will only be remembered for its hit on middle Australia.

In this budget this government could only scrape together $2.7 billion in savings over five years while the total spending will amount $1.9 trillion. That is the equivalent of 14c in every $100. The majority of those savings will not even come until 2014-15. Bear in mind that around one-third of Labor's so-called savings are really taxes—some savings! Under this government this year's budget deficit will rise to $49.4 billion and the forecast deficit for 2011-12 has blown out by $10.3 billion to $22.6 billion. Net government debt has climbed to $107 billion in 2011-12 and is forecast to remain over $100 billion right through the forward estimates. The previous speaker said that it is marvellous that we will have the budget in the black. Having the budget in the black is just part of the equation; the other part is getting rid of the debt of $100 billion.

This year's budget confirms how out of touch Labor is with Australian families because it has done nothing to help them cope with increasing costs of living. Let us be clear here: out-of-control costs force families to try to cope with half-baked Labor policies such as the home insulation scheme, cost blow-outs with school halls, $1.7 billion in failed border protection policies and so on. A Galaxy poll conducted by the Courier Mailas recently as 30 May shows a whopping 70 per cent of Queenslanders have completely lost faith in the ability of the state and federal Labor governments to spend their money prudently. Some of the failed schemes include $20 million for Fuelwatch, dumped; $13 million for GroceryWatch, dumped; and the scandalous $2.5 billion blow-out in the insulation scheme, now dumped. I had a lady on the phone this afternoon from Howard who is still waiting to get her roof fixed because the insulation was not put in properly 12 months ago. Add to that the Queensland government's inability to get health and payroll systems right and its bloody-minded resolve to sell off public assets and it is little wonder that Queenslanders have had a complete gut-full of the Labor Party. At the local level last week, 25 May, the Bundaberg NewsMail carried a report of locals going without food, not using their stoves and favouring blankets over heaters to combat skyrocketing power prices, especially during the winter months. It is frightening that that could go on in Australia.

Can anyone from the government explain to Kim Ross, a disability pensioner in my electorate, why she should have to sell many of her prized possessions to try to make ends meet? Can anyone from the government suggest to me how the Salvation Army's Tom Quinn Community Centre, which does remarkable work, can continue to hand out welfare to locals when they have already handed out $90,000 in assistance this year compared with $44,000 for the same period last year? These are the sorts of scenarios that are playing out in regional Australia and this government is doing nothing to help. By way of an aside, how could anyone contemplate a carbon tax against a background of community suffering like this. It just defies rational explanation.

I want to touch on a few important local projects that the coalition backed at the last election and that Labor has ignored. This year's budget overlooked every single one of these projects. At the last election I could not get my opponent to even match me on obvious things that are required in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay. The first is the Fraser Coast’s much admired youth mentoring program, the Triple S program, which requires around $600,000 over three years. The volunteers working on the Triple S program keep disconnected local youth connected with education and keep them in the loop so that they are not removed from school and other disciplinary regimes, but are treated in a much more innovative way. The program had to cease because of a lack of funding from the Commonwealth, and it is yet to be reinstated. I have spoken to the Attorney-General and he has been very sympathetic, but action is needed urgently. I note by way of passing that in the electorate of New England—and I applaud this—a similar scheme was recently granted $1.5 million.

Secondly, fixing the mouth of the Elliott River, which is just south of Bundaberg, is one project that appeals to me. It has been silting up for some time. For me it is one of the biggest environmental challenges facing the Bundaberg region and it is also a public safety issue as navigating the entrance to the river is becoming dangerous. Clearing the mouth of the river will be a big task, and it is one that the coalition was ready to get stuck into with a $2 million commitment to get the job done. Yet, it has been put on the backburner by the current government.

The coalition was also prepared to spend $100,000 to investigate a new bridge on the Burrum River, which would create a more direct link between the coastal communities in Hinkler as well as a new and direct tourist route. At a time when business is so low, tourism really needs assistance.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is Campbell committed to that?

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure I will get a much more proactive hearing from him than I have had so far from the federal minister. Not only did Labor's candidate at the last election ignore this project but it has been ignored in this year's budget as well.

I will now deal with the financial support for building a performing arts centre at the Urangan State High School. This was missing from the budget despite the fact that I had former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and infrastructure minister Anthony Albanese briefed onsite on this project. The facility would be stage 1 of a planned sporting and cultural complex for the school and it would be an asset for students from across the region, as well as the community at large. And let me say that these are some of the most talented kids I have seen in my life. Their music, dance and acting is exceptional. I ask why we have to have these schools of excellence only in the capital cities? Why wouldn't we have one in a place like Hervey Bay and why wouldn't we have one at Urangan High School? An amount of $3 million or $4 million for something like this, with a Commonwealth contribution, is not a big ask when you see the sort of money that was wasted on some of the assembly halls in the BER scheme. But the real sticking point around the region is the government's failure to fund upgrades to the Bruce Highway, and that was the big failure during the recent floods. Under Labor our nation's finances are in such poor shape that the Gillard government's 2011-12 budget was not even able to provide any new money for the Bruce Highway. The only announcements of any significance were reinstatements of previously deferred projects. Even at the local level the government has failed to invest in vital road upgrades that are needed by the sorts of communities I represent.

At the last election, the coalition recognised the need to improve the road network around Hervey Bay. This is one of Australia's fastest growing communities, where infrastructure gets ahead of the ability of the council to pay. It is a typical example of where state and federal governments need to give some assistance. Ten million dollars was on the table from the coalition for three important road projects. Once again, Labor failed to match that commitment. Completing River Heads Road and Old Toogoom Road as well as building the Urraween to Boundary Road extension—that is, the fourth corridor through Hervey Bay—are priorities for the local community. The Fraser Coast Regional Council has them factored into its 10-year capital program. A rapidly growing community like Hervey Bay faces unique infrastructure pressures. Those problems have to be fixed if we are going to improve the efficiency and safety of local roads and ease the burden on ratepayers. I want to see those road upgrades funded as soon as possible. It is extremely disappointing to see those communities missing out under this government

On a happier note, I do thank the Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, for providing $47 million for the expansion of the St Stephen's Hospital at Hervey Bay. The government have been well aware of my calls for this project to be funded. I am pleased that they have come on board by providing funding under round 3 of the Health and Hospitals Fund program. It was a very generous grant.

Hervey Bay's distinct demographic profile made it a strong candidate for funding The city and its surrounds are inhabited mainly by older residents and younger families, which means there is a greater demand for medical and hospital services than is experienced in other regional centres. The lack of a comprehensive private hospital facility in the city has added to the strain on the region's existing public health services. So the new inpatient facility in Hervey Bay will not only ease the pressure on the public hospital, which at times has occupancies of over 100 per cent, but also provide easier access to high-quality care and choice for people throughout the region.

So I acknowledge the benefits of this support, but I temper my praise by pointing out to the minister that the government is still pursuing its agenda to slash private health insurance. One way or another, 53,000 people in the Hinkler electorate will be hurt under this plan. The realities of life dictate that if you hit millions of Australians with increased premiums many of those people will dump their insurance, leaving the remaining policyholders with much higher premiums. Of course, the people who have abandoned private health insurance have to rely on the public system, so the dog will continue to chase its tail. The overstretched state hospital regime is slowly crawling out of its difficulties, but Hervey Bay will go back into them again. It really is a sad reflection on the government and its lack of foresight.

Many of those in my electorate who do the right thing by contributing extra money to cover their own health needs—and I include among these pensioners and others who earn less than $50,000 a year, some of them self-funded retirees—are the ones who will really suffer. Along with the middle income earners losing their rebates, the even more vulnerable lower income Australians will suffer through higher premiums. They are the ones who will suffer under this government's lack of planning. Let us not kid ourselves, as the government often does, that somehow only the rich will be affected. All—and I stress all—subscribers, and the private health insurance industry itself, will be affected.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are heading north.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are heading north—it is very true. Premiums are heading north. Because the coalition worked on it for 11 years they were going down.

Finally, I speak briefly on mental health. The majority of funding will only become available in five years time, which will be close to the end of the next term of this government if it survives. In addition, hidden in the detail of the budget is $580 million cut in mental health programs coordinated by GPs. Next financial year, the government says it will provide $47.3 million in new funding for mental health. But it will cut $62.8 million from existing programs—when the cuts are taken into account, it turns out that Labor will only provide $583 million in new funding over the forward estimates. That is about a third of what the coalition is promising. This was not a good budget. It was dull, it was unimaginative, it hit the poor and it hit middle Australia.

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

I rise to support Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012. I differ from the previous speaker in that I think that, whilst this is a fairly nondescript budget, it was time for a non-descript budget. At least we gave a budget speech at the time, unlike the opposition who provided no alternative, no vision, no insight, and no cost savings—nothing. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition said it was not his role to do that and gave an election campaign speech instead.

This is my 13th year in this parliament and my 13th year of speaking on appropriation bills, and the tick-tack on both sides never ceases to amaze me. Very rarely have we said of previous budgets that there have been some good things in them. In fact, I think that during my years in opposition I actually commented when the Howard government did some good things, and I think that we as political parties should rise above partisanship sometimes and look at the good that is being done within budgets. Despite many natural disasters and the downturn in the global economy, Australia's economy is well placed—it is actually doing exceptionally well. Overall employment is at record levels, which is the envy of the Western world, yet somehow this does not translate into anyone's thinking. I have never worked that kind of thinking out, and I doubt I ever will.

The 2011-12 budget strengthens Australia's economic outlook and creates new opportunities. The federal budget has delivered in many ways in my electorate of Chisholm, most notably in the diagnostic imaging reform package. I welcome the reform package and the $717 million which has been provided to expand access to diagnostic imaging services. Some of this funding will benefit Monash Medical Centre, a vital health provider within my electorate. Monash Medical Centre is probably one of the largest hospitals in the Southern Hemisphere—it is huge. This funding will provide new Medicare licenses for the two existing MRI machines at Monash Medical. Monash Medical has three MRI machines, but they were not licensed under the Howard government. Under the deal—the 'scan scam'—introduced by the previous member for my electorate, Dr Michael Wooldridge, when he was health minister, we had this invidious situation where machines were sitting in a very large public hospital yet were unlicensed to perform Medicare refunded treatment. It was absurd. These machines were given 100-year licences. Some of the things that the previous government did have been almost impossible to unscramble, so I am very appreciative—as indeed is everyone at Southern Health, which Monash forms part of—that the budget has ensured that there will be greater service at a greatly reduced cost for patients accessing services requiring the use of an MRI machine.

Importantly also, GPs will now be able to refer patients under 16 years of age for specific conditions without the patient's first needing to see a specialist. Again, this was a hurdle that was in place previously—you went and saw your GP, and, even though the child was obviously in need of an MRI, you then had to go and see a specialist. I do not know if any of you have had to go down this path, but what happened after that was that you had to wait to go to see the specialist and then, finally, to wait to get to the MRI. This reform allowing GPs to refer patients under 16 will take away the anxiety and distress that the old system caused. Having undergone an MRI I can tell you that it is not the most pleasant experience. The noise is deafening and I should imagine that children would find the confinement and the noise quite frightening. But the anxiety would be greatly exacerbated for the child and the parent if the MRI had to be put off. So this is a terrific thing that has been welcomed across the board. This initiative will also reduce the cost as the budget has committed to increasing the bulk-billing incentive for MRI scans to 100 per cent of the scheduled fee. The initiative therefore means not only better access but more affordable access to MRI services in my electorate.

Many of my constituents have expressed concern—as has everyone who has spoken about it—about the importance of mental health reform and the need to ensure that this critical area of health is adequately funded. I recently was asked by Claire Whittle, a constituent of mine, if she could come and talk to me about her experiences of mental health services. I really want to say to Claire, 'Thank you for the courage and the foresight of coming to see me.'

More importantly, she then put on Facebook that she had had the courage to come and talk to me about her own fairly traumatic experience. A healthy, active, happy 20-year-old suddenly went into the depths of absolute despair and depression. And after three years around the health system and the mental health system she has finally fallen upon a doctor and a service and medication that will see her through. But before that her experience was horrendous. She should never have had to endure what she endured. Nor should her family have had to endure on her behalf.

I want to say thank you to Claire because she really did highlight this insidious situation, particularly for younger people. She went to a GP and said, 'I'm depressed.' The GP, without actually looking at things, immediately put her on an anti-depressant, which made her even more depressed and almost suicidal. I am not condemning GPs; they are overworked. But Claire's situation was insidious and I am hoping that greater access to headspace centres will ensure that Claire's situation never has to be repeated.

I am very pleased to be able to go back to my electorate now and say that the federal government has delivered for them by providing $2.2 billion over five years for national mental health reform. This package is the most extensive commitment to mental health services in Australian history, including $1.5 billion in new investments in this federal budget.

This reform will assist in detecting and treating mental illnesses in the early years of life, assisting young people who struggle with it in their teens, and providing incentives and support to help those with severe and persistent mental illness. All studies show that the earlier you diagnose and the earlier you treat the better the outcome for the individual. But living with an undiagnosed and untreated mental illness can have devastating consequences for everybody concerned.

Another issue of great concern for my electorate, home to two very large universities—Monash University and Deakin University—was the speculation, pre-budget, about decreasing funding in the NHMRC space in research into medical areas. I was inundated—as you would appreciate, I have an electorate that has more PhDs per square metre than is probably healthy for it!—by individuals concerned about NHMRC funding. I was happy to report that it was scaremongering and that the government has ensured commitment to this wonderful space. We will see ongoing commitment to research funding.

I will read a bit of one of the emails I got. It indicates the level of interest in my area. The writer said:

I am a final year PhD student studying at Monash University and my project involved investigating the interactions between Helicobacter pylori and human stomach cells. H. Pylori infects the stomachs of half the worlds population and many of these people suffer from indigestion, peptic ulcers, or even worse, stomach cancer. Studies that allow for the continued understanding of how this organism causes inflammation are critical for the identification and management of those individuals most at risk to develop severe disease.

I am writing to express my concern that the Federal Government may reduce funding for health and medical research in the upcoming May budget. For me, at the end stages of my PhD, this is particularly worrying, as already it is difficult and highly competitive to obtain ... funding opportunities ...

And on and on she goes. I was very happy to write back to Melanie Hutton and say, 'It was a rumour. We are not discontinuing this funding space.' It is too important for the health of our nation. We can continue to fund more and more beds but if we do not fund research we are only going to continue to funnel people into beds—all we are ever going to do is talk about acute health as opposed the preventative health. And on World No Tobacco Day I think we should be looking at preventative health, going into that space and doing all we can to encourage phenomenal people like Melanie to continue with their studies and, hopefully, to find cures and causes for these diseases. The budget provides proof that the government is on the right tack regarding education. As I have said, higher education is vitally important to my seat, with Monash University, Deakin University and Box Hill TAFE—very large institutions. The government's commitment of a further $1.2 billion to meet the demands of growth in university enrolments will assist in further enhancing the reputation and excellence of universities like Monash and Deakin.

I have often said in this place that many of the people who live within my electorate cannot afford to actually get to university, that the constituents in Clayton who live right on top of Monash Uni are most under-represented at the university. It is the socio-demographic. This money to encourage more people from lower socio-demographic areas will greatly assist some people within my electorate. There are obviously pockets of my electorate where there is quite significant wealth, but across the board this is a terrific initiative that we should be encouraging more people to take up higher education—and not just within the university but within the TAFE sector. Box Hill TAFE provides an amazing opportunity for students, but they need the assistance to be able to go there.

Many schools in my electorate already have high-performing teachers, but $425 million to reward top-performing teachers will provide further encouragement to teachers to excel. I am particularly pleased that students with a disability will also be supported with $200 million which, will not only assist students with a disability but also be of substantial benefit and assistance to their teachers. As an aunt of a child with Down Syndrome who is now nine years of age, I have seen the struggle that my brother and his wife have had to ensure that the necessary things are there for Chris to be able to access and have a great education. I know those skills and supports to ensure he gets the best he can will be welcomed by them and numerous other people within my electorate.

Again, many people wrote to me during the election campaign about the national chaplaincy program. I am pleased to say that we will not be axing funding from this program but will be putting additional funding of $220 million which will mean that this program will be extended and more people will have the benefit of utilising this excellent program. Many of the schools in my electorate have chosen to go down the school chaplaincy program route, and I have been impressed by the work that those school chaplains are doing.

One of the other areas of great concern to my electorate is increasing our commitment to overseas aid and development assistance. I have received numerous emails from individuals in my electorate, such as this one from Jessica of Box Hill North:

As someone in your electorate I just wanted to write and say thank you for keeping your commitment to the world's poor in last Tuesday's budget. The way Australia spends our foreign aid is really important to me. I believe that we both have a duty to assist people in less well-off countries and that Australia benefits from giving foreign aid through increased trade and regional stability. I am proud that you as my local member have shown leadership on this issue and will continue to support you on this.

I want to say thank you and I do support the great work that our aid budget is doing. Within my electorate there are some phenomenal institutions such as the Christian Blind Mission, which is one that most people do not know but has been around for 100 years, which are recipients of these aid dollars. Christian Blind Mission is doing phenomenal work throughout our region and in the world assisting people with blindness. Not only do they deal within the aid space but also they deal with the poorest of the poor—the disabled in our community. The Christian Blind Mission—I had the privilege of spending some time there recently, and again had lunch and a discussion—are passionate in ensuring they can provide opportunities for individuals.

Blindness can be cured in many people. It is an insidious disease in impoverished countries. We think of it as an end but it is reversible. The Christian Blind Mission returns to people their way and quality of life and their quality of life. It also returns their children's quality of life. This is a wonderful thing, as many children have to leave school to support their blind parents or grand parents.

My new boundaries also incorporate Vision Australia, who all of us know, whose head office is in Burwood. The wonderful work they are doing in this aid space ensures that they continue to do that. Over the past 30 years we have witnessed unprecedented progress in reducing poverty and improving the health and livelihoods of people around the world. However, over one billion people still live in extreme poverty. Every day 22,000 children under the age of five die from preventable or treatable conditions that have been largely overcome in Australia, and almost 1,000 women and girls die in pregnancy and childbirth. Today some 67 million children do not have the opportunity to attend primary school and these statistics are unacceptable. They are unacceptable to the majority of my electorate. Reducing poverty is also in our national security and economic interest. Two-thirds of the world's poor live in Australia's region. Of our 20 nearest neighbours, 18 are developing countries. Many of these countries are also significant trading partners. Because of these humanitarian, national security and economic reasons the government has committed in the budget to increase aid to 0.35 per cent of gross national income or $4.83 billion, up from $4.362 billion. This is a great outcome and I really welcome it and I say thank you on behalf of my electorate.

There is one little thing in the budget that was overlooked and it is an interesting thing that I am going to be pursuing particularly in my electorate. In the budget speech the Treasurer said, 'We will begin with $232 million in new strategic investments, including $100 million for suburban employment hubs and $61 million for smarter motorways.' My electorate is 20 kilometres out of Melbourne, and that does not sound far until you have to sit on the Monash Freeway or the Eastern Freeway. I leave home two hours earlier than a plane ride at 7.20 on a Monday morning to ensure that I get the plane—not because it is very far but because the traffic is that bad. We need to ensure that people have jobs closer to home and are not spending their lives commuting and we are not ruining our environment. I look forward to exploring this initiative in the budget. (Time expired)

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012 and its cognate bills. Mr Deputy Speaker, I, along with many others from the Gold Coast, listened to the Treasurer's budget speech with the hope that the budget would contain measures that would directly affect four key issues for us on the Gold Coast: transport infrastructure, tourism, employment and cost of living. But there was nothing.

Let me start today by speaking about transport infrastructure and our needs on the southern Gold Coast. As most Australians would be aware, the Gold Coast is structurally different to other cities that have a central business hub or a central business district, with suburbs and arterial roads radiating out from that central point. The Gold Coast is different because it comprises a long strip along the coastline, some 41 kilometres from Helensvale to Coolangatta. What is important to our residents and tourists is the ability to travel quickly and safely to various destinations along that coastal strip. For our increasing number of Brisbane commuters, we need faster access to Brisbane and return. It is approximately 80 kilometres from Brisbane to the central Gold Coast, about an hour by train and two hours during the peak periods for those travelling by road. Heading south by road from Brisbane, the M1 is eight lanes, four lanes northbound and four lanes southbound, until just north of Nerang. From there the M1 narrows to two lanes northbound and two lanes southbound. Works are currently underway to widen the road with one extra lane each way, but only as far south as Worongary, which is still several kilometres north of the central business district of Robina.

In 2007 the Howard government allocated $455 million to upgrade the M1, with the priority areas identified as between Tugun and Nerang. This money has been reallocated by the state Labor government further north while the southern Gold Coast through to the border remains at four lanes and commuters continue to endure worsening daily bottlenecks. The state Labor government has said that instead of the upgrade to eight lanes as originally proposed, any upgrade further south will only be to six lanes. This is yet another example of very poor planning. If it was deemed appropriate in 2007 for the M1 to be upgraded to eight lanes, it is near impossible to understand how six lanes would be adequate some four-plus years later, particularly in light of the growing population. I note that south-east Queensland and the Gold Coast in particular has been the fastest-growing region of Australia for the past 30-40 years. This trend is predicted to continue, with population expected to grow by 13,000-16,000 per year and reach 730,000-plus residents on the Gold Coast by 2026. Until such time as the M1 is upgraded, commuters, residents and tourists will have to look for other forms of transport.

The Queensland government's light rail website states the following:

The Gold Coast is one of Australia's fastest growing cities and the growing population is causing increasing congestion on our local road network. There are no new major roads planned for the coastal corridor, so the introduction of a sustainable public transport network is vital to keep our city moving.

It continues:

Traffic congestion on Gold Coast roads is steadily increasing. Stretches of the Gold Coast Highway between Southport and Broadbeach are predicted to be over capacity by 2011. Compared to travel times from 2006, average travel times will increase by 30 per cent in Southport, Surfers Paradise and Broadbeach by 2016. Public transport is a more efficient use of road space and fuel and creates fewer emissions than private cars carrying a single occupant. An integrated public transport system is essential to meet the needs of our growing city.

Whilst these statements are in relation to the more northern suburbs of the Gold Coast, they are also relevant to the southern suburbs. Construction has started on the light rail to service some of the northern suburbs of the Gold Coast and it is anticipated that stage one of the project, which services a 13-kilometre corridor, will be completed and commence operating in April 2014. But this does not help us on the southern Gold Coast. Further stages of the light rail project are contemplated, including from Broadbeach to Burleigh Heads and from Burleigh Heads to Coolangatta, but only high-level conceptual planning has been undertaken for the section between Broadbeach and Burleigh Heads and no funding has been allocated. There are no plans available for the section further south to Coolangatta and there are no publicly available time frames for these extensions. Again the southern Gold Coast misses out.

