Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Disability Reform) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

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I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill delivers on the government's announcement of a new payment for families to help with the costs for children in school.

It is part of this Labor government's commitment to helping Australian families make ends meet.

And it shows our determination to continue supporting low- and middle-income families as we return the budget to surplus.

Our economic fundamentals are strong, unemployment is low and we are in the middle of a mining boom but we do recognise that it is not everybody's boom.

We understand that many working Australians are struggling to balance the family budget. For many families, the extra costs of sending children to school and giving them a great education can add to this pressure.

So that is why, from 1 January next year, the government will deliver a new payment to around 1.3 million Australian families with kids in school.

This payment, the schoolkids bonus, will be paid to the families of around 2.2 million children in primary and secondary schools across the country.

The schoolkids bonus will be delivered as an up-front payment to families in two instalments each year, before term 1 and term 3, to help them cover the costs of their child's education.

Expenses like school uniforms and school shoes, textbooks, camps, excursions as well as extracurricular activities, such as music lessons.

Eligible families will receive a total of $410 a year for each child in primary school, and $820 a year for each child in secondary school.

The schoolkids bonus will replace the education tax refund in 2013, and this bill also removes the education tax refund for 2011-12 from taxation legislation.

For many families with children in school, the education tax refund has made a big difference. However, we know that many families are not experiencing its full benefits.

This is especially the case for working families on low incomes—it is simply too tough to pay the school expenses first and then wait months, or even a year, to get 50 per cent back. For busy families it can also be hard keeping track of receipts and then filling out all the paperwork at tax time.

Last year more than 80 per cent of families did not claim the full amount they were entitled to. About 20 per cent did not claim a refund at all.

In total around one million Australian families are missing out on the full benefit of the education tax refund.

This Labor government wants to change that.

This is the right time to turn this assistance into an upfront payment, with the 1 July 2012 increase to the tax-free threshold meaning that more than one million people will no longer needed to do a tax return.

The new schoolkids bonus will make sure that all eligible families get their full entitlement, not just those who can afford to spend the money upfront and claim later.

The schoolkids bonus means more support for families with kids in school.

It means not having to wait months to get something back.

It means not having to collect a pile of receipts or fill out that extra paperwork at tax time.

Paid in full and upfront, the schoolkids bonus means working families get the support that they need, when they need it.

It is money in your pocket—and new support from the Gillard government.

It is support that is there before the costs start rolling in.

It is extra support for more than one million Australian families who have missed out in the past and can now get every cent they deserve.

The schoolkids bonus will be available from 2013 to families receiving family tax benefit part A plus young people in school receiving income support payments such as youth allowance, ABSTUDY, disability support pension and veterans' educational allowances, on the eligibility test date.

Families will only need to notify Centrelink when their child first starts school so that the payments can begin.

After that the bonus is automatically paid in January and July every year if they remain on the relevant linked payment such as family tax benefit part A.

Parents will also need to let Centrelink know when their kids go to high school so that they can move on to the higher payment.

The government is delivering this new support because we know it can be tough to make ends meet, particularly when you are trying to get your kids through school.

Uniforms, school shoes, textbooks, excursions are not cheap. I think all of us know that the cost can quickly add up. When the schoolkids bonus begins in January next year it will help families relieve some of the pressure on the household budget.

We do also know that many families are feeling the pinch right now—and need a bit of extra support right now.

So as we transition to the schoolkids bonus we want to do what we can in the next few weeks to make sure that we are looking out for low- and middle-income families who are finding it tough to keep up.

This bill creates a one-off transitional payment called the ETR payment which will pay out in full the education tax refund to all eligible families for 2011-12.

This means families will receive their full education tax refund entitlement for the 2011-12 tax year ahead of tax time. So parents will not have to worry about keeping receipts or making claims when they do their tax this year.

The one-off ETR payment will be $409 for a child in primary school and $818 for a secondary school child, the same maximum amounts that would have been available in the 2011-12 tax year. A family with one primary student and one secondary student will get more than $700 extra on average this year.

All 1.3 million families will get the maximum amount they are entitled to for the first time and all will get their payments earlier.

They will not have to collect their receipts and they will not have to fill out that extra paperwork at tax time.

This lump sum payment will be paid to all families entitled to family tax benefit part A on 8 May this year for a school-aged child as well as to young people in secondary education who are receiving certain student income support payments on 8 May.

A similar ETR payment will be provided through amendments to Veterans' Affairs legislation for recipients on 8 May of payments under the Veterans' Children Education Scheme or the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act Education and Training Scheme.

The bill will also create an administrative scheme for the ETR payment which will assist people who may not be able to access an appropriate ETR payment under the family assistance law or veterans legislation; for example, a parent who was automatically paid the primary school rate for a child who is actually in secondary school.

In a tough environment this government is making the hard decisions as we return to surplus.

But we are a Labor government, driven by Labor values.

Labor will always stand up for Australia's low- and middle-income families.

Families who do their very best with what they have got.

Who do not ask for much and who deserve a bit of extra support.

It is our job to make sure that those families who need that extra help are getting it, and that is what this government's schoolkids bonus will do.

Labor will always work to ensure that Australian families, particular those putting their kids through school, have a support that they need to make ends meet. I commend the bill to the House.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing and Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I indicate at the outset that the coalition will oppose this legislation. We will oppose it because it is bad policy. It is bad policy for a number of reasons—

Ms Macklin interjecting—

If the minister at the table would be quiet for a moment I will explain to her and to anybody else who happens to be listening to this broadcast why this is bad policy. It is bad policy because when you look behind the spin of a Treasurer last night in his budget speech, and you look behind the spin of the minister in her second reading speech of this bill today, then you can see what is actually going on here. The first reason this is bad policy is because this is essentially a sleight of hand by the Labor government. Look at the current situation in relation to this education payment. If a family who is eligible has a child at primary school and they have receipts for educational expenses as set out in the legislation, for that child at primary school they can currently claim $410. And if they have a child at secondary school, in the same circumstances they can claim $820. So the current situation—what operates right now; what would operate for this financial year without this legislation being passed—is that parents around Australia with primary school children can claim $410 and with secondary school children can claim up to $820. That is the situation that exists right now. Without this legislation, parents in that circumstance would be eligible to claim that amount and they would have it repaid at the end of the tax year. That is the situation that applies for parents right now.

After the passage of this legislation are those eligible parents who make a claim going to get a cent more? No. They are still going to get $410 if they have a primary school student and they are still going to get $820 if they have a secondary school student. That is why I say this is a sleight of hand. This is taking one payment, abolishing it and replacing it with the same payment in terms of what parents actually receive, so there is a sleight of hand here. A targeted program that exists at the present time is therefore being replaced by one which is untargeted—and any pretence, as we have heard in the speech this morning by the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, that this is about offsetting education costs is simply denied by the facts that there are no changes in the amounts of payments that go to the eligible parents. So the first reason that this is bad policy is that this is simply spin. It is taking a payment that already exists—which this coalition supports and will continue to support into the future; in other words, we support parents of primary school children getting up to $410 and we support parents of secondary school students getting up to $820—and that is made through the tax system and saying, 'We're now going to make this a welfare payment.'

What this shows is that the Labor Party have learnt nothing from the incompetence of administration in the past. Remember the expenditures that they have paid over the past few years: the cash handouts, the pink batts, the cash for clunkers, the set-top boxes—and one could go on and on and on about poor and incompetent administration by the Labor Party over the last few years. So what are they doing with this payment? Instead of having a targeted payment, where all that is required is for parents to keep the receipts of their expenditure on the list of allowable expenditures, they are saying, 'We'll just give you the money.' What is the consequence of that? There is no connection between the money that is being handed out and educational expenditure.

Parents can go and spend the money on what they like. If they want to go down to the local club and put it through the poker machines they can do that. If they want to go and buy some new electrical gear from the electrical retailer they can go and do that. Of course, we know from the past when payments were made by the Labor Party that payments were made to dead people, that payments were made to people living overseas and that a lot of the money was simply wasted.

If this was genuinely an educational expenditure, if this was genuinely about saying that we should provide for children and some of the expenses that their parents have for their education and schooling, then we have a targeted program that does that—and all that requires of responsible parents is that they keep the receipts and make a claim on their tax. But that is no longer the case so far as the Labor Party is concerned. It is not about a targeted educational expenditure. This, in reality, is a handout in order to help cook the books, which this budget is all about; a handout in relation to offsetting what they know is coming by way of the cost increases under the carbon tax from 1 July.

So the first reason that this is a bad policy is that it takes a properly targeted educational expenditure, a properly targeted program which is working quite well at the present time, and then changes that into something that is simply a handout, where there is no connection between the educational expenditure and the handout itself. And we know from past experience of the poor and incompetent administration of these programs by this Gillard-Swan government that some of this money is going to be wasted. I ask the ordinary, hardworking taxpayers of Australia, the men and women who are working hard and putting their children through school in this country and who are able to list their educational expenses and make a proper and genuine claim, do they think it is reasonable if somebody cannot be bothered to do that or somebody just wants to take the money and spend it however they like? Do they think that that is actually connected to enhancing education and schooling and training in this country?

Go down to the front pub and apply the pub test to this by asking people. I will have a bet with anybody on the other side what the answer will be. The answer will be that they think it is quite reasonable the way the system works at the present time. If this is genuinely about educational expenditure then there ought to be a connection between that expenditure and the payment being made, but that is being ripped up so far as this piece of legislation is concerned. So the first reason why the coalition will oppose this measure because we believe it is bad policy is that it disconnects the existing nexus between the educational expenditure and the payment itself. For that reason it is bad policy. It is bad policy for the additional reason that this government has shown itself totally incompetent in administering these sorts of programs in the past, and there are numerous examples which I will not continue to rehearse in this debate today.

The second reason this is bad policy goes to the heart of the accounting tricks in this budget. This budget accounting trick is one which will unravel in the coming days. Why was there an indecent haste, and there still is, to introduce this bill? Yesterday afternoon the minister came in here before the budget was delivered to seek leave to introduce this bill. The budget had not even been delivered: this is a bill of which the Treasurer made an announcement in the budget last night. But hours before the Treasurer even stood on his feet at the dispatch box here at 7.30 last night to announce this measure, amongst other things, the minister was in here seeking leave to introduce this bill. Why was that? Why the indecent haste to introduce a measure that is in the budget but has not yet even been announced in the budget? The reason is this: it goes to the accounting tricks at the heart of this budget.

Currently, this payment would be in next year's financial accounts. I will go back to explain how the system works at the present time. At the end of this financial year a parent, if they have a primary school student and if they have the requisite receipts for educational expenses, could put in a claim on their tax for $410, or $820 for a secondary student. They would put their tax in after the end of this financial year, as we all do, and that claim would be accounted in their tax for this year, which of course means that any refund or any allowance would be actually paid by Treasury next year. Currently this means that the amount which the government expends on this measure would be accounted for in the 2012-13 financial accounts of the Commonwealth.

But what is this measure doing? Why this indecent haste? The minister has just said he wants to pay this money out before the end of this financial year. What is the consequence of that? It is that that expenditure by the government will be in this year's financial accounts. That expenditure will be part of the $44 billion deficit that this government predicts it will have by the end of this financial year—it will probably be more given the way it has blown out, but based on the words of the Treasurer last night, the projection was of a $44 billion deficit this financial year. It will be part of this year's financial accounts because of the passage of this legislation; whereas, if people were still to receive the money which they would otherwise have received, it would be in next year's financial accounts.

Why is this an accounting trick? Because it is moving what normally would have been an expenditure by the government in the next financial year into this financial year. And what are the consequences of that? It helps the Treasurer to achieve his paper thin, and probably paper only, $1.5 billion surplus next year. If this amount of money was in next year's financial accounts then that would probably reduce by about half the $1.5 billion surplus that the Treasurer is claiming he will achieve next year. This is financial accounting trickery. This is why, as someone said, this is a 'fudge it not a budget'—because it is moving expenditure that would have normally occurred next year, and would have been accounted for next year, into this year. He is not worried if there is an extra half-billion or so on what is already a $44 billion deficit this year. He is worried, politically, that he will be able to say, 'I'm going to get a surplus next year.' Of course, nobody believes that. But if he did not have this measure being paid out in this financial year, then it would be paid next year and so the pretend surplus that he announced last night would be halved overnight.

This is not the only example of this sort of accounting trickery that we have in this budget. We see that flood payments to local government, which would normally have been made next year, are being made this year. That is $1.1 billion that would have been in next year's expenditure now being brought forward into this year's expenditure. The Treasurer says, 'I'm going to have a $1.5 billion surplus.' However, if you take the 1.1 billion away from that, it reduces his surplus to $400 million just like that. Just one simple accounting trick. That is what we have throughout this budget.

Let me take another example: the clean energy advance of $1.5 billion. That is exactly the same amount that the budget is projecting will be a surplus. The clean energy advance, which would have been paid next year and therefore would have been a cost to the finances of the Commonwealth government next year of $1.5 billion, is being brought forward and paid before the end of June so that it is in this year's budget rather than next year's budget.

So there are just three examples of the financial and accounting trickery that is at the heart of this budget. That is why this surplus being projected by the Treasurer is simply unbelievable. If you took that payment of the clean energy advance of $1.5 billion alone, and it was made next year, as it was meant to be made, then the surplus disappears—with just one payment! But add to that the payments to local government of $1.1 billion and the payment under this bill that we are debating now—probably in the order of half a billion dollars—and there is no surplus; there is a deficit. The reality is, when next year's financial accounts come in, there will not be a surplus, there will be a deficit, no matter what trickery is engaged in cooking the books by the Treasurer.

This bill is not the only example of accounting trickery. There is other expenditure which normally—as would have been forecast in the forward estimates before last night—would have been made next year but has now been pushed out beyond next year. In other words, expenditure for next year is either being brought forward, so it does not show up on the books next year and so this paper surplus can be claimed, or pushed out to years beyond that, so again it does not show up on the books next year and so again the Treasurer is able to claim that he is getting a surplus.

That is not to mention the NBN, which is not even in the financial accounts. It is not even part of the bottom line. If you add the NBN in, there is another $8 billion or so that would have to be taken into account and would add immediately to the deficit of this government. So the surplus is an illusion. It does not exist, except on the paper of the Treasurer's statement and in the mind of the government.

If you look at the borrowing from the future, this year the government spending is increased by $25 billion. It falls by $7 billion next year—the year he wants to achieve a surplus—and yet on his own figures and data it then goes up by $23 billion the following year. These bottom line figures just show what is happening: expenditure is being brought forward into this year so that it can fall next year and then the year after that it goes up to about what it is this year. So this is trickery—trickery at the heart of the Treasurer's budget and at the heart of the financial accounts—and this bill is an example of that trickery simply by bringing this forward to this year. So the surplus is illusionary—and it would not be believable anyway, because this time last year the Treasurer was telling all and sundry who would listen that we would have a deficit of $22 billion. I remind the House that his first estimate was $12 billion and that he later revised it upward to $22 billion. Fast forward 12 months to last night, and he says, 'No, the deficit is not going to be $22 billion; the deficit is now going to be $44 billion.' So you cannot believe what this government says about the deficit. It may be more than $44 billion. We still have almost two months to go before the end of this financial year, and we will not know until September whether it is a $44 billion deficit or even higher. The point is: how can you believe now what the Treasurer says about the deficit when last year he was telling us it would be $22 billion and it has blown out by 100 per cent to $44 billion?

Put this in the context of what has happened under this government. Last year the deficit was $47 billion; the year before it was $54 billion; and in the first year of this government it was $27 billion. The cumulative total of these deficits, even if the $44 billion is correct, is about $174 billion over four years. Yet we are told, assured and led to believe that we are simply to say, 'Yes, Treasurer, you are going to produce a $1½ billion surplus next year.' The cumulative total of the deficits is $174 billion over four years, and we are going to turn it around and produce a $1.5 billion surplus next year? As I have already explained, part of that apparent surplus will be achieved through financial trickery. If anybody believes on the basis of the evidence of what has been done over the last four years that this $44 billion deficit is going to lead to a surplus then they can find fairies around Lake Burley Griffin.

If they have been unable to control the budget for four years, how is this government going to control the budget in the fifth year? It is simply not going to happen. If you want further evidence of this, there is the fact that we found out last night that elsewhere in the budget papers the government has increased its debt ceiling. The government currently has the legislative authority of this parliament to borrow up to $250 billion. The government says, 'We're getting things under control. We're not going to have any more deficits; we're going to have a surplus. We're all back on track. Forget the last four years. Forget all of that; this is a new start.' That is effectively what Mr Swan was saying last night. It was: 'Forget that; we're all under control. We've got the spending under control. We've got tax under control. We've got our programs under control.' But, if that is the case, why does the Commonwealth need to increase its debt ceiling for borrowings from $250 billion to $300 billion? If somebody says, 'I've got the household expenditure under control—I'm not expending any more than I'm bringing in by way of income,' would you believe that person when they then said, 'But I'd better go out and increase the bank card limit from $250 to $300'? That is what the government is doing. In this budget they are seeking the legislative authority of this parliament to increase their borrowing ceiling to $300 billion, yet they are trying to tell us that somehow everything is under control.