This leads us to a consideration of heavy rail and its potential to service the needs of the southern Gold Coast. The most southerly station is Varsity Lakes, which is still some 22 kilometres north of Coolangatta. By way of background, it took 11 years to build one station and lay approximately four kilometres of track from Robina to Varsity Lakes. Current planning is that there will be a further three stations: Tallebudgera, Elanora-Palm Beach and then Coolangatta airport. The airport will not be connected until 2019-25. By that time the M1, as well as local roads, will be choked and significant traffic delays will be endured by motorists. We must be mindful of the fact that the Gold Coast Airport is one of the busiest airports in Australia with more than five million passenger movements per year. We need to be able to move those passengers efficiently to the local destination, whether they are residents, business people or holidaymakers.

To summarise transport infrastructure on the Gold Coast, particularly on the southern Gold Coast: the M1 reduces down to four lanes, two northbound and two southbound, at Worongary, which is essentially the central Gold Coast; and the heavy rail stops at Varsity Lakes and is not planned to be extended to Coolangatta until 2019-25. And there is no plan in place for the light rail to be extended south to Coolangatta in the foreseeable future. In this budget the federal government allocated $36 billion for vital roads, railways and ports but nothing was allocated for the Gold Coast.

The next issue I would like to address is tourism. As we all know, the Gold Coast is an iconic tourist destination. We have been doing it tough for many months now, and what is there in the budget to assist the Gold Coast tourism industry? Nothing. Many things have impacted on our tourism industry, including the rising cost of living, meaning that Australians have much less disposable income and are significantly reducing their discretionary spending. We know that many of our visitors to the Gold Coast are from the domestic market. We also have been affected by the rising dollar and whilst we were not directly affected by natural disasters experienced by other parts of Queensland, many of our visitors cancelled their holiday plans for the Gold Coast and either stayed at home or holidayed elsewhere. In many cases they travelled overseas.

The Gold Coast economy is heavily reliant on tourism and a downturn in the industry has a flow-on effect of impacts on many small business operators, including our accommodation providers, restaurant and coffee shop owners, taxi drivers and newsagents, to name but a few. It impacts on their employees as well. The Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, a Gold Coast icon that I have spoken about in this place a number of times before, is struggling. The recently upgraded wildlife hospital is consuming the sanctuary's financial resources. The sanctuary is not only a tourist attraction and destination but also a conservation and education facility that needs support. Despite direct pleas to the government, no assistance has been forthcoming. More broadly, research shows us that while visitor numbers to the Gold Coast are somewhat stable, the amount of money spent by our visitors is down on previous years. This trend needs to be halted and indeed reversed. Tourism is not only a major contributor to the Gold Coast but a major employer. The downturn in that sector, along with the downturn in the construction industry, is reflected in the unemployment figures.

Unemployment on the southern Gold Coast is consistently higher than the national average, generally by a couple of percentage points. But in recent months unemployment on the southern Gold Coast has been almost double the national average. An analysis of data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the period November 2007 to April 2011, during the term of the Labor government, shows an alarming trend. In November 2007, at the conclusion of the Howard government, unemployment on the southern Gold Coast was three per cent. By November 2008 this figure had risen to 4.4 per cent. By November 2009 it had risen to five per cent and in November 2010 to 5.3 per cent. In April 2011 unemployment on the southern Gold Coast was 6.3 per cent. Clearly, there has been a significant pattern of rising unemployment on the southern Gold Coast over the last, long 3½ years.

The combined downturn in tourism and construction has led to a significant tightening of the job market. On the Gold Coast it is now not uncommon to receive 200 to 300 applications for an advertised job, with many of those applicants not meeting the selection criteria but being prepared to apply for, and take, almost any job available if they are fortunate enough to secure one.

Whilst we need to strengthen our tourism and construction industries, we also need to develop a second layer of industry on the Gold Coast to provide further employment opportunities. Two obvious sectors to develop are education and light manufacturing. We already have four university campuses on the Gold Coast, as well as TAFE, a broad range of training colleges and more than 30 schools in my electorate of McPherson. We are well placed to develop as a university or tertiary education city of excellence.

We also have a number of industrial precincts on the Gold Coast, each with additional capacity to develop and grow the light manufacturing sector. By attracting education providers and light manufacturers to the Gold Coast, we will be developing depth in the employment market and, in turn, building a stronger economy as the load is shared with the mature sectors of tourism and construction.

I would like to conclude today by speaking about the rising cost of living and the impact that it is having on the Gold Coast, particularly that southern Gold Coast. It is remarkable to reflect on the fact that this Labor government was left an economic legacy by the very prudent and effective economic management Howard government. However, in only a matter of a few years the good work of the coalition has been all but wiped out by a government that does not value the importance of the taxpayer dollar. The Prime Minister and Treasurer have managed to deliver a budget deficit which has soared to the dizzying height of $49.4 billion, with a forecast deficit in 2011-12 blowing out by $9.6 billion to $22.6 billion. This means that in four budgets the Gillard-Rudd Labor governments have turned a $20 billion surplus under the Howard government into a $50 billion deficit. And $70 billion in net assets have been reduced to $107 billion of debt.

On top of all of this the government is still borrowing $135 million every day. The reality is that Australian households are facing higher cost of living pressures. And I know that this is very true for families in McPherson. The list is long when we total the living costs which have gone up since Labor came to government. Electricity prices are up 51 per cent; gas is up 30 per cent; water is up 46 per cent; education costs are up 24 per cent, health is up 20 per cent; rent is up 21 per cent and grocery prices are up 14 per cent.

I believe it is important to understand that debt has a double burden on society. It costs us now—when we could have spent it on transport infrastructure, hospitals and schools—and it costs our future generations as they bear the burden of paying off this debt. Locally, rising interest rates have affected home owners and business operators alike. Small businesses in particular are having difficulties borrowing and establishing a line of credit and, as a result, many are experiencing a cash flow crisis. Families in McPherson are doing the best they can to live within their means and this is becoming more and more difficult as the cost of living continues to rise. I was recently at the Pines Shopping Centre in Elanora in my electorate holding one of my regular listening posts where I saw and spoke with many locals going into the supermarket, buying only their bare essentials and then leaving. People were not stopping for lunch; they were not buying clothes; they were not buying shoes—they were only shopping for essential food and living items. What they said to me is that they had had to tighten their belts so tight in the current situation that they had no option but to buy only essential food and living items.

This budget fails to ease the rising cost of living on Australians and does nothing for families who face higher prices every day. It also does not address the needs of the Gold Coast. This government, I believe, has failed to listen to the people.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will have an opportunity to speak in much more detail at a later date but I feel one cannot make a contribution in this place on this day without making at least a reference to Lieutenant Marcus Case and Lance Corporal Andrew Jones, who have both just lost their lives in Afghanistan, making them 25 and 26 amongst our casualties and many more who are injured. Our thoughts and prayers go out to their families, loved ones, mates and friends.

For the record I restate my support for our ongoing involvement in Afghanistan. It is important to our own national interest. It is dangerous and challenging work, particularly mentoring the Afghan National Army. We do not know the detail, but it seems apparent that Lance Corporal Jones lost his life at the hand of an Afghan National Army soldier. I have had my own experiences with members of the ANA. The majority of them I believe are there for the right reason and doing their very best to train themselves and to be trained where they need to be to take care of their own security in Oruzgan province.

On that point, I noted some comments by Colonel John Angevine in the Sydney Morning Herald today, which I will also have something more to say about at a later date—his suggestion which he will put in a speech to the Lowy Institute tomorrow that Australia's strategic settings are incorrect and based on the wrong premise. I disagree with Colonel Angevine. It is right for Australia to make as its first priority the defence of our continent and our areas of strategic military interests and to do our best to be able to do so independently of any other nation state. We do not know where the United States will be in global terms in the future. We can never be certain that the United States will not turn inward. We cannot always be absolutely sure that the US will be there for us, as confident as we can be at this point in time, and we might be talking 100 years from now. For Australia to have the ability to establish self-reliance, we need to have continuity in our defence planning and continuity in our investment in defence capability—continuity which would be lost if we took a different strategic setting.

Before I turn to some of the details of the budget, I have something to say about what is I suppose the topic of the day, although it is competing on many other fronts this evening, and that is climate change on this day of the delivery of Professor Garnaut's latest report. I want to share a bit of a narrative to make my point. Mick is a plumber. Throughout his working week he generates a fair bit of waste. He disposes of it at the local council-run garbage tip where he pays around $20 a tonne. He cannot simply pass the whole cost of dumping his waste onto his customers. The industry he works in is just too competitive. Peter owns and operates a factory producing chemicals. One of his biggest costs is the safe and responsible disposal of his toxic waste. Like Mick, Pete struggles to recover these costs in a competitive market. Judy and Ben both work to support their young family. Their household budget sets aside about $30 each week to cover their council rates. Ten per cent of that cost represents the amount the local council charges to dispose of the family's waste. They have a big garden and, while Ben puts all he can into compost, he regularly takes a load of waste to the council tip in his box trailer. Each time he does so he faces a minimum fee of $15. By contrast those who make a quid generating the electricity which powers our homes, our factories and our small businesses dispose of their waste free of charge. On a daily basis they emit tonnes of pollution into the atmosphere. If you and I did that, Mr Deputy Speaker, we would be fined.

There are many reasons this is unacceptable—some are environmental, some are economic. The environmental concerns are obvious and the economic ones are less so. When we allow one set of industries to avoid some of the costs of doing business we distort the market and disadvantage others. We also affect business investment decisions. People have asked me: 'How is imposing a carbon price on big business and then compensating consumers going to change consumer behaviour?' There are two answers to that question. It is not primarily consumer behaviour we are trying to change. Rather we are mainly trying to change the behaviour of investors. At the moment investment in renewable forms of electricity generation or less-polluting forms of generation like gas are relatively expensive. One reason is that coal is relatively cheap. The second reason is that the cost of disposing the rubbish, that is pushing pollution into the atmosphere including carbon dioxide, is zero.

This is the key distortion I referred to earlier. Making the producers of electricity pay to pump their pollution into the atmosphere will help to level the playing field. The price they charge for their product will better reflect the cost of producing it. This will make renewables more competitive and, in turn, the renewable sector will attract greater investment and therefore will grow.

That is not to say that we do not hope to influence consumer behaviour. Let us say a family was to receive $100 compensation for an increase of $100 in the price of their electricity bill. If that family, in turn, work to reduce their consumption of electricity to the point that the impact of the carbon price only sent power prices up by $80, then the family would profit to the tune of $20. This is a significant incentive for them to embrace the cause of energy efficiency and other means of reducing their power consumption.

Even if you are a climate change sceptic, you need to ask yourself two things. Firstly, given it will be cheaper to act now rather than later, wouldn't it be smart to act now as a form of insurance? Secondly, why should Mick, Peter, Judy and Ben pay while the big polluters escape cost free? These are important points. The debate about carbon pricing is a very, very complex one but at the end of the day it is really simple. There is an abundance of science to suggest that the climate is warming and that man is making a contribution. But, again, if you only take the precautionary principle and accept that at the moment the market is distorted and we need a structural shift in our economy, then you will support some action on climate change. If you are going to support action you would support a market based mechanism which, of course, is the cheapest and most efficient way of doing so.

I now turn to Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012. The budget was a good budget. I think it was a historic budget. Its key focus was getting the government's books back into the black after a very significant investment, which was absolutely necessary to keep this Australian economy out of recession. It did so very successfully. We are the envy of the world. It sought to spread the dividend of the mining boom, which is very important to people in my electorate. A very big investment in health continues. I am sure it is right up the top of the agenda for most Australians.

Very close to my heart is a big investment in employment—in other words, a big investment in assisting people getting back into the labour market and the workforce, through adopting both carrot and stick approaches. That is a big investment in those who need a leg-up to secure some involvement in the labour force. Appropriate changes to the transfer payment system have been made to ensure that people who are able to work are in the workforce. We cannot afford to do anything but that. An unemployment rate below five per cent demands that every working aged person in this country able to work is working. If we fail to do that not only will we face higher rates of inflation and therefore higher interest rates but we will also be missing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to break the cycle of poverty and the cycle of unemployment.

In my electorate we have too many people on disability support pensions who I believe could be working and there are too many sole parents not working who could be working. I have many young people in my electorate who are third generation unemployed—in other words, they have never known either their parents or their grandparents to work. At the same time I have employers—particularly those in the wine tourism industry or in local pubs or clubs or in other semiskilled areas of work—who cannot get young people to fill positions. That is something we cannot allow to continue into the future. I am working with my local employment coordinator and other stakeholders to ensure that the initiatives in the budget are used in a way which maximises the benefits to my constituency. This more than anything else is about protecting the economy and it is about the dignity of work.

One of the controversies I have seen in recent times—and it is nothing new of course—is the effect on contractors when head contractors or the primes in a build or project collapse are unable to pay their bills. There have been a few examples such as in the Building the Education Revolution. Some members in this place have tried to some make political capital out of that as if, because the government is the funder, somehow it is more responsible than the private sector might be in a similar situation.

I do think there is an opportunity for government that is not necessarily available to the private sector. That idea was put forward to me by Mike Bell, who is Sydney based. He wrote to both me and the Attorney-General. I have since written to the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Senator Wong. He put forward the idea of rather than paying the prime contractors in a build—let us say, it is a school or a significant residential accommodation facility on a defence base—putting part of the money into a trust to ensure that the contractors under the prime contractor are eventually paid. I think it is a good idea. I have written to the finance minister and said so. I appeal to her and other senior economic ministers to have a look at the merits of the system as a means of protecting small to medium businesses which might be working under very big prime contractors and which are vulnerable to the consequences of the collapse of larger contractors.

I want to quickly say that I am, again, concerned about the behaviour of some of the Australian Rail Track Corporation's agents in the build of the third rail line through the Hunter down to the Port of Newcastle. This is going to be a dedicated line, making the transport of our coal to ports quicker, more efficient and further enhancing the capacity. However, these works—which I welcome so much—involve land acquisitions and other problems for residents nearby. I experienced another one recently where an overpass is going to affect the access to a person's land. I have written to the minister about it and am hoping that it will be resolved, and I warn the agents of the ARTC—that is, those contracted to the ARTC—that I and, I am sure, my constituents expect them to act as the equivalent of model litigants in these cases, to treat people with respect and to ensure that they get compensation commensurate with the way they have been impacted upon as a result of the building of that rail line.

I close by doing what I so often do—that is, to welcome the ongoing funding in the budget for the Hunter Expressway. This is a $1.7 billion project in my electorate which is going to transform land transport in the valley. I have been fighting for it since, would you believe, about Easter 1988. Some people might describe me as a failure for taking so long, but we got there, and it is going to be a big boost to the Hunter economy. I put the RTA on notice that I intend talking to them very soon about some additional works associated with the project—simple things such as artworks along the highway and proper signage which points out and highlights the attractions of the valley. I think people are going to need a bit of a push. I am appreciative of the efforts of a member of the local chamber of commerce who put together some very good ideas on the subject which I will be putting to the minister. (Time expired)

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Rather than make my contribution tonight a lament about Labor, I extend the opportunity to the member for Hunter to respond by interjection to my recounting of the wonderful example he gave of a family whose power bills rise by $100 a month only for them to be compensated by $100, and who, if they work hard, can get their power bill down by $20 and somehow keep $20. I put to him: why would someone who did not experience the Gillard churn work hard to get their power bill down and save $20 on it? I wait here for the member for Hunter to interject.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There will be no interjections, and I ask the member for Bowman to continue his speech.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I invite an interjection, but I am unable to get one. How is the person any better off—$20 better off—than someone who does not churn, yet is still also $20 better off?

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Bowman will direct his speech through the chair.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a classic example of Gillard churn outlined for you by the government. Let Hansard record that I waited 15 seconds for that interjection but none came. The member for Hunter has also explained that he emphasises workforce participation; yet he has a colleague, the former Minister for Employment Participation, who, we understand, instructed his departmental officers through departmental communication not to pursue mutual obligation in remote Australia. As a result of that, we have seen deployment rates and program rates throughout Central Australia fall away and unemployment rates as high as they ever have been.

This is not about plumbing the depths of government incompetence; this is about recording for posterity what this administration will be remembered for. When they write the history of the Gillard administration, it will be very hard to hide the facts and record a successful outcome. As I meander through its series of policy failures, which surely this chamber must be fatigued listening to, I say that Australians out there are genuinely sick of the waste.

The notion of primum non nocere—first do no harm—is just as valid for governments as it should be for the medical profession. We can understand, member for Oxley, that there will always be a little bit of redistribution; however, the one thing that Australians would ask is, 'If you're going to take some money from me and give to someone else, just try to do it effectively.' They might even ask, 'Just do it efficiently, so we don't lose too much in the process.' But the last thing they would ever want would be for that to be done wastefully or in a way that causes damage, which is what we have seen over the last five years.

In this budget, which forgot that there was even a carbon tax occurring this year, we saw tricky arithmetic to try to create an on-paper future surplus without any answer to Australians about when the debt will be paid off. The reality is that this is yet another Labor administration quite content to run significant, medium-sized, structural government debt; this is a government utterly comfortable about doing it. Of course, they do not admit that prior to the election, but now that they are here we can see that, like the Keating government before them, they are quite happy with a 10 per cent of GDP debt running forever. That is fine if the government is prepared to do that, but they also have to be able to protect the citizenry when the time comes.

So what exactly did this government do when faced with the GFC? This was the get-out-of-jail-free card for the former Prime Minister to spend, spend and spend, and we are still paying the price. We can look at the school halls program and see the $16 billion of which this government blithely says, 'We have invested into schools!' But what could we have bought with that money? We can only begin to imagine.

The shadow education minister has been quite right; he said that $16 billion could have bought so much more than just one school hall. It could have built enormous libraries and education science facilities where there are none. There is not even a concrete slab there. We saw halls put next to halls and we saw dreadful outcomes that no government should be forgiven for achieving.

When we look at the NBN we again see some very tricky balance sheet reporting by using a 1997 CAC Act to call the NBN an investment, and therefore it does not appear on the bottom line. That is an extraordinary piece of Treasury trickery, to hide what is, in effect, a massive investment from the eyes and scrutiny of ordinary Australians. We know it is a massive investment, and Australians are right to say, 'What is going to be the return?' It is now obvious that the government does not really know, but having initially promised a $5 billion program and then having upped it to $50 billion they are utterly compelled to roll this thing out.

No-one is going to start bagging fibre and no-one from this side is going to criticise the idea that we all want faster broadband. But I think that Australians are asking—and on their behalf we as an opposition ask—simply to see the cost benefit. We are not interested in the private good for those who enjoy gaming or other activities using fast broadband, we would just like to see where the public good lies. It is utterly appropriate for a government to pay for what delivers a public good that otherwise the private sector could not provide. That is the job of government. So all we are asking of the Labor administration in 2011 is to show us the public good derived from the NBN.

The answer usually is, 'We cannot show you because we don't know what it is. Don't worry about it, it is all about to come.' So why do we not turn our attention to nations which have rolled out an NBN equivalent and just see whether South Korea has been transformed by fast broadband? The answer is: not overly. When you look in parts of Europe the sign up rates are remarkably low. As wireless surges through we do not speak ill of broadband by fibre; we simply say that as younger generations demand more mobility and smart handheld devices, wireless will become increasingly important. It will by no means be a substitutional good, but it will become more important and it will make it harder for the NBN to recoup the losses of an early and expensive rollout.

It is a simple question, and I think that government deserves to make that answer to its people. But it is an answer that we did not receive in the budget, and we will have to wait another year while this NBN is rolled out in political deployments in marginal seats around the country, and people do not sign up unless it is given to them for free. There is no better indication of just how much something is valued than if the only way you can get someone to take it is to give it away. That the NBN sign-up package is so cheap it does not reflect the cost of rolling it out is the first irrefutable evidence that the NBN rollout is occurring so early in many of these areas. The take-up rates are low, so of course you are not going to be able to get a return for decades.

So I put it to this government: roll it out when people want it. Do not roll it out when the press release demands it. That is what the NBN was: it was dreamt up on a a flight between two capital cities. It was dreamt up, they came up with a figure and, by gosh, they are not going to stop until it is rolled out or someone stops them. Of course, there are these highly paid executives on obscene salaries, which really does spit in the eye of anyone from Labor politics who thinks that executives should not be paid obscene salaries. But it has been done, and it has been with a nod of assent and a nod of approval provided to these NBN executives. Make no mistake—it is not hard to find someone who is going to head up the NBN. It is quite easy simply to turn to ex-Labor staffers, nominate someone and give them this obscene six-figure salary, just as it was when the time came to privatise New South Wales power and three potential Labor supporters needed top ups for their superannuation; $1.4 million later for six months work we had privatised New South Wales power. It is a recurring habit in both Labor jurisdictions. So from the NBN, to the carbon tax, to school halls—and, as I said, this is not intended in any way to be a Labor lament—I am effectively an opposition member searching for something good, just a morsel of goodness that has come out of this administration, to take home to my own constituents and say: 'They're not all bad. I know the cost of living has gone up 63 per cent in five years, but they're not all bad over there.' I would love to go back to my electorate newsletter and write that there was a little bit of good on both sides of politics, that there are good ideas on both sides—as Killen said, there's good cricket players on both teams. But just give me something that I can take back to my people, who are paying more for food, more for power, more for fuel, to show that this government is heading in the right direction.

Let us take the carbon tax as case par excellence. It is not a debate about whether we care about the environment, nor even about whether we want to reduce emissions; this is an argument of timing. It is an argument of whether it is in Australia's national interest to move now compared with the global interest; or whether, by waiting, and potentially having to have a larger program, we move with the rest of the world and do it more effectively. It is a debate about the national interest. It is why we fly to Canberra: to debate the national interest. One side of politics does not have a greater love of carbon emissions, for goodness sake; we just want to do it at the right time, when it works best.

So I put a challenge to the government over there: name me one major ore-exporting, commodity-exporting economy that has signed up to a carbon tax—just give me one. Again I invite, but I hear nothing but silence, because the closest you might come up with is New Zealand—with all that energy-intensive milk production and growing apples, you can see why a carbon tax would devastate their economy! But, of course, they exempted all of their own sectors, didn't they? So what we see in a few selected economies outside the EU is a Swiss-cheese carbon tax that exempts anything that is of any value, and that is why they will sign up to a carbon tax. But the reality is, when you look across the OECD, looking at our commodity-exporting wealthy competitors, who will take our jobs without a blink, you will see that none of them are moving toward a carbon tax. There will potentially be a time when they do, and let us then have a debate about how we do it together. It is not a matter about us being a small economy and accounting for less than two per cent of emissions—no, it is about the carbon leakage; it is about what you do to the price of an Australian made car compared with a Chinese imported car. Did we get an answer from the Prime Minister on that? No, we did not. Was it mentioned in the budget? 'No.' Was there a massive big smoke screen around the carbon tax? 'Yes.'

The government are completely unwilling to talk about the challenges to working Australians, who have become the forgotten Australians. Instead we have these Garnaut reports that are foisted upon the media gallery, because these are issues that no-one believes the government has credibility to talk about. I have some considerable sympathy for Professor Garnaut, a hardworking economist who is driven by a passion; but I would like to see one more report from Professor Garnaut—don't retire yet! Give me one more report, Professor Garnaut, about how you will personally pay for the disadvantaged working Australians who are left out of pocket when they are not compensated adequately. The bottom line is that no-one knows how working Australians will be compensated because our Prime Minister cannot and will not tell us. We get these vague promises about all of the receipts from the carbon tax reimbursing vulnerable Australians, but there is no detail. How can we possibly have a debate in this chamber when we do not know how ordinary working families will be affected?

I see another government member has entered the room. Again, I put a basic question. There are two working families, both with a single income from working at a cannery. One worker lives next door to the cannery and walks to work; one commutes 40 kilometres to get to the cannery. How do you compensate the fuel-stressed low-income Australian differently from the one who walks to work? Again, I invite a response. How do you compensate a fuel-stressed working Australian differently from one who lives next door to the cannery, when that is the only job they can do? Tell me how you moderate that and calculate compensation for every Australian. I would not trust any government department to be able to do that precisely. I would fear that I would not be able to build a bureaucracy large enough to do it fairly. The only alternative is: leave the vulnerable out of a scheme and find a way that targets the sectors where improvements are most likely to be made—and that is called 'direct action'. It is pretty simple. It is a market based mechanism. You go to the sector, you can see the emissions, you can see where world technology is going and you say, 'I want to purchase abatement from that sector'—and that is an incentive to do something, which does not spill over and does not churn. I am genuinely frightened about where this carbon tax is going. There is no doubt that this government can potentially delay another year, as Mr Rudd did, and simply say that we are not ready. But why not just be open and honest about how Australian families will be affected?

My greatest disappointment is not with this government, it is with the Australian trade union movement. I have got a lot of respect for people in the trade union movement but not for their leaders, who blindly follow and try and resuscitate our current Prime Minister by helping her through this carbon tax debacle by intimating that paid-up union members would support a carbon tax. There are glib claims that we will transform the economy and move ourselves into a post-carbon generation and if we do not do it now, if we do not move right now, we are somehow disadvantaged. But it just stops there and we get no more detail than that, just these glib promises of a beautiful future pulled down on a chain by Cate Blanchett.

I am quite happy to have Cate Blanchett say whatever she wants to say, but when she steps from being a universally adored actress to a commentator in a party political divide, she can expect a little bit of pushback. When I see a pensioner paid to get into an ad on TV by GetUp!, which is union funded, to hide behind a one metre round dollar coin and say, 'Help for paying the bills, that's why I want a carbon tax,' when I hear such an incredible statement that lacks all credibility, I can understand why the beliefs of ordinary Australians sceptical about this government move to cynicism. And this government is very close to that tipping point. The budget did not help this government one iota and I urge them to do three things: explain the NBN, talk about the business plan, and talk about the carbon tax honestly and the way it affects working families.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012. The 2011 budget is a jobs budget which has been delivered by a jobs government, a government which has been committed to the employment of Australians from the very first day of its election, from the abolition of Work Choices which provided Australians with job security, to the supporting of working people through the global economic crisis where 200,000 jobs were supported—200,000 Australians are working today who would not have been working but for the stimulus package put in place by the federal Labor government. Since its election the Labor government has created 750,000 jobs. This budget will provide for the creation of another half a million jobs over the next two years.

But it is also a budget which is a fiscally disciplined budget that will see the federal budget return to surplus in the financial year 2012-13. It is on track by virtue of the budget we have put in place in 2011. But that has occurred through very difficult spending decisions—$22 billion worth of saving which has resulted in the lowest level of spending increases in the last 20 years, which in turn forms part of an enviable record on the part of the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, in delivering in his time as Treasurer the lowest level of spending increases in the federal budget in political memory. Since the time of the stimulus package during the global economic crisis to the point when the budget will be back in the black in 2012-13, we will witness the most significant fiscal consolidation in the federal budget ever.

What that means in a bigger picture sense is that when during the global economic crisis the private sector was contracting we saw in its place the public sector expand through the stimulus package. Now that the private sector is returning to growth, we in turn are seeing the public sector contract as it should. By contracting in the way that it is through the spending cuts that have been introduced, this in turn will reduce pressure on inflation.

This forms part of a very enviable record that this government has in managing this economy. We kept Australia out of recession, we have delivered an economy which is the envy of the developed world, but, much more importantly than that, we have made very difficult decisions in the heat of the moment where we have got those decisions right and where the opposition has got its decisions wrong. The stimulus package that we put in place during the height of the global economic crisis supported those 200,000 jobs. Those people would be on the dole queues now if Tony Abbott had had his way. Similarly the work we have done in bringing the budget back to surplus, as we will in 2012-13, and the fiscal consolidation which is underway at the moment through disciplined spending cuts, stand in stark contrast to the spendathon that we saw during the Howard years during mining boom mark 1. It stands in stark contrast to the $11 billion black hole that was presented by the opposition in its costings in the lead-up to the last election and stands in stark contrast to the utter inability of the opposition to state where it would engage in spending cuts to bring the budget back to surplus. They say they could have done that this year but they do not explain to us exactly where they would do that or how they would do the hard work in getting there because they have no idea how they would do that.

I said that this was a jobs budget. And it is so because it understands that we will see, as the private sector returns to growth, an increased demand for labour within the Australian economy. And in seeing that increased demand for labour it is very important that we remove the capacity constraints within the economy which existed during mining boom mark 1 under the Howard government. That is particularly so in the case of skills shortages. So there is a very significant emphasis in this budget on training—a $550 million workforce development fund, which will provide 130,000 training places over four years, and the trade apprentice income bonus, which will provide $1,700 to apprentices pursuing occupations where there are skill shortages to encourage them to complete their apprenticeships. In the electorate of Corio there are 5,000 apprentices who will fit that category.

More than one million dollars is going to be provided to employment services within the Corio electorate to provide for additional training and work experience for the very long-term unemployed, of whom there are more than 2,000 in the Corio electorate. That will be a real benefit for those who have been struggling to find employment for a very long period of time.

In addition to training, education is very central to the budget. There are programs such as $425 million to reward fantastic teachers—25,000 teachers around Australia—who are doing such a wonderful job and give them an incentive to do better. There is $200 million to support students with disabilities. Of course, the fantastic computers in schools program continues to be funded out of this budget. It has seen 2,645 computers already delivered to schools within the Corio electorate. The trades training centre program, which is also funded out of this budget, has seen more than $11 million committed to a trades training centre in Geelong, which will be shared amongst nine schools.

Families, of course, are at the heart of this budget. There is a boost to the family tax benefit A of up to $4,200 to support parents with teenagers who are in school or undertaking training. There are 4,600 families in Corio with children aged between 16 and 19, who could receive a benefit of up to $161 a fortnight. As has been remarked on often, the education tax refund is being extended to school uniforms and the childcare rebate now has the option of being paid fortnightly, which will reduce up-front fees.

But for a place like Geelong there is one really important measure in the budget, which I want to make particular mention of—that is, the $24 million package to help Australian manufacturing better engage with the resources sector to better supply, to the resources sector, the products that they make. This is a really important initiative which is going to help cities like Geelong—industrial manufacturing centres—plug into the resources boom which is being experienced in the resource-rich states of Queensland and WA.

As well, there are a number of specific spends in the Corio electorate which I want to highlight tonight. There is $26 million being provided to Barwon South Western Regional Integrated Cancer Service. I want to take this opportunity to call upon the Victorian government to come to the party on this and make its contribution to this wonderful facility, which will see a new linear accelerator provided for radiation therapy, a 32-bed oncology ward, a 24-bed palliative care ward and 20 new accommodation units. Importantly, this centre has a very regional focus, supporting not just Geelong but the entire Western District, including the member for Wannon's area. That will see supported accommodation in Warrnambool, consulting suites in Hamilton and a day unit centre for chemotherapy in Portland, which I am sure the member for Wannon is very happy to hear about. There are a number of wonderful community organisations in Geelong which do important work for people with disabilities and for those suffering from mental illness. I want to highlight their work, because they are the subject of recurrent funding in this budget. Karingal is an organisation that supports people with disabilities in supported employment. The cafes at Shell and Alcoa have become famous for the wonderful services and food that they provide to the workers at both those plants but they also provide an environment where people with a disability are able to work alongside able bodied people and get the support they need.

There are large-scale landcare projects undertaken by Karingal for Barwon Water alongside a number of river reserves but also for Alcoa at Point Henry. Karingal subsidiary Kommercial does fantastic work in the packaging area, doing everything from mail-outs for businesses in Geelong to packaging of brochures to labelling jams to packaging Easter and Christmas chocolates. In all, Karingal provides 120 people who have disabilities with meaningful work, and it is great to be able to highlight their work tonight.

Pathways is another organisation which is supported in this budget. Pathways was started in Geelong 25 years ago and is now one of the largest direct employers of people with serious mental disorders in Australia. It runs a new cafe, called MadCap Cafe, which in fact is right near my electorate office in the Westfield shopping centre. It is going to provide skills and training for people with mental illnesses so that they can, first of all, get out of their homes and do that, but also so that they can go on and work elsewhere.

Clearwater Business Services, which is a program also run by Pathways, employs about 85 people a week. These people all have serious mental disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and clinical depression. Clearwater Business Services provides commercial and domestic property care services such as cleaning, gardening and landscaping and, in the process, provides an enduring, flexible and supportive employment space with small teams of people working with mentors and with careful monitoring of the wellbeing of those who work in those groups. Pathways and Karingal are two fantastic organisations in Geelong and they deserve a mention tonight.

The budget provides a number of infrastructure spends, some of which are done through the City of Greater Geelong—for example, the Kardinia Park netball complex upgrade and the Eastern Beach Reserve restoration; both of which are about $3 million dollar spends.

In highlighting the role that the City of Greater Geelong plays in this I want to focus on a debate which is ongoing in Geelong at the moment about the future of the City of Greater Geelong. In making a contribution to that debate, I think it is important to say that the role of local government in regional Australia has a particular importance which I think exceeds the role that local government plays within our capital cities. I want to spend a moment explaining why that is.

We have been witnessing in Australia over the last few decades a policy drift to the federal tier of government. And that is not surprising, given that we have overcome in many ways the tyranny of distance. We are a population of 23 million people making our way in the global economy. So it makes sense that we have one set of regulations nationally and then we have local service delivery occurring at a local tier of government. The question is: what is that tier of government? Mostly, the answer to that question is: the state governments. But I think it is fair to say that the Victorian government plays that role of service delivery far more naturally within Melbourne than it does within regional Victoria. The Port of Melbourne, Tullamarine, Melbourne's transport system are all issues which are instinctive to the state government, but regional airports, regional ports, regional transport systems are nowhere near as instinctive. Economic development is simply not the same issue for regional cities as it is for Melbourne in the context of the work of the Victorian government. So, in Geelong, we need strong local government. We need a local government that goes beyond the issues of potholes, footpaths and garbage and actually looks at economic development. It is a very critical debate that we are having in Geelong. At the outset, I would like to commend the council, which I think does a great job in the context of its work. Mayor John Mitchell and CEO Steve Griffin run that council very well. The debate in Geelong has focused on whether or not there should be a directly elected mayor, which is an interesting question but in my mind is not the main question.

I want to make three suggestions in the time that I have left as to what are the critical issues for the City of Greater Geelong. First of all, we need a mayor who serves a full four-year term. The fact that John Mitchell has served a number of terms as mayor is a benefit, because he has grown into the job and has provided a continuity in that role. Voters at council elections are entitled to see a mayor emanate from those elections who serves for the full term of the council. Having a directly elected mayor would clearly do that—it would provide the duration and that sense of connectivity—but it is not the only way for it to occur.

The second thing is that we need to see professional councillors. Having part-time councillors, as we do now, makes it simply impossible for those councillors to exercise their best judgment. It means that the judgment that is normally brought to bear on any issue is that which is brought to bear by the council officers, who are professionals and yet who do not have the same connection to the voters as the councillors who need to go back to the voters every election. Having professional councillors will connect the council with the electorate much more. That would be a very democratic reform. And, by the way, these councillors represent a quarter of a million people. We are big enough to have them as professionals.

The third point is that we need to raise the profile of economic development within the council. We need to have the person responsible for that reporting directly to the CEO and directly to the council, a point that I have raised in this place before.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me pleasure to be able to rise tonight to talk on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-12 and Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2011-12 and the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2011-12. In talking about the budget tonight, there are eight points that I would like to make. The first is with regard to the carbon tax. One of the alarming things about the budget was that it made no reference to the carbon tax. The government told us that it could not because there was no detail. Yet the mining tax was not finalised and we saw the mining tax included in the budget. Why, then, wasn't the carbon tax included—especially given the impact that it is going to have across the nation on families, on the manufacturing sector and on our agricultural sector? There will not be a part of life in Australia that this tax will not hit and will not impact on.

There are a couple of points that I would like to make on the carbon tax. One is that I was extremely disappointed to see that there was no new spending on bringing the rest of the world together so that we can address this global problem with a global solution. What we needed to see, rather than funding going towards trying to get our foreign minister a seat on the UN Security Council so that he can go off and do whatever he wants to do in the United Nations, was a focus on what he once called the greatest moral issue of our time. Yet there is nothing in this budget about what we are trying to do globally to get a global solution to this problem.

Instead, what we are hearing is complete silence on what impact the carbon tax will have. I would like to refer to some of the impacts that we are seeing. There was a very good report issued by the National Farmers Federation yesterday that showed that five years after the carbon tax is introduced, if it hits a rate of $36 a tonne—which is not unreasonable—you are likely to see a wheat-growing property incur additional costs of $36,000. Our farming community has to deal with the weather, the dollar and overseas commodity prices. Now we are whacking a $36,000 impost on them as a result of the carbon tax. Do we get a mention of that in the budget? No, we do not. Do we get a mention on what impact it will have on our manufacturing sector, a key sector? Portland Aluminium in my electorate have already made huge inroads into cutting their emissions. As a matter of fact, based on 2005 levels, they have already cut their emissions by 20 per cent. That is fantastic work and they should be rewarded in some way or, if not rewarded, they should at least be acknowledged in some way for that. Yet, what will the carbon tax do? It will penalise them even further and they will get nothing for already having started this work in reducing emissions.

That is what we are going to see occur across our manufacturing sector. The high energy costs which they have been hit with, which has led them in many instances to try and do very good work in cutting emissions, will count for nought because 'whack' they will get hit by the carbon tax again. While some of the bigger manufacturers may be able to get permits, and maybe get permits up to a 95 per cent free allocation; the smaller manufacturers in Australia will not. They will be hung out to dry with devastating consequences especially in regional areas. It is our small manufacturers in our country towns that provide the majority of our jobs.

It is extremely disappointing that we saw no reference to the carbon tax in the budget, particularly when it will start on exactly the same date as the mining tax, 30 June next year, and the mining tax was included in the budget. I think the Treasurer, Mr Swan, would have preferred that it was not because, only a few weeks after the mining tax was included, the Western Australian government blew a big hole in Mr Swan's budget. It is a budget which is built on a house of cards. It is a budget that may get a surplus in three years although, as we have seen, it has been a long time between drinks before a Labor government delivered a budget surplus.

Before we focus on three years time, and that is in part what the Treasurer wanted us to do, we should focus on the here and now because we saw a budget deficit of $47 billion dollars for the last financial year. I just want to put that in perspective. The Victorian state budget was handed down a week before the federal budget. The total expenditure for the whole Victorian budget is $47 billion. So our second biggest state's total budget, which includes all the spending in health, education and transport, is the size of the budget deficit which was handed down in this last federal budget.

It does not get any better next year. The forecast is for $21 billion. What is the effect of that? We already have debt of $106 billion which means we are paying back $135 million a day of Labor debt. Just think for a moment what that money could be spent on, and think for a moment about the $96 billion debt that Labor left us the last time they were voted out of office. Think of the length of time it took us to pay that off. Although we have been focusing on a minute surplus in three years time, we should not lose sight of what we have here and now, and that is budget deficit followed by budget deficit, and we are seeing net debt increasing to $106 billion, which amounts to $135 million a day to pay back. What we need to see now is the government saying, 'We're asking the rest of the community to tighten its belt. We're going to do the same.' But unfortunately we are seeing no indication that the waste will stop. We saw a very glitzy presentation of the NBN being rolled out in Armadale, but I think I am right in saying that so far we have seven people signed up to the NBN in Armadale. We saw a very glitzy launch down in Tasmania, in Launceston, but once again the uptake leaves a lot to be desired. So we are seeing waste continue on a vast scale.

It does not seem that the government has learnt its lessons from the stimulus package, where we saw the BER waste billions of dollars. There was not only the pink batt fiasco but also the home insulation inspection scheme fiasco. The prize example in my seat of Wannon was where we had an inspector come down to inspect six units. He did four because that is what the regulations told him he could do. He flew back to Sydney and then a fellow from the Gold Coast flew down two weeks later—

Louise Markus (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Gold Coast? How odd.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

yes, from the Gold Coast—to do the remaining two units in a block. So there was a block of six units and they got a fellow from Sydney to do four, but he could not do the remaining two, even though he was asked to, so he disappeared back to Sydney and they sent a fellow down from the Gold Coast to do the remaining two. It is that sort of waste that the Australian people cannot tolerate, especially when you think about what this budget did to try and ease the squeeze on cost of living pressures. It did nothing.

We have seen electricity prices rise by 50 per cent since 2007. What is the government doing in the budget? It is hiding the fact that, when a carbon tax is introduced, electricity prices will go up by another 25 per cent. So our families, the forgotten families, are going to deal with a 75 per cent increase in their power bills.

Locally there were three outcomes which I would like to mention. We have seen south-west Victoria being promised a Medicare funded licence for its MRI machine. The funding has been promised for 18 months time. Obviously the community and I would have liked to have seen that occur right here and now, but we do have a promise that the Medicare funded licence will be provided. I will be looking forward to making sure that that promise comes true. We also saw two commitments for funding: one for Ararat hospital and one for Timboon primary health care. Those two million-dollar allocations were allocations for which the community had put forward compelling cases. I was glad to see that the government listened to the compelling cases and delivered on those two bits of funding and the promise of a Medicare funded licence for south-west Victoria.

What has been alarming, though, is that, while we have seen some small instances of health funding, the broader funding to regional Australia has seen pork-barrelling at an extreme level in the two rural Independent seats. This is not good government. Government should govern for all Australia. They should not pork-barrel for two rural Independents who are propping up what is a very weak government.

Before I conclude, I could not sit down without mentioning the budget reply speech. I think without doubt it was one of the best budget reply speeches which has been heard in this new parliament. Tony Abbott gave a speech pitched to the forgotten families in Australia, those families who are doing it tough as a result of this government's policies—a government, and especially a prime minister, that does not seem to understand and want to understand or listen to these forgotten families.

The cost of living pressures that these families are under are growing daily. Yet this Prime Minister, having lied to them by saying she would not introduce a carbon tax before the election, is now introducing a tax which will increase their cost of living pressures and is doing nothing else to help them in this regard. Tony Abbott nailed that. But he also nailed what the coalition would offer as an alternative: how it would help the Indigenous people, how it would help those suffering from mental health issues, how it would help families meet education costs; and also how it would stop Labor's waste and would put in place a government which actually values the taxpayers' money—a very positive agenda.

It was a compelling budget reply speech and one which sent a clear message to the Australian community that we on this side are listening. We are aware of the cost of living pressures they are facing. We will not put a carbon tax in place which after one year leads to your petrol prices going up. We will not put a carbon tax in place which is likely to lead to you losing manufacturing jobs, losing agricultural jobs, losing services jobs. We will listen; we will get Australia heading in the right direction.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I did not want to interrupt the member for Wannon's speech, but the member for Wannon did make an unparliamentary reference to the Prime Minister and I would kindly ask the member for Wannon to withdraw.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, I should have said 'misled'.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Wannon also said that the Leader of the Opposition's speech was the best budget reply speech that the new parliament had ever heard. Seeing as it was the first and only that the new parliament had ever heard, I guess it does not have to stack up against much—and just as well because it certainly did not rate for those of us on this side of the house who are more interested—

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was not talking about the new paradigm, I was talking about our new parliament.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, I see. Well, it still does not rate on the scale of opposition leaders' budget reply speeches. I think it is probably just one more sign of the sorts of things that we saw in the Financial Review's analysis today of the steadily and consistently shrinking total of the opposition's savings measures that they keep referring to in terms of trying to establish their economic credibility. Just like their little tally of supposed savings, that economic credibility continues to shrink every day.

I want to talk about what is in the budget for my electorate because there were some significant initiatives and programs in the budget and of course I welcome those on behalf of the people of Capricornia. The first one is the investments that this government is continuing to make in health in my electorate, particularly in this instance in the city of Rockhampton. This Labor government has a very strong track record in making huge investments in the health services for the people of Central Queensland. The very first budget in 2008 provided $75 million for a major extension and redevelopment of the Rockhampton Base Hospital which is the hub, the major health care provider of the highest levels of care to people in Central Queensland—the hospital that people rely on to power the bulk of their health care. That was in the 2008 budget. Work is proceeding on that and is nearing completion. Following up on that was another announcement last year. In 2010 we found that we were successful in obtaining $67 million for a regional cancer centre for the Rockhampton Base Hospital. When the announcement was made in about April last year, it was one of the most satisfying days of my career to be able to bring that to the people of Rockhampton. Work is proceeding on that, and when it is completed I think it will take the capacity for cancer care in Rockhampton from five chemotherapy chairs up to 16. It will also provide for certain aspects of radiation treatment, which is something that is desperately needed in Rockhampton to avoid people who are diagnosed with cancer having to leave their home, their family, their loved ones and all of their support mechanisms behind and travel down to Brisbane. This has been the case for far too long in Rockhampton.

This year, I am pleased to say, the health minister was back in Rockhampton to announce that the Mater hospital, one of the private hospitals in Rockhampton, was successful under the Health and Hospitals Fund Regional Priority Round. I think it was in the order of $6 million for two terrific projects. One is to build three new operating theatres at the Mater hospital. Money will also be there to completely fit out two of those operating theatres with equipment, and the third one will remain as a shell until demand reaches the point where it needs to be fully commissioned. Mater hospital was also successful in obtaining funding for patient accommodation. This has been a long-term goal, a long-term project, of the Mater hospital.