This government is borrowing $100 million a day and projecting an interest bill next year of $8 billion. What could you spend $8 billion on, when in the last years of the Howard government we had surpluses? Last night the Treasurer was trumpeting that he is putting $1 billion over four years into the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The scheme is going to cost $4 billion, according to the Productivity Commission, so we are yet to find out where the other $3 billion is going to come from. The Treasurer is trumpeting that he will put $1 billion into the scheme over four years, but in reality it is probably going to cost closer to $8 billion to put the National Disability Insurance Scheme in place. If you did not pay $8 billion worth of interest each year, you would be able to do something socially useful that this country needs, such as have a proper national disability insurance scheme rather than have it on the never-never, which is what you are proposing.

The government says to us that there are 400,000 profoundly disabled people to whom the scheme should apply in the first year. Do you know how many of these people are going to be covered by what the government announced last night? In the first year there will be just 10,000 packages, and in the second year there will be 20,000 packages.

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

What did you do?

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing and Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will tell you what we did. We left the budget in surplus so you could pay for things like this; we did not run up $174 billion in cumulative deficit.

Mr Champion interjecting—

Keep the interjections coming. We did not have to raise the debt ceiling of the Commonwealth from $250 billion to $300 billion. We did not project in the budget, as your Treasurer did last night, that the unemployment rate is going to go up in the next year.

Mr Champion interjecting—

Keep the interjections coming if you want to know what we did. I do not think the record stands any comparison with the incompetent Labor government that we have at the present time.

In programs such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme, just one-twentieth of the need is going to be met. There will be just 20,000 out of the 400,000 packages projected to be needed, because the money is not there. Another example from the budget is its approach to aged-care reform. There was a bit of money for aged-care reform in the budget last night, but is that going to meet the ageing of the population and the huge increase in demand that is coming in future years as more people get older and need dementia services and other services? No. Why can't these services be provided? They cannot be provided because we have a government that is chronically unable to control the budget of this country, and this budget is just another example of its inability to do so.

Another reason that this budget represents bad policy is that it is basically compensation for the carbon tax. I heard the minister saying in her second reading speech that families were facing pressures—and they are. But this is what the Treasurer said last night:

The price on carbon pollution that begins this year will only be paid by Australia's biggest emitters. It will not be levied on families.

As if big emitters will not pass costs on to families!

But to help with any price increases, we are cutting income tax and increasing payments to pensioners, families and recipients of allowances beginning this month.

In other words, despite telling us that families in Australia are not going to have any impost because of the carbon tax, the Treasurer let the cat out of the bag last night when he said, 'Yes, there are cost increases coming and this is part of the reason we are having to give these handouts.' That is what this is about as well. It is not just about moving payments that would normally occur in next year's financial accounts into this year's; it is also about providing compensation with a bit of pretext that it is about an education allowance. As I explained before, you can make educational payments for genuine education needs under the present system without making this change. The Treasurer let the cat out of the bag last night. The reality is that this is about compensation for the carbon tax. Labor know that the carbon tax is toxic in the community. They know that people have made up their minds about it. People do not believe the spin that only big emitters will pay and that, having done that, they will absorb all the costs.

In reality, two things will happen as a consequence of the carbon tax. Emitters will, where they can, pass on the costs. Any business does that. If a business has an increase in the cost of production of its goods or services, it passes on the costs. It would have been better if the government had come clean and said this, but they are trying to walk both sides of the street. That will be one consequence. The other consequence will be that many small businesses in particular, where they are not able to pass on the costs, will reduce the number of their employees. This is happening already. If you go for a walk around the northern suburbs of Melbourne, where there are a lot of small manufacturing businesses—or the eastern suburbs of Melbourne or elsewhere around Australia—and if you talk to the people who are out there running businesses, you will find that the reality is that jobs are being lost already, and that is because of the impact of these changes under the Labor government. What the government is seeking to do is to give a bit of a sugar hit now, because they know that the big hit to the budget of ordinary Australians is coming with a huge whack in July.

The pretence in this budget is that we are taking money from the rich, the miners, to pay for the poor, but we are also taking a lot of money from low-income earners. There are changes to the FTB in relation to older teenagers—which is something that the government promised back in 2010 they would look after. That is suddenly gone in this budget. So one group of low-income earners are paying for another group of low-income earners. Then there are single parents. The government are taking a saving of about $700 million from that group of low-income earners to pay for other low-income earners and, at the same time, slashing the funds in the budget for the job service providers who might have been there to provide for these people whom the government are moving off parenting payments onto Newstart. While the government are moving them off parenting payments onto Newstart, they are actually slashing the funds that are available to the job service providers in Australia to provide the services that might help those single parents to get into a job. This pretence that this is just taking from one group who can pay it to another group who need it is just that: spin and pretence. There are low-income earners who are losing money under this budget and the reality is that the cost of the toxic carbon tax will be passed on when it is passed. That is what we are facing.

In terms of the carbon tax, the budget has $36 million to advertise and promote the carbon tax. I calculated that the government are going to have to spend almost $2 million a week on promotion and advertising for the carbon tax. Why have they got to do that? They know that it is so toxic that they have to try to convince people otherwise. At the same time, we know that electricity prices have gone up, gas prices have gone up, prices are going up and they will continue to go up.

Unemployment is forecast to go up under this budget, and that means job losses for ordinary Australians. There is every reason for this budget to be feared by the Australian people. When they look beyond the spin to what is actually in this budget, it will start to unravel, because they will see that one-off handouts—handouts that can be misused in some instances—are not going to fix the structural problems of the Australian economy. They are not going to make Australia a more economically secure place than it is at the present time. Worse than that: at the end of this budget process, nothing much has changed. We still have Julia Gillard as Prime Minister and Wayne Swan as Treasurer. It is still a government hanging onto the vote of the member for Dobell in order to maintain its majority in this place. We still have a tricky PM who did a deal with the Speaker in order to try to shore up her votes in this place. Nothing has changed—nothing at all. These issues are not going to simply go away because of whatever spin the Treasurer wants to put on these matters.

As I said at the outset, the coalition will oppose this measure. We will oppose it because it is bad policy. It is bad policy because it is taking a targeted payment and making it a general payment that can be used in any way unrelated to education expenses. It is bad policy because it is bringing forward expenditure from next year's financial accounts into this year's financial accounts in order to give the Treasurer his surplus. For those reasons, this measure should be opposed.

Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I listened to the contribution from the member for Menzies on the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012. I will not denigrate the debate by resorting to political spin, as he chose to do, particularly in his concluding remarks, but I would say that what the contribution the member for Menzies actually does bring to this debate is the difference in the approach of a government that is committed to looking after low- and middle-income families and the approach of those who simply think that those families may not be the people who are the primary concern in their electorates.

My electorate is probably vastly different to the electorate represented by the honourable member for Menzies. My electorate is the most multicultural electorate in the whole of Australia, according to the ABS. My electorate also is somewhat distinguished from other electorates—and particularly that represented by the member for Menzies—in that it is the second lowest when it comes to socioeconomic standing in this country. In other words, the electorate I have the honour to represent is an electorate of great need. It has significant disadvantage, and as a consequence we are obliged to look at people who are falling through the cracks, who are missing out.

This measure that is being introduced goes right to the heart of that. Those opposite have indicated that they are going to oppose this bill. I do not mind that; I am actually proud. This is a genuine Labor initiative—looking after low- to middle-income people. The argument of those opposite—if you cut through what the argument was—was that if you give people money upfront they are going to go to the pub and literally pass it over the wall. That really shows a great difference in approach.

The government will provide $2.1 billion over the next five years for this new schoolkids bonus to provide guaranteed support to families to help with the cost of their children's education. This will replace the education tax refund, which is currently available as a tax refund offset. The schoolkids bonus will be made in two equal instalments—in January and July of each year—commencing from 1 January 2013. As a transitional arrangement, the educational tax refund in 2011-12 will be replaced by a one-off payment to eligible families in June this year. Making these payments automatic will increase the assistance to many eligible families currently missing out on the education tax refund. This bill that the minister has just bought before the House introduces the new payment for family assistance which will commence on 1 January 2013. The payment will provide direct assistance to eligible families with children in school and will be paid through the family benefits scheme. The payments of $410 per child in primary school and $820 per child in secondary school will be made twice each year.

I have spoken a little bit about the electorate that I have the honour to represent. We need to put in context not only what the value of the educational tax refund was but also the fact that it was probably underused. Like every member here, I imagine, I regularly conduct mobile offices. As I indicated, I have a very multicultural electorate. I am very fortunate to have both Vietnamese and Chinese speaking staff and so when we get out there we can engage directly with people. About six weeks ago we were doing a mobile office in Cabramatta park and a Vietnamese gentleman came up and started talking to us and asking what we were doing. We discussed a range of things and we spoke about his kids. He had two children with him and we asked him what he got out of the education tax refund. He said, through the interpreters, 'No, Sir, I am not entitled to that.' He was very, very embarrassed because he could not find a job. This man, whose English was not good and who was certainly struggling to provide for his children, thought that he was not entitled to the education tax refund because he did not have a job and he did not pay tax. He did not understand that you could submit your receipts and claim the money back. That was the experience we heard from one man who fronted me six weeks ago.

Since then we did a bit of hunting around some of the local statistics in that regard, and I have actually discovered that, of all the eligible families in my electorate, 10 per cent have not claimed the education tax refund. That is a lot of low-income families that are missing out. They, like that gentleman, did not understand that they were entitled to the education tax refund, that it is a provision designed to assist in the education of their kids.

When people stand up and give us a lecture and say that if we give people the money upfront, when they need it, to be spent on their kids' education—whether it be for uniforms, books, computers, tuition, music lessons et cetera—they will go to the pub with it, what does that say to the people I represent? I know that a lot of people I represent work two and three jobs to pay for extra tutoring for their children. The Vietnamese, in particular, understand that the difference between success and otherwise in a modern society is education. I see firsthand these families who are struggling but who go out of their way to invest as much as they can in their child's education.

If those families are listening to the debate today, I wonder how they would take the fact that those opposite think that whatever we pay them will simply be expended at the local hotel or club? I wonder what they would think that says about the level of trust placed on how they raise their families? They are very good parents. They love their kids dearly and, above all, they know the benefit of education. As a matter of fact, of all the schools I visit, the schools attended by Asian children—whether Vietnamese, Cambodians, Chinese or from Laos—the teachers tell me that they feel that they work in partnership with parents because, as I said, these parents understand the value of education.

This money is going to go to them twice a year, not after they have expended it but when they need it the most. They will have this money when they need to commit to send their kids to an excursion or when they need to purchase school uniforms, textbooks or computers. It will help to ensure that their kids are able to be totally included in the education system, in the same way as every other kid out there. That is all kids, including those represented by the member for Menzies and those opposite. I see the need of people in my electorate. The other side do not represent those people, and maybe they are not high on their agenda, but these are real people making a real contribution. What is more important than the next generation—what these kids are going to do for our country, our economy and our productivity?

This schoolkids bonus will not change the method of calculating the education tax refund but it will ensure that people get it. It will put it into their accounts as opposed to people going out of their way to maintain receipts, hoping they have got them and using them every tax year. People I have personally spoken to believe that because they do not pay tax they are not entitled; that is why 10 per cent of my electorate has not claimed the educational tax refund. My electorate is probably the second-most disadvantaged in the whole of Australia and yet 10 per cent have not done that. Above anything, I would ask members to think about that—about the people that I represent in an electorate which is significantly disadvantaged. This is directly doing something for them and their children.

Much has been made of bringing the budget back into surplus. Clearly the Treasurer's speech did not impress those opposite last night because he actually did it: he has brought down a budget that is going into surplus. I recall the comments of the shadow Treasurer not all that long ago. His rhetoric has changed considerably over the last six months. It went from, 'We'll get back into surplus before Labor will get back into surplus,' to the last position he had—that is, that getting back to surplus was an aspiration: 'No great plan for it.'

There has been a litany of things that those opposite have failed to have any regard for in their contributions about budgetary matters. I cannot for the life of me recall that at any stage, during any economic debate, any of those opposite even vaguely mentioned the world financial crisis. It is as if it did not happen. When most European states at the moment have a sovereign debt of 80-plus per cent of their gross national product, when their unemployment rates are over 10 per cent, when the United States' unemployment rate is about 8½ per cent, Australia is a standout economy. Those opposite certainly no longer mention the International Monetary Fund, mainly because it has credited the Australian government's move to bring this budget back to surplus in such a timely way. Nor have those opposite mentioned similar positive comments made by agencies such as Standard and Poor's. In any economic contribution, they are going to completely ignore the fact that, despite the challenges we have faced leading up to this budget, Australia has now received AAA status from every rating agency for the first time in its history—never before.

What we are doing through this budget is placing downward pressure on interest rates. We are creating an incentive for the Reserve Bank to again reduce interest rates. I would not expect those opposite to acknowledge it but the recent 50 basis point adjustment by the Reserve Bank, which is being taken up in dribs and drabs by other banks, has had a huge impact on my electorate. My electorate might be the second-most disadvantaged in the country, my electorate might be the most multicultural in Australia with 50 per cent of my electorate born overseas, but one thing my electorate really strives hard to do is participate in private housing. When they got that rate cut it went down very significantly for families who work so hard to look after their kids. This is another initiative by federal Labor to do the exact same thing. Without increasing any inflationary aspect, without making any adjustments to the calculation of the education tax refund, we are moving in such a way as to ensure that all those families that are entitled to it for their kids will get it.

I ask those opposite who are going to participate in this debate to understand that in my electorate, an electorate of great need, to date 10 per cent of families who are eligible for the education tax refund have not claimed it. This is for a range of different reasons, but many just did not think they were entitled to it. This will be well-received by them and I can assure those opposite there will be no issue of it finding its way into local clubs, poker machines or the front bar of some establishment, as the member for Menzies indicated; this will go to looking after their children. (Time expired)

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012 abolishes a good program, the education tax refund, and replaces it with a fistful of dollars designed to shore up the electoral prospects of the Prime Minister. The bill itself should be called the 'sugar hit bill' because that is exactly what the intent of this bill is. Make no mistake: it is about two things and they are not to do with education. It is about trying to compensate for the carbon tax—the world's biggest carbon tax coming on 1 July this year—and trying to add to the pretence that the government has some sort of economic credibility by delivering a budget surplus next financial year.

I will get to those two points in a minute, but let me get to the substance of the bill in front of us first. The bill abandons the education tax refund. This tax refund was specifically designed to assist families with their education expenses. We support that intent, and we support the education tax refund because, as the member for Fowler pointed out, many families are doing it tough at the moment. We know that education expenses have been going up. There are uniforms, school fees, textbooks, drama, music and all sorts of things that families need to pay for.

We are a strong supporter of the education tax refund to enable families to pay for those measures which specifically are tailored towards helping their children go to school. In fact, so much so are we supportive of this measure that we took to the last election a policy to increase the amount of money which people could claim against that education tax refund. It was based on an important principle, and it is a principle that the other side of this chamber have great difficulty with. It is the principle of accountability. It is accountability to the taxpayer, who is paying for the payment, and it is accountability on behalf of the recipient to spend it according to what the desires of that payment were.

The design of the education tax refund was quite simple. You simply had to collect the receipts for items which went towards the education of your children. That was all. It was no great burden. If you bought textbooks you got a receipt, put it in your pocket, and then you could claim it back against your taxes and get a refund at the end of that financial year. That is what it required. That did two things. First of all, it created an incentive for people to spend the money on education rather than other things, because we think that is a good thing. Second of all, it created an accountability mechanism so that we ensured the money set aside for education expenses actually got spent on education expenses. We are in favour of this. We are in favour of supporting families with their costs of education, so much so that, as I mentioned before, we took to the last election a policy to increase the amount of support provided to each family—up to $1,000 for each secondary school-aged child and $500 for each primary school-aged child. By contrast the Labor scheme provides only $820 for each secondary school aged child and only $410 for each primary school aged child.

This bill removes the linkage between the payment and education. That is what it does. No longer do you have to collect the receipts and no longer do you have to ensure that the money has to be spent on education in order to receive that payment. Rather the payment just gets delivered directly into your bank account to spend on whatever you like. We have seen this before, because we have had a pattern from this government, and we know through the GFC that there were $900 cash splashes provided to families. Yes, many of those families used it for the right purposes to help them with their food and accommodation and other costs that they were struggling with. We also know that a lot of that money was spent on flat screen TVs from China, it was spent on holidays and it was spent on some other unsavoury things, which I do not need to mention here. It was given to dead people and it was given to people who were overseas. I am concerned that exactly the same thing will happen, again, here. Yes, a lot of people will use it for education costs but there will also be people who use it for things other than the costs incurred for the education of their children. There will be payments, I am sure, made to people who are now deceased and there will be payments made to people who are living overseas.

Our concern is that it breaks the nexus between the payment and the purpose for the payment and, consequently, this core concept of accountability gets thrown out the window. It is accountability, most importantly, for the taxpayer who is paying for this. They are the ones who are paying for it. It is not the Labor government paying for it; it is the taxpayer. They deserve accountability to ensure that their hard earned dollars are going to where they are supposed to be delivered. It is accountability on behalf of the recipients of that money to ensure that they spend the money on the purpose for which it was intended.