Again, because Rockhampton is such a service hub for Central Queensland, people from a very large radius of Central and Western Queensland rely on the hospitals in Rockhampton to provide them with high levels of treatment. Over the years, that has traditionally meant people having to travel in to stay with relatives or in private accommodation. It is great that the Mater hospital will now be able to realise its dream of providing accommodation on site for people receiving treatment at the hospital and their family members. That goes together with some units that have been completed by the Cancer Council in Rockhampton, so we really are starting to fill a very big gap that has been there for people coming to seek health treatment in Rockhampton for some years now. It is great for those country people who can now be a bit more comfortable and have one less thing to worry about when they have to be in Rockhampton for health treatment.

I will talk about one infrastructure project for which funding has also been made available in the budget. That is the Yeppen roundabout, which is at the southern entrance of Rockhampton. Anyone who was watching the flood footage in January this year, when Rocky was one of the first cities in Queensland to experience flooding, would be very familiar with the Yeppen roundabout, which was basically sitting under all of that water when they were showing the statue of the bull at the entrance to Rockhampton, surrounded by water. That is the Yeppen roundabout. It has been a real problem for some years now. There is great congestion for people driving to Rockhampton from Gracemere, a nearby town which houses a lot people who work in Rockhampton. Those people have had to put with an awful lot of congestion—I am sure nothing like the people living in the member for Oxley's community, but very bad by Central Queensland standards. We now have money in this budget to undertake a major upgrade of that roundabout, which is going to relieve a lot of those problems. Upgrading a roundabout does not sound like a big deal, but I have to tell you that for those people coming from Gracemere every morning and sitting in bumper to bumper traffic it will mean a great deal. It shows that this government has been listening to their concerns and needs.

A very significant thing that was in this budget for Rockhampton was the announcement that it will be one of the 10 communities that will receive special and intensive assistance under the place based initiatives that were announced in the budget. I have been on this campaign for some time. I have spoken about it previously. Rockhampton is in a situation in which we have great opportunities surrounding us, whether they are in the industry and economic activity coming out of Gladstone or whether they are in the Bowen Basin to our west. And there is the perennial mainstay of Rockhampton, which is our beef industry, represented by the two large meatworks that operate in Rockhampton. So opportunities exist and are growing within our region. At the same time, there is a proportion of people in Rockhampton who these opportunities are passing by. An entrenched level of social disadvantage is emerging in Rockhampton that I have wanted to act on for some years now.

Income management was introduced into the Northern Territory as part of the intervention. We legislated a couple of years ago to apply the Racial Discrimination Act to that legislation, meaning that income management measures would be applied more generally to the population. Since that time I have been lobbying hard for an introduction of income management into Rockhampton ahead of the rest of Australia, which it will be rolled out to eventually. I am pleased to say that that is now happening. It is based on the model that has been operating in Perth for some time. It will mean specifically that families who have come to the attention of child welfare authorities, people who have been assessed as being vulnerable and perhaps able to benefit from income management by Centrelink social workers and other people who may volunteer to be part of that program, will from 1 July next year be subject to income management. That will mean that part of their Centrelink payment will be quarantined and only able to be spent on the essentials—food, rent, pharmaceuticals; those sorts of things.

I have long seen this as something very tangible that the government can do in terms of trying to turn around some of this social disadvantage. What I was not expecting—and this was great to see as part of the package—were all of the support measures that are coming with this. There is going to be a significant investment in the city of Rockhampton to try to act on and break down this entrenched disadvantage. We will give people the incentive through income management and also the opportunities that they need through training, personal support, better education, access to child care—all of those things that we need to incorporate in a whole-of-community response to try to match the opportunities that are there for employment in our region with a group of people who to date have not had the ability to take part in that. It has been well received to date. I have been very keen to make sure that the people who will be subject to some of these measures understand that it is not all stick, that there is carrot in this package as well. Yes, there will be greater obligations placed on people who are receiving Centrelink payments, but there will certainly be plenty of assistance, support and opportunities provided through this package of measures at the same time. I will be working with the community organisations in Rockhampton to really make this work. It is a great opportunity for us to turn around a group in our community that has missed out for too long.

One of the things that I know will be of great interest to not-for-profit groups working in this sector is the Local Solutions Fund. Twenty-five million dollars is available to be shared amongst the 10 regions across Australia that are part of these place based initiatives, pulling together groups within the community that work with disadvantaged people or have experience in breaking down disadvantage and helping vulnerable people in our communities to come up with ideas for how we can best meet those needs and tailor the solutions to our local circumstances.

In that respect it was a very noteworthy and significant budget for Rockhampton and for Central Queensland more broadly. It is what we are becoming used to under the Labor government. Year in, year out, we have been receiving investment in our core services—whether it be in health, education or training—and this year it has been taken to a new level with this very targeted package, which is addressing some of the social issues in our city. I commend the budget to the House.

Louise Markus (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012 and cognate bills on the significant impact of the Gillard Labor-Greens alliance government's budget on the electorate of Macquarie. Despite all the talk from Labor in the lead-up to the budget, this was not a budget tough on the government; but it is tough on families. There is little which helps ordinary Australians deal with the rising cost of living, cuts to family benefits, changes to fringe benefits tax and the introduction of two big new taxes. This budget will hurt 2 million families nationwide and 19,800 families, as at the last census, in the electorate of Macquarie.

Labor persists in trying to pretend a family earning a total income of $150,000 is rich. The coalition knows families are struggling under Labor's fast rising living costs. Labor should come clean and admit that families earning $40,000, $50,000 or $90,000 are also slugged by this budget. Family tax benefit part A payments will drop significantly as a result of the freeze. A family with one parent earning $65,000 and one earning $40,000 will lose around $850 in 2012-13 if they have two children under 13. It is an even bigger loss, around $900 a year, if they have three children under 13. The same results apply to any family with two children and a total family income between $102,000 and $112,000 a year, regardless of whether there are one or two wage-earners. They also apply to any family with three children and an income between $105,000 and $123,000 a year. Every recipient of any income will lose out from the freezing of the family tax benefit part A supplement. Labor has already been at those receiving part B, having frozen the $150,000 threshold in 2009 and continuing that for another two years in this budget. Over two years, more than 19,000 Australian families will completely lose family tax benefit part B as a result of this freezing alone as their wage increases push their income past the $150,000 threshold. These families have indeed been forgotten by this government, leaving them to pay for this government's wasteful spending.

The Prime Minister was right when she said that this is a traditional Labor budget—another big deficit, more borrowing and debt and more taxes. This picture could have been very different, with a coalition government having the courage to make savings where necessary. This budget is based on a lie. The carbon tax revenue and expenditure have not been included in this budget. A price on carbon will destroy jobs and increase the cost of virtually everything. A $26 a tonne carbon price would push up petrol by 6.5c a litre, gas by up to 10c in the first year and groceries by five per cent. The coalition's direct plan represents a more cost-effective policy which would tackle climate change without pushing up prices for electricity, petrol and food.

This government has spent the $22 billion surplus left to it by the previous coalition government. Australia has gone from a $20 billion surplus to a $49 billion deficit in four years. Last year's midyear budget estimates predicted net debt would peak at $94 billion. On budget night it was revealed that the figure is now $107 billion. This government continues to borrow $135 million a day, and the interest on Labor's debt will be a staggering $7 billion a year. They have saddled this nation with a bill of $18 million a day in interest on this debt while ordinary Australians struggle to make ends meet.

In Macquarie these interest payments could have been used to deliver projects totalling $18 million, including the Greater Western Sydney conservation corridor, the Blaxland and Glenbrook solar towns project, the reconstruction of a section of Freemans Reach Road in Wilberforce, the University of Western Sydney Hawkesbury-Nepean algae project and numerous solar schools and Green Army projects. In terms of infrastructure this government has done little to assist the people of the Hawkesbury and the Blue Mountains.

This government has allocated $2 million that is not allocated in the forward estimates until 2014-15, another empty promise that may never eventuate. Heavy peak traffic on Grose Vale Road, Terrace Road and Bells Line of Road leading down towards the M7 causes significant congestion around the Richmond bridge. It takes sometimes more than an hour for people, once they reach North Richmond, to cross the bridge to Richmond on the way to work, and the same can happen in the evening.

A study into adding a contraflow lane in peak periods on Richmond bridge does not address the larger traffic issues leading on and off the bridge, particularly the pressure on the major roads of Bells Line of Road and Richmond Road. It does not address making the intersection of Old Kurrajong Road near the bridge safer; nor does it address the issue of the set of lights and the pressure at those lights leading from Terrace Road or from Grose Vale Road.

These are the actions of a desperate government trying to look like they are delivering, making a promise. The money for that study is needed now. In fact, the RTA most recently conducted an audit of the intersections and the roads leading onto the bridge. They have come up with some solutions which could alleviate in the immediate short term. I would suggest that the government spend the money doing that.

I raise the issue of funding for the Black Spot Program. At the recent 2010 federal election the coalition reaffirmed its support for this program. The program is highly successful in funding low-cost but high-value road safety improvements where there is a history of fatal crashes or a road safety audit recommendation. In the 11 years between 1996 and 2007 the coalition invested $486.8 million to address these black spots. The Bureau of Transport Economics estimated that over the same period the Black Spot Program saved at least 130 lives and prevented 6,000 serious accidents by upgrading 4,200 dangerous sites on local and state roads.

In Macquarie this program was vital to upgrading many rural roads—for example, Drummond Street at Windsor and a roundabout at Pitt Town and Boundary roads following a fatality. I am working with local communities to address black spots on local roads: the roundabout at Boundary Road, which has been resolved, and Old Pitt Town Road, where there have been fatalities. I call on Labor to deliver more funding to this program, particularly in the seat of Macquarie so the people of the electorate of Macquarie can drive safely on the roads. This government's inaction on freight to rail is a disgrace. Freight to rail is an area which has been largely ignored by Labor. I support an integrated road-rail policy that moves more freight to rail and improves the safety of local roads and highways. The national transport commissioner will not deliver any policy until 2013-14. I call on the government to explain to the people of the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury why it is taking so long to alleviate the pressure on our roads and improve the safety of our highways.

The Bells Line of Road through the Hawkesbury and the Great Western Highway through the Blue Mountains are particular examples of why action is required on freight to rail sooner rather than later. Heavy vehicles are using these roads which are not designed to take the volume of heavy vehicle traffic that we see today. The Great Western Highway upgrade has been occurring since 1998 and, while significant progress has been made, there needs to be more. Over the same period there have been no fewer than 13 studies on the Bells Line of Road. Thirteen studies in 13 years is excessive, provides no clear direction and is a great challenge to be overcome.

The RTA crash statistics for Bells Line of Road sadly record that from 2000 to 2002 there were five fatalities and 135 injuries. Many in my electorate know that that means the loss or serious injury of someone they love—a family member, a friend—and all of us in this House know that more than one person is impacted when a serious accident, fatality or injury occurs. The statistics highlight that there are 17 black spots on the Bells Line of Road. These statistics show why action is needed. Many action groups in the villages and towns along the Great Western Highway in the Blue Mountains believe that the roads are degrading rapidly because of the continual use of heavy vehicles, creating a serious threat to safety on these roads. The inaction of this government on practical solutions highlights how little they understand the needs of residents and road users, ordinary Australians like those I represent.

These are just some of the areas in which the Labor government has failed. You only need to look at the impact on small business to see that this is a government that is out of touch and that lacks empathy. Small business is the engine room of local economies and the nation. This budget does little for or largely ignores small business. In Macquarie there are 4,514 small businesses, providing products and services in our diverse local economy. Most importantly, small business provides opportunities—including IT, tourism, hospitality, retail and community services. The Australian Bureau of Statistics from June 2006 estimated there were 1,646,344 small business operators nationwide.

Small business forms the backbone of the nation, providing support to the local economy; yet this government continues to treat small business owners with contempt. I work closely with small businesses and chambers of commerce, and businesspeople tell me that increased regulation, increased taxes and the cutting of benefits do not help small business flourish. The Labor government has introduced 220 new regulations on small business for every one regulation it repealed. How can small businesses grow when they are drowning in red tape? There is a small business in Windsor that after 30 years is contemplating putting off staff or closing down completely because of the increased burden this government has placed upon small business.

The coalition is committed to cutting Labor's red tape, which is strangling small business across the Hawkesbury and the Blue Mountains. We have committed to removing one regulation for every new one placed on small business. The coalition is committed to relieving burdensome regulation from small business. Labor offers small business no relief. For examples of this, look no further than the entrepreneur's tax offset and the proposed carbon tax. The abolition of the entrepreneur's tax offset provides a disincentive for business growth, with some commentators suggesting that the $5,000 motor vehicle deduction sends the wrong signal to small business owners starting out in business. Furthermore, this government has done little to address the impact of the cost of the carbon tax on business cost and more importantly the increase to the cost of living on small business customers.

When looking at health, this budget continues to disappoint. The government announced a package of measures in this budget for funding mental health. Despite the headline figure of $2.2 billion, this budget commitment represents new funding of $1.5 billion over four years and only $47 million spent in the 2011-12 financial year. The reforms closely mirror the coalition's re-election plan for mental health proposed last year and while they will go some way to making improvements, we all know that a lot more is required. However, the government's proposals have been underfunded and ultimately will not achieve the same positive outcomes the coalition's policies would have. This government has been criticised by the Australian Medical Association and the Australian Psychological Society, two peak bodies in this field, for not investing enough in mental health. This budget cuts $580.5 million in funding from GP mental health services providing referrals of patients to psychologists. How will members of my local community already under stress be able to access these services if they are made more expensive? The coalition has consistently led the way on the mental health funding with the announcement in 2006 of a $1.9 billion investment. The coalition recognises the importance of mental health to the ongoing health of our nation, our communities and our families.

Many in my electorate have asked me why the government is wasting so much money. This call comes from ordinary Australians forgotten by this government. Grandparents are concerned how this great big new tax will impact upon them and their ability to pay their electricity bills. This government has done little to help families in this budget. As I have said before in this House, what does the Treasurer have against ordinary working families? A typical tradesman who lives in Windsor in my electorate earns around $78,000 a year. His wife works part time as a nurse. They have two children under the age of five. Under changes in this budget, this working family will pay a flood tax of $150, will receive less family benefits and will be hit with a fringe benefits tax on the work ute. They will likely face interest rates higher than the seven to eight per cent currently charged on the mortgage later this year and then get hit with a carbon tax. For the first time in eight years they will see no tax cuts. How does the freeze in indexation of family tax benefits A and B help this family? (Time expired)

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) and cognate bills, commonly known as the budget. This federal budget really does chart a road back to surplus in 2012-13. It does so recognising that in Australia at the moment what we have is a patchwork economy. We have got some states and some areas of some states really thriving with the mining boom, and we have got other parts of Australia, even parts of the states that are booming, that are really being left behind. What we are trying to do in this budget is address some of those issues. We want to bring some of the lower income disadvantaged people with us. We want to ensure that people receive training and that we have a workforce as the mining boom escalates to allow people to fill those jobs that will become available.

What I have heard a lot from those on the other side as I have been listening to speeches is the legacy that the coalition had when they left government. What they seem to conveniently forget is that there has been a global financial crisis since they left government. What they also seem to forget is that it was the Labor government that stimulated the economy to ensure that the economy would keep moving and keep growing throughout that period. What we know from the figures and from the data of what the opposition proposed to do is that the deficit would actually be bigger if they had been in government during the global financial crisis.

We have spoken in the House many times about the disastrous floods and Cyclone Yasi that have affected Queensland and parts of New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and even my home state of Tasmania. We also are going to need a ready and willing workforce to rebuild those flood-affected areas of Australia. That is why it is so important that we do have a workforce ready and able to provide that work and those skills that are required as that rebuild occurs. Certainly we know that the floods and cyclones cost our economy $9 billion in lost output and that will have an effect on real growth. It is a very significant impact. Those on the other side seem to forget the GFC, seem to not understand the issue in terms of the floods and the impact they have had on the federal budget. We all know that their accounting systems are a little bit dodgy, to say the least. We saw in the lead-up to the last federal election that they had an $11 billion black hole in their costings. So we really cannot rely on anything that they say in terms of costs of policies or where things might be, but it really does get a little bit trying to continually hear about the shape the economy was in when they were in government, because of course we have dealt with the big issues of the global financial crisis, we have dealt with the floods that have affected Australia, we have dealt with Cyclone Yasi and we are now dealing with the mining boom mark 2. What we want to ensure is that the benefits of that mining boom are not squandered as they were when the coalition were in government. We want to build new infrastructure. We want to plan for better hospitals and better health care. We want to have a better mental health system. We want regional health facilities. We are going to be investing right around the country with our $2.2 billion mental health care package and our $1.8 billion priority round from the health infrastructure fund.

As I have been talking about, my home state of Tasmania did have some floods, and there is some work to be done there, but certainly Tasmania's economy is not going as well as that of some of the thriving boom states. We did continue to perform and in fact had the fastest growing economy and the lowest unemployment at the beginning of the global financial crisis, but what has happened in the Tasmanian economy in recent months is that the economy has slowed as the effect of the government stimulus has started to wind up, and it is now just starting to recover. We have had an impact on the forestry, tourism and manufacturing industries, and there are some Tasmanians really doing it tough.

The Australian dollar, of course, has had an impact on Tasmanian exports, as it has on Australian exports. To give a bit of an example of that, in 2007-08 Tasmania exported $726 million of product to Japan, and last year, 2009-10, that figure was down to around $420 million; that is over 40 per cent lower. So some of our export businesses in Tasmania are really struggling, and our 5.7 per cent unemployment rate, whilst historically low for Tasmania, is being masked somewhat by a participation rate that is lower than that around Australia: Tasmania's participation trend rate is at 61.4 per cent, compared to the national figure of 65.6 per cent. I guess that is really why the Tasmanian economy will benefit greatly from some of the initiatives and training in this budget. Appropriate training for Tasmanians will ensure that they are better off and that Tasmania is better off in the long run.

This budget delivers a host of new training opportunities, and it means that more of our disengaged, underemployed and unemployed, including long-term unemployed, will be given an opportunity to build and benefit from an Australian economy. We want to make sure that they are not left behind. In Tasmania there are over 1,900 people classified as long-term unemployed, and I think that they deserve our help and that we should be providing them with the support they need to be able to effectively look for work.

It is expected that from the federal budget 130,000 new training places will be developed nationally from the $550 million Workforce Development Fund. It will be particularly important in the lower socioeconomic areas of Tasmania that have had historic lows in participation in the workforce. We want to encourage these people and get them to join in the workforce. The Language, Literacy and Numeracy Program will assist many Tasmanians; the job-related training program for more than 30,000 sole parents seeking to return to work will benefit some Tasmanians; and, of course, the Australian Apprenticeships Access Program will help vulnerable job seekers develop skills to succeed in an apprenticeship. Then, of course, more than 10,000 apprentices in Tasmania could potentially have access to the apprenticeship mentoring programs and the $1,700 trade apprentice bonus that will support apprentices. This apprentice bonus is really important in Tasmania; there are a lot of young apprentices and this will obviously encourage them to complete their apprenticeships.

One of the things that I am really proud of in this budget is that it delivers $240 million for the Royal Hobart Hospital out of the health infrastructure fund priority round. This is a $565 million project. It is the largest ever single infrastructure project in Tasmania's history. To give you an understanding of what it will mean for Tasmania, it is in addition to the $100 million that the Gillard government has already provided to the Tasmanian state government, and the state government is contributing $225 million. Planning work has begun by the state government on the women's and children's precinct. I would really like to put on record my appreciation of the other Tasmanian members of parliament that have lobbied very hard for this project, going back to the former member for Denison, Duncan Kerr, and my local Labor senators Catryna Bilyk and Carol Brown, and of course the current member for Denison, Andrew Wilkie, has also had that as part of his agreement with the government. There is a lot of support for this investment in southern Tasmania in our hospital system, and I was really pleased to see it in the budget. It will mean more beds, more services and better facilities for the communities of Greater Hobart—in fact the hospital serves the whole of Tasmania. It will provide capacity for 195 new overnight beds, a one-third increase, as well as 12 new operating and procedure rooms.

The budget also provides $1.2 million for the new Cygnet medical centre, which I have spoken about in this place before, and that is also from the regional priority round of the health infrastructure fund. These projects will provide not just better health care in southern Tasmania over the long run but also a stimulus to the local construction industry and work for Tasmanians. As I said, the largest single investment project is very important to the construction industry in Tasmania as the Building the Education Revolution projects start to wind up and will provide great support for people in our local community.

I would like to talk a bit about some of the budget measures in my own portfolio that I am assisting the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs with. In that area we have delivered for the most vulnerable in our community: we are providing an additional $83.3 million boost over the four years for emergency relief services. We had a boost in emergency relief services for two years for the global financial crisis, but this is an ongoing commitment from the government. It is an historic boost to the base funding of emergency relief services and is the largest increase in the base funding of emergency relief services since the program began in 1977. It is really significant in terms of those vulnerable Australians or those Australians doing it tough that need our support.

We also have continued funding of the Commonwealth financial counsellors that we did boost during the global financial crisis. They are also funded on an ongoing basis through the budget and will be offered three-year funding contracts to provide certainty for the clients accessing those services and for the workers who are providing that vital financial counselling around Australia.

The budget also includes funding for Foodbank Australia. Foodbank provides a remarkable service to Australians: for every dollar invested by the government they can produce $7 worth of food that they then provide directly to local charities and local non-government organisations to distribute to those people that need some support. We are funding $4 million over the four years—that is $1 million each year for four years to Foodbank Australia. This is in addition to the $2.24 million that we provided to them during the global financial crisis.

This funding is part of an overall package—a boost of $171.9 million over the four years—for emergency relief services, for financial counselling services and for innovative projects such as low-interest loans and matched savings schemes and some micro-finance type schemes. It comes after the government commitment of $15.7 million for emergency relief and financial counselling services in disaster-affected areas of Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales from December last year that we announced on 16 April. That money is to 31 December 2012. It is for 18 months at current levels in those flood-affected areas to ensure those vital services are there for those communities as they recover from those circumstances.

As I have said, this is a budget that charts a path back to surplus. It recognises that some Australians are doing it tough. We have seen that in a range of measures through the budget—whether it be supporting teen mums, and we have our trial site in Burnie, whether it be providing in my portfolio with Minister Macklin the emergency relief services and financial counselling services or whether it be providing support for people with disabilities to enter the workforce—to ensure those Australians who are doing it tough are not left behind. But this budget is also recognising that we are entering another mining boom and that we need to be prepared to be back in surplus and we need to have the skills and the workforce available and ready to take those jobs that Australia will have to support that boost to the economy that the mining boom will have to bring. All in all, I think the budget has been well received. Certainly there has been some criticism from those on the other side in relation to what we are doing to support families. This government has shown remarkable support for families since it came to office. We have increased the childcare rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. From 1 July, that can be paid fortnightly directly to the childcare provider, which helps with out-of-pocket expenses for mums and dads who are paying those bills. That is a very significant change from the 30 per cent provided by the opposition when they were in government, and when they first introduced that 30 per cent you of course had to wait for more than 12 months to receive the money.