Let me now go back to what this bill is really about. As I said at the outset, it is really about two things: compensating for the world's largest carbon tax coming to all families on 1 July; and trying to add to the pretence that there will be a budget surplus next year. The carbon tax, the greatest carbon tax in the world, will hit every single family on 1 July this year. This was the tax which was supposed to reform the economy according to the Treasurer—a clean energy future was going to occur, a transformation of Australia.

It is funny, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, that it did not get mentioned once in the budget speech. This was the big transformation of our economy. You would think in the 14 pages, the half-hour speech, that the Treasurer might have mentioned it once. But, no, he did not mention the carbon tax. We know why, because it is toxic. It is politically toxic for this government. The reason it is politically toxic is it puts prices up for every family across Australia and it will cost jobs across Australia. When you look at the government's own figures, the carbon tax will increase electricity costs by 10 per cent in the first year alone. According to the government's own figures it will increase gas costs by nine per cent alone. It will cost jobs across Australia. The Victorian treasury has done some analysis and says it will cost 24,000 jobs across Victoria. In my electorate alone it will cost 500 jobs. The reason is that it penalises our businesses but does not penalise the businesses that we are competing with from overseas. So a manufacturer in my electorate, which is struggling already with the high Australian dollar and fierce competition from China, will all of a sudden have additional costs imposed but the Chinese manufacturer will not have those additional costs. It operates like a reverse tariff. It is poisonous because it is bad policy.

Of course it is based on a lie: it is based on the premise that this government went to the election promising that it would not introduce a carbon tax, and what does it do as soon as it gets in? It introduces it, and this bill is all about trying to provide a little sugar hit to divert people from the carbon tax, which is coming their way. But of course it will not compensate for fewer jobs. It will not compensate for the higher prices which will be coming from 1 July. It certainly will not compensate for the continuing increase in prices which will occur because the carbon tax is legislated to increase from $23 up to $29 in the first three years alone. It cannot compensate for those things, and the government should not pretend that it will do so.

The other thing that this bill is about—and the member for Menzies touched on this—is trying to add to the pretence that the government is reining in its expenditure and getting on top of its debt and will deliver a surplus in 2012-13. The trickery of this bill is that it brings forward some of the costs from the education tax refund, which were supposed to be incurred in 2012-13, and brings them forward into this financial year—that is what is happening. Under the previous scheme, you had to collect your receipts, you would put them in and the payment would come the next year; under this measure, a payment will be delivered in June, immediately, and that is why there is a great rush to get this bill through the parliament to deliver the payment in June. The government does not care about the expenditure; it only cares about the paper projected budget surplus of next year. If this payment were put into next year's budget then half of the $1.5 billion budget surplus would be gone. This is not the only piece of accounting trickery which is going on, as the member for Menzies pointed out; there are any number of other pieces of accounting trickery occurring in order to give the pretence that we will have a budget surplus next year.

The key thing about a budget surplus is that it is not just to give the pretence through a bit of paper that they have got the spending under control. We advocate for running a budget surplus because, primarily, it is intended to stop a government spending money beyond its means. We advocate for a budget surplus because it puts limits on the government spending money beyond its means. But the government actually does not care about that. That is why we have seen this financial year's budget deficit balloon out from $12 billion to $22 billion to $37 billion to $44.5 billion for this financial year. It does not care about that as long as it has the pretence that next year it will get this $1.5 billion surplus.

The other thing that I would mention is that of course we will not know whether they actually deliver on this budget surplus until the end of next year. We know for sure that they will not deliver. It is interesting that we have the member for Fraser in the chamber. The member for Fraser has been a big advocate of looking at betting markets to determine what is the most likely outcome in politics. He suggests that they are a very good predictor of what will occur. In fact the betting markets today have the odds on whether the government will deliver a budget surplus—not just project one but actually deliver one—in 2012-13. The odds of them delivering a surplus are about $4 or maybe $5; the odds of them delivering a budget deficit for 2012-13 are about $1.20—that is, the markets suggest there is about a 20 per cent chance of them delivering a surplus, even taking into account all of their accounting tricks. Maybe the member for Fraser will be able to comment on that, because he has written extensively about how the betting markets are very good predictors in politics, and the betting markets are saying that there is about a 20 per cent chance that they will deliver a budget surplus next year even taking into account their accounting tricks.

Let me summarise: this measure before us is poor policy because it takes away the link between the payments and the actual intent of the payments—that is the first point. It is also poor because it is based on accounting trickery, trying to bring forward payments from the next financial year into this financial year. Thirdly, it is all about trying to create a sugar hit for the carbon tax, which is going to hit all families on 1 July this year.

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

I rise to proudly support the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012. This bill introduces a new payment through the family assistance legislation called the schoolkids bonus to begin on 1 January 2013. The payment will provide direct assistance to eligible families with children in school and will be paid through the family payment system twice a year: in January and July. It will be paid right at the start of the school year and just before term 3. The two payments will total $410 per year for each child in primary school and $820 per year for each child in secondary school. The schoolkids bonus will replace the education tax refund. Subsequently this bill removes the education tax refund from the taxation legislation. As part of the transitional arrangements to the new schoolkids bonus, the bill also creates a new payment in the family assistance and veterans affairs legislation to pay the maximum value of the education tax refund entitlement for 2011-12 as a lump sum. This lump sum payment will be delivered to eligible families before the end of June 2012.

What does this mean? It means parents do not need to keep receipts for months and months on end to get a guaranteed payment. It means that parents will receive a full amount every time, so families will not miss out if they lose their receipts. Parents do not have to pay out of their own pocket and then wait months to get paid back. The payment will be made upfront twice a year before the start of term 1 and term 3.

In addition, the paying out of the 2011-12 education tax refund as part of the transitional arrangements means that parents who are entitled to family tax benefit part A will be paid on 8 May 2012 for a school-age child—and for young people in secondary education a lump sum payment. The education tax refund payment will pay out the full amount of what would have been available through the taxation system for 2011-12. This means $409 for each child in primary school and $818 for each child in secondary school. The education tax refund payment will be paid earlier than otherwise would have been the case under the education tax refund, and without the need to lodge receipts for a tax return.

On many occasions in the five years I have been here I have had to shake my head while listening to speeches—yesterday afternoon while listening to a matter of public importance which the opposition treated as such a joke that they turned it into a story about Star Trekbut I do not think I have ever stood in this chamber and been as angry as I am now. The arguments being put up by the opposition—and importantly by the shadow minister, the member for Menzies—are appalling, to say the very least. Families in my electorate should be disgusted at the arguments that are being put up by the opposition today. For the shadow minister to stand there today and say that families are just as likely to go down the road and blow it on poker machines is just offensive. It is so interesting that every time this government provides financial assistance to ease those cost-of-living pressures we hear the opposition drag out that line, 'They are just as likely to blow it on poker machines.'

What is absolutely ironic in this argument is that the then minister under the Howard government, Mal Brough, was more than happy to give a $5,000 lump sum baby bonus—no checks or balances, just: 'Here's $5,000 because you've had a baby. You don't have to prove that that money is spent on that child.' You did not hear arguments from the Howard government saying, 'We're worried this is going to be blown on other things.' They trusted the families that they gave this money to. But when we want to give $400 or $800 to families for education expenses, it is: 'No, we cannot trust them. They won't spend it on their kids.' That is just offensive. The families in my electorate should be furious at the opposition for wanting to block this bill.

I have heard arguments from the opposition today that this is bad policy and that no-one is going to get any more money. That just shows that the opposition do not understand this bill and why this change is occurring. The reality is that more families are getting extra money, because many families across the country were not claiming the education tax refund despite being eligible. There were many families who were underclaiming. In my electorate there were 1,600 families out of the 9,700 local families who were not receiving the education tax refund at all. There were another 8,100 who were receiving less than they were entitled to. This is a bonus to those people. It is extra money. To say, 'It is just shifting money from one side of the ledger to the other; it means nothing; it is no extra money for families,' is either showing the ignorance of the opposition in not understanding the bill or, worse than that, misleading the Australian people. I suspect it is the latter, because there is certainly a history of that behaviour.

It was interesting to hear the member for Aston today say that the education tax refund's intent—which they supported—was to help families with education expenses. He went through a list of different expenses. He mentioned textbooks, uniforms, music, art and other extracurricular activities. It is very interesting that the member for Aston would say that, because he is absolutely right that families are weighed down with those expenses; they are having to pay for all of those things. What he is wrong on is thinking that the education tax refund covered those things, because it did not. In fact, the education tax refund was limited to what families could claim, and I bring the chamber's attention to the education tax refund eligibility:

Eligible expenses include the cost of buying, establishing, repairing and maintaining any of the following items:

More recently, in the 2011-12 budget, the government extended that to include school uniforms, hats, footwear and sports uniforms purchased from 1 July 2011—all very important expenditure for families. But it did not include the sorts of things that the member for Aston talked about. That is why—despite the opposition claiming that this is just a 'sugar hit'—this is a much better program. It is much better than the education tax refund, not only for the obvious reason that families are getting the full amount and they are getting it when they most need it, but also because it recognises that education expenditure goes much broader than textbooks, computers and uniforms. There are a lot more expenses for families. The member for Aston is right in saying that kids who want to do music have to buy their own equipment. Whether it is government or non-government schools, whether it is part of the normal curriculum within the school or an extracurricular activity after school, they still have to buy their own equipment. If the kids want to learn violin, mum and dad still have to find the money to buy that violin. This program means that that money can go towards those expenses. It can go to art courses, to music and to other things, but importantly I want to give a couple of examples why this program is so much better and more important for families.

The reality is that there are students who need more support than the education system can provide, wherever they go to school. Sometimes those children need some external tutoring. Sometimes because of learning difficulties those students need speech therapy, and I have met many families whose children need speech therapy. That is not readily available in schools. In government schools in Queensland, if your child is assessed and they need speech therapy they may get one session a week or fortnight, and it may even be less than that. If you talk to any parent whose child needs speech therapy, they will tell you that is not sufficient to bring their child up to the level they need to be at to further their learning. This money can actually assist in those kids getting speech therapy lessons outside of school. I am very proud of this program because it recognises that there is no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to education expenses. It is up to the family to decide that.

To argue that we do not know where this money is going to be spent ignores the fact that this money has already been spent, that these parents have already put their hands in their pockets and spent the money on their children, and it is okay to reimburse them for those costs. But there are also families out there who have not been able to put their hands in their pockets already. I will tell you, for example, of the mum in my electorate who could not afford to buy new shoes for her daughter who was starting high school. The daughter had to wear her existing shoes from the previous year. The shoes were too tight, and she came home in the first week with blisters on her feet and in excruciating pain. The mum did not want to send her to school in other shoes because she might get picked on. Her solution was to pull her daughter out of school until she could afford to raise the money to buy new shoes. No parent should have to do that. She turned to one of our local not-for-profit community organisations for help, and she got that help. But I do not think she should have to turn to that community organisation for help. We should be supporting that family, and that is what we will do through this financial assistance.

Many benefits come from this bill. Despite my anger, I do in part feel sorry for those members who stand up on the opposition side and speak to oppose this bill, because they have to go back to their electorates and face those families. They will do one of two things: either they will pretend they are not opposing it and go out and say this is a great initiative—a bit like the BER, when they went out and said how great it was locally, but then came here and opposed it—or they will have to tell those families why they do not deserve this money and that they do not trust those families to use this money on their own children.

This government, through this bill and the budget initiatives, is doing a lot for families including the Paid Parental Leave scheme, the family tax benefit part A, the teenager boost that we have previously provided, the childcare rebate and the assistance that we are giving parents in their childcare and their training needs to get back into the workforce. These are all positive measures, but I stand here today to say that there is no more positive measure that we can do for families in relation to cost-of-living pressure. We hear those on the other side constantly arguing about cost-of-living pressure, but this is the test: when they talk about cost-of-living pressure on families, is it about the politics or is it genuinely about helping families? If you are genuine about helping families, you will support this bill. You will go back to your communities and say, 'I will stand up and support this bill,' just as the government is doing with the clean energy future household assistance package. We will support families. That is what a Labor government does. That is what this government is doing, and I support this bill wholeheartedly.

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

I am pleased to rise to speak on the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012. Let me start by noting that the process under which the House of Representatives is being asked to consider this bill is a deeply deficient one. The first official announcement of this measure was in the Treasurer's budget speech last night. We now have a bill which was introduced this morning that was only available to members of the House to review from 9.30 this morning. The second reading has been brought on immediately and members of this House, the people's house, are being asked to consider the merits of a bill which extends for some 55 pages and contains some extremely complex provisions with very little notice. That is poor process and it could only lead one to doubt the motives with which the government brings forward this bill and its motives in wanting to have it considered in such a rush. It is hard to avoid the suspicion that the government is eager to avoid detailed scrutiny being brought to bear on the measures contained in this bill.

In the brief time that I have available to me I want to make three points: firstly, that the measures implemented by this bill are poorly designed measures and they do not do what they say they do; secondly, that what is really driving this bill, and the measures contained in it, is politics. This is pure politics, and is about seeking to offer additional compensation for the effects of the carbon tax and the increase that will cause in the cost of living faced by millions of Australians; and thirdly, that families would be much better served by having a better government, lower taxes and less debt to be repaid, including debt that will inevitably fall upon the shoulders of the very children whose families are to receive payments under this bill.

Let me turn first to the proposition that what we have before the House this morning is a poorly designed measure that does not, in fact, do what the governments says it is going to do. The stated intention of this measure is that it will pay for expenses like school uniforms, school shoes, textbooks, camps, excursions and extracurricular activities, such as music lessons. That is what the minister told the House this morning in the second reading speech. The reality is that this money can be spent on whatever the recipient chooses to spend it on. If this is a measures designed specifically to target expenditure associated with the cost of having a child in primary school or high school it is a very poorly designed and poorly targeted measure. Curiously, it replaces a measure designed to achieve the same outcomes—that was much better targeted. Again, one can only wonder about the government's motives in introducing this change.

To be eligible to benefit under this measure, a number of conditions need to be satisfied. The first is that the family must be eligible for Family Tax Benefit Part A. But the class of eligible families goes beyond families who have children in primary school or high school because Family Tax Benefit Part A is available for those who, first of all, meet the income test and, secondly, have a child up to the age of 20 or a dependent student within the family up to the age of 24. In other words, if this measure is to be effective in being targeted only to primary and high school children there are additional eligibility conditions which will need to be met. The family will need to demonstrate that here is a primary school or high school aged child in the family.

There are reasons to be uncertain as to whether the eligibility mechanisms have been adequately thought through. We are told, in the minister's second reading speech, that the design of this scheme means that parents or eligible recipients do not have to collect a pile of receipts. It is paid in full and up-front. It is money in your pocket. The minister's second reading speech says very little about the mechanisms by which eligibility will be established and very little about the inevitable possibility that this money will be paid to some families who do not, in fact, meet the eligibility criteria because although they are eligible for Family Tax Benefit Part A the relevant child is not a primary or secondary school student.

In this regard, it is interesting that when you delve into the bill it says, amongst other things—under proposed section 35U(c) of A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999—that the bonus can, in some circumstances, be paid even after the child has left school. In other words, the very drafting of the legislation acknowledges that there is a problem is trying to determine who is eligible to receive this bonus. The solution is apparently a quick fudge: we will allow payment even if the child has left school.

There are other provisions of the bill which are equally concerning when it comes time to consider how well designed and targeted this scheme is. Clause 24 provides that the minister has the power, by legislative instrument, to determine a scheme under which ETR payments—education tax refund payments—be made to persons in particular circumstances. This bill, in other words, very deep within it, contains provisions entitling the minister, by regulation, to expand the circumstances under which money is paid.

That is just one piece of evidence amongst many that this is a poorly designed and hastily cobbled together package of measures, and we all know the underlying political reason for that. It is that the government panicked, late in the day, as it was developing this budget. There was not sufficient compensation for Australians who are going to face cost-of-living increases as a result of the introduction of the carbon tax. So they have come up with a new way of throwing money at people and they have dignified it with the term 'schoolkids bonus'. We know from past experience of similarly hastily put-together and poorly designed cash-splash schemes by this government—such as the $900 cash bonus in the Rudd years of this government—that such schemes are rife with problems. Money gets pumped out to a whole range of people who ought not to have received it, even under the rules of the scheme. That is an inevitable consequence of a scheme being cobbled together in a rushed fashion to meet political objectives.

We have heard claims from members opposite this morning that the policy objectives here are worthwhile and important and that this is in some way a better designed and targeted scheme than the one it replaces. But even a moment's consideration suggests that that claim cannot be substantiated. There is no attempt to link the amount that is paid to the actual expenditure incurred. In other words, the amount is paid regardless of whether the child goes to a school where the uniform costs $50 or the child goes to a school where the uniform costs $250, and regardless of whether the child does sport and music, and incurs fees in doing so, or does not. There is no linkage at all between the amount of the schoolkids bonus and expenditure actually incurred by the family in supporting the child in his or her education.