So there have been remarkable improvements. We have seen Australia's first Paid Parental Leave scheme, which certainly helps Australian families, which was introduced from 1 January this year. We have seen an extension of the family tax benefit to 13- to 16-year-olds while they are in school. A whole range of measures have been implemented by this government to support Australian families. We understand that there are some issues with the cost of living and that is why we have addressed them so comprehensively over the last almost four years that we have been in government, because we do understand that there are people in our community doing it tough.

There have also been our historic pension reforms and our carer payment increases, so there have been a whole range of measures from this government to ensure that families receive the support they need and that Australians who have been doing it tough receive the support that they need. Overall, this is a good budget. It is a Labor budget and a budget that I am proud of.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the role of federal government tax reform and growth in the federal budget, especially since 2007. Over the past three decades we have seen successive governments expand the size and scope of the federal budget, I believe to the detriment of all Australians. This year's budget, with all its debt and deficit, continues a disturbing trend, with the centralisation and growth of the federal government.

At Federation, federal government spending made up a mere five per cent of GDP. At present it is close to 25 per cent, and this year total government spending, including state government spending, will surpass 30 per cent of Australian GDP. Let us look at the past decade, one which has seen the most pronounced growth in the federal government. Treasury figures show that the total dollar value of Australian government spending, including GST payments to the state and territory governments, has grown by 54 per cent since 2000-01—from $176.9 billion to $272.2 billion in 2007-08. Based on the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook 2007, spending grew further, to $314.3 billion by 2010-11—a total increase of 78 per cent since 2000. This equates to 5.9 per cent growth per annum over the past decade.

Since coming to power, Labor has exponentially grown its commitments to the electorate and employed an additional 24,000 public servants to administer them. Public Service employment has grown considerably faster than private sector employment, yet Ms Gillard and Mr Rudd both consider themselves to be fiscally conservative, persistently labelling themselves as such during the Kevin 07 election campaign. The growth in spending is particularly noteworthy, given that Australia has experienced 19 consecutive years of real GDP growth. Unemployment has fallen to 4.9 per cent, which is a 33-year low, and capital utilisation is at a record high of 84.2 per cent, demonstrating that we have a highly efficient private sector.

Why, then, is the government spending so much that at the moment it is borrowing $135 million per day, when times are so good? In this unprecedented period of economic growth the federal government is wasting our finest opportunity. A passion for equality has seen rampant welfare spending make vain the hope for freedom and prosperity. Of course, the freedom I refer to is freedom from taxation, freedom from social engineering and freedom from unfair wealth redistribution for all Australians. Moreover, our federal government sees as its role and responsibility to constantly intervene in our free society—all in the hope of levelling the playing field and creating equality. Under the guise of progressivism, social justice, equality and a fair go, Australia has advanced along the well-worn path of wealth redistribution and exploitative tax regimes more akin to the broken European welfare model.

Over the past month, I have heard the federal Treasurer, Wayne Swan, make statements such as, 'This government is responsible for creating jobs, creating wealth and spreading the prosperity,' and, 'This government will not waste the resources boom and we will ensure the wealth is spread.' When did it become okay for the government to claim credit for the prosperity of free enterprise? This is a false dichotomy. Any attempt to spread prosperity to every postcode—another Wayne Swan quote—still ends up with disadvantage existing in both Australia and around the world. After all, resources left to the private sector have a far bigger economic multiplier, and this multiplier creates greater economic efficiencies and further wealth creation. These efficiencies are imperative for Australia, a country currently operating at full capacity.

Let me be blunt: it is not progressive to grow the federal budget and it is not progressive to continually expand the size and scope of federal government. It is in fact regressive by any reasoned definition and by historical context. In Australia, we have yet to see a robust debate on exactly what the role of federal government is. And both parties have made the same mistakes. While in government, the coalition may have shown budget discipline—and this was commendable—and we still matched rising tax receipts with increased government spending as a percentage of GDP. We did not spend more than we received, but we did grow the budget—against our party platform. So what do we believe?

The Liberal Party believes:

'Lean government' is code for 'do not expand the size of federal government'. Most importantly, it says that business and individuals, not government, are the true creators of wealth and employment. In short, we believe in individual freedom and free enterprise. If you share in this belief, then ours is the party for you. As Liberals, we must return to the wise words of our party platform.

The world over, the GFC has forced governments to rethink their obligations to their citizens. Dubbed the PIGS of Europe, countries like Portugal, Ireland and Spain have been forced to downsize their governments with a gun to their heads. Questions relating to the role and size of government must be front and centre, both in our national debates and in our international discussions. And this not just be an academic exercise. It needs to be a continual review process, facilitated by measured political debate designed to keep the size of government in check. John F Kennedy famously said to his fellow Americans, 'Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.' It is not a new concept, but it requires our leaders to understand the role of government, and that role is not to give things away and redistribute the wealth of individuals simply to win votes.

I say to my constituents that we need to fundamentally rethink the social contract with our federal government. Nobody is suggesting that government does not have a role to play. Government can do a lot of good—but only if it settles for being the handmaiden to the free market. You can hardly call the Department of Climate Change, numerous multicultural councils, pink batts, overpriced school halls, set-top boxes and a whole raft of bureaucrats a wise use of taxpayer moneys. As political leaders we must acknowledge the inherent limitations of government and avoid ill-guided policies that empower governments but not people. As MPs we should all be asking ourselves a fundamental question: is this something that needs to be done by government or are we contributing to a wider problem of government growth and private enterprise subversion? President Bill Clinton said in his state of the union address in 1995 that the era of big government is over. Yet it seems today that big government is back with a vengeance, not just as a brute fact but as a vigorous ideology. But how do we bring about smaller government and empower our citizens and communities to make decisions and enact reforms at a local level? I think it can be done with a fundamental rethink about our tax regime and the way it is administered.

The Henry tax review, despite costing $10 million and taking 18 months to compile, is not worth the paper it is written on. We need fundamental tax reform. We need to ask the hard theoretical questions like: is income tax still necessary; should we use a flat income tax rate; and should it be administered by the federal government?

The income tax, first and foremost, has enabled government to expand far beyond its acceptable constitutional limits, regulating virtually every aspect of our lives to the point where it is not even contested that we live in an over-regulated society. It is a fact that is readily accepted and backed up by numerous studies and non-partisan bodies.

Those Australians who are ignorant of their history would not know that prior to 1942 income tax was administered by the states. With threats not too dissimilar to the ones currently being levelled at WA Premier Colin Barnett, the federal government coerced states into ceding their income taxing power to the Commonwealth. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer need to remember their place on this issue. We are a federation of independent sovereign states. WA is a sovereign state with the power to raise their royalties whenever they wish.

The income tax takes billions of dollars out of the legitimate private economy, with most Australians giving a large chunk of their income and other investment monies to the federal government. So could we proceed without an income tax in Australia? The Treasury will tell us we need one. After all, income tax addresses what would inevitably be a shrinking revenue base. However, this is what the Treasury is tasked to do. It is their job to ensure government spending can be met by reciprocal tax receipts. I believe it would be possible to reduce the income tax, compensated for by an increase in the GST and other consumption taxes. But we have never even considered this approach. We routinely hear that if we reduce a certain tax it will be a cost to government. But there is no such thing as cost to government; there is only cost to our people. Lower income taxes would achieve the outcome of a smaller federal government that would have constrained revenue and thus lower spending. A reduction in receipts from income tax would force MPs to ask the fundamental question when assessing new legislation, that being: is this something that really needs to be done by government or are we contributing to a wider problem of government growth and private enterprise subversion?

Income tax seems to be the universally accepted medium to fund government. But before income tax the states would raise money through tariffs, excise taxes and property taxes without ever touching a worker's pay packet. Income tax changes would result in the control of the purse strings in areas such as health and education being returned to the states, and that is a good thing. Remember it was not that long ago that the states provided 100 per cent of the funding for both health and education. A quick check of the executive power section in our Constitution shows that neither health nor education appear on the federal government's list of things to do. I believe the most important aspect of state control would be a return of our government to the people, governing themselves as was envisioned by our founding fathers.

A debate on spending levels is a good thing; however, we ought not to be debating whether we can save a million here or a million there but whether whole departments, agencies and programs should exist at all. Little cuts here and there do not address the big picture problem. Real root-and-branch tax reform is a big job but it must be done. The hot-button issue of the moment is cost-of-living pressures. Our constituents are telling both sides of politics about it and both sides are talking about it. It is a problem government cannot make better but can make infinitely worse. Every attempt at providing handouts, stimulus, subsidies and welfare programs merely inflates the economy and places greater economic pressure on all Australians. So let's try the opposite—why not have less government and less tax?

The good of the collective society has replaced the idea that the individual has a right to live unhindered by government interference. The expansion of government control over our lives is both a result and a cause of individuals assuming less responsibility for themselves. We need to get away from the idea that big government makes our lives better, that government can do anything other than redistribute and then waste our economic resources from the productive private sector and citizenry.

Australian government is growing faster than the private sector investment and debt financing is allowing our government to grow unchecked. I reiterate that large government and mass wealth redistribution has not paid off by delivering higher standards or better social conditions for Australia. Remember, every dollar paid to someone who does not work for it is a dollar worked for by someone who is not paid for it. Bigger government is not better. Let markets play a bigger role in delivering on the promises that politicians have already made and let a free people continue to live free.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Manager of Government Business yesterday accused the opposition of 'standing for nothing', during his reply in the suspension of standing orders. Coming from that side of politics I would say it is a bit rich. The coalition has a whole suite of policies which disprove that mistruth, just one of many offered as fact to the national parliament and the Australian people by this desperate focus-group-driven government.

Essentially the coalition stands for good government, living within our means and ensuring that the best interests of families and farmers are protected, preserved and promoted. Unfortunately, since the Independents gave an unelected Prime Minister an undeserving and unwarranted lift into the Lodge last September, those interests have not exactly been catered for. Families are facing cost-of-living pressures not felt since the 1980s when home loan interest rates, thanks to the Prime Minister we had to have and Mr Keating's recession we had to have, hovered around 18 per cent.

Farmers confront uncertainty as never before each and every day. Families and farmers, who have helped make this country great and who continue, despite adversity, to fight the good fight for the sake of the future and for the need to feed the nation, were the forgotten ones in this recent budget. But they were not the only ones. Small business, miners, the aged and university students were all overlooked or plain ignored by a budget the Treasurer introduced by declaring that it was 'a Labor budget'. He was right about that. It truly was a Labor budget—all spin and precious little win.

Very early in his budget speech the Treasurer referred to the Asian century. It was a term also used by the tourism minister at a recent launch. The Treasurer made the Asian century remark again just yesterday. The Asian century describes the belief held by some that, if certain demographic and economic trends continue, the 21st century will be dominated by Asian politics and culture, as the 20th century is often called 'the American century' and the 19th century is called 'the British century'. I say, 'To hell with that.' I would like to see the 21st century be the Australian century, and it is high time a few people on the other side of the House started thinking the same. There is no reason why Australia cannot be a world leader in so many respects. This government is about making us a world leader in some areas—unwanted areas, I would argue—such as national debt. This government is the first to roll out a fibre national broadband network across a continent of this size, which will cost somewhere in the order of $55 billion and cover about 90 per cent of our 22 million people but will not go to towns with fewer than 1,000 premises. Let me tell you, there are plenty of those towns within the Riverina electorate I represent. This is happening as the United States of America, the mainland of which is larger than ours, is implementing a wireless version which will cost just $18 billion but will cover 98 per cent of its 311 million people.

This government is pushing ahead—or should I say that this government is being led by the nose by the Greens?—to implement a price on carbon when our major trading partners are steering well clear of such a toxic tax. Once a carbon tax is in place at the behest of those unrepresentative and un-Australian Greens, we will become a world leader in exporting jobs offshore. Dare I say it has already started? A carbon tax will do nothing to cool the planet or lower sea levels—not one degree, not one millimetre—but the financial costs will, even as Ross Garnaut indicated in his review update today, be borne ultimately by Australian householders, Australian families.

There is no denying the word 'tough' went hand in hand with this year's budget. In a pre-budget speech the Treasurer said 'tough decisions are required' and 'this will be a tough budget'. The finance minister, in an interview in the lead-up to the budget used the word 'tough' more than 10 times, including four times in one answer. Headlines nationally screamed, 'Federal budget, will be tough,' and, 'That's not a tough budget; this is a tough budget.' Thank you, Labor, Australia got the message. However, what you failed to say is that this is such a tough budget that few will benefit from it. This budget is mostly disappointing because, despite all the pre-budget hype about this being a tough budget, this government has been tough on families—families who are working hard to meet the increasing cost of living. Many are struggling, and this budget seems to have ignored that fact.

We have seen, for the first time in eight years, a budget which has not provided a tax cut for families. For a party which says that they are all about the working family, where was their mention in this year's budget, or is it just tough bikkies? We are seeing support for families reduced at a time when the majority of Australians are facing tremendous cost-of-living pressures. Over the past 18 months we have seen the cost of living for everyday families rise by 4.9 per cent—well above the official increase in headline inflation of 3.3 per cent. For pensioners the increase was 4.1 per cent, for other welfare recipients it was 5.1 per cent and for self-funded retirees it was 3.4 per cent. Since this government came to power in 2007, electricity prices have increased some 51 per cent, grocery prices have gone up 14 per cent and education and health costs have gone up by more than 20 per cent. There have been seven interest rate rises in a row, yet this government continues to borrow money and add more taxes. That is what they are all about: tax, tax and more tax.

We have already seen this government waste billions of dollars on ill-fated, poorly-managed and poorly-thought-out green programs to deal with the deceiving global warming phenomenon. These include failures such as the pink batt insulation scheme and the dreaded Building the Education Revolution plan. And let us not forget Fuelwatch and GroceryWatch.

Ms Rishworth interjecting—

However, once again this ineptitude has been compounded by the Prime Minister's plans to introduce a carbon tax from 1 July 2012. This tax will hit every family, every household, every business and—make no mistake!—every farm in Australia. This government is wasteful and reckless and continues to treat the—

Ms Rishworth interjecting—

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

I remind the member that there is a method of intervention in this chamber if she would like to use it. We will do it through that method, not through yelling at each other.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government is wasteful and reckless and continues to treat the nation and its people with disdain and as fools, by counting new or higher taxes as savings, continuing to deliver policies which 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. It is a debt which will have to be repaid by a future coalition government. Before this budget parliament gave approval for the government to borrow $200 billion. After this budget the limit will be one quarter of a trillion dollars. That is what the Treasurer calls 'back in the black'. This is what the first harbinger of debt looks like to the nation's capital. There will be cuts over the forward estimates—that is, the next four years—of $2.133 million for the National Library; $1.762 million for the National Museum; $1.0999 million for the National Film and Sound Archives; $1.373 million to the National Gallery; and, wait for it, $1.632 million to the centrepiece of Australian democracy and what our soldiers, airmen and sailors have worked to fight for, the Australian War Memorial. How disgraceful.

Some of the alarming facts to come out of this budget are that the deficit has soared to $49.4 billion and that net government debt has climbed to $107 billion. That puts government borrowing at $135 million per day, every day. This budget also confirmed how out of touch the Labor government is with Australian families and small business. It fails the essential test: to ease the cost of living on Australians who face higher prices every day.

The new arrangements for taxing company cars will slug small business operators, tradesmen and farmers with increased costs at a time when they are already doing it tough. There is that word again. This measure will impact negatively on those Australians who rely on their motor vehicle to earn their income and who have to travel long distances, including tradespeople, salespeople, couriers, primary producers, small business people and farmers, many of whom live in my Riverina electorate. This new arrangement therefore weighs heavily on my constituents. Many people from my electorate live many kilometres away from their place of work, homes and shops, and travel—that tyranny of distance—is something they have to do.

With this latest Labor scheme, and the rumour is that petrol prices will increase by 6.5c a litre, this government is once again targeting already struggling people. As the member for Riverina, which houses the training base for the Army, defence is obviously a high priority for my electorate and my constituents. Yet the 2011-12 budget has shown that the Gillard Labor government is carelessly indifferent to the ongoing viability of the Australian defence industry sector and, importantly, the jobs it supports and creates.

According to the shadow minister for defence, the budget papers reveal that the total Defence Materiel Organisation resourcing for the procurement and sustainment of equipment reduced from $11.7 billion in 2009-10 to $10.1 billion in 2011-12 and would further decrease to $9.8 billion in 2012-13. In keeping with these figures, by the 2012-13 budget, the Defence Materiel Organisation will reduce its spending on purchasing equipment and sustainment of activities by almost $2 billion in less than four years. That is despite the government's huge list for more training and extra equipment.

The Prime Minister has announced that an extra 21,000 university students are receiving youth allowance. Once again, students in Wagga Wagga, Adelong, Batlow, Coolamon, Gundagai, Junee, Mangoplah and Tumut, considered to be inner regional areas, have missed out. Probably plenty in Labor electorates have too. For some reason they are considered not isolated and are not eligible for the independent youth allowance. Hopefully, the inquiry, which is currently being undertaken, will soon rectify that.

The Treasurer claimed his budget delivered to regional Australia like no other budget. Considering $500 million was cut from regional programs, it is a little hard to comprehend that regional Australia benefited.

Regional Australia has been deprived in this budget, not compensated. The agricultural industry, which regional Australia relies heavily on, was largely rejected. Not one cent of new money was given to roads and rail. And the farm sector, which drives more than $150 billion a year in economic production and which has a job support network of more than $1.6 million, has had its budget slashed by $33 million.

However, the upside of the budget, and the member opposite will be glad to hear me say this, was the health spending for some electorates—admittedly, mostly government or Labor-aligned rural Independent electorates. But I would like to acknowledge and pass on the gratitude of the people of the Riverina for the $55.1 million allocated to Wagga Wagga Base Hospital, as part of the Health and Hospitals Fund regional priority round in the budget.

I also acknowledge the $3.412 million given to the Calvary Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation and Detoxification Facility.

Ms Rishworth interjecting—

I am acknowledging it. These funding announcements will make a positive difference to the lives of Riverina people and those of the 250,000 people who the Wagga Wagga medical facility serves. Mind you, it was not before time. They have endured facilities which have at best been described as dilapidated for too many years to contemplate. I would also like to place on record the fact that the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital rebuild still requires additional funding—somewhere in the order of $130 million. I am hopeful that this or part thereof might be forthcoming in the next Health and Hospitals Fund regional round, with applications to open later this year. Finally, and whilst appreciating that many submissions for funding were received, I am hopeful that the bid by the City of Griffith in the Riverina for $11 million for its exciting hospital project in partnership with St Vincent's will be looked upon favourably in the next HHF round. Thank you.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on yet another Labor budget, which is of course leaving Australia with a legacy of debt and deficit. It is impossible to examine a budget and think about what is going on in Australia today without considering what the bottom line is. Numbers do not lie. The ruthless efficiencies of figures and numbers are things that should be at the forefront for any responsible government that seeks to deliver improvements in the quality of life of its citizens.

When I ask Australians, as I do in my electorate regularly, what the biggest single item of expenditure within the federal budget is, most say health. Defence is another popular answer, as is education. Lots of different answers are given. But it always dismays me to note and I always like to note in this place that the single biggest item of expenditure within the federal budget, what we spend money on here in Canberra, is of course welfare, the human services budget, at $121 billion this year. The largest item of federal expenditure is welfare. It is double the health budget. It is four times the defence budget. It is 2½ times the education budget.

That is always an important starting point for this discussion, because we have to find ways to reduce the welfare budget in Australia, to ensure that we are not a nation of rent seekers. I do not believe we are. I do not believe that is worthy of a country like Australia. Almost every single dollar of individual income taxation that is taken in by the federal government is sent back out in the form of welfare, and that is something I do not agree with. I think it is something future governments will have to change. There is no doubt that is not going to change under the current government. There is now a deficit of $49.4 billion this financial year—$50 billion. Today we refer to a billion like it is going out of fashion. Net debt will peak at $107 billion. That is the single largest amount of net debt accumulated by any Australian government. We pause often in the chamber for all kinds of solemn occasions and events, but I reckon it is worth a minute's silence to note that we have the highest level of net debt in Australian history, racked up in just four short years by this government. That is a legacy for all Australians.

When you think about debt and deficit, you have to think about the approach to take into government. And too often we see from a Labor government that is spiralling out of control in its spending habits not a carrot and stick approach—the carrot is all gone—but just a stick approach. And that is something I want to speak about further.

This government seems to think that taxation or penalties, the punitive powers of government, are the answer to every single problem that the government faces, every single challenge. That is why, since 2007, Labor has announced 14 new or increased taxes. There was most famously the alcopops tax, which was supposed to provide for an education campaign to reduce drinking rates. That was the justification for that increase in taxation, which of course has not happened. There was an increase in the luxury car tax; the mining tax; the flood levy; and the LPG excise. There was a new tax on Australians working overseas, making it more difficult for people coming from Australia to go and earn money and bring it back to Australia; a cut tothe amount Australians can put into superannuation tax-free; new restrictions on business losses claimable for tax purposes; and changes to the employee share scheme. Some were even abandoned. All of these were announced by Labor. There were taxes on cigarettes of up to 25 per cent; ethanol tax increases; tighter restrictions on tax claims for medical expenses; fringe benefits tax in the 2011-12 budget; and, of course, the biggest tax of all, a big new carbon tax. That is why I say that this government is addicted to punitive measures.

But there are other things in this budget which I think are very relevant for this House to consider. My approach, and the Liberal Party's approach, to government is built on incentives, not on saying that people are doing the wrong thing out there in the economy so we need to create all these disincentives. For them to earn, create, innovate, employ and do the things that we ask them to do, our approach says that there should be incentives built into government. That is a better way of doing government and that is why I think that, hidden within this budget, there are many measures which go to the heart of what is wrong with the federal Labor government's budgetary settings today—things like lowering the drawdown rate for self-funded retirees, making it more difficult for a person to retire under their own steam, to fund their own retirement without government assistance after they decide to stop working, and measures like halving the rate for upfront fees. When you go to university in Australia today you can pay your HECS fees upfront and get a 20 per cent discount. That is called an incentive. That is a decent incentive that will drive, and has driven, people to pay for their education upfront. Why would we want them to do that, Madam Acting Deputy Speaker? People paying their education expenses upfront save the government money not just now but in the long run. It gets capital into the education system. So halving the rate from 20 per cent to 10 per cent is a removal of an incentive that works, a removal of something that actually saves the government money in the long run, which is what incentives do. But all we see from a Labor government addicted to spending is taxation, punishment and settings that say, 'You are doing the wrong thing.' There is no ode to genuine incentives, which would of course make a big difference in the long run.