It is a bizarre approach to policy to say, 'There was previously a tax rebate which was payable for a defined objective if the taxpayer provided evidence of having spent money in the designated areas but we are going to replace that scheme because not enough people claimed under it.' The government is saying: 'Not enough people wanted to claim money from the government. Something must be wrong; we're going to fix that up by replacing it with a scheme which has no restrictions and no requirement to demonstrate eligibility, at all.'

Economists speak of 'revealed preference'—that is to say, you work out what it is that people want to consume based upon what they actually do. If people have chosen not to make a claim it is a pretty good inference that that is because they did not need the money or they made a judgment that the time incurred in gathering the documentation and making the claim was time that could have been spent more productively doing something else. But that is not good enough for this government because it is determined to push money into the pockets of people even if, to date, they have shown no desire to make a claim. The consequence is that we have moved from having a measure which was well designed and well targeted at education expenses towards a generalised cash splash.

The government's arguments on this point are completely threadbare when you give the matter even a moment's thought. If their true objective was to make it simpler procedurally for parents to obtain this money to use for the specified purpose, there are a range of alternatives they could have considered. They could have considered, for example, a voucher scheme under which you are given a certain amount of money which can only be spent with specified suppliers. You could be given a voucher which could only be spent with people who make and sell school uniforms, with providers of sports and music lessons and so on, or with the school itself, which will often be the one which is charging the extra fees. The point I make is this: there are a raft of other policy designs which could have been used if the government was genuine in wanting to achieve its stated objectives. But the reality is that the stated objectives are merely a smokescreen for the government's true purpose.

The second point I want to make today is that this is purely about politics. This is a measure which is designed to deliver further compensation for the cost of the carbon tax, because the government knows, despite its protestations, that the carbon tax will materially increase the cost of living for millions of ordinary Australians

The Treasurer told us last night in his budget speech that families will not pay the carbon tax; it will be companies that pay. If that were true there would be no need for compensation. But the reality is, as the Treasurer either knows or ought to know, there is a well-established distinction between the legal incidence of a tax and the economic incidence of a tax. This is a tax the economic incidence of which will fall upon all Australians. This is pure politics designed to try and soften the blow of an ill-judged carbon tax.

The Treasurer and the government are desperate to ram this measure through quickly because they are desperate to get the money out before 30 June. Amongst other things, we know that the true cost of this measure in 2011-12, according to the budget papers, is $1.32 billion. If that money were to be spent in the 2012-13 year the consequence would be that the Treasurer's wafer-thin surplus would disappear almost immediately. So it is politics that is motivating the government's desire to move to this supposed new scheme. It has nothing to do with the policy merits or otherwise of the existing education tax rebate scheme.

The third point I want to come to, in the brief time I have remaining to me, is to argue that what families deserve is a better government, lower taxes and less debt to repay. Of course, if we could all have an extra $820 in the pocket, which did not cost us anything to get, that would be wonderful and we would all sign up for it. But that is not the proposition on offer. This $820, far from costing us nothing, is going to cost us all a lot of money. The people who will end up paying the most for it are the very schoolchildren purported to benefit, because in years to come they will be the ones repaying this government's debt. That is why we oppose this ill-judged measure.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to comment on the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012 today. I had not planned on speaking directly after the member for Bradfield, who is always a hard act to follow. I had expected, according to the very latest speakers list, to speak after the member for Robertson, but as usual it appears that the government speakers list is as inaccurate as their budget forecasts.

What is this bill really about? We have heard a lot of talk today that it is about education and making sure money gets to the right people, but there are some other aspects to this as well and we can never lose sight of those. Possibly this bill is not all about education; maybe it is all about politics and maybe it is also a little bit about the budget. I will get to those aspects which so many of my colleagues have spoken about this morning and make my own points.

Education is something that all of us in this place agree is of great value. It is the great leveller, the great equaliser—the chance for people born in the lowest socioeconomic circumstances to rise up to great places in this country and to do great things for our nation. That is important, and that is why we supported the education tax rebate. It is a very good, targeted program. I spoke a couple of years ago about the need to expand it when you could not claim a refund for uniforms. I am on the record for having said you should be able to, and later it was expanded to allow that.

I know that there are families within the electorate of Cowan—in Girrawheen, Koondoola, Ballajura, Marangaroo, suburbs like that—where there are young kids who just do not fit in at school, where the fact that they do not have the leavers shirt or the latest upgraded uniform means they do not feel that they really fit in. I made an offer to Ballajura Primary School recently that I would help pay for leavers shirts for a couple of kids who did not appear to have them, because I know how important it is for young people to fit in. Obviously my 13-year-old and my nine-year-old do not want for such measures, but I know there are families in the community that struggle. So it was a welcome thing that the education tax rebate focused on specific, directed delivery to allow kids to fully participate in the educational process and the educational system, so that they did not have to feel different and that that was not something that made them less likely to turn up to school each day.

There is no doubt that we as a coalition support education and that we want kids in the more struggling families in the lower socioeconomic areas to have the same opportunities and not to feel bad for want of the basics such as a decent school shirt or a decent school uniform to wear. We certainly would not want them to feel that they could not have the same textbooks and other things that kids in Western Australia get from places like Wooldridges, the great suppliers of the book lists in the state school system in Western Australia. So it is important that we focus on making sure that the money that is on offer to Australian families actually makes it to the mark and results in real educational outcomes. Those outcomes were aplenty: school uniforms, books, school fees, even those voluntary fee ones in state schools in Western Australia. They were the sorts of things that could be claimed: actual deliverables, an actual impact as a contribution to the school and directly to the student.

What worries me about this proposal, specifically when we are talking about the educational outcomes, is that this will be something like the BER . It will purport to be some education revolution but, like a new building, which is great, not something that substantially changes the actual education outcomes for kids. I know from past experience—quite distant past in my case—and from the experiences of a lot of families in Cowan about the impacts of the cost of living and what happens when money lands in their accounts. What will happen when this money lands in the accounts of some families in the electorate is that that money will not just be immediately moved over to an education account or subaccount for that family. They will receive that money and then, when the next bill comes in, that money will probably just flow out to pay for that. In a very small number of circumstances we may see a pick-up in whitegoods, TVs or, worse and hopefully in none or hardly any cases, drugs and alcohol and other excesses and vices and things like that. The one thing that we can be certain of is that there can be no guarantee that the upfront $820 cash payment for a high school student or $410 for a primary school student will actually make an educational impact for a student. We can always hope, but we can be certain that it will not all go in that direction. And that is what the education tax rebate was really all about at the start.

As I said before, both sides of politics agree on the great value of education. What we believe in on this side is making sure that every dollar that comes from the taxpayers—it does not come from the government; it does not fall from the sky—actually ends up making some impact on the educational opportunities for young people across this country. That should particularly be so for the students in those great state schools I mentioned before within the electorate of Cowan: Hudson Park Primary School, Roseworth Primary School, Koondoola Primary School, Waddington Primary School, Marangaroo Primary School, Rawlinson Primary School and South Ballajura Primary School. Those are in areas where there is struggle, where there are people doing it hard. They are the lower socioeconomic areas where education is needed to help children to lift up to be great participants in this great country's life.

We need to make sure that this money goes all the way through. We are not opposed to $820 going to a high school student or $410 going to a primary school student. But we stand for that money going to the educational benefits for those children and not, through an act or omission or other issues, being diverted to something else. The government knows that. The government knows exactly where this money could end up and they are not concerned about making sure that every dollar goes to education. This government is thinking of other things now.

This government is thinking about what it has done in the past in this place and the impact of that from 1 July 2012. I am talking about that great betrayal of the Australian people by the Prime Minister and by the government with regard to the carbon tax. The government knows that the Australian people disagree with it. It knows that it is going to have to try and buy its way out of this adversity. Despite the scandals that afflict the government right now, it knows that the big tidal wave is coming and it is going to have to try and buy out the Australian people—to flash some cash in their direction—to try and get off the hook on that deal. This is primarily about politics. It is about the government's benefit, not ours.

We on this side believe in the great value of education. We believe in what must be done for young people in Australia. We believe that $820, for secondary school students, and $410, for primary school students, should go towards their education, towards helping them and towards providing benefits to them—that is, making sure they fit in and that they can fully participate. We believe in that. And, without this bill, that would continue. There would still be the need for accountability—that is, people would have to prove that they actually spent the money on education for their child. Is that such a bad thing? Is it such a terrible thing that Australian parents should have to prove that taxpayers' money went to the education and benefit of their child? I do not think that is too much to ask. That is exactly the sort of support that this federal government, and this parliament, should be providing. They should be making sure that taxpayers' money goes to the future of this country, which is represented by all those young people around the country. It is not too much to ask. It is the right thing to do.

However, in the case of this bill, it is not right. This is not what is going to benefit Australian children. This is not going to be an investment in the future. An investment in the future was the education tax rebate—that was working. Maybe, if the government is so concerned about people not participating because they did not know about the rebate, it should divert some of the $36 million that it is spending on promoting its toxic carbon tax. Maybe it should put some of that into some posters on the front doors of school admin blocks around this country, to tell people that the education tax refund is there for them. Maybe that is what it should be doing with some of these advertising dollars. But instead, what we have is this sugar hit, this sweetener and this compensation for the carbon tax in the form of extra cash handouts. That is what this is really all about.

However, it is not just these matters—the lack of focus on education, the politics and the buy-out. It is not just those things. We have also got the budget. Last night, the Treasurer tried to persuade us that his figures were going to be accurate this time: $1.5 billion for a surplus—not a whole lot of change from the figures for the year before, when he told us there was going to be a $22 billion deficit, which has now blown out to $44 billion. But this time, apparently, it is all going to be accurate. It is all going to be cast in stone. It is going to be accurate for the first time in four years. I think the Australian people know that it is not going to work out that way. This coming year will be another red ink year, despite the fact that, if this bill passes, the government will have managed to move these payments, such as the $750 million in educational tax rebate payments, into this financial year, which helps it take that little bit of pressure off the next financial year. That is sleight of hand.

The government has also announced that the $1.1 billion in flood payments to local governments is being moved from what was forecast as part of the next financial year—that is, this allegedly $1.5 billion surplus financial year—into this financial year as well. Again, a sleight of hand. What we are seeing with this government is that it talks about education but it is not about education. This bill is about politics. It is about buying people out. It is about trying to compensate for the government's toxic carbon tax. It is also about trying to create a false image, which will be seen to be such in the coming months. It is about trying to balance the budget and trying to do that sleight of hand with the budget.

As I have said, both sides of this House believe in education, but we on this side stand by our opposition to this bill because we believe that it is not too much for taxpayers to ask that every dollar of the contribution they make to the future of this country towards issues like education and towards the education tax rebate should go towards an educational outcome. We should be able to be certain that every dollar spent goes to those young people around the country, including those in Cowan, who need to fit in and who need to have the resources there to make sure that they do not miss out We need to make sure that education, that great leveller, is pushed out through all the streets and all the communities of our country. It is not too much to ask that the money that the government offers actually goes all the way through to an educational outcome.

What the government proposes today is no guarantee for that. It is just a handout. It is just a sugar hit. We cannot be sure that educational outcomes will ever be achieved by this measure. It is not the right way to go. It should be left as it is. We support the current situation with the education tax rebate and the government should leave it alone in the best interests of this nation.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012. I would like to acknowledge the previous speakers, including the member for Cowan, another West Australian, who I know has a deep interest in education, particularly as he has two young girls that he is extremely proud of. His interest in their education is shown by the way he delivered his speech on this particular bill. We also heard from the member for Aston, who spoke about this bill being all about a carbon tax compensation, and the member for Bradfield, who spoke about this bill as being just politics. Last night the government announced their planned budget for the coming year. It was a confusing message from the Treasurer, and it seems that this government continues to lack any sort of narrative that appeals to the Australian public and deals with the economic challenges which Australians face. If we had taken Labor's rhetoric at face value, we would have expected a tough budget with a coherent economic strategy to deliver stronger growth and higher productivity. Instead, we got more Labor handouts, money shuffles and a pretend surplus.

The surplus is an illusion. The planned increases in national debt next year and over the forward estimates will continue to rise. Those who watched the budget last night might ask themselves: 'How can the government deliver a surplus while simultaneously increasing national debt? Surely there's something the Treasurer isn't telling us.' The bill currently before the House is yet another example of the government not being upfront with the Australian people. Labor has decided to dump the education tax rebate, a targeted program that provided genuine assistance to relieve education costs for parents. Instead, it is giving out handfuls of taxpayers' money in a desperate bid to improve its electoral stocks.

The new handouts bring back memories of the $900 cash handouts that former Prime Minister Rudd sent out in the early days of the government. Consistent with this government's usual practices, waste occurred on a massive scale, with payments going overseas and to dead people. I recall during the Rudd period a talkback caller to 6PR in Perth whose name, if my memory serves me right, was Charlie. He won the title of talkback caller of the day. The subject he spoke about was what he had spent his $900 of stimulus money on. He had spent it on brothels. There was no accountability for the $900, so, instead of helping him out—

Mr Baldwin interjecting—

It seems to be an acceptable practice.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At least it was his own money!

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He thanked the government for the good time he got out of the $900.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's cheap compared to Thomson!

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

I am sure that the member for Swan can have his contribution by himself, without your assistance.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The education tax refund—the ETR—was designed to help with the cost of educating primary and secondary school children. Eligible parents, carers, legal guardians and independent students were able to get money back on education expenses. These included items such as computers, educational software, textbooks and stationery. Under the education tax refund system you may have got 50 per cent of your money back. If you got family tax benefit part A, you were probably eligible for the ETR. There were also some payments which prevented your receiving FTB part A but still entitled you to receive the refund.

This new legislation has abandoned any pretence of being about offsetting education costs; it is simply a sugar hit to create a diversion from the increased bills and costs that will occur as a result of the carbon tax while families go about their everyday lives. Labor are recklessly promoting this measure by saying that families will be eligible for the money even if they lose their receipts, but they have failed to explain that every eligible family will get the money regardless of whether they keep their receipts and that they can spend the money on anything they like. It is funny that the government stood up a few weeks ago talking about how much they support small business and then gave away the one per cent tax cut they talked about while the ATO and this government insist on businesses keeping receipts and everything being accountable. A business in my electorate went under because the ATO pursued it for not having proof that payments out of the company went to superannuation funds and the people it had employed were not able to give back to the company proof that the money had gone into their accounts. The business was treated as having given a distribution and was forced into liquidation by the ATO because it did not keep receipts. The ETR was all about accountability: if you wanted to get the ETR, you had to be accountable and keep receipts. But under the new legislation you will not need to keep receipts, and that means that you will be able to spend the money on anything you like—it does not have to go to education. It can be spent on TVs—it can go to the Taiwanese economy as the $900 handouts did. The Taiwanese economy was the main beneficiary of the $900 handouts through people's purchases of TVs.

Under the ETR you needed to keep records to help you or your tax agent prepare your tax return or claim. You also needed receipts to ensure that you were able to prove your claim for expenses if you were asked by the tax office to do so. Eligible education expenses had to be listed separately on invoices. Under the ETR the eligible expenses included the cost of buying, establishing, repairing and maintaining any of the following items: home computers and laptops; computer-related equipment such as printers, USB flash drives and disability aids to assist in the use of computer equipment by students with special needs; computer repairs; home internet connections; computer software for educational use; school textbooks and other printed learning material, including prescribed textbooks, associated learning materials, study guides and stationery; and prescribed trade tools for secondary school trade courses. This system ensured that the money went to specific and important areas and was not wasted. Labor's bill will remove the cash incentive for parents to invest in their children's schooling needs. This bill put forward by the government is one of the most blatant attempts at cooking this year's budget books in order to allow Labor to protect its unofficial surplus in the next financial year, as the refund will be paid out before the end of this financial year. The education tax refund system was a regime that ensured taxpayers' money was given only to families who actually spent money on education costs. The coalition, which supports the ETR, took a policy to the last election that vastly expanded the number of school expense items that were eligible and also increased the rebate amounts. The coalition's plan would have provided a rebate to families of $1,000 for each secondary school aged child and $500 for each primary school aged child. By contrast, Labor's scheme provides only $820 for secondary school aged children and $410 for primary school aged children, leaving a family with two children—one secondary and one primary—some $270 per year worse off.

The coalition's policy at the last election delivered more money, was better targeted and went straight to those families who needed it most. While some families might benefit this year under this bill, Labor continues to borrow money and it will be the children of these families who will have to repay Labor's debt for years into the future. An eligible family with an 18-year-old in year 12 may get a sugar hit, but that will not last long, as the student will then get slammed with hundreds of dollars in compulsory student union fees—which is a topic I have spoken on at length in this place and is one of the numerous new taxes or tax increases introduced by this government.