That is why I am so opposed to this government's approach to fiscal matters, not only because they cut $2 billion from the Defence budget. When you go to the Australian Labor Party's website it says the No. 1 priority of a national government should be the nation's defence. It acknowledges that its own government's first priority ought to be the defence of the nation. Yet in this budget we see a $2 billion reduction for expenses in defence without serious attention given to defence expenditure and the capital acquisition outlined in its own defence white paper, which calls for a rapid expansion of Australia's defence forces, including serious long-term capital acquisition of key items. None of that is funded. In fact we see a reduction in overall defence spending, without any consideration of how we will meet the challenges outlined in that white paper, how Australia will be able to defend itself in the long term and, more importantly, how we can fund it. That is yet another consequence of a Labor government addicted to debt and deficit.

Of course this government has omitted serious and substantial items from its budget. The carbon tax is one, notably—and they use the excuse that the GST was not in the budget. Fair enough! What would you say then, about the biggest single item of Commonwealth expenditure in this country's history, the National Broadband Network? Why would we not include that in the budget bottom line, considering that this will be the single most expensive item of government expenditure ever? I think there is an answer to that as well, and it does not bode well for this country's future that the government is taking such a reckless and casual approach to the nation's finances. The member for Bradfield made an eloquent appropriation speech about the NBN, and I think he made some very valid points. He is a serious man from the industry. What we have is the NBN Co., which started from the ground with no experience of construction, no record of achievement in a particular industry, now moving into a niche of the market and attempting to dominate it, funded by the taxpayer and other investors, allegedly—although that will remain to be seen. As the member for Bradfield eloquently outlined, the recipe there—when all of the industry is saying, 'don't do it this way; don't do the things you are doing the way you are doing them, because you will not make it work'—is one that will be a serious challenge for this country's future, especially with the current government running it.

The NBN is not in the budget. The difficult thing about the budget today is that, if you try to get a figure of how many billions the government is spending on the NBN, it is a moving feast. Is it $20 billion? Is it $26 billion? Is it $30 billion? Is the total cost of the NBN going to be $40 billion or $50 billion? It keeps going up. And, if you are trying to put a cable to 93 per cent of households in a country like Australia, I would suggest to you that your costs cannot be overestimated. They cannot be overestimated because the cost and expense of doing that when the industry is saying, 'Don't do that; you don't need to do that,' is obviously quite severe.

The carbon tax is also a very serious issue for this country's future. There are polls that suggest that many Australians support action on climate change: improving our environmental practices, dealing with badly polluting industries and indeed transitioning our economy into a cleaner and greener future. Those are instincts that I think are not incompatible with the advancement of human beings. In fact, the only answer to those questions is for us to advance—to use technology to our best ability to ensure our impact upon the planet is minimised.

However, for the government to suggest that the tax system will provide the answer to our environmental challenges is one dimensional. It is wrong and it is demonstrably not going to achieve the aims of the government to reduce the emission of carbon by individual households, by industry or by anybody else. The concept of a tax, once again, is very clear—it is a disincentive to do something. In this case, you are putting a tax into the economy to create a disincentive to emit carbon, to create carbon or to use carbon-intensive products and services.

But the government suggests to this place and to every member here—and it is really an insult to the intelligence of every member and the Australian people—that somehow the government will compensate individual households. We do not know how many, but of course the government suggests most of them and that everybody will be better off. Industry will be compensated and exempted, and indeed there are now whole states and territories seeking complete exemptions. If there is no disincentive to use carbon, which would be created by a carbon tax, for all of those households and all of those industries, how will our emissions reduce? The answer is always unclear; it is always vague. It is always, 'Oh, don't you know? Haven't you worked it out? We've got a snide sort of view of these things.'

Recently it was revealed that New South Wales and Queensland are today paying double the price for electricity that Victoria is—double. We have been paying double for some time now because of billions of dollars of underinvestment in the power grid and in the power network. So effectively what you have had in New South Wales and in Queensland is a price on carbon. Electricity generation is the No. 1 reason why Australians do emit high amounts of carbon. Everybody knows the challenge; governments know the challenge. But effectively in New South Wales and Queensland you have had in operation a carbon price—double the rate of electricity in Victoria.

Have we seen any alteration in behaviour or any reduction in emissions in those states where the electricity price is already double what it is in another state? It is fascinating. But, of course, it is not fascinating to some, who have obviously pointed out from the beginning that electricity generation is vital to every sector and every household in this economy. It will continue to be necessary, it will continue to be used and it will continue to be in demand. There has been, with a doubling of the price in two states, no difference in the rate of increase of carbon emissions in either of those states. So you already have an effective working model in this country today of how a carbon price might work, and it has already been revealed that it will not work on the principle that the government suggests.

In a state where electricity is half the price you would expect a doubling of the rate of increase—more people, more activity or more generation—and in a state where the price is doubled you would expect a reduction. Neither has occurred, showing that the demand for electricity is very stable across the nation and will remain stable—and no tax on electricity, electricity generators or those essential items of everyday living will produce a reduction in carbon emissions. That, of course, is the big furphy behind the government's carbon tax proposal. That, of course, goes to the heart of this matter.

At a time when in New South Wales we have power bills double the rate of other states and increases that are hurting families across Western Sydney and in my electorate of Mitchell—and I have the highest rate of families with dependent children in the entire country—it is a great concern that this government does not consider cost of living increases as a serious political issue in Australia today. We are told that households will pay and they will just absorb cost increases. Households are already absorbing cost increases in Australia today. They have absorbed substantial cost increases. In New South Wales you can go into any part of Sydney and speak about electricity prices and every household will tell you, every small business reliant on energy will tell you, that the cost of electricity is squeezing them in a way that is unsustainable. So for this government to suggest that somehow we will increase the cost of living through a carbon tax and that will just be borne and not have an environmental benefit is something that I regard as irresponsible.

In summary, Labor being addicted to debt and deficit has seen the highest level of net debt in our country's history. That will all have to be paid back. So will the NBN. So will the carbon tax and its consequences when Labor is finished in office. I think we need the restoration of a government that has the ability to read numbers, understand the bottom line and not take a punitive approach to government. (Time expired)

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Mitchell for his remarks. The remarks that I make tonight will be related to both his and my electorates. That is not necessarily an invitation to stay but he may be interested in what I have to say. This budget is a budget of betrayal. It is a budget of betrayal because it is saddling Australians with increased debt. That observation was made by the member for Mitchell but I want to reinforce it. This is a time in which if you are going to pay off debt you should be doing so. It is not a matter that you can put off, effectively. I know because I have been in government when we have had to pay off Labor's debt before. You have to early in a government—and this is relatively early in this government's term, if it is to go a full term—make a clear commitment to cut government expenditure and to live within your means as a government. Yet this government wants to have its cake and eat it too. It tells us that they have their own philosophical commitments. What that really means is that they have substantial areas of new expenditure that they wish to undertake. When you look at the tough decisions we were told were going to be included in this budget, where the savings were going to be made, you find that those savings were substantially used to pay for new commitments. That is why I call this a budget of betrayal, because future generations of Australians are being saddled with the largest debt that we have ever experienced nationally and they are going to have to pay it off.

But this is also a budget which has betrayed my electorate, the Central Coast, and I suspect the electorate of Mitchell. This is a budget in which the government again stripped away funds unjustifiably from north-western Sydney to fund what they say were their own priorities. When I turn to Budget Paper No. 2, I find on page 268 a statement, 'Nation building program, F3 to Sydney orbital, feasibility study deferral.' There it is outlined that $150 million appropriated by the government is to be deferred until 2015-16, outside of the future budget appropriations. That will reduce expenses by $150 million, so the government tells us, and savings from this measure will be redirected to other government priorities. Unless you know the history of this it probably does not mean a great deal to you. But I have to say that this is very clearly a betrayal. Last year, I asked the government in this chamber during the estimates debates on the transport and infrastructure portfolio what the government intended to do in relation to the F3-M2 link. I said:

I note that last year $150 million was appropriated for design work in relation to that road to ensure that it would be, presumably at some point in time, shovel ready in relation to the procedures that may enable a project to be considered for funding.

I asked the minister whether those funds had been spent. Minister Albanese was gracious enough to be present and to respond he said:

Secondly, in terms of the questions from the member for Berowra, I can confirm to the member that we have allocated $150 million. It is in the Nation Building Program. The memorandum of understanding has been signed with the state government and we remain committed to that funding.

So when I use the term 'betrayal' I use it very advisedly, because those funds were there and the minister last year gave a commitment that those funds would remain. And yet has he has the audacity to defend a decision—a base political decision, I might say—to strip that money away from that project in order to assist in buying off one of the Independents with the expansion of the Pacific Highway. I was perhaps a little indecent to the Speaker by interjecting in the other chamber when I heard of that matter. When the member for Lyne was raising the issue of the Pacific Highway, I asked why he was worried, as nobody would get there because they could not get past Pennant Hills Road. And there is a degree of truth in that.

I want to explain the history of what has happened in relation to this matter. The Labor Party have had their fingerprints on this for a very long period of time and they play one government off against the other—the state Labor government and the federal government—ensuring that nothing is done. If Howard was trying to do it in Canberra, the state government would not cooperate. Even when we had the $150 million there, the government here said, 'There has to be a matching grant of $30 million from the state government.' Do you think that the state Labor government was going to cough up that $30 million? Of course they did not. Now there is a government that is ready to assist—and I might say that I have here a statement from the Hon. Duncan Gay MLC, Minister for Roads and Ports, commenting on this matter. He made the point that the New South Wales government would have welcomed the $150 million expenditure on the design of the missing link.

I want to talk about the missing link, because I do not think that a lot of people understand its importance to the national infrastructure of Australia. The fact is that across Sydney, excluding national road No. 1, which is the Hume Highway and then the Pacific Highway and presumably includes the Harbour Bridge, there are four major arteries that channel all their traffic onto Pennant Hills Road and then off onto a freeway called the F3. They include Silverwater Road, Woodville Road, the Cumberland Highway and now the M7, the major orbital road to take traffic around Sydney. And all of them are consolidated at one point on what the federal government regards as a state road. There are three lanes in each direction dissected with major cross roads and traffic lights every half a kilometre or so. For some eight or nine kilometres, you have major interstate traffic mixed with suburban traffic in the most dangerous circumstances imaginable. There are four highways consolidated onto one state road, of six roads. You would not do it anywhere else in the country. It is described as a missing link. Why is it a missing link? Because the cost of building infrastructure across my electorate is comparatively higher than elsewhere because of the hills, the natural charm of the area and the urban development that has occurred around it. Of course it is going to involve major infrastructure. It was always recognised that that was the case. I have to say that, as a minister in the Howard government who was sitting around the cabinet table when the state government in New South Wales, for the political purpose of shoring up support in the western suburbs of Sydney, wanted an M7 freeway that ended on the M2, linked the Hume Highway and skirted around Liverpool, Fairfield and all of these places—very good for the Labor Party, with the minister for roads, Carl Scully, representing Fairfield—I said to myself, 'They are going to put all this traffic onto the M2 and then onto Pennant Hills Road and what is to happen next?'

The state government bought off the federal government by saying, 'We will have a study.' They got an organisation called SKN to do that study. They looked at all of the options and said it was absolutely essential to have a tunnel built between Beecroft and Wahroonga, the M2 to the F3, duplicating and following the alignment of the Pennant Hills Road. We have had some inquiries that have said that is the right solution. Whether it is or it is not, the work has to be done to prepare designs to ensure that that road would be, in the parlance of all of these people who deal with the funding of these issues, shovel ready. The government has made it very clear through Infrastructure Australia and its own intentions that there will be no money to deal with Pennant Hills Road, the F3-M2 link, unless the project is shovel ready and able to be given priority for funding as against other proposals. That is why this measure is so much of a betrayal. It will never get to first base. There is no money to undertake the design work that is necessary to ensure that this matter can be dealt with on its merits.

There is no justification for this decision and I have to say to this government, 'You may have been too smart by half.' Yes, it impacts upon my electorate—and I doubt that the Labor Party will ever win the electorate of Berowra—but I tell you there are some other electorates that are more impacted by this than even mine. The member for Robertson knows that her future is very much dependent upon her constituents being able to access Sydney safely. She knows, as I know, when you are mixing those transport vehicles, the B-doubles and the like, with mums and their bubs going to child care and to school each day, that this is a disaster waiting to happen. We saw a vehicle in flames last week on the F3. They had to close the F3 because it was too dangerous. They were able to divert the traffic to the Old Pacific Highway. I can tell you on the Pennant Hills route there is no old Pacific Highway. There is no alternative route, yet accidents of this sort are very likely to happen. I go to bed each night anxious as to what might happen to my constituents and others in the circumstances that we have been left with here in the electorate of Berowra. If you get the impression that I am worked up about this matter, you would be right. I think it is a betrayal. I will come into the estimates in this place and I will confront Minister Albanese again about his statement because he made it very clear when he was in this place that they had allocated $150 million. It was in the Nation Building Program. There was a memorandum of understanding with a Labor state government and we remain committed to that funding.

Here in this budget this government has walked away from it. I asked the other day in the House whether the Treasurer was reconsidering this matter. I have to say, the member for Robertson has been so concerned about it there have been suggestions that it might be looked at again. She peddles that around the electorate. The Treasurer made it clear in his answer to that question that the government had no intention of revisiting the budget in relation to this matter. I think that is regrettable. The government ought to be big enough to own up to the fact that it made a major mistake, to put the funding back and to apologise for the betrayal that took place in this budget. (Time expired)

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

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-2012, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2011-2012 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2011-12, which implement the Gillard government's budget for this year. I note the passionate comments of the member for Berowra, who spoke just before me.

In my address this evening I want to comment on the budget's impact on residents in my electorate and on families and small business particularly. These make up an important part of most electorates but particularly electorates like mine, which comprise a huge number of middle-income families and small businesses. Overall this budget is an attack on those two groups at a time when families are doing it particularly tough with cost-of-living pressures and at a time when small businesses are also particularly doing it tough with rising interest rates, less flexible industrial relations regimes and difficulty in accessing finance.

Let me make some macro comments about this budget. In the government's own words, this is a 'very Labor budget'. It sure is. It has growing debt. There is a growing deficit, slowing jobs growth and more wasteful spending. They called this a tough budget but they increased spending. They talk about surpluses but they deliver deficits. They talk about the need to repay the debt but they lift borrowings to record levels.

Let us look at some of the numbers in the budget. This year's deficit will be $50 billion, and that is a blow-out of $10 billion even since the forecast from last November. Net debt will now peak at $107 billion and will stay above the $100 billion mark, according to the forward estimates, for at least the next four years. The government continues to borrow $135 million per day and the interest payments on Labor's debt will be a staggering $7 billion per year.

The government is forever telling us that the debt is not that high; we should not have to worry about it; it is minor compared to those of Greece and Spain and some of these other countries. But just let us consider for a moment the interest repayments alone: $7 billion per year. That would build seven Rowville rail links. We have been campaigning in my electorate to get a rail link out to Rowville to ease congestion and to link up Australia's largest university, Monash University, for some time now. A feasibility study was just announced last Sunday and is finally underway. The $7 billion interest alone would build seven Rowville rail links. One year's interest payments of $7 billion would complete the last section of the Melbourne ring road, which needs to be done and which causes so much congestion in outer eastern Melbourne. About $7 billion would also complete the connection of the Eastern Freeway to the Tullamarine Freeway, again a vital piece of infrastructure which everybody accepts needs to be done and would alleviate the bottleneck at Hoddle Street, where the Eastern Freeway just comes to a full stop. Of course this one also greatly affects residents of my electorate who have to travel into the city. The amount of $7 billion would also build seven tertiary hospitals. This is a huge amount of money which is now just disappearing every year—$7 billion year on year—just to pay the interest repayments on Labor's debt. The debt is also a concern because it puts upward pressure on interest rates, and in my electorate, which has one of the highest proportions of home ownership in the country, that is a very great concern. The debt alone, as Mr Ruddock pointed out, is left as a legacy for our children, so they will have to pay it off in due course.

Why are we left with such debt? How did we get into such a position given that when the Labor government was elected in 2007 they had $60 billion in the bank and they had $20 billion of surplus? What happened was their spending was essentially out of control and was often on wasteful activities which have left no legacy for future generations. We have seen the greatest growth in government spending since Whitlam.

What do we have to show for it? Do they have those major infrastructure projects that I was referring to previously? No, we do not. What we do have is cheques of $900 which were issued; we have school halls that were built for double the price of what they could have been built for; we have blow-outs in border protection; and of course we have hundreds of thousands of roofs which were fitted with pink batts and then had the pink batts taken out. Literally billions of dollars have been wasted over the course of the last few years of the Rudd and Gillard governments, and this budget continues to spend and spend and spend more—often on wasteful activities.

Let me move now to the impact which the budget will have on families and particularly the families in my electorate of Aston in eastern Melbourne. As I said at the outset, my electorate is a family electorate basically made up of middle-income, everyday families working hard, frequently with two parents working and kids who attend school, go to church and do all the other activities which families do. Like many families across the country they are doing it tough with cost of living pressures.

I hear this every single day that I am in the community. We know this because since December 2007 electricity prices have gone up 51 per cent; gas prices have gone up 30 per cent; water has gone up 46 per cent; and education costs have gone up 24 per cent. But instead of taking measures to try to ease the cost of living pressures in this budget, the government has actually added to them by slashing the support for families. The government's budget will freeze the indexation of family tax benefit part A and the government is also going to fix the income threshold limit for family tax benefit part B. The first measure will affect over 10,900 families in my electorate, and families with incomes as low as $45,000 will be affected by that, while the second measure will affect a further 7,900 families in my electorate.

Families will not just be losing a few dollars from these particular measures. Quite often they will lose considerable money each year. For example, a family with one parent earning $65,000 and one earning $40,000 will lose $853.50 a year in 2012-13 if they have a couple of kids under 13, and they will lose $907 a year if they have three kids under 13. This is a standard family in my electorate. One parent, who might be a teacher or a junior police officer, is earning $65,000 and the other parent is earning $40,000, and they might be a typical part-time worker who contributes to the family in the other half of his or her time. That is a very significant hit on their family budget at a time when they are already stretched to capacity.

Families will also be hit through the changes to the private health insurance rebate scheme in this budget. That will affect directly not only those people who will be above the new income threshold; it will have flow-on effects to all other families who take out private health insurance, because premiums will inevitably have to go up if people drop out of private health insurance.

What is not included in this budget but should have been included is the carbon tax, which will have a dramatic additional impact on cost-of-living pressures. It is the great betrayal of this government that went to the last election promising that there would be no carbon tax under a government that Julia Gillard leads, and of course it has lied to the Australian public and is planning on introducing that. It will have a dramatic effect also on cost-of-living pressures on families across Australia, including in my electorate.

I want to move to small business. Again, this budget is a direct hit on what is the engine room of our economy, and certainly the backbone of the economy in Aston. The budget has three strikes on small businesses. The first, as you may well be aware, is the scrapping of the entrepreneurs tax offset. This was a relatively small tax benefit for micro-businesses with an income of less than $75,000. The 400,000 small businesses across Australia that fit that category will lose up to $2,500 due to this adjustment, and 1,500 small businesses in my electorate will be affected as a result of it. The second hit was the changes to the fringe benefits tax on motor vehicles. We know that, under the new regime, if a person has to drive more than about 25,000 kilometres they will be worse off under this measure. The third hit is the measure that imposes burdensome reporting requirements on those in the construction industry, for no apparent reason. Yes, there is a small new benefit in terms of businesses being able to write off $5,000 on a new work vehicle, but that is no recompense for those other measures I have mentioned.

Why has the government made those attacks on small business? It is basically because the unions do not like small businesses and they particularly do not like independent contractors. If you look at a quote from Ken Phillips, the executive director of the Independent Contractors of Australia, he made the comment that in all his time in professional life he has 'never seen such a blatant and intentional attack on the self-employed as there is in this budget'. 'It reflects the changed dynamic within the federal government,' he said. I think he sums it up very well.

In my remaining couple of minutes let me say at least a couple of positives about the budget.

Mr Ruddock interjecting—

There were two or three, Mr Ruddock. I was pleased that more money was put into mental health. I have been running a campaign in my electorate to get more investment in mental health in the outer east of Melbourne, including a headspace site. Unfortunately, it was not the $2.2 billion that the government said it was investing. It was only $583 million over the four-year forward estimates and, of course, it did come at the cost of scrapping the Better Access Initiative. But, overall, more money for mental health is a good thing and I am hoping that some of that money will come to the outer east of Melbourne.

I also support the government's decision to extend the National School Chaplaincy Program, which is an excellent initiative that Julie Bishop introduced when she was the Minister for Education, Science and Training. It is a very popular program in my electorate and the government in this budget has committed to a further three years for it.

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No guarantee in the future, then?

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

There is no guarantee after those three years but it has committed to it. I also support the additional funds for students with disabilities and I support the Welfare to Work measures in the budget. These are all good things. By and large they are all things which the coalition has led. It led with the School Chaplaincy Program, it led in the debate on students with disabilities, it has certainly led in the debate on mental health issues and it has led in the debate on the Welfare to Work measures. Overall, however, this is a disappointing budget for families and for small businesses in my electorate and it continues the Labor tradition—more debt, more spend, more taxes and more waste.

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak tonight on the appropriation bills currently before the parliament. Australia is in a period of relative economic strength with the rise of our close neighbours lifting our terms of trade to record highs. Most analysts predict the hunger for our mineral resources is likely to continue to drive our economic prosperity into the future, with Australia's real GDP growth forecast to reach four per cent in 2011-12.

The strength of the Western Australian economy is the bedrock of our growing relationship with the emerging economic powerhouses of Asia. Western Australia not only accounts for 70 per cent of Australia's total exports to China; it attracts 80 per cent of Chinese investment into our country. All up, Western Australia accounts for 44 per cent of our country's exports—a figure greater than the total combined exports of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. Yet, despite all this, the people of Western Australia find themselves under regular attack from the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the rest of this hapless Labor government. I suspect that it may well be a clumsy attempt at a diversion, a distraction, from the state of this budget.

This government inherited the strongest set of books of any incoming government in our history with zero government debt, a budget surplus of more than $20 billion and tens of billions of dollars in savings. In four short but catastrophic years this Labor government has effectively destroyed the budget bottom line with billions upon billions wasted on cash splashes, overpriced school halls, a disastrous Home Insulation Scheme, bungled Green Loan schemes and much, much more. There is now more than $100 billion in government debt and a budget deficit of almost $50 billion, and most of the savings have been frittered away on blatant pork-barrelling. In four budgets this Treasurer has delivered cumulative deficits of $150 billion.

Worse still, in the dead of budget night after the Treasurer had completed his budget presentation, when the spotlight was off, the cameras had moved on and the media was focused on the budget speech, the Assistant Treasurer scuttled into the House and introduced a bill to increase the government's borrowing limit, to increase the debt ceiling by a further $50 billion to $250 billion. The government clearly intends to spend even more taxpayers' money while telling the public it was giving up on its wasteful ways. This sly and cynical act reveals the level of embarrassment felt by this government about its shameful record. The attack on Western Australia is a mere diversion.

Many of my colleagues have already spoken at length, including the member for Aston just now, about the financial incompetence of this Labor government. It has an unrelenting determination to relieve the Whitlam government of its well-deserved reputation as the worst government in Australia's history, until now. The Gillard government has come along and is proving every day to be more reckless than even the Whitlam government.

I will focus on a number of aspects in the foreign affairs portfolio. In his media release following the announcement of the budget Foreign Minister Rudd highlighted the government's commitment to delivering consular services for Australians abroad. However, what the government has presented as a one-off increase to consular assistance hides what is really going on. According to Appropriation Bill No. 1 government funding for outcome 2, which provides assistance for the protection and welfare of Australians abroad, will decrease by $23.8 million in 2011-12. This cut comes at a time of immense insecurity throughout the world. We have witnessed the turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa, with violence in many of the countries, including Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, as old regimes have sought to cling desperately to power.

The budget cuts also come at a time when natural disasters have shattered parts of our region. Each of these events has placed immense strain on Australia's consular officials, who provide vital assistance to Australians, some of whom find themselves in great distress and need while caught up in circumstances overseas. The government's decision to cut $23.8 million stands in stark contrast to the coalition policy, which we took to the last election. It was a promise to strengthen Australia's overseas consular services by reversing previous cuts introduced by the then Rudd government. The Gillard government's cuts are short-sighted and ill conceived and indicate a lack of understanding on the part of the government of the increased number of Australians travelling overseas and the demands on our consular posts.

Of considerable interest is the fact that according to the budget papers the government has committed a further $10.5 million to the final phase of its campaign for a temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council for 2013-14. Details obtained under freedom of information show that back in 2002 the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade estimated the cost of running a campaign to win a temporary seat to be $55 million. The government now wants us to believe that, almost a decade later, it will cost only a fraction of that. It was $55 million in 2002 and that is a far cry from the $13 million over three years that the government has previously committed. Senate estimates will seek to uncover the true cost, as massive resources are being directed to this campaign, but under the guise of general DFAT expenditure.

Importantly, the freedom of information documents also revealed that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade considered a bid for a temporary seat on the security council in 2018 to be the preferred option on the grounds that a successful campaign would require long-term strategic thinking, which is not something that this government is renowned for. Having received this advice upon coming into office as the then Prime Minister, the advice was promptly ignored by Minister Rudd. The year 2018 would be beyond Mr Rudd's likely hold on the top job, so he launched into the current bid for a seat in 2013. I make it clear that I am not opposed in principle to Australia holding a temporary, two-year seat on the security council, but I am concerned that millions of dollars could be wasted on what will turn out to be Rudd's folly. The official advice was to aim for 2018. Then Prime Minister Rudd went against that advice and took the least preferred option. According to reports, the now foreign minister's cabinet colleagues would also prefer him to postpone the bid to 2018 but, as the media report noted:

For the foreign minister to delay the bid would be unthinkable and sure to put him offside.

Given the precarious nature of the current parliament and the Prime Minister's desperation to cling to power, we can be sure that the foreign minister's cabinet colleagues will not be pushing back too hard on this issue. They would not want to incur the wrath of the foreign minister.

DFAT noted in further documents, which were obtained under freedom of information, the need to:

… prosecute an increasingly active, dynamic and well resourced campaign, including ministerial and prime ministerial attendance at multilateral meetings and an active program of visits by special envoy. Whole of government efforts to address bilateral issues remain essential.

That sounds pretty expensive to me. DFAT also suggests 'a high-level travel plan for the foreign minister'. Well, there is absolutely no doubt that the foreign minister's high-level travel plan is underway.

But this international crusade for votes recently led one of the two other contenders, Luxembourg, a nation with no major strategic interests in the Pacific, to attend a meeting of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, involving Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. There can be no doubt of the motives behind its attendance. That Luxembourg considers the votes of these countries in play is a sad indictment of the state of the Gillard government's relationship with our closest neighbours. When Australia's standing in the region falters, so too does our influence with our close friends and allies in the United States and Europe. A temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council in 2013 will not automatically enhance Australia's standing nor recover the lost momentum amongst our close neighbours. It will not help to restore democracy in Fiji, or slow the spread of HIV-AIDS in Papua New Guinea or strengthen democratic institutions in East Timor. It was also interesting to note in the DFAT budget statement the government's continued intention to 'promote and actively support international pressure on Fiji's military regime to return the country to democracy and the rule of law'. It is obvious to everyone but current members of the government that the present strategy is not working. The government's intransigence with progressing a return to democracy in Fiji will potentially drive a wedge between Australia and our closest allies, most of whom have now conceded that a new approach is needed.

According to the United States Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Kurt Campbell, the United States is planning to:

… seek more direct engagement with Prime Minister Bainimarama to encourage his government to take steps to restore democracy and freedom that would allow movement towards normalisation of Fiji's relations with other countries in the region.

New Zealand has also expressed concern and wants to find a way out of the diplomatic deadlock with Fiji. According to foreign minister Murray McCully, New Zealand needs to 'be prepared to engage and to try and find constructive solutions'. Japan, too, has stressed the importance of continuous dialogue with Fiji. It seems that it is only diplomatic courtesy that has stopped these countries from speaking out more firmly on this issue, saving the Gillard government from an embarrassing retreat. Or, as the CEO of Civil Liberties Australia testified before the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, 'There is no clear mission or vision where we are going with Fiji, yet we are going to continue doing whatever it is we are doing.'

Rather than encourage reform, all the government strategy has done is drive Fiji further into the arms of others. China's growing presence in the Pacific has been noted by many over the past five years and more recently by the United States, with Secretary Clinton specifically expressing concern at China's close ties with Commodore Bainimarama. According to the Lowy Institute, China's interests in Fiji:

... at the expense of Australian influence as the Fiji government convinces itself it does not need Australia while it has a friend in China.

I am aware that Commodore Bainimarama may well seek to exploit any change and Australia should not be panicked into a response. And that is a big call for a government that is in constant panic mode.

The drift that has beset Australia's foreign policy in the Pacific was acknowledged by the government's own former Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs Duncan Kerr. As revealed in a US diplomatic cable, Kerr reportedly sought out the United States for advice as Australia was 'close to exhausting its diplomatic options on Fiji to little apparent effect'. That the then parliamentary secretary was forced to go to the United States for leadership on this issue reflects poorly on Australia. As foreign editor Greg Sheridan wrote in the Australian in November 2009, 'The Rudd government has mishandled the Fiji situation from the start.' He referred to the fact that Australian no longer had a high commissioner in Fiji and Fiji no longer had one in Australia. 'Congratulations, Canberra: a brilliant result,' he wrote, heavy with sarcasm.

The coalition believes that it is time for the Australian government to review its stance on Fiji. I stated in my National Press Club address prior to the last election that the coalition would open negotiations with Commodore Bainimarama in order to promote electoral reform. I believe that this is important if elections are to be held by 2014 at the very latest and for there to be a return to democracy and the rule of law in Fiji.

I have also voiced my concerns that the Gillard government has taken its eye off the Pacific region and particularly the development needs in that area. Australia's foreign policy must focus primarily on our immediate region. While there are many pressing issues throughout the world, it is the area in which Australia has the most influence and can do the most good. As the portfolio budget statement reveals, Australia's foreign policy under the present government is a one-man show. This Prime Minister appears both unable and unwilling to stamp her authority on this crucial portfolio. Given the Prime Minister's disastrous attempts to shape the direction of Australia's important relationships in the region—and I note particularly the disastrous engagement with East Timor over the East Timor processing centre—this Prime Minister should no be permitted to shape the direction of Australia's relationships.

The other significant issue in the budget papers related to the increase in Australia's foreign aid and overseas development assistance budget. Prior to the last election during my National Press Club address I indicated that, given the size and significance of our foreign aid budget, the coalition would appoint a minister for international development to work with the Minister for Foreign Affairs to oversee our aid budget and have responsibility for AusAID and the delivery of aid through non-government channels. I called for an inquiry into our aid budget because the Australian National Audit Office had raised serious concerns about AusAID's ability to effectively manage the large increases in aid required to meet the 0.5 per cent of GNI target. There have been deep criticisms of AusAID's overreliance on technical assistance, questionable priorities, waste and mismanagement. I am pleased that the government has adopted our policy and a review has been held. I understand that the government has a report into aid and the coalition will respond to the recommendations from that report when it is made public, including in relation to the priorities identified in the budget papers. The fact is that Australia must investigate the allegations of waste and mismanagement and provide clear direction as to how we can increase effectiveness and transparency in our aid delivery.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to start this discussion of the appropriation bills with an assessment of the government's general fiscal performance and to establish a pattern of fiscal waste and mismanagement not just over four years but over the last nine Labor budgets. Those non-Labor budgets should be remembered by their numbers. Heading back to the five last Keating government budgets, what we see are deficits of $12 billion, $18 billion, $18 billion, $14 billion and $11 billion. Then we see a period of 12 Howard-Costello budgets, of which 10 were surpluses. The first cut the deficit in half and then there was only one deficit of 0.1 per cent for one year during the middle of the tech wreck and the year of the September 11 tragedy, which had such a profound impact on global financial markets. So there were 10 out of 12 surpluses and five consecutive Labor deficits, all greater than 1.5 per cent, and now all of a sudden the moment government changes—and of course there are circumstances but there were always circumstances that governments must face—what we see are four further consecutive Labor governments of $27 billion, $54 billion, $49 billion and then this coming year $22 billion.

Let me run over those figures again because they are profound. What we have first is nine consecutive deficits—$12 million, $18 billion, $18 billion, $14 billion and $11 billion. And then under this government they were $27 million, $54 billion, $49 billion and $22 million—in percentage terms, three per cent, four per cent, -3.9 per cent, 2.8 per cent, 2.1 per cent. Under the Rudd and then Gillard governments there were deficits of 2.2 per cent, 4.3 per cent, 3.6 per cent and 1.5 per cent—nine consecutive massive budget deficits, of over 1.5 per cent. The smallest of those deficits is 1.5 per cent. Events are one thing but a pathology of deficits over nine consecutive budgets must surely cause the House and all members and all members of the public who are aware of this to stop and think: how can it be that one party has nine consecutive budget deficits over two different periods of government and right there in the middle, as soon as another party comes in, the deficits stop and we get 10 out of 12 surpluses, and then as soon as that party leaves the deficits start again? It is not a story of bad luck; it is a story of pathologies, of type, of intent. No matter what the circumstance, that circumstance will be used by the Liberal and National parties to seek to exercise constraint over public spending. No matter what the circumstance, that circumstance will be used by the Australian Labor Party when in power to seek to justify massive expenditure of the public purse. I say this having sat down, analysed the budget figures and seen the extraordinary difference between the almost $100 billion of savings made simply through the cash accounts, let alone the capital, during the course of the Howard and Costello era and the over $200 billion of deficit over a lesser period of time under the Keating, Rudd and Gillard governments—three consecutive governments, nine consecutive deficits: a pathology of expenditure.

Let me give examples. In my own portfolio, the waste and mismanagement under the Home Insulation Program continues to this day. Only last week I received news of an apartment block in Sydney where 86 apartments had been insulated and nobody had sought to check whether this was in any way fraudulent or inappropriate. Given that it was a multistorey apartment building and every one of the apartments—in fact, there were actually only 85 apartments in this Potts Point apartment building, so there was one extra—was fitted out, given that multistorey apartment buildings do not have cavities between the floors and do not need home insulation between the floors, and given that not one actually received home insulation, it could have been prudent if one minister at one time sought to check whether or not this was an appropriate insulation installation job. There was nobody watching.

The result is that we have seen the best part of $2½ billion allocated and $1½ billion spent on extraordinary levels of dodgy, dangerous and inappropriate jobs. The consequence was that, of those 150,000 homes tested under the general Home Insulation Safety Program, 24 per cent were found to have been defective insulation jobs. That is a figure which is extraordinary. It is allied with 200 house fires and 1,500 potentially deadly electrified roofs, and still the government refuses to check the remaining one million homes. In light of last week's news that the fraud continues to remain undiscovered and that dodgy jobs continue to surface, it is time for the government to commit to 50,000 additional random inspections.

The government's justification is, 'We looked at the houses with the highest likelihood of having dodgy jobs.' I do not disagree with that prioritisation of inspections. I do disagree with the fact that, having discovered a 24 per cent failure rate in the first 150,000 homes inspected, nothing is being done for the remaining one million homes. How can it be that a million homes are suddenly assumed to be at an acceptable level of defect when the first 150,000 produced a 24 per cent failure rate? Let us say the rate is lower. Let us say it is only 15 per cent; that is 150,000 defective houses. Let us say it is only 10 per cent; that is 100,000. Let us say it is a relatively paltry five per cent, compared with the extraordinary 24 per cent failure rate; that is 50,000 homes that have either dangerous or substandard insulation. That is the best scenario the government can hope for and that problem is not being addressed. That is why we have called for the government to act. They have money in the kitty. Well over $400 million was set aside to help fix the roofs as part of this year's budget, a continuing figure of over $300 million to the end of this financial year and another $111 million for the next financial year. There is ample scope for the government to conduct these inspections. So tonight I call upon the Prime Minister to intervene where the Minister for Climate Change has refused to act and guarantee that there will be 50,000 random inspections from the remaining one million homes, for reasons of public safety, for reasons of prudence and to ensure that additional cases of fraud are investigated, detected and prosecuted.

That is an example of the waste that has gone into nine consecutive ALP deficits. That is a figure our side perhaps does not raise often enough, because this issue of nine deficits, over $200 billion of accumulated debt, as opposed to 12 budgets and 10 surpluses during the course of the Howard and Costello government is a profound pathology of difference between the two parties.

That is dealing with those items that are on budget. There are of course those items that are off budget. We are about to witness through the NBN the perversion of a good purpose to a bad end. Whether it is $36 billion or $50 billion, ultimately a massive amount of money will be expended for no good purpose. The world is moving to a wireless world. Blackberries, iPhones and tablets—whatever form they are—are the communications form of the future. And we are building a fixed line system, which will be bypassed, which is unnecessary and which will in many ways prove to be stranded over time. And we will do it at a massively inflated cost and in a way that will distort national resources. That debt, as with all other debts, will have to be repaid by our children and our grandchildren. The definition of a responsible generation is one that pays down the debt for their children. The definition of an irresponsible generation is one that leaves the debt and leaves the bill for their children and grandchildren. What we are seeing from this government is the practice, the pathology and the nature of an irresponsible government.

That brings me to the last element I wish to raise briefly in terms of off budget items: the carbon tax. Of course the carbon tax was not in the budget—although $14.7 million for advertising was. The total budgetary impact is likely to be between $30 billion and $40 billion over the forward estimates. That is a profound figure that was excluded and which we will ultimately see. My challenge to the Treasurer this evening is to guarantee budget neutrality for each of the years that will see the carbon tax introduced. In the first financial year, in the second financial year and in the third financial year, which go to the three out years of the forward estimates, we expect the government to make a full statement as to whether or not it is budget neutral. If it is not, it will be a tax grab or it will be an assault on the surplus.

It is very clear that the government is beginning to walk away from the language of budget neutrality. They are now saying 'over the cycle'. The cycle was defined during Senate estimates as 'the seven- or eight-year period heading towards 2020'. What we see is that the express, clear and absolute pledge of budget neutrality is beginning to collapse under any close inspection. It is about being budget neutral in each of the years. That is what they implied; that is what they set out at the beginning.

In that context, let me make one other point. Professor Garnaut today—and we may have our disagreements but I have always been publicly respectful—let the cat out of the bag. Professor Garnaut made it absolutely clear that petrol will be taxed and that the price of petrol will increase every year as a consequence of the government's carbon tax. The test for the Prime Minister is to say whether she will rule out a new tax on petrol. It is time for the Prime Minister to rule out a new tax on petrol. The cost of living is hurting almost every Australian family. Maybe it is not hurting a North Shore movie star so much—that is a hypothetical—but the cost of living is hurting almost every Australian family. The Prime Minister's plan—her proposal, her objective—is to increase the cost of electricity, petrol and gas. The test of the Prime Minister this week is to rule out, once and for all, a permanent increase in petrol excise which, even if it did not begin in the first year, as Professor Garnaut has said, will continue after year one, every year ad infinitum. Each year new weight will be put on the price of petrol. (Time expired)

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the amendment and on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-12, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2011-12 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No.1) 2011-12, which are being debated concurrently. Twelve months ago I spoke on the 2010-11 budget appropriation bills. It has been twelve long months of Labor induced waste and debt and further financial hardship for Australian families. As the full scope of this big-spending, big-taxing budget is being digested by scholars, politicians and mums and dads, I, like the aforementioned, can only shake my head in disbelief that a government could treat a nation with such contempt and that a government in power—only by default I might add—has Australia's financial future teetering on the brink of ruin by basing the annual budget on revenue from the mining tax. That is a tax that has not even been legislated.

This immoral government has included revenue from a tax that has not yet been bedded but has failed to make mention of the carbon tax revenue and its associated spending anywhere in the budget. Quite frankly, I, along with my colleagues on this side of the House, am very weary of fixing successive Labor governments' financial blunders. I am tired of listening to the rhetoric. I am tired of the Liberal Party leaving Australia in a position where we can taste the financial future for our children, only to have that future destroyed every time Labor claim power.

In the greatest growth in government spending since the Whitlam government, it has taken less than four years to beat Paul Keating's record. He left the incoming Liberal government a $96 billion debt in 1996. We paid that debt off just as we will this one. Already this debt is at $107 billion. Who knows what it will be if this government runs the full term? The thought of this government running full term with an open chequebook and unlimited IOU vouchers makes me cringe. Spending under the Rudd-Gillard government has gone from $271.8 billion in 2007-08 to $362 billion in 2011-12.

Just last November we were told that the deficit for 2010-11 would be $41.5 billion. Then on budget night it was revealed that it had blown out to almost $50 billion. In November we were told that net debt would peak at $94 billion. Just six months later we are told the figure is $107 billion and is set to stay above $100 million for at least the next four years.

With borrowing of $135 million a day, interest on Labor's debt will be an incomprehensible $7 billion a year. As a nation we have become desensitised to the outrageous spending of this careless government. We, the people of Australia, through the psychological process of desensitisation, no longer count the zeros in the dollars that this wasteful government throw away. One billion dollars equals one thousand million dollars. The average run-of-the-mill calculator cannot even fit the nine zeros needed to make up this mammoth number on its screen.

The Prime Minister stated quite unapologetically that this budget was a traditional Labor budget. Back in 2002, the Canberra Times reported on the taste and the danger of a traditional Labor budget—albeit a state Labor budget. In fact, it just proves that the rot sets in at the state level. Some of the Crispin Hull comments included:

Tax the rich, the middle and the upper middle and tax business—

And—

Have a lot of inquiries and commissions instead of getting on with it ...

He also said:

The downside is that a lot of money gets spent for no outcome.

He later continued:

... higher taxes, too much regulation, too much public-sector wage and program costs and the devil take tomorrow with the bottom line.

If you had read the same article with the data raised, you would be forgiven for thinking Crispin Hull was commenting on the federal Labor government of 2011. Yes, this really is a traditional Labor budget—another big deficit, more borrowings and more taxes. This Labor government talk the talk, but when it comes time to walk the walk they suddenly find themselves crippled. They talk about tough budgets but increase their spending. They talk about surpluses but deliver deficits. They talk about the need to repay the debt but lift borrowings to record levels. They talk about easing the cost-of-living pressures but then slug families $2 billion to pay for their wasteful spending. They have made further attempts to implement the private health rebate changes; made changes to the fringe benefits tax arrangements to work vehicles; and frozen family tax supplements and the upper income threshold. They will phase out dependent staff offsets such as education costs against youth allowance and will remove the discount for upfront HECS payments. This Labor government talks of reducing spending, yet total savings from policy decisions amount to only $2.7 billion over five years, where total spending is almost $1.9 trillion.

Just try to put a trillion into the calculator; it will go into meltdown. I implore the Australian taxpayers to stop this government before they issue run-of-the-mill calculators, government funded of course, which will enable people to calculate the interest payable on Labor government debt in trillions of dollars. By the time they are issued, pensioners will still be having their new set-top boxes installed—or recalled, if the bungled insulation scheme is anything to go by. With a forecast cost of $308 million, the set-top box program is ripe for rorting. The subsidy for digital television connections is expected to cost taxpayers between $350 and $400 for each connection, the same cost as a new digital TV with a built-in DVD player. Set-top boxes can be purchased for around $50. Industry sources suggest that most people can install the boxes without professional help. This scheme reeks of the roof batts scam—well intentioned, lacking industry knowledge, badly bungled and above all wasteful.

'Wanton waste' has now become a term synonymous with the Rudd and Gillard governments. Another term that has become synonymous with the Labor government is 'asylum seekers' or, as I prefer to call them, 'economic opportunists'. In fact, put wanton waste and asylum seeker together and you have a word that describes this government: debacle. And 'debacle' is the only way to describe the asylum seeker situation the Labor Party currently has on its hands. In August 2007 the Labor government softened the border policies that the Liberal government had in place. In doing so, they opened the floodgates for the people-smuggling business not only to survive but to thrive, and the economic opportunists began arriving on our doorsteps in their thousands—and I mean thousands. As at 31 May 2011 the total number of economic opportunists arriving in leaky boats was 11,413, on 228 boats. On 27 June 2010, not long after the Prime Minister knifed Mr Rudd in the back, and with the smell of blood still on her hands, the current Prime Minister said in an interview with Laurie Oakes:

I took control to get the government back on track ... This place is our sanctuary, our home. We all wish it best for the future ... I'm obviously concerned about asylum seekers, about boats. I've indicated that concern, and I think the Australian community feels it ... This isn't about slogans. To use an old saying, in an area like this tough ain't enough, it's about being effective, and that is what I want to ensure that we are being effective ... I believe in doing the effective things to manage our borders.

Well, Prime Minister, you are as effective as a rudderless boat. Since the Prime Minister's election by proxy, we have had 4,164 people on 73 leaky boats arrive on our shore. According to the Labor Party, that is effective. My definition of effective is vastly different; in fact it runs parallel to John Howard's effective boat policy, the very same policy that was deemed ineffective by the Prime Minister. So effective was the Liberal Party's policy that when we were last in government we had four—yes, four—people in detention across Australia. Currently there are 6,500 people in Labor detention centre across Australia, including 1,000 children, who arrived by boat in Labor's detention centres. The average time spent in detention is now just under 180 days compared with the 60. Costs have spiralled from $100 million to $1 billion a year, yet the government saw fit to introduce a flood levy for Queensland on the law-abiding citizens of Australia because there was not enough cash in the bank to look after our own. The rolling crisis of this government asylum seeker policy has seen violence, chaos and the torching of our buildings, scenes that Australia should not tolerate. This sort of noxious behaviour may be commonplace in the homelands of those economic opportunists but it is certainly not acceptable behaviour in ours. With an average of more than three critical incidents being reported every day in the Labor detention network, ranging from self-harm to riots, fires and deaths, this government needs to start taking the word 'effective' seriously. I am, along with the majority of the residents of this country, hardworking, taxpaying and grateful for the opportunities we have in Australia. We are a tolerant mob, yet my tolerance, and it would seem from the emails I regularly receive the tolerance of mainstream Australia, has come to an end in relation to the economic opportunists taking advantage of a weak government treating these people with kid gloves.