What more and more Australians are realising about this government is that, despite all the lofty rhetoric we hear from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer day by day, this confused government continues to raise taxes and grow our national debt. Australians know that this new legislation is simply designed to distract from the carbon tax hit to families, which will go up every year. Labor is once again playing at divisive, class based politics. This is not a battlers' budget in the way that the Howard and Costello budgets were. Labor has proven time and time again that it supports recklessly throwing money away to give a handout and not a hand-up to hardworking Australians. Under this government the focus has been on dividing the Australian people as opposed to being aspirational. This government have shown time and time again that they are not behind the average aspirational Australian family. Instead, they are focused on dragging down those families who attempt to support their children with high-quality education. On this issue, Labor's track record is telling. In the 2008 budget, Labor means-tested the family tax benefit so that any family where the main income earner has income of more than $150,000 lost the benefit. In the same budget, Labor introduced a means test on the baby bonus, which meant that the baby bonus went only to families with an adjusted taxable income of $75,000 or less in the six months after the birth of a baby. This is the equivalent of an adjusted taxable income of $150,000 a year or less. I think we can all agree that a family earning this much is not rich by any standard. An income such as this translates to the combined income of a nurse and a police officer, or a teacher and a public servant. These are the people that this Labor government has shown they are willing to abandon.

I now draw the attention of the House to the numerous attacks on middle Australia from this government. In the 2009 budget, Labor attacked middle Australia by freezing the indexation for the full payment of family tax benefits A and B, the baby bonus and the dependent spouse rebate. The people who benefit from these payments are not extraordinarily rich. They are the majority of aspirational Australian families—

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I remind the honourable member that the House is debating the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012 and I would ask him to keep his remarks relevant to that bill.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pity that you were not in the chair before, Mr Deputy Speaker Leigh, when members on the other side of the House strayed very far and distant from the subject as well.

In the 2011 budget, the narrative was exactly the same. Labor froze the indexation for family tax benefits A and B and supplement payments. This is a blatant attack on every Australian, as is this legislation. In the 2012 budget, Labor cut the age of eligibility for family tax benefit part A to families with children who are 18 years of age, meaning that families with children aged 19 to 21 will no longer receive assistance through the family tax benefit, even though many children of this age remain classified as dependants and still have the same, if not higher, costs for education.

While this Labor government are unwilling to assist families to educate their children, they are more than happy to take through an ever-increasing tax and levy system. The flood levy introduced by this government unashamedly relied on these families. Those earning over $100,000 pay 0.5 per cent of taxable income in excess of $50,000 and one per cent of taxable income in excess of $100,000. Labor have demonstrated that they do not care for productive, well-targeted payments that really do benefit families.

From the December quarter of 2007 to the December quarter of 2011, Labor's economic mismanagement has led to price increases which have impacted on every family. That demonstrates to this House again that this bill is impacting on the economic management of this country. Electricity prices have increased by an average of 61 per cent across Australia. Gas prices have increased by an average of 37 per cent across Australia. Water and sewerage rates have increased by an average of 58 per cent across Australia. Health costs have increased by an average of 20 per cent, education costs have increased by an average of 24 per cent, the cost of food overall has increased by 13 per cent, and the amount of rent people are paying has increased by 25 per cent across Australia. This payment will not help to curb these constantly rising costs. Childcare costs are also continuing to rise because of Labor inattentiveness.

I would like to draw the attention of the House to comments made by George Megalogenis in today's Australian newspaper. He notes that the razor-and-handout approach taken by this reckless government has taken us back us back to stimulus levels in terms of cash handouts—hardly the tough budget the Treasurer has claimed. There is no doubt that all families were better off under the coalition. The Australian article noted:

Family payments were 12.1 per cent of spending at the end of the Howard era in 2007-08 … By 2015-16, family payments will be less than 10 per cent of the budget for the first time on record.

This is not sensible spending. It is reckless spending by a desperate government, designed to make Australian people forget the toxic carbon tax which will hit everyone and increase already rising living costs. This bill is not intended to fairly assist families; it is intended to cushion a failed budget full of toxic taxes. The coalition supported the ETR but we do not support this, because this is bad policy.

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

It is my great pleasure to rise to speak on the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012. Let me start by telling the House that this is bad legislation. This bill before the House is a desperate, crude, blatant cash splash designed to win votes. There is no productivity outcome for the Australian economy, there is no positive educational outcome for kids at school and there is no dividend in terms of job creation and investment in Australia. That is why we oppose it. And we oppose it because it plans to replace a perfectly viable and effective scheme, the education tax refund.

The education tax refund was based on parents with school-age children at primary and secondary school providing receipts at the end of the financial year. They then received reimbursements for those particular educational related expenses. It was such a good scheme that the coalition took to the last election improvements. We took to the last election policies to expand this particular dividend. In fact, if you go to our election policy, under the title 'Real action plan: Reducing the pressure on families', it talks about how the Liberals will increase the education tax rebate. It said that we would 'increase the maximum rebate to $500 per year'—up $110 per year—for every child in primary school. That same document said that the Liberals and the Nationals, the coalition, would 'increase the maximum rebate to $1,000 per year'—up $221 per year—'for each child in secondary school'.

What is more, we were planning to expand the eligible expenses for the rebate so that it included government and nongovernment school fees; special education costs for children with disabilities, like dyslexia; camps and excursions; musical instruments; extracurricular school activities, such as music, sports, dance and drama lessons; and tutoring costs, sporting fees and equipment and school photos.

This education tax rebate is a targeted scheme. This is a scheme that put money in the pockets of parents who have primary and secondary school-age children. They would provide receipts. This encouraged responsibility in our system. Instead, we have this proposal before us in this Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill particularly designed to cushion the impact of the carbon tax. This is not an education related expenditure.

This government is so embarrassed by its record on education, including the fact that it believes that a billion-dollar cost blowout on its computer in schools program means better educational outcomes and that spending more than $15 billion or $16 billion of taxpayers' money on overpriced school halls leads to better educational outcomes. It was wrong on both accounts. This government commissioned the Gonski review to look at how to improve educational outcomes in our schools and has done nothing in this budget to meet the recommendations of David Gonski and his committee. Instead, it has rebadged this cash handout the 'schoolkids bonus'. How ridiculous is that. There is nothing that is linked to school outcomes. This is just a desperate bid for votes.

You tell me, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker: what is the connection between school outcomes and handing out cheques for $800-odd for secondary students and $410 for primary students with no receipts and no commitment by the parents that that money will be spend on education related expenses? They have got rid of that responsibility, that accountability, that viability and that transparency in the current system. Instead, they have replaced it with this desperate, blatant cash splash. It is a bad outcome for parents and a bad outcome for taxpayers and it does not produce the educational dividend. What would have produced a better educational dividend is the policy that we took to the last election, designed, as I said, to increase the maximum rebate for parents with students at primary and secondary school and designed to expand the eligible expenses for the rebate. That would have produced a better educational outcome.

So why has this government done this? Why are we having this legislation thrust upon us the morning after the budget? I will tell you why. It is because Australia is about to face an economy-wide carbon tax—the biggest carbon tax in the world. If you go to the United States, there is no cap-and-trade system. In Canada, their Prime Minister, a conservative, just won the biggest election victory in over 100 years campaigning against a carbon tax. If you go to China, you see that they are increasing their emissions by 500 per cent. But if you go to Australia, you have a Labor government which wants to burden every taxpayer and every household with higher cost-of-living expenses through a carbon tax.

I can tell you from my own experience in the electorate of Kooyong that parents and households are worried about this. Small businesses are getting desperate, and they know they are not going to be compensated. That is why this government has decided, through this fictitious bill called a schoolkids bonus, to hand out money to parents, with no link to educational outcomes. I will tell you about the drycleaner in Cotham Road, Kew, who employs four people. He works six days a week. He has seen his electricity bills rise and now they are going to rise another 10 to 12 per cent on July 1 this year with the carbon tax. He does not know what to do in order to recoup those expenses. He cannot lift his prices because that will see a fall in his trade; but he can put off a worker and that will not be good for the economy. He cannot work any harder because he has a family and he works six days a week. I will tell you about the self-funded retirees in my electorate, who are under the age of 65 and have an income of around $30,000, who went to the government's own website to see what compensation they get under the carbon tax—and they get nothing. They are over $200 out of pocket and worse off every year under the carbon tax, but they do not get compensation.

Under the carbon tax this government is going to be spending $3½ billion of taxpayers' money on offshore permits by 2020 and $57 billion by 2050. In my electorate people—

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I would remind the member for Kooyong of the debate before the House. The member for Kooyong will keep his remarks relevant to the bill before the House.

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

I am staying absolutely relevant, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am talking about the carbon tax because it is the motivation for the bill that is before the House right now. This is not an education-related bill. This does not produce better outcomes for parents and their children who are students. It does produce a cash bonus for their pocket which will not necessarily be used on educational outcomes. The reason is the carbon tax. That is the only reason. Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Leigh, you know that there is no job creation in just giving a handout to parents with school-aged children.

The last time this government gave cash bonuses, during the GFC, 16,000 dead people received their $900 bonuses. How many ineligible people will receive this cash bonus? The current scheme, which the coalition strongly supports, is all about giving parents money after they have spent their own hard-earned dollars on education-related expenses and provided the ATO with the receipts at the end of the financial year. That is the current system which we were in favour of improving. Instead, this government has designed to remove that existing system so that it can cushion the pain and the blow of the carbon tax. Deloittes have done studies that have found that over 23,000 people will lose their jobs in my own state of Victoria. Jobs will not be created. Billions of dollars will be sucked out of the economy. I have told you about my own experience with small business and self-funded retirees. They are not going to get this cash bonus—this fictitious schoolkids bonus—but they will be paying higher cost-of-living expenses.

This Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill is part of a rotten budget. It is part of a budget which has forecast an increase in unemployment to 5.5 per cent, which has ripped more than $5 billion out of Defence and which insufficiently supports the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It is part of a budget which has lifted the debt ceiling from $250 billion to $300 billion—four times the amount that existed under the Howard government. It is part of a budget which has told us that last year's budget deficit has ballooned from $22 billion to $44 billion. That is why this educational mechanism, this schoolkids bonus, is so wrong. It is part of a broader budget which fails Australian families. It is a budget which abolishes company tax cuts for small and big business, which makes people pay more for aged care and which will see Australia's debt rise to $145 billion, including an interest bill of $8 billion a year or $22 million a day.

Mr Gonski was talking about an extra $5 billion dollars to provide better educational outcomes. Hang on! Isn't the interest bill for the Australian taxpayer now $8 billion—the cost of an NDIS; the cost of five teaching hospitals; or the cost of real educational change? You get educational change by putting the budget in the black, not by running up massive deficits. In fact, the four largest deficits in the history of the Australian nation have been in the last four years under Wayne Swan—a total of $174 billion.

One of my heroes, Margaret Thatcher, a reformist prime minister, said: 'The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money.' That is what we are seeing from this government. That is why I am against this cash handout, this 'cash splash' which is a desperate bid for votes. It is not designed to boost productivity, it is not designed to create jobs and encourage investment, and it is not designed to improve educational outcomes. We want to go back to responsible fiscal management. We want to look after those students who are at school and whose educational outcomes we care about.

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

Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, before I begin today, let me use this as the first available opportunity in this place to express my deepest sympathy and my community's deepest sympathy for the young girl who was tragically stabbed in my electorate this morning. She attended St Columban's College, which I am proud to say is a great local school. It is a school that I have a strong involvement with. It has great students, great staff and a great sense of community. This is, obviously, a very dark and difficult day for the school community and for the community at large. In this place I want to record my sympathy and the community's sympathy for the young girl, and our thoughts are with her family, with her friends and with the school.

I rise to speak today on the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012 and to voice my sincere disappointment with, and objection to, this bill. Last night the Labor government disappointed millions of Australians with their cook-the-books budget. It is a budget which many Australians had high expectations for but were miserably disappointed with. One of the major disappointments for Australians, including the people in my electorate of Longman, was Labor's announcement that they are dumping the education tax refund, instead, give handouts of taxpayers' money, borrowed money, in a desperate bid to improve their electoral stocks.

As I have said in this in this place before, the government has a record of wasting taxpayers' hard earned money. Its record of waste and mismanagement is a mile long with pink batts, school hall rip-offs and border protection blow-outs, to name just a mere few. Now, the Labor government has abandoned the education tax rebate. It was a targeted program that provided genuine assistance to relieve education costs for parents.

This government has ripped out a program that not only ensured that the education needs of students were met but also provided genuine relief to the many families in my electorate and around Australia. They are families who are struggling with the escalating cost of computers, textbooks, workbooks and subject-specific resources. They are families who are trying to give their kids the best possible start in life, which is the very best thing a parent can do. They are parents who are doing everything they can to live within their means, but want to provide for their kids. Now, this program has borne the brunt of the consequences of this Labor government's waste and mismanagement and has become the latest victim of another dodgy Labor budget.

As the dust settles Australians will be able to see the truth. This Labor government is making its best effort to hide and distract from the pain that everyday Australians are feeling. This Labor government is trying as hard as it can to increase taxes, including the biggest of them all: the carbon tax. Any pretence of this new policy being about offsetting education costs has been dispelled. What we have before us today, what we have here in this place in this debate, is an instant sugar hit, a one-off hit for families, that is designed to help with a smoke-and-mirrors budget being delivered by this incompetent Labor government. It is a sugar hit being delivered before the end of this financial year to help dodgy the books and to deliver a fanciful surplus.

Let us talk about what this policy is not. It is not genuine relief for families to compensate for the enormous imposition of the carbon tax. This policy is not a carefully considered targeted measure that will reach families who need the assistance most. It is a careless blanket splash of cash, and there is no limit in the way it can be spent. In fact, this Labor government is recklessly promoting the policy by saying that families will be eligible to receive it even if they lose their receipts. It fails to explain that every eligible family will get the money regardless of whether they keep their receipts or not. This is an indiscriminate and careless sugar hit.

I am extremely concerned about the long-term consequences of this $820 sugar hit to families. As a young person I am continually aware of the long-term implications of debt. It is a debt, it seems, that people of my generation will be paying off for the extent of our lives. It is a debt incurred in just four years of Labor. The irony in this situation is that these young people, whose families will receive the $820 bonus, will be the very ones who will be faced with this interest bill. The very people this bill seeks to address and help will actually be hurt by the borrowings of this Labor government. They are the very ones who will be contending with the consequences of this over their lives.

I challenge those opposite with this: would the young people of the Australia prefer the security and stability of a healthy economy of a country that is not left with the burden of generations before who are unable to live within their means, or would they prefer the burden that comes with paying down an enormous debt: a difficulty in purchasing their own home and partaking in the Australian dream? I suggest that they would prefer the security and stability of a healthy economy and a healthy budget, one that has not been used to deliver a sugar hit to produce the appearance of a wafer-thin surplus.

What we are seeing with this budget and what we have seen with this sugar hit is one of the most blatant attempts at cooking this year's budget books, in order to allow Labor to protect its artificial surplus next financial year as the refund will be paid out before the end of this financial year. I propose that Australians deserve better. They deserve a government that is upfront and honest with its people, one that can live within its means, one that does not need to resort to smoke and mirrors to manage its books and one that does not cook its books.

The coalition understand families. We know that families with school aged children have large costs. The best way to ensure that money is spent on our kids is through the now abolished education tax refund system. We believe that this was a regime that ensured taxpayers' money was given only to families who actually spent money on education costs. It delivered the relief to families who relied upon it and who were making sacrifices for their kids' education to give them every opportunity in life. We believe that this could have gone even further. The coalition took a very strong policy to the last election—a policy that vastly expanded the number of school expenses items that would be eligible and increased the rebate amounts. We understand that parents have been looking for practical relief for real expenses. The coalition's plan would have provided a rebate to families of $1,000 for each secondary-school-age child and $500 for each primary-school-age child. By contrast, we are seeing with Labor's scheme $820 for secondary-school-age children and $410 for primary-school-age children, leaving a family with two children—one secondary and one primary—some $270 a year worse off. The coalition's policy was more money better targeted and it went straight to those families who needed it most.

Labor continues to borrow more and more money. While some parents might benefit this year, it will be their children who will have to repay this Labor debt for years into the future. Australians will not be fooled by this sugar hit. They know that Julia Gillard is not interested in helping families and is interested only in keeping her own job. An eligible family with an 18-year-old in year 12 may get a sugar hit, but that will not last as long as the student when they get hit and slammed by hundreds of dollars in compulsory student union fees when they go to university.

This Labor government is addicted to more spending and higher taxes. To put in perspective what this bill is trying to hide, let me have a closer look at this year's budget. What we have seen in this year is a predicted deficit of $23 billion blowing out to a delivered deficit of $44 billion—the fourth-largest deficit our country has ever seen, delivered in order by a Labor government. What does this amount to? A record net debt level of $145 billion and an interest repayment of $8 billion a year. This is what the young people of Australia will have to pay off for the reckless waste of just four years of Labor. They have taken away real means that would have given real assistance to families to deliver on their kids' futures and have instead given a political announcement and a sugar hit. This is why I will strongly oppose this bill. I encourage all members of this House to stand up against this Labor government's attack on working families. Thank you.

Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012. This is a particular subject that I have always spoken on in this place. In fact, the old education tax refund goes back to 2008. I spoke on that bill at the time and subsequently in 2011, when the education tax refund was adjusted to include school uniforms. But, having heard some of the debate here this morning—especially the contributions coming from the opposition benches—I really do wonder if many of these members have ever gone out and spoken to their constituents about school costs. Although the education tax refund was a very good scheme, it did not cover all the costs of sending children to school, and anyone who has children at school would know that. Although it covered books and stationery, although it covered computer items and equipment, although it even covered such things as iPads, there was a big list of essential school items that were never part of that but on which parents will now be able to spend the money provided by the schoolkids bonus.

The list is quite instructive. Many of us in this place have children at school, and we know about these bills. There are things like the school fees you get at the start of every year or even before the start of the year. A government primary school is $250, $300 or $400 a student. A secondary school can easily be double that. That is in Victoria. And that is just the start. That was not covered under the old education tax refund, but it is most certainly what a parent would regard as an education expense. The other big one is school camps. I quite often get letters about this from parents who are a bit distressed that they cannot send their child to a school camp because they simply do not have the money. Again, under the old education tax refund that was not an allowable expense. Under the schoolkids bonus it will be. The money will be there in the bank account and, hopefully, some more kids will get to go away on camps because of payments like that.

There is another one that I have spoken to quite a few constituents about over the years, and that is after-school tutoring costs, sometimes for children who need more help than they can receive in school and sometimes because they may actually be getting ahead by doing that. Again, that has not been part of what was on offer and can now have money directed to it.

There are many others on the list as well. Sporting equipment is a big one. For all of us who have children at school who play sport—and that is most—things rapidly escalate beyond the school uniform. It does not take much at all for a piece of sporting equipment to set you back several hundred dollars, and they do not always last as long as you would like as kids grow bigger.

There are other items. A really big expense—though not every child has them—is musical instruments. A lot of schools have music programs, and that is a great thing, but they all come with a cost. There is generally a cost for the musical instrument or the hire of it, and there is a cost for the teacher. Quite a lot of these classes are done during school with extra cost or after school with extra cost. It is a great thing. It is a wonderful component of education. But if a child is at school and decides to play the flute it is possible to rent that flute for a year. That would cost quite a few dollars. You can buy one for around $200 or $300 at the cheap end. It goes up from there. If a child chooses to play a musical instrument such as the cello, the costs can go through the roof and be four figures rather than three. And that is quite common. Again, under the old education tax refund, although that is what a lot of people would regard as an education expense, it was not part of the scheme and could not be claimed. There are other things on the list that are also important. School subject levies and levies for consumables in subjects such as woodwork and home economics are not necessarily packaged by schools in their fees in ways that could have been claimed under the old scheme. Now parents have money coming to them to provide for such items. There is a long list of others as well. Not so much in the government school sector but in the private school sector many schools raised building levies. Schools without as much money can only really finance new buildings by raising levies on parents to supplement what they get from the federal government. Again, that was not covered under the education tax refund.

There are smaller costs that also were not covered—costs like library book fees. If a school charged for such services there would not be many parents who would not regard that as an educational expense. There is also the old favourite, which any of us with children at school would know, which is school photos. I am probably showing my age, but when I was at school and it was the day for photos a large number of kids would be sitting on several levels of benches with a board at the front and maybe a football. We got one black-and-white photo and it was sent home. I do not remember if there was a charge, but it may have been a dollar or two. These days school photos come as packages, and the cheapest one that my children were offered started at $30. You get folders with various different poses and the class shot, but there is no cut price.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are no front teeth too.

Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That happens at school too. If there are a number children in the household, that happens every year and it is very easy to spend up to $70 on school photos. That is part of the educational experience. If a child misses out on having their photo when everyone else in the class has their photos it is not good for them and nor is it good for their parents because it is a record of what went on at school. I regard that as an educational expense, but photos were not covered under the old scheme.

Talking about the week-to-week functions of schools, there is not one parent in Australia who would not know about requests for school donations. There is always a chocolate drive, a raffle or a donation in lieu of attending on a weekend to clean out the gutters. Whatever it may be, schools need to raise money, but under the education tax refund scheme those sorts of expenses were not covered. Again, they are pretty important to the school and they are money out of the parents' pockets. Other things that are not necessarily thought of when looking at education expenses are transport costs such as bus fares. They add up, but were not covered under the old scheme. Again, most parents would say if children have to go to school on a bus it should be regarded as an educational expense. I think they are right.

There are many items that are now covered but that were not covered before. That is a great thing for parents right across Australia. It is a great thing that the money is going to be paid upfront, rather than parents having to collect receipts and wait around for a refund, in some cases for more than a year depending on when the expense was incurred and how soon the taxpayer gets to an accountant to get the paperwork done. Those expenses will now be covered—money before instead of money after is good for the family budget.

Those people who think that parents with children at school will immediately run off to the pub and blow the lot, as I have heard some people in this place say, really misstate the case of those parents. Most parents of children who go to school work very hard to get the best education for their children and a little bit extra helps. I am sure, like everything in society, not every last dollar that goes to every last person will be spent on educational expenses. Some may go on other household expenses too. As it is a government payment, it is not up to the likes of me to tell a family how they should spend their money. If they direct it to education for their kids and that covers some of the expenses I have just gone through then that is a great start. I am certain that even with these payments some items on the long list of expenses that were not covered by the education tax refund will still not be covered for many people, but this bonus is a great help.

Governments should be lending assistance to those who need it. By targeting family tax benefit A recipients the schoolkids bonus does exactly that. There will be high-income families that do not receive it and there will be low-income families and middle-income families that do receive it. I put it to the House: who is better able to afford to send their children to school, a low-income family or a high-income family? I suspect it is the high-income family in just about every circumstance. Producing the payment before children start the school year and the fees have to be paid is a good thing—as I said, usually school fees are not paid the year a child starts school as the bill is sent out and the school wants payment before the end of the previous school year. Generally these accounts arrive a couple of weeks before Christmas, which is the worst time for a bill to arrive because of all the other Christmas expenses and the hangover in January when the credit card bill inevitably arrives.

The education tax refund was a great step forward that was put in place by a Labor government. I think the schoolkids bonus is an even better step forward. Waiting around for your receipts to be checked and for the tax office to send a refund was an improvement, but now there is a better way of doing that. I have seen people coming into this place today to talk about how this money could be spent, which I think only devalues how parents will spend it. Money that is directed towards their children's education is not only an investment in that family's future but also an investment in Australia's future. I commend the bill to the House.

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

I rise to speak on the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012. I, along with many Australians, am very much aware of the costs associated with educating children. It does not matter whether the school is a government school, a faith based school or a private school; we all know that there are significant costs associated with educating our children. If taxpayer money is to be spent by government for the purposes of assisting with educating children, then it is essential that the money goes to where it is intended and that the recipients of that money—for example, parents—are accountable for how and where that money is spent.

The Labor government has made it clear that families will be eligible for the payment even if they lose their receipts. What does this actually mean? More importantly, what does it mean in practice? What does it mean for the implementation of this program? To me, it means that, if there is no requirement to produce receipts for expenditure on education, that money could be spent on anything. Without receipts there is no way to verify proper expenditure and there is no meaningful way to audit the expenditure of taxpayer money. So how can this government guarantee that the objectives of this policy are being achieved by the means? The answer is quite clearly that it cannot. There is virtually no accountability for recipients under this program.

Taxpayer money must not be used inappropriately and it must not be squandered. It must be used very wisely and, quite frankly, I do not believe that the program that is being proposed by the Labor government has sufficient checks and balances in place to qualify as an appropriate or wise use of taxpayer money. It is disappointing to see that there is another very ill-thought through move from this Labor government that bears the hallmarks of a desperate move to raise its political fortunes. The government intends to abandon the education tax refund, a targeted program specifically developed and designed to give assistance to parents to relieve the increasing costs of education.

The education tax refund allows for a refundable tax offset for eligible education expenditure up to $794 for primary-school studies and $1,588 for secondary studies. Items such as home computers and laptops as well as related accessories such as USBs, internet connections, software, textbooks, other printed learning material and even prescribed trade tools for secondary-school trade courses have all been covered by the refund. I listened to the member for Deakin criticise the scope of the items that were covered, but surely if the scope of the items was the issue you would add additional items, not scrap the entire program and replace it with a cash payment system where no receipts are required.

Not satisfied with the incentive the refund provided for families to invest in their child's education, this government will now promote a policy which removes any idea of sensibly offsetting education costs and merely creates a sideshow, an attempted diversion from the ever-rising costs of living that affect all facets of our lives. I will speak more about this later, and about how hard the cost-of-living increases are hitting families and will continue to do so, particularly in light of the introduction of the carbon tax. Cost-of-living increases certainly impact on our children's education.

All this measure forms is an obvious attempt to prop up the government's electoral hopes on an artificial surplus, with the refund to be paid out before the end of this financial year. Apparently this government has no wish to make things easier for parents who place a high value on their child's education or on equipping Australian students with the best possible start in their schooling careers. This measure is merely just another example of tricky accounting when the Australian people are demanding transparency and real action.

However, the coalition understands that there are many families with school-age children who are currently burdened with large costs. The best way to lighten their load was through the education tax refund, which ensured that taxpayer money was given only to families who actually spent the money on education expenses. The coalition took a policy to the last election that would have vastly expanded the number of expense items that could be claimed, and increased rebate amounts, including a rebate to families of $1,000 per secondary-school-age child, and $500 for each primary-school-age child. This is in contrast with Labor's scheme, which provides $820 for secondary-school-age children and $410 for primary-school-age children. The coalition's policy was clearly better targeted and would have gone to families who needed it most.

But the record stands clear. This Labor government, since its election, has been attacking middle Australia. Labor means tested the family tax benefit B in 2008 so that any family where the main income earner earned more than $150,000 lost the benefit. Labor froze indexation for the full payment of family tax benefits A and B, the baby bonus and the dependant spouse rebate in 2009. Labor froze indexation for family tax benefits A and B supplement payments in 2011. In the budget handed down last night, Labor cut the age of eligibility for family tax benefit part A for families with children who are 18 years old, meaning families with children aged 19 to 21 will no longer receive assistance through the family tax benefit. We should make no mistake here: Labor is most definitely assaulting the wellbeing of middle-class Australians, and the removal of the education tax rebate is just another blow at a time when it is least needed. What is hurting parents most is the increasing cost of living, and under Labor this has gone well beyond the norm. Electricity prices have gone up by 61 per cent; gas prices have gone up by 37 per cent; water and sewerage rates have gone up by 58 per cent. Families are struggling and I do not believe the government is doing anything to help. In fact, Labor are making a bad situation worse for families with their carbon tax, which starts on 1 July this year. The carbon tax is a new $9 billion a year tax—an immediate 10 per cent increase in electricity bills for the next year alone and a nine per cent increase in gas bills. When you couple the effects of the carbon tax with the other 25 new or increased taxes introduced since Labor were elected in 2007, and the continued pressure of cost-of-living increases, is it any wonder that our families are crying out for help?

However, the coalition has a strong appreciation for education and for families and the contributions that they make to our communities. To find out more about the pressures that are being placed on our students and their parents, as well as the many schools in the local community, I hosted a forum last week for non-government school principals with my colleagues the member for Sturt and the member for Moncrieff so that the educators could raise any concerns that they had with the Gonski review or any other elements of the education system. The conversation was certainly most enlightening. Many of the schools discussed the need for certainty in funding and their concern with the suggestion that NAPLAN could possibly be used as a tool to determine the allocation of resources and funding for schools. This point should be made clear: schools do not want a NAPLAN tested funding regime that in the long term may prove inequitable for the schools that need that funding. The purpose of NAPLAN testing is as a diagnostic school to assist schools and teachers in targeting their learning techniques, and it most certainly should remain that way. I would like to thank the principals from my electorate and also those from further north, in the Moncrieff electorate, who attended the forum and gave my colleagues and me some very valuable feedback with regard to what is in the best interests of their school community and what is currently hurting students and their parents the most.

There is no question that our schools deserve our support. They are not only institutions where children are given life skills and knowledge of the world around them; they also serve as a dual service as social hubs for the community. When school hours are over, many community groups use the premises for meetings. Sometimes they are social gatherings and sometimes they are other classes or functions held in the school buildings. They provide fun days out and opportunities for many residents in the local community. I note that many of the religious schools—and I have a number of faith based schools in my electorate—also open their facilities to worshipers on days of worship or religious holidays and provide a location for the community to congregate. So schools are clearly a key building stone to what constitutes the Australian way of life.

I am certainly very proud to have more than 30 schools in my electorate, ranging from the Queensland-New South Wales border all the way up to the northern part of my electorate, near Merrimac. Some of those schools are quite small and only have 100 or so students, but there are also schools which are very large and have well over 2,000 students. Throughout the year I attend many functions and events held by schools in my electorate and I am always impressed by the professionalism of the staff, the quality of the teaching and the conduct of the students when I visit those schools. I am consistently told by parents from each of those schools that they want choice in deciding where to send their children and they want an opportunity to send their children to schools without being penalised by the government.

I believe the measures that the government is seeking to introduce will do more harm than good in the long term. The education of our future generations is certainly not something that can be played with for political buoyancy. It is disappointing to find members of the opposite side of the House advocating for such a reckless measure that will leave families and students worse off. Education in Australia should be encouraged. I will fight to ensure that the families and schools in the electorate of McPherson receive the assistance that they need so that they can give their students the tools needed for the future.

I have spoken in this place on a number of occasions about the importance of education. A school student's education can last over 13 years. In Queensland we currently have prep to year 12, but a number of schools offer an additional pre-prep year. From preschool children through to adult learners, participants in education have greater opportunities to build their self-awareness and confidence. The years that students spend at school are clearly their formative years. I believe that we have an obligation to provide each student with the opportunity to develop and succeed not only at school but socially and to develop the skills that will take them from their childhood through to young adulthood and beyond.

What makes a quality education experience is not as simple as a cash payment for which there is little or no accountability—a payment that will be made with no requirement to produce a receipt for education expenditure. I want to see good educational outcomes for our students at all levels, from school through to tertiary education.

On the Gold Coast I believe that we are well placed to be Australia's education capital, and I have spoken about that on a number of occasions in this place. We have several university campuses, two of which are located in my electorate of McPherson—Bond University and Southern Cross University, which has a large campus at Bilinga that is currently undergoing expansion. We have TAFE colleges and numerous registered training organisations. As I have said before, there are more than 30 schools in my electorate alone. I consult widely with principals, teachers, parents and students, and I agree with them that the objective is a good quality education outcome. If I were assessing the Labor government's education policy, I would assess it as a fail.

Russell Matheson (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus) Bill 2012 because I believe that we should be redefining the education tax rebate system rather than handing out taxpayer money as a cash bonus.

It is obvious that Labor's announcement to dump that education tax rebate and to give out handfuls of taxpayer money is a desperate bid to win votes—nothing more; nothing less. If I did not know any better it would sound like cash for votes to me! It has taken the broader community less than 24 hours after the budget announcement to work this out.

This ploy will not work with the people of Macarthur, who understood the importance of the education tax rebate, a targeted program that provided genuine assistance to relieve education costs for parents. If this government was serious about supporting parents in Macarthur they would not be dumping this rebate and replacing it with a sugar-coated payment to try and win votes. We all know that this new program is designed to distract from the carbon tax hit to the cost of living, which will go up and up every year. Residents in Macarthur are not stupid; they know that prices will continue to rise as a result of the carbon tax, and a cash payment before July this year just is not going to cut it.

Labor's new policy is a bad policy. It is not about offsetting education costs; it is simply a sugar hit for families to create a diversion from increased bills and costs, which will rise come 1 July. Labor is recklessly promoting this measure but they do not spruik the fact that parents do not have to spend this payment on their children's education. They can spend it on anything they like; there is no accountability.

How can the government genuinely claim that this cash splash will be spent on the educational needs of our children? They cannot. How can they guarantee that the money will be spent for the purpose it was given? They cannot. I have heard a number of members speak today. Some of them are in dreamland or away with the pixies. Some of the members were talking about low socio-economic backgrounds and money being put upfront for people to spend on their children's education. Have a look at the last cash splash leading up to the last election. Go around and ask the publicans and the clubs how much their profits went up for that period of time. There is no guarantee that this money will be spent on each child's educational needs. A number of members have mentioned a number of issues in relation to alcohol and drugs and many other things. I am sure that a significant amount of this money will be wasted and not spent for the purpose it was given.

As part of its plan Labor has removed the cash incentive for parents to invest in their children's schooling needs. Ultimately, this will be counterproductive for our schoolkids. Yes, parents in Macarthur are struggling and need all the help they can get but the carbon tax is going to hit them hard, and a lump sum sugar payment will not sweeten the deal.

And why do you think this payment is being made before 30 June this year? This is one of the most blatant attempts to cook this year's budget books in order to allow Labor to protect its artificial surplus next financial year, because the refund will be paid out before the end of this financial year. The coalition knows that families with school-aged children have large costs, and Macarthur families are no different. But the best way to ensure money is spent on our kids is through the now abolished education tax refund system. This was a regime that ensured taxpayer money was given only to families who actually spent money on education costs and the needs of their children.

The coalition took a policy to the last election that vastly expanded the number of school expense items that were eligible through the rebate, and increased the rebate amounts. We did this because we know that parents need better assistance. The coalition's plan would have provided a rebate to families of $1,000 for each secondary school-aged child and $500 for each primary school-aged child. By contrast, Labor's scheme provides much less—only $820 for secondary school-aged children and $410 for primary school-aged children—leaving a family with two children some $270 per year worse off than our policy.