The never-ending asylum seeker debacle has now entered a new phase with the five for one people swap with Malaysia, an appalling deal with an exorbitant cost to Australian taxpayers. Who knows how this will play out considering Malaysia is not a signatory to the UN Convention. Dare I say a leopard never changes its spots, and I think we all know how this chapter in the book of Labor's faux pas will end. We have seen the SIEV36 set alight, killing five people. And, wait for it, all of the perpetrators were granted permanent visas. When the SIEV221 crashed against Christmas Island rocks, 50 people lost their lives. How many more have lost their lives on the journey to the promised land is not known, although we do know that a boat set out in November with 91 persons on board never to be heard of again. How many will lose their lives trying to get back to Australia after they have been exported to Malaysia? How soon will Labor be lamenting the Malaysian people swap?

The mental health of this government needs to be addressed. Why any sane government would cut 40 per cent out of the patient rebate for GP mental health treatment plans needs to be seriously considered. We have seen a failed border protection budget blowout since 2009-10 of more than $3 billion, money that should have been spent in areas that are critical to our nation, such as the mental health of our people. The Prime Minister on one hand calls for people to participate in the workforce. On the other hand she further disenfranchises those who would appreciate being able to join the call, those with a mental illness. The government announced a package of measures in its 2011 budget for funding mental health and, despite the headline figure of $2.2 billion, the government will spend just $583 million over the next four years. In the 2011-12 financial year the total amount to be spent is only $47 million, yet they can spend $440 million on their building the detention centre revolution. The government is in fact cutting mental health by ripping $580.5 million from GP mental health services and allied health treatment sessions from the Better Access initiative. According to the latest ABS figures, 2009, mental illness costs Australia $20 billion annually, which includes the cost of lost productivity and Labor force participation. Mental disorders were identified as the leading cause of healthy years of life lost due to disability. After nearly four years of the Australian public having to endure a Labor government fraught with waste, we all deserve a little from that mental health budget. Since December 2007, the price of electricity is up 51 per cent. Gas is up 30 per cent, water is up 46 per cent, education costs are up 24 per cent, health costs are up 20 per cent, rent is up 21 per cent and groceries are up 14 per cent. And since mid-2009, interest rate rises have added $500 every month to mortgage repayments—and all this while wages have risen just seven per cent. This is typical of a term of a Labor government.

In this typical Labor budget, this government delivered total savings from policy decisions of only $2.7 billion over five years. And one-third of these savings are new taxes. Yes, indeed: this is a typical Labor budget. All of this is on the shaky of a foundation of a carbon tax we have no detail on at this stage. But every thinking person realises that if there is to be a reduction in greenhouse gases, which we produce as part of our economy, then there is going to have to be pain. This government is painful enough without mention of the carbon tax, a carbon tax that the Prime Minister promised would not be introduced by a government led by her. (Time expired)

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It will not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the way that the Rudd and Gillard governments have managed our economy over the past 3½ years to learn that this year's budget is not just weak; it is also irresponsible and risky. The strategy chosen by the Treasurer to dig this nation out of the fiscal hole we find ourselves in is utterly dependent on the continuation of the current China-led resources boom. There is no plan B. The budget papers make even plainer the extraordinary expense to taxpayers of the current design of Senator Conroy's National Broadband Network. Regrettably, it appears that there is also no plan B there. If the plan for the NBN has to be altered in coming years—as seems highly probable—taxpayers will be slugged again. But I will return to that issue shortly.

Let me begin by discussing the budget in a broader context given the government's barely credible plan to move from the record deficits of the past two financial years to a lesser deficit in the coming year and a tiny surplus for 2012-13. Many of the financial market economists have already pointed out that if this meagre $3.5 billion surplus projected for 2012-13 does eventuate it should be stamped 'made in China' given the importance of buoyant commodity exports, especially iron ore and metallurgical coal, to China and other economies in Asia, to the achievement of fiscal consolidation.

Australia's resources sector is certainly in the midst of a remarkable boom, arguably already the largest and the longest lived in our history. Thanks to urbanisation in China, India and elsewhere, prices for Australia's commodity exports have risen dramatically since 2003. The Reserve Bank's commodity price index is currently at an all time peak and more than three times its average level of the two decades prior to 2003. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer claim that it requires a new resource rent tax for the federal government to properly benefit from this boom.

In the run-up to this year's budget, the government also attempted to suggest that the cupboard was entirely bare and that mining boom mark II, as the Treasurer describes it, would not boost revenues at all. Neither claim is correct. We know that the boom has been substantially boosting budget revenues for many years without a minerals resources rent tax, although there is an uncertainty or at least a controversial debate about by how much. Last October the Treasury's economic forecasters released work on the 'structural' budget deficit, suggesting that the resources boom has been delivering ever-larger revenue windfalls since around 2004. The central case in that work assumes that Asia's economic ascent and growing demand for food, raw materials and metals means that Australia's average terms of trade in the early 21st century will be about 20 per cent higher than they were in the late 20th century. That assumption seems reasonable and broadly matches the expectations of most market economists. But as Martin Parkinson, the Secretary of the Treasury, correctly pointed out on 17 May, estimates of this sort are always highly sensitive to the assumptions which underlie them and it is difficult to be entirely precise about the impact of changes over time in the terms of trade or, indeed, many other economic variables in the budget.

Nonetheless, Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan were entirely willing to use a crude earlier version of the Treasury's work published in the 2009-10 budget without any such qualification to try and trash John Howard and Peter Costello's reputations by claiming that they squandered the resources boom. In fact it appeared that the work had been commissioned for that very purpose. So I acknowledge Dr Parkinson's point that Treasury's estimates are sensitive to various assumptions, but I will take the central case figures provided as a reasonable estimate of the revenue windfall arising from the current terms of trade. According to the Treasury's central case the resources boom delivered a revenue windfall of about $25 billion over the last three budgets delivered by Peter Costello. Those three budgets were in surplus by $53 billion so all of the income from the boom and more was banked, although Treasury's central case estimate suggests the budget was in a small structural deficit in 2007-08. So much for claims that the Howard government blew the boom! While its last term could have been more disciplined, as my colleague Joe Hockey acknowledged on 18 May, there was nothing like the thoughtless orgy of frenzied spending and borrowing that we have seen under Labor.

During the four budgets delivered so far by Labor in this term of government the Treasury figures from October last year suggest that the federal government has benefited from a terms of trade windfall of at least $90 billion, with the largest single boost coming in the 2011-12 financial year we are about to commence. According to the latest government forecasts deficits run up by Labor over those four years from 2008-09 to 2011-12 will total $154 billion. Regardless of the impact of the global financial crisis those figures speak for themselves.

And for all Labor's claims that its record deficits have been caused by weak revenues, first because of the GFC and more recently because of the strong exchange rate, capital gains losses, which have reduced post-GFC capital gains tax collections, and the patchwork economy, if we really want to understand what has been going on with the federal budget we need to look at the outlays side—the spending side. There we can seen that annual spending has risen by $90 billion since the last year of the Howard government. That is a rise of 33 per cent in nominal terms and more than 20 per cent after adjusting for price changes. That is the equivalent of adding the annual expense of four additional Defence forces, three extra education and training systems or two new national health and hospital services to the existing expenses in the last Costello budget—in just four years. No wonder we are in deep deficit despite full employment, an unemployment rate starting with a four and the strongest terms of trade in our history.

The bottom line is simply this: Labor has already spent all of the extra income and budget revenue that the resources boom has delivered to Australia, and then some. Now, that raises an obvious red flag. What if the resources boom fades more quickly than Treasury and, indeed, most market analysts expect or is interrupted by an unanticipated and uncontrollable external shock? Where will the budget, and our nation for that matter, be if China's amazing growth story overheats and temporarily, if not in the long term, slows, or if another global financial upheaval perhaps starting in Europe triggers the same massive slump in international trade as we saw in 2008-09 but over a prolonged period? Where will we be if global low-cost production of what are already relatively abundant resources such as coal and iron ore ramps up faster than we expect, slashing market prices and Australia's national income?

We know more supply is going to come on line. For example, Rio Tinto is negotiating with Chinalco and the government of Guinea in West Africa to develop Simandou, which would be the largest iron ore mine in the world. That is just one of many projects in West Africa.

In short, does the Gillard government have a plan B? The unfortunate reality is that they do not. A plan B would require far more intellectual and fiscal discipline than has so far been shown by this cynical and incompetent government. It is far easier to live for the day, spend everything that comes in and more and say whatever it takes to cling to power, and the future be damned.

Fortunately, Australia's fundamental prospects are good. Asia's growth story will continue for many years although there will be many hills and hollows along the way. Although increased global supply of some commodities will lower our terms of trade from current levels, there is every chance they will remain higher in the next decade than they were in the 1980s and 1990s as Treasury's central case forecasts assume. But it is very dispiriting to see this government's complete lack of vision about where the resources boom is taking us and what Australia might look like at its end, its refusal to honestly canvass the difficult structural adjustments that our economy will experience along the way and its failure to acknowledge the increased volatility that our greater exposure to the commodity cycle likely entails.

When we talk about the resources boom and the value of having a fallback plan, it is important to anticipate and prepare for unexpected adversity. It is important to be clear that this does not mean trying to somehow resist the forces currently changing our economy. The rise of China and India—and the return of China and India to a position in the economic order of the world proportionate to their size, a return to the same position they had in the global economic order in the 18th century, proportionate to their population—is in effect a return to normalcy. This will result in extraordinary shifts in relative prices for commodities and other traded goods. These are immensely powerful trends. Australia, as a small and open economy with some of the world's best resource endowments and some of the most expert and technologically sophisticated resources companies, has little choice but to go with the flow. I tend to agree with the Secretary of the Treasury when he suggested recently that Australian businesses and other trade-exposed sectors cannot resist the challenges that this is creating, such as the higher exchange rate. Firms are going to have to evolve their business models and find different ways to compete and become more specialised and become more effective.

The government, however, does have some choices it can make about how it responds to the resources boom and the associated structural changes. It can make decisions in areas such as industrial relations that impede or smooth the movement of labour and capital from one sector to another. Let us be clear about this. We are talking about major changes and shifts in our economy from one sector to the other. Industrial relations laws and labour laws which impede the movement of labour—the flexibility of labour from one sector to another—will make that transition harder. The government also has the opportunity to make policy choices that can influence whether the extra income arising from the boom and accruing to both the private and public sectors is saved or spent. The desirability of saving some of what may turn out to be a temporary boost to income is why I have advocated a sovereign wealth fund. The idea behind a sovereign wealth fund—indeed, in this case a second sovereign wealth fund after the Future Fund—is to smooth consumption of income arising from temporarily high commodity prices or the exhaustion of finite resources. This is achieved via substantial public saving which enables later consumption or preferably investment. Smoothing can be over a years-to-decades horizon, as in the case of Chile's fund, which stabilizes the impact of volatile copper prices on its budget, or a longer intergenerational horizon, as in the case of Norway's $550 billion fund, which invests oil income. If as in Norway a wealth fund invests offshore, preferably in assets uncorrelated with the commodities cycle, the high exchange rate and pressure on non-resource exporters can be mitigated to an extent, although it is unclear by how much, and risks can be better diversified.

There is a lot of talk about what we can do about Dutch disease—the resources boom and the high exchange rate prejudicing the non-resources part of the economy. The one thing that a government can definitely do is to save more. That is a focus that this government lamentably lacks. I find it incredible that the Gillard government's leaders, including some of its alleged rising stars, such as the Assistant Treasurer, Mr Shorten, have so airily dismissed this proposition, with the most flimsy arguments imaginable. (Extension of time granted)

I continue to believe that the proposal for a sovereign wealth fund is appropriate to our economic circumstances. I note that The Economist magazine, unquestionably the most influential and important mainstream financial journal in the world, has made the point that it is incredible that Australia is not establishing a sovereign wealth fund. Take your pick; whether it is the IMF, the OECD, The Economist or the Financial Times, leading economists around the world are all asking, 'Why is it not a key focus of the government of Australia, which is enjoying this resources boom, to establish a new sovereign wealth fund to put some of this money aside?' If you despise the views of international organisations and international journals, the most distinguished public sector economist in this country by a country mile, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Glenn Stevens, has argued again and again that the focus of the government should be on saving. If they want to put downward pressure on inflation, if they want to put something aside for future generations, if they want to have something to show for the resources boom, there must be a new sovereign wealth fund. That should be a key focus.

Let me turn now to the National Broadband Network, where there is also an emerging and very worrying indication of a lack of a plan B. As we all know, the NBN as it is currently planned involves running a fibre-optic cable into 93 per cent of all the homes and businesses in Australia at a cost that will ultimately exceed $50 billion once payments to Telstra for migrating customers and using its ducts are counted. The gigantic cost of the NBN is largely a consequence of the decision to build an entirely new fibre-to-the-premises or fibre-to-the-home customer access network regardless of whether cheaper network architectures, such as fibre to the node or upgrade of the existing hybrid fibre-coaxial pay TV cables that run past almost a third of Australian homes, could achieve comparable broadband speeds. Fibre to the node is an architecture that pushes fibre beyond today's telephone exchanges further into the field to nodes or cabinets nearer to homes and businesses, but uses the existing copper for the last part of the connection. Therefore it avoids the vast expense of digging up every front garden and drilling holes in the walls of every house or apartment in Australia. Were the NBN being built in an economically rational way, fibre would extend to the furthest economically viable and technically necessary point in the network and no further. The decision that 93 per cent of Australia will receive fibre to the home is an ideological choice. It is not an engineering or economic necessity.

The cost differential of using almost as fast but much less expensive alternatives is huge. Upgrades to the HFC pay TV cables could achieve speeds of 100 megabits per second to a third of Australian households for about 10 per cent of the cost of a fibre-to-the-home overbuild.

Rolling out a fibre-to-the-node or fibre-to-the-kerb network design can deliver speeds high enough to be indistinguishable from fibre to the home at half or less of the cost. As Alcatel-Lucent notes, in a 2007 technology white paper: 'The economics of fibre to the node are hard to resist, given cost points that can be 50 per cent or less than those of fibre to the home.'

Under the terms of the Telstra/NBN deal currently being negotiated, the NBN will pay Telstra about $9 billion in net present after-tax value terms—about $16 billion in nominal dollars—in return for it decommissioning its copper customer access network. But as the deal is apparently envisaged at present, if NBN Co. or a future government from either side were to try to redesign the NBN so as to build a cheaper and equally effective fibre-to-the-node network in part or most of Australia, NBN Co. would be required to renegotiate its deal with Telstra to use a part of the copper network it has already paid Telstra to decommission. That is more billions of dollars of your taxes out the door and yet another case of having no plan B.

At the recent hearing of the Joint Standing Committee on the NBN, its CEO, Mike Quigley, was unapologetic about NBN Co's failure to seek the right to use any part of the Telstra copper customer access network so that it had the option to deploy fibre to the node, instead of fibre to the home. Mr Quigley said that he had not sought to acquire the right to use a portion of the Telstra copper because the government had not told him to do so and, in any event, he said it would be complex. No doubt, many of us thought, as we listened to him, it was simpler and less complex to drop a few more lazy billion dollars of taxpayers' money.

It is utterly mind-boggling that a government would pay a private company $16 billion to decommission a network asset but not reserve for itself, as part of the deal, the right to use as much of that network as it chooses, if the current NBN design were to be changed. But this is the bizarre world that Senator Conroy, Treasurer Swan and Prime Minister Gillard inhabit—a world where risk does not matter, because there are always new tax hikes available to cover up for any mistakes.

Unless there is a change of direction on the part of the government, the Telstra/NBN deal may set Telstra up to be paid twice for its copper network if, as seems inevitable after the failure of NBN Co's recent construction tender, the current architecture of the network is exposed as unaffordable, unnecessary and unachievable.

Let me say one more thing about the current negotiations between the government, NBN Co. and Telstra, and the apparent attempt to use long-term contracts to lock future Australian governments into the Conroy model regardless of the democratic right of voters to choose a different government with different policies on broadband. We in the coalition respect the rule of law and property rights. But, nonetheless, we will be utterly committed to ensuring that, if we are returned to government, the interests of the taxpayers are protected. We will use every measure available to us to ensure that taxpayers get value for money with the NBN and that consumers of the NBN service get broadband at an affordable price. (Time expired)

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on what the Treasurer spruiked as a very Labor budget. He was spot on. This budget is quintessentially Labor. It is about taxes, spending and debt. Hiking up taxes and sending the country into the red: it really does not get any more Labor than that. It is also a budget that proves how out of touch both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer are with everyday Australians, because it fails the fundamental test of easing the cost-of-living pressures for Australian families, who face higher prices everyday—higher electricity prices; higher gas prices; higher water prices; higher bus fares; higher food prices; higher cost-of-living pressures. But nothing in this budget addresses those things.

The simple truth so clearly exposed in this budget is that Labor cannot manage Australia's finances. This government and its predecessor, led by the member for Griffith, has made such a hash of the budget process that Australian families are being slugged again and again in order to paper over the black holes created by this government's mismanagement. The Treasurer assures us that he will deliver a surplus in 2012. He is so fond of talking about this budget of the future, perhaps embarrassed by what he has presented to the parliament so far, that he does not seem to want to talk about the current budget. How can we have any faith that a surplus will be delivered in 2012 when my youngest daughter, who I must admit is only two years older than the member for Longman, has never seen a Labor budget in surplus in her lifetime? From the decision to impose a freeze on the family benefit supplement, which will affect families earning more than $45,000 a year, to the imposition of an array of new taxes, this Labor budget has nothing for families at all.

My electorate of Groom is an area that is well on its way to recovery in the wake of the floods of earlier this year. That is no thanks to the Queensland Labor Bligh government, which has kept the millions—in fact, quarter of a billion—of dollars in donations tied up in red tape and incompetence. It is not the Bligh government or the Gillard government that has gone out and done something to relieve the pain of those people in my electorate who were affected by the floods in January. I, my office and the good graces of the people of Toowoomba have helped those people affected by floods. It is a great disappointment to me that the Prime Minister of Australia has driven six times past the houses of people in Oakey who are yet to have their insurance claims for the flood settled. Did she stop? No. Did she talk to them? No. Did she ask the Assistant Treasurer to see if he could sort out the problems? No. It is me and my good officers and the people who support me who are out there fighting for the people of Oakey so that they can have their insurance claims settled. It is an indictment on both the Labor government of Queensland and the Labor government of Australia that neither the Premier nor the Prime Minister have lifted a finger.

But the good news is that we will win, no thanks to the government. It is the community spirit and the community based fundraising that will give those people relief, and I have supported them along the way. While the homes are being rebuilt, there is one critical piece of infrastructure that will not be fixed so easily. I wonder how many people in Australia right now are operating with half of what they had before Christmas—and that is what Toowoomba is operating on: half of the road to Brisbane that we had before Christmas. The Prime Minister has not driven that road. She chooses to fly in. She lands at Oakey, drives past all these flooded houses, does not stop, comes into Toowoomba, makes herself out to be a hero and then leaves again. She does not actually understand that Toowoomba is connected to the east by a range crossing that was severely damaged by the flood, and her government has no commitment to fix it. The commitment the Howard government made was spending $43 million to acquire the corridor, and we then allocated $700 million to begin construction. We lost the election in 2007 and with that the people of Toowoomba have been left high and dry. With a bit of luck and, again, no thanks to the federal government, we might have two lanes to Brisbane by Christmas next year.

The impact on my electorate is of course disastrous and the impact on the economic development of Western Queensland will be affected as well. Whilst this government is happy to take the PRRT money from the oil and gas enterprises to the west of there, they are not prepared to return a single solitary cent—not a cent. I see the member opposite lift her head—no money from the PRRT collected in Queensland will be returned in infrastructure spending in Queensland.

Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was checking the time, actually.

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not a cent. You want to check your own facts. You should read the budget, because it says that there is not a cent for the people of Western Queensland. For those trucks that travel through Toowoomba, not a cent will be returned from all the dollars that the Bligh government collects and all the dollars that the Gillard government hopes to collect.

Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks for your support on the flood levy.

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure the people of Toowoomba would be happy to pay a flood levy were they to get a cent of that flood levy back—just one cent would be good. We will take one cent, but we get nothing of course.

And we all know that new taxes are part of this new budget. Taxes will be applied not only through a flood levy but through an LPG levy, through a CNG levy, through an LNG levy, through a carbon levy, through the mining tax levy, of course, and through the PRRT, the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax. Every time the people of my electorate look up they pay a new tax and get nothing back.

This is a tax and spend government. It is a government that has a history of being unable to manage its money. It is a government that has managed to take a $70 billion cash in the bank operation to a $107 billion debt. It is a government that does not know the value of money and does not respect the taxpayers of Australia, who have to earn that money before they contribute it to a government that wastes it.

Missing from this budget are the figures of the carbon tax—this much vaunted tax that will change nothing in terms of emissions of the world. It will change nothing in terms of lowering greenhouse gases in the world, because all it will do is move industry from Australia to China, to Russia, to India, to Indonesia, to Korea and to all of those countries that have made it clear in the last few days that they are not going to continue to tax their industries under any suggestion that there is a global agreement on lower greenhouse gas emissions. Those countries have made it absolutely clear that they will not sign up to the extra emissions targets of the Kyoto agreement.

So, here we have a government in Australia that delivers a budget that drives Australia further into debt, a budget that offers Australian families no hope but for higher taxes, and a budget where families know that this government cannot manage to spend the money in a way that produces a tangible outcome for all Australians. Then the government watches as every other country steps back from an agreement on lowering greenhouse gas emissions while Australia is quite prepared to continue to tax our jobs and our industries while those industries move overseas.

This budget is a disgrace. And the disgrace of this budget is only surpassed by the government that handed it down. We have a Treasurer who has no idea of what it means to manage an economy, to deliver a budget in surplus—a surplus that would give hope to the Australian people that this government actually knows the value of money and a government that can actually put in place projects that work.

In the 15 seconds left, I will talk a little about the insulation scheme that cost millions. I will talk a little about the Building the Education Revolution that wasted billions. In the end Australians know that this budget continues the waste, increases taxes and does not deliver any hope for the future.

I seek leave to continue my remarks at a later date.

Leave granted.

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

The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate is made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Main Committee adjourned at 22: 0 1