Perhaps this government should have paid attention to the coalition's policy, which was for more money, better targeted to go straight to those families who needed it most. If, as the government suggests, people are slipping through the cracks and not claiming their education tax refund we should simplify the system and promote an awareness program through the schools and possibly the P&C organisations. It is not too hard to put out a few newsletters at the start of the year, the middle of the year and at the end of the year, to notify parents how they can claim the rebate for the educational needs of their children. It would be simple, one would think. What about school newsletters, as I mentioned, at the beginning of the year and just before tax time?

Families need to know that they could receive just as much money, if not more, under coalition policy, by claiming the education tax rebate. Not only is the money accountable; it ensures that the education needs of our children are addressed. Labor says it is supporting our families and their children but who do we think will be repaying their debt in the future? I cannot just sit by as Labor continues to borrow more money, because while some parents might benefit this year, it will be their children who will have to repay Labor's debt for years into the future, and that is not right.

I brought up my two daughters in Macarthur. My wife and I worked hard to support our family, and I can tell you that a long-term plan like the education tax rebate system would have been much more of a helping hand than this sugar coated payment followed by a hike in all of our bills due to the carbon tax. The people of Macarthur will not be fooled by this sugar hit. It is a senseless cash splash for more votes. Residents in my electorate know that this Prime Minister is not interested in helping local families; she is only interested in keeping her own job.

Macarthur parents supporting students studying for the HSC need to know that while they may get a sugar hit in June that will not last long, because their child will then get slammed by hundreds of dollars in compulsory student union fees. If you ask me, this is just another example of Labor attacking middle Australia. The Schoolkids Bonus is not about helping local families; it is about throwing money at people before they get hit with the world's biggest carbon tax. It is merely a distraction: a quick, short-term sugar hit to distract people from a carbon tax that will keep on hitting them time and time again. Labor's claim that they support Australian families is farcical. Just take a look back through history. In the 2008 budget Labor introduced a means test on the baby bonus which limited the baby bonus to families with an adjusted taxable income of $75,000 or less in the six months after the birth of a baby. This is the equivalent of an adjusted taxable income of $150,000 a year or less.

In the 2009 budget, Labor froze indexation for the full payment of family tax benefits A and B, the baby bonus and the dependant spouse rebate. Labor also announced that from the 1 July 2009 the income test for the Commonwealth seniors health card would include income from superannuation streams with a taxed source and salary that are sacrificed to superannuation. They subsequently backed down after community outrage. In the 2011 budget, Labor froze indexation for family tax benefits A and B supplement payments. In MYEFO Labor cut the baby bonus from $5,400 to $5,000 and froze indexation of the payment for three years.

In the 2012 budget Labor cut the eligibility for family tax benefit part A to families with children who are 18 years, meaning families with children aged 19 to 21 will no longer receive assistance through the family tax benefit. And what about the flood levy? Those earning over $100,000 were forced to pay 0.5 per cent of taxable income in excess of $50,000 and one per cent of taxable income in excess of $100,000.

In my electorate, a retiring police officer was forced to remain in the workforce to avoid a $6,500 hit to his superannuation because of this tax as he was receiving a lump sum payment in that financial year. He was unwell and wanted to retire but was already paying $90,000 in tax on his super so he remained in the workforce to avoid another $6,500 loss. How is this looking after hard-working families?

And do not think that residents in Macarthur have not noticed the increase in the cost of living under this government. How can you claim to be supporting Australian families when so many of them cannot afford to pay their electricity bills? There are people in my electorate on low incomes or in the welfare system who are waiting up to three months for $30 vouchers to assist them with their electricity bills.

Let us look at Labor's record from the December quarter of 2007 to the December quarter of 2011. Electricity prices have increased by an average of 61 per cent across Australia. Gas prices have increased by an average of 37 per cent across Australia. Water and sewerage rates have increased by an average of 58 per cent across Australia. Health costs have increased by an average of 20 per cent across Australia. Education costs have increased by an average of 24 per cent across Australia. The cost of food overall has gone up by 13 per cent across Australia. The amount of rent people are now paying has increased by 25 per cent across Australia. When is this government going to realise that the people of this country are not stupid? They can see through the smoke and mirrors. They can see through the financial trickery.

We have a government saying that they are saving money, controlling their spending and reducing debt. What sort of message are they really sending to the people of Australia when they are increasing their borrowing ceiling from $250 billion to $300 billion? There are plenty of people in the community asking that question. This government just keep on spending and keep on taxing. The people of Macarthur know that this is a 'cook-the-books' budget, with the artificial surplus based on fiddled figures and money shuffles.

The Treasurer lives in Wayne's World. It does not exist; it is only in his mind. The $1.5 billion surplus is a mirage—the closer you look, you realise it does not exist. Local families know that a cash payment on 30 June is not going take away the carbon tax pain that begins on 1 July.

The education rebate tax should not have been dumped by this government. It was a silly mistake. Spending taxpayers' money on these payments with no accountability of how the money is spent is not fair to the hard-working people of Australia who pay their taxes on a daily basis. If the money is to be spent on the education of our children then redefining the education tax rebate would have been a much more effective way to do it than these lump sum payments that will only plunge this country further into debt.

We are currently paying $8 billion interest each year on our national debt. This could easily pay for the National Disability Insurance Scheme the people of Australia are waiting for. The people of Macarthur can see what is happening here. They can see that this cash payment is nothing but an attempt to distract them from the carbon tax and the painful price hikes that it will cause. And while this government claims to be supporting Australian families, it will be the future generations of this country that will have to repay the billions of dollars in debt caused by this government's wasteful spending and incompetence.

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

It is a pleasure to rise and speak against the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012 as the member for Macarthur did so well just now. It was an excellent contribution on behalf of his constituents, who he understands very well. He also understands that this sugar-hit bill for the carbon tax that is about to hit Australian families will not work because Australian families no longer trust the government, which told them that there would be no carbon tax in the first place.

Directly before the last election, members of this House will know, the Prime Minister said on Channel 10 that 'there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead'. Of course, we are now just days and hours away from that carbon tax coming into place. So this bill that we are debating today, which is being rushed on by the government, has had no government speakers on it because it is so hard to justify, even from the government's perspective. Government members do not want to be on the record justifying what is an attempt to provide a sugar hit.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Deakin just spoke on this bill.

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

Minister, you are entitled to speak on the bill. Your name is not on the list. There are no Labor members' names on the list. There is a good reason for it. You are ashamed of what you have done to Australian families and what you are about to do to Australian families with your world's biggest carbon tax—a carbon tax you promised would not be implemented. I say to the minister, if she wants to speak on this bill, she should stand up after I finish my contribution and speak on this bill, represent those people from Ballarat, tell them why she supports this carbon tax, tell them why she wants this carbon tax to increase their costs and tell them why this is just an attempt by this government to try and sugar coat what is the nastiest pill that Australian families have faced in a very long time.

Last night we saw the Treasurer's fifth budget delivered. Each budget in this place has some sort of narrative to it and it tells a story about the government's direction. Last night what we saw was a budget which was about trying to enhance the electoral stocks of this Prime Minister and this government. It was a last-gasp effort to try and get a boost in the polls, to hold back the movement of MPs on the government benches. The member for Griffith may be their last salvation—the person who they so abused not too long ago and who they will no doubt, in just a little while, turn to when this sugar hit of the electoral prospects also fails. Last night we saw a budget which was built on a house of cards. I suspect the Treasurer does not think he will ever have to implement it, because the forecasts in it are so unbelievable—you would have fairies at the bottom of the garden to expect that the expectations in that budget of revenue increases, for instance, will be met.

I note that the Australian journalist Adam Crichton, who understands this far better than most, has written an article today about the biggest increase in tax receipts in three decades; that the expectation in the budget is that somehow, while growth will be a trend, there is going to be an enormous growth of 12 per cent in the next financial year of receipts—government receipts, taxation receipts—to create this falsehood of a surplus.

We know that last year the government forecast there would be a deficit in last year's budget of $22 billion. If we refer to the budget papers, which were tabled last night, we see that that blew out to $44 billion. We are now expected to believe that this government can manage the budget back from a $44 billion deficit—which followed on from a $47 billion deficit which followed on from a $54 billion deficit which followed on from a $27 billion deficit—and that somehow it is going to turn around some $45 billion in one financial year, no doubt through a whole lot of trickery in the budget papers, and it is going to stop wasting Australian taxpayers' money when all it has done in its five years of government is just that.

We see it again with this piece of legislation, one which is trying to overturn the whole intent of the original education tax refund; a proposal, as the member for Macarthur put so well, that the opposition sought to improve at the last election. In fact, at the last election the government opposed what we were trying to do because it would not address the educational needs of Australian children. Now people will be handed cash with no expectation at all that they will spend it on education expenses. Indeed, what this cash bonus is all about is for people to be able to pay their soaring electricity bills. The government knows that it has to bribe and compensate people for the pain that it is about to inflict.

This is no longer about assisting educational outcomes for Australian families or schoolchildren, which the opposition's policy sought to improve at the last election by expanding the number of items that this could be spent on by keeping receipts and claiming it through the taxation system, which has been a long-practised way of focusing the money. This, instead, through this piece of legislation, is attempting to—and I hope this legislation does not pass; I hope the Independents see that this cash hit, like the cash hit during the stimulus package back in 2008-09, will be ineffective and wasted. That is why we see a debt soaring up to $240 billion. Last night the credit card was extended: it has gone from $250 billion to $300 billion, and we know that the Labor Party will make the most of its extension, as it has each time it has extended its credit card.

This bill does no more than try to find a way of compensating people for a carbon tax which is about to hit them. If this bill is seriously about education expenses, why is it being pulled forward to be delivered in June this year? Why are payments all of a sudden expected to be made in the next financial year being brought forward and why is this bill being rushed through the parliament so that money is spent in this financial year? It beggars belief. It does not require any proof that it is being used for educational purposes at all. It is an attempt to put money in people's bank accounts and hope and pray that they do not take out their anger, as we know they are, on Labor's members of parliament when we inevitably go to the next election.

We know—and, thankfully, a backbench MP on the government side helpfully told a journalist off the record just two days ago—that you cannot go doorknocking at the moment without being beaten up about the carbon tax. We all know: when we are in public at the moment, every time we go to a function, all people want to talk to us about is the carbon tax, the incompetence of the government, the government's judgment in backing people like the member for Dobell and standing by the member for Dobell and his use of credit cards. What is it with this party and the use of credit cards? What is it with this party and extending cards and using other people's money? What is it with this party?

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Be very careful: it's the pot calling the kettle black.

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

It is interesting that this party does not mind wasting other people's money on all sorts of questionable expenses.

I repeat: this is a bad piece of legislation because it is not following through with the original intention of the education rebate. The education rebate was to assist Australian people with educational expenses. This is an attempt to bribe and compensate people for the impact of the carbon tax, which is about to hit them, in a budget which is built on a house of cards, a budget that the Treasurer does not expect to implement because the numbers and the forecasts are so ambitious as to be unbelievable. It has been interesting to note and watch as the Treasurer has failed fundamentally to explain how it is that the ambitious forecasts in his own budget papers, which get to this pretend surplus, will somehow be delivered.

We just have to look at the record. I refer again to the budget papers, which show that in every budget delivered by this Treasurer the result of the budgets have been deficits: $27 billion, $54 billion, $47 billion, $44 billion. Next year the government expects us to believe that somehow there will be a $1.5 billion surplus, a rounding error in the Commonwealth budget purposes. Just look, for instance, at the increase in spending since this government came to power: in 2007-08, the last Costello budget, the spending was $271 billion; this year it is expected to be $364 billion—near enough to a $100 billion increase in just five budgets. It is an extraordinary increase in government spending. It is an extraordinary increase in the power of the state. It is an extraordinary increase in the take from the Australian people. This is what this government does: it taxes big and it spends big. It spends more than it taxes each year. We have seen that; that is the evidence. This bill is another example of this government spending more money than it takes. It does not have an economic plan to make our country stronger and to take advantages of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities we have. Its economic plan is to tax more and spend more—to waste more. We have seen how much money has been wasted. I referred earlier to the one-off payments as part of the stimulus package. We know, for instance, how many dead people, people living overseas and people in jail received those one-off payments.

During that period we also saw the money that was wasted on the pink batts scheme. We know it cost twice as much—it cost $2 billion to take out the $1 billion that the government spent. Why would this bill be any different? Why would this spend be any different? Changing the purpose of the education tax rebate in the first place to make it a cash payment is purely to try to compensate Australian families for the impact of the biggest lie that this Prime Minister has made to the Australian people. This carbon tax is the dagger at the heart of Australian families. This is an attempt to sugar-coat that pill, and it will not work. It will not work, just as this house of cards budget will not work, because we all know in this parliament that this expectation that somehow there is going to be a $45 billion turnaround from this year's deficit into a surplus next year is a flight of fancy. It is built on an extraordinarily ambitious forecast which cannot be met. It is built on the record of a government that has spent more than it has earned every year it has been in power. For five long years the Australian people have had to suffer under this Treasurer.

We should never forget that when this Treasurer took the Treasury off Peter Costello, Peter Costello left this country with money in the bank, a $20 billion surplus. Surpluses of $20 billion are shown in budget papers 2006-07, 2007-08—money going into the Future Fund to plan for the future. A future fund was established so we could meet contingent liabilities as our country gets older and more people retire. All these plans and all these long-term hard decisions that were pursued by the former government and the Treasurer were undone in what seemed like a matter of weeks—in fact, it has been five long years. To expect that that is somehow going to turn around this year, to expect that somehow we are going to have these ambitious forecasts met, and that the government is going to turn it into a surplus budget, is to be ambitious at best.

This bill is a bad bill. It is a bad decision to change the education tax rebate in the first place. It has been rushed because the government knows it needs to change its numbers in a hurry before the Labor Party members change their Prime Minister. We just hope that the Independent members of this hung parliament—a situation we hope never to see in this country again—decide in the best interests of our country—

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's real bad having this democracy, isn't it.

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

It is not working very well. It is a terrifically stable arrangement, member for Kennedy! There is no doubt about that. The country is certainly going down beautifully at the moment!

We just hope that these Independent members finally wake up to themselves and decide that this government should end. This government was based on a falsehood in the first place. This carbon tax—which the Independent members of parliament helped get through this place—will do so much damage to Australian families. We hope those members finally wake up and end it before this continues; before too much more money is wasted and before future generations are damaged more than they are today. It is a bad bill. It just continues. It is a bad government. It was a bad budget last night. It is built on a house of cards that is, hopefully, going to collapse as soon as it possibly can.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It always amazes me in my years in politics, particularly over recent years, when speakers get up and say, 'We have to get rid of this terrible government.' During the last state election campaign, I asked over 4,000 people at various meetings or talking to two or three people in the street: 'Why? What will change? In Queensland, what will change?' And I say to you: if you change governments from the ALP to the Liberal Party, what will change? In this country, what will change?

I think the first thing you would say, if you were intelligent—I do not know whether you are—is the carbon tax. I would say that the carbon tax was not announced by the ALP; it was announced by the Liberal Party. John Howard said there would be an emissions trading scheme that was fully operational by 2012, and the person standing beside him when he said it was Malcolm Turnbull. The minute you got out of office you immediately became anti carbon tax. When you get back in, please excuse me for thinking you might be back on the other side of the fence. But all I can say to you is that I asked—

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

I've got 20 bucks on that.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will remember that. I am not putting 20 bucks on it because I would not trust people to do anything.

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

I'll make it $100.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take that interjection. The honourable member said that he will pay $100 if they do not abolish the carbon tax, and I will nominate the charity to which he can donate it.

I asked 4,000 people what would change. They were not our supporters; this was just at meetings at the chambers of commerce or public meetings. Out of 4,000 people only four people said that anything would change. Most of them burst out laughing when I asked them what would change. It was a good idea to get rid of the Labor government in Queensland; there is no doubt about that. But what will change? Why do you change it? Nothing is going to change.

One said it as a question: 'Would we get better economic management?' The other two said we would get better economic management. The fourth one said there would be an expectation that things would get better and that there would be an environment of investment that would come in Queensland. I said, 'For how long?' and he burst out laughing. Those who have been around with me can verify what was said. But there are no fundamental differences between that side and the other side. If there are, you can tell me about them when you get up to speak because I will be interested and fascinated to know what they are. But do not start on the carbon tax, because you blokes in opposition announced the carbon tax, not this mob. It is a disaster for this country—let there be no question about that.

The ultimate consequence for a race of people is that they simply eliminate themselves from the gene pool; that they simply cease to exist as a race of people. I am among the first of the baby boomers; I was born in 1945. Statistically, I will die in 10 years time. I will be dead. All of the baby boomers will die in 10 years time. In 10 years time, when that occurs, there will be more deaths in this country than births. In Australia, at that point in time, we will officially become a dying race. There are people who say, 'Yes, but people will come in from overseas.' Yes they will, but they will not be Australians—they will be migrants. They will not be the race that is here now. I do not know about other people, but my forebears have been living in this country for 130 years. That is not true for everybody, but the race of people that are here will simply vanish. Before they vanish, there will be this terrible problem of half the population being very old and decrepit and having to be looked after by less than half the population—if you take out children, less than half the population will have to be looking after the old, decrepit half of the population.

I was not aware of this until Dr Bob Birrell from Monash University, the leading demographer in this country, wrote a landmark article in the Weekend Australian newspaper. In that article, he said that in 100 years time the population of Australia will be between six and seven million people. I thought, 'This is ridiculous; this can't be right.' I went down to the Parliamentary Library to the demographer there and I said, 'Is this ridiculous?' and he said, 'No, you can work it out for yourself'. He said that when 20 Australians die they are replaced by 17 Australians. If you do that for five generations over 100 years, you will find that you will have a decline, a very significant decline. I went back up to my office and did the mathematics, and I was quite amazed and very worried that I now belong to a vanishing race.

There are enormous, horrific costs associated with having a child. My wife and I brought up five children. I think it would be impossible to keep a child for under $25,000 a year, and even in the most grinding of poverty it would still be $15,000 a year. A child is not tax deductible, as it was when we were originally bringing up our children, when it was fully tax deductible. Now, the DINKs—double income, no kids—pay the same tax as the poor beggar whose wife has to stay at home because he has got three kids, and they are trying to stay alive with four or five people on one income. It is Christmas time for the DINKs; it is horror time for those people who would love to have children, who want to see an Australia in the future and who would love to see more Australians. It is horror time for them.

I enjoy immensely coming in here and tearing into the mainstream parties over economic issues and other issues, but in this case I have to say that the Liberal Party under Peter Costello—one of the worst Treasurers in Australian history, but Paul Keating will tip him out well in that race—doubled taxation and trebled the national debt. I am not referring to the government debt; Costello skited about the government balancing the budget, but it is a pity he did not take the time to think about the nation's book of account and its debt problems. He fixed his own by nearly trebling taxation while he was here, so do not let the Liberal Party ever get up and say, 'We're the low-taxing party'. They are the highest-taxing party in Australian history.

But I give Peter Costello his due. His comment, 'One for mum, one for dad and one for the country,' was a very good comment, and he did not just say it; he backed it up. There was a huge increase in the amount of money going to families having kids. It did not go back to anything like it was when I was a young father and the kids almost made our taxation negligible. We did not pay much tax at all because we had five children. He did not go that far, but all the same he started a big movement back towards defraying the enormous prohibitive costs of having a child.

The current government has continued with this and I praise them for the fact that they have provided a continuingly increasing amount of money to get to where we should be. But even this, which I refer to as $2,000 for three kids, the best way to explain it to the electorate is to say, 'If you have three kids, you will get an extra $2,000 a year'. It is not a huge amount of money but it is significant. We as a party—the KAP Party that I belong to—believe that every child must get $7,000. If we are going to turn that birthrate around then there has to be a payment for the birth—I cannot remember exactly what the figure was that we determined—with $7,000 per year per child in addition to that initial outlay, which is a very expensive item in the budget. It comes to $26,000 million—a huge budget item. But if you want to have a nation and a people with a future, and still exist as a race of people, then you had better do that and do that quickly. People say, 'Where will we get $26,000 million from?' but we have a 10 per cent customs duty on everything coming into the country, which will provide that amount of money. We can justify that, WTO neutral, because it is a customs duty not a tariff.

I return to the theme of a vanishing race. We had a very large number of suicides in one of our towns. I will not repeat the name of the town. It got a lot of bad publicity at the time. I said to one of my very good friends, who is very active in my political party as well, 'How is this occurring?' because it was occurring to middle-class families. I was quite staggered when I found out who the people were, because I knew them. He said, 'What if you were a young mother and the police knocked on the door and said, "Your kid's been throwing rocks through windows. We want him. He's going to have to be charged,", then the next day the housing commission—Qbuild or whatever they call them; they change their name every 10 minutes these days—turns up and they say "You're behind in your rent; we're hitting you with an eviction notice. You're going to be out on the streets," and you know you have to buy food for tonight but your husband's taken the money for the food and spent it on grog and if you complain he might duff you up a bit"?'

My friend said, 'Really? What do you think their frame of mind is?' Let me go back to the fact that the mother cannot pay the rent. One reason, as this gentleman said, was that the father was spending it on grog. He was not referring to a specific case; he was generalising. Another reason is that they just simply have no money to pay the rent. We in Australia have three characteristics that differentiate us from every other country. One of them is that we have the highest juvenile male suicide rate in the world, consistently and continuously now for over 20 years. I have my own views on why this is occurring and I am not sure whether they are correct or not. Boys are no longer allowed to be boys. They can no longer go fishing, camping, hunting or shooting. There are no male teachers anymore in the schools. Football is not available to them; there is no-one to take them there or to train them. They have no male role models. Probably a third of the population of Australia now live in families where there is no father. All of these things come together.

One of the issues that arise, and it is most unfortunate in this budget, is that we say to that little mother, who is trying desperately to raise three kids after her husband selfishly walked out on her and dumped her, and she is fighting to stay alive, 'Oh, no. You're not going to get any money unless you go back to work.' Then you complain because the children are on the streets causing trouble all of the time and a lot of them commit suicide. They have no mother because the mother has to go out and work. That is what is being imposed upon people here. If you think child-care centres and the education system can raise your kids then have a look at your statistics. You have the highest male suicide rates in the world. Is there a single member in this place who does not have a complaint every single week about misbehaviour of the juvenile section of our community? That has always been there but it is infinitely worse now than it has ever been before.

The honourable member for Herbert has come in. He would be well aware, in the Townsville region, of the great battle that my own party is leading, and I disagree with one aspect of this. They say that the parents should be made responsible. The parents have no disciplinary powers whatsoever now. That is another reason potential parents are not having kids. You cannot control the kids. The kids control the parents now. You cannot impose this, and Justice Wall quite rightly drew attention to it. But I say to Justice Wall, even though I love and respect the man—he is a great bloke—that without the disciplinary powers we cannot go in that direction— (Time expired)

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

I rise to speak on the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012. It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Kennedy. I hope that Hansard records and that, Madam Deputy Speaker Rishworth, you will be the witness to the $100 wager between myself and the member for—

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

I have to caution the member about making wagers in the House.

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

I am sure that the member for Kennedy, at the change of government, will gladly give me $100 for my charity, for what was said. This bill is not about a schoolkids bonus; it is all about abandoning the education tax refund, which was a targeted program that provided genuine assistance to relieve education costs for parents. It has been replaced by nothing other than a free money handout.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I claim to be misrepresented. I never offered him $100 if they do it. I would not trust them to do it or not do it, but I most certainly accept his offer of $100!

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

Order! I must caution members that the House is not a place for making wagers. I ask the member for Hughes to continue.

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

This bill is about abandoning the existing tax education refund, which was a targeted program that provided genuine assistance to relieve education costs for parents, and replacing it with nothing other than a free money handout. It is a handout that has nothing to do with education. Everyone likes to give away free money. We have seen it before from this government, thinking they could buy popularity, but they should learn from their past mistakes—this only buys very short-term popularity. And it is certainly not free money when that money has to be borrowed and when that borrowed money creates an obligation to pay interest in the future and when that borrowed money has to be repaid. The free money handout that this bill will give will only further add to our nation's debt burden that will have to be repaid by future generations of Australians. So this bill would be far better if it were renamed as not the 'schoolkids bonus' but the 'schoolkids debt burden', because that is exactly what it is.

The last four Labor budget deficits have totalled a cumulative $174 billion. And even if last night's forecast $1.5 billion surplus is achieved—and I note that the online betting agencies are actually taking wagers on this and it is a very short-priced favourite that it will not happen, but let us give the Treasurer the benefit of the doubt and assume that last night's forecast $1.5 billion surplus is actually achieved—this will mean that Labor's legacy, the legacy of their last five budgets, the cumulative deficit that they will leave as a legacy to future Australians, will be $172½ billion. So, because of those last five Labor budgets leading to a cumulative $172½ billion in deficit, for years into the future, for future generations, before we have one cent to pay for the education of our children, before we have one cent to assist our children with disabilities, before we have one cent for aged care, for hospitals, for roads, for medical research et cetera—for everything that is important in this nation—we will now have to find $8 billion just to pay the interest bill on Labor's debt. And the majority of this $8 billion will actually have to be paid to foreigners, and will have to be paid year after year after year—forever, until we start paying down that debt that they have left us.

How long will it take to repay Labor's debt from the last four years' budget deficits? Again, let us give the Treasurer the benefit of the doubt and assume that the betting markets have it wrong and they will actually deliver the $1.5 billion forecast surplus. At that rate, a surplus of $1.5 billion per year, it is going to take no fewer than 116 years to pay off the combined deficits that Labor has rung up in just the last four years—116 years to undo the damage of just four years. To visualise just how much $172 billion actually is, imagine a stack of $100 bills; if you were stacking piles of $100 bills on a pallet and filling that pallet up with $100 bills as high as you could go, to reach that $172 billion, that pallet would be stacked no less than 2.4 kilometres high. That is the debt mountain that this Labor government is leaving future generations. A good question to ask is, 'Why is this legislation being rushed through the parliament today? Why is it being rushed through to rebadge the education tax refund?' We all know: it is simply about throwing money at people before they get hit with the world's largest carbon tax.

If you were really about helping future generations of our schoolkids, you would not be handing out free money to them. You would not be leaving them with a debt burden. The one thing that you would be doing would be protecting our nation's competitive advantages so that they could be passed on to our future generations, the schoolkids of today, so that they could enjoy the competitive advantages that we as Australians had as a nation in years gone past. As a nation, just as for a business, we can only succeed if we have a competitive advantage. A competitive advantage is our lifeblood. It is what creates opportunity. It is what creates prosperity. It is what we should be handing down to our future generations. It should be the sacred duty of every elected member of this parliament to do everything we possibly can to safeguard our national competitive advantage. For, although we may survive if we are just at competitive parity, if what was our advantage turns into a competitive disadvantage then as a nation we go backwards.

There are many things that we suffer in Australia as competitive disadvantages. We have high labour costs, and that is something we do not want to do anything to harm. We also have the competitive disadvantage of major distances to our major markets. We also have the competitive disadvantage of our large nation—the large distances between our cities. But one of our nation's greatest competitive advantages has been our low-cost electricity supplies. Abundant supplies of high-quality black coal generating low-cost electricity—that has been one of the true national competitive advantages we have had, and it should be our sacred obligation to hand that competitive advantage on to our future generations, the schoolkids of today, who will be running our businesses and our economy tomorrow. But this Labor government, in an act of sheer economic treason, has decided to surrender this one national competitive advantage that we have by imposing upon our nation the world's largest carbon tax—a mere charade that has nothing to do with controlling global temperatures and nothing to do with the environment but which will simply raise electricity prices and sacrifice our national competitive advantage.

Australians used to enjoy some of the lowest electricity prices in the world. But a recent study released by the Energy Users Association of Australia has shown that average electricity prices in Australia are now, unbelievably, amongst the highest in the world. And once the world's biggest carbon tax takes effect, Australian businesses and consumers will have the highest electricity prices in the world. Interestingly, in South Australia, where they often boast about having more wind turbines than anywhere else in the country, they can now also boast that they have the highest electricity prices not only in Australia but in the world.

Again, this schoolkids bonus will not be directed at education; this coming winter, many families will simply have to use this money, this cash handout, to pay for their increased electricity costs so that they can keep their heaters on during winter. Another question about this bill is: why does this money have to be shovelled out before 30 June? What is so important about 30 June? What is the rush? We have heard the excuse from the Prime Minister that it was needed for the winter school term. But, if we check the school holidays, at 30 June in almost every state our school kids are still finishing off their second term, in the first two weeks of July they are on a break and they do not go back to school for the winter term, the third term of the year, until late in July. So why isn't this money handed out in the first week of July, if that is what it is really meant for?

We know it has nothing to do with school kids. It is simply thrown in at 30 June so it comes in in the current year's budget and not in next year's budget, when we see an artificial surplus. So is it any wonder that we have seen the current year's deficit blow out from $22 billion? We had thought it was $37 billion but, as we heard last night, another $7 billion has been tacked onto it and we now have, in this financial year, an estimated budget deficit of $44 billion. So the reason is simply to bring that expenditure out so it sits in there: rack up the deficit for this financial year as much as we possibly can and bring all the expenditure forward to create that artificial surplus for the next year. This is one of the most blatant attempts we have seen of cooking the books to allow Labor to protect that artificial surplus for next financial year by simply paying the refund before 30 June this year.

The coalition knows that families with school-aged children do have large costs, but the best way to ensure the money is spent on their kids is through the now abolished education tax refund system. This was a successful regime that ensured taxpayers' money was given only to families who actually spent it on education costs. Compare the two plans. The coalition's plan would have provided for a rebate to families of $1,000 for secondary school-aged child and $500 for each primary school-aged child. In contrast, they are being short-changed under this bill because Labor's scheme only provides $820 for secondary school-aged children and $410 for primary school-aged children, leaving a family with two children—the typical Australian family with one child in secondary school and one child in primary school—some $270 a year worse off. This bill actually makes school kids and families worse off. The coalition's policy has more money, it is better targeted and it will go straight to families who need it most. In contrast, Labor continues to borrow more money. While parents might see a short-term benefit this year, it will be their children in the future who have to pay off Labor's debt.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always good to follow on from my colleague the member for Hughes. I rise to speak on the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012. This bill is about the government desperately trying to buy votes that it cannot afford, at the expense of good policy. There can be nothing surer than that. This bill allows for the removal of the education tax refund and replaces it with the Schoolkids Bonus: twice-yearly, lump sum payments of $410 for primary school students and $820 for high school students.

The education tax refund is a targeted program that provides genuine assistance to families paying off education costs. With this bill, Labor have abandoned this measure, opting instead for a cash handout that they hope will distract families from the world's biggest carbon tax. This is not offsetting education, and no-one should be fooled by that. As the member for North Sydney and shadow Treasurer so eloquently put yesterday or the day before, it is simply 'a sugar hit for families', a distraction from increased bills and costs that will rise just for going about their everyday lives. Unlike the now defunct education tax refund, there is no requirement that this education handout be spent on schooling needs. It is just as likely to go to Dan Murphy. Once again, the Labor government have opted for a vote grab instead of good policy.

On this side of the House we do support investment in a child's education and we do know that parents need better assistance. The coalition took a policy to the last election that would vastly expand the number of eligible school expense items and increase the rebate amounts. This plan would have given families a rebate of $1,000 for each secondary school child and $500 for each primary school child, some $270 more beneficial for families than what the government is proposing with this bill. Additionally, our policy was targeted to make sure that taxpayers' money was being spent where it was needed: on education costs. After its promise of a tough budget to get back to surplus, Labor's bill can be seen as nothing more than a cash-grab attempt to win votes, paid for by debt. While parents might get a handout today, it will be the children who are paying it off in the future, along with the rest of this Labor government's debt.

One of the things that I found most disturbing about this whole exercise of a cash grab is that during the whole budget speech not once was the word 'productivity' mentioned. Is this the best use of our taxpayers' dollars? Is this the best way we can hand out taxpayers' dollars—just splash cash out in every way, shape and form towards an electorate that is becoming increasingly cynical about the way that we operate here? Surely we have learnt our lesson from the stimulus packages and the flood handouts, that by and large the money is not going to the places where it is actually needed. What is wrong with having to provide receipts for genuine educational costs and claiming that on your tax? What is wrong with actually having to stump up and say: 'This is what I am spending on my child's education. Can you give me a rebate for it?' What is wrong with that? What we are doing now is just giving this cash out to anyone who has a school-aged child. As long as you qualify for it, the money just goes into your account and away you go. You can do whatever you want with it. There is no onus on you to do anything with it. Having kids is not cheap. I have got three of my own and I can tell you that when they are at school, it is probably the cheapest they will be! Wait until they get out of school and they start wanting motor cars and plane trips and things like that. That is when they start to get expensive. Are we going to go down the track where we start to hand out money because our teenagers want to stay at home, or because our 20- and 30-year-olds are still living at home? Are we going to start handing out cash because they will not move out of home? That is the way we are going with this government at the moment. Money is going everywhere. It is a splash for cash that just goes all about the place. We have to think about things that are more productivity based.

What are we doing with our taxpayer dollars? It was Kerry Packer who stood in that joint house committee inquiry and said that he had a fundamental duty to reduce the amount of tax that he paid because governments do not spend it wisely. If you are busting your backside out there, if you are making the effort to make a difference, to create wealth and to create employment, and you pay your tax and then you turn around and see a government of any shape or form just splashing cash all over the place, you have every right to stand there and say: 'What the hell is going on here? Why should I be paying tax? Why should I be in private enterprise? Why should I be a small businessmen trying to do the best for my family and for the people who work for me, when the government does not respect the money that we give it?'

My mum and dad have three boys. Two of us went to boarding school, because we did not have the option of going to a local senior high school, and my little brother went to school in Brisbane. It was not easy and it was not cheap. All the way through, my parents scrimped and saved to do what they had to do. It is the same with my kids. We have to make do with what we have. We have chosen an education system for them and we will do the best we possibly can for them because they are our children.

What we do not need is a government standing out there and setting an example to us as parents that says, 'If you just hang around long enough and you don't do anything then we, the government, will give you cash.' The government will just stand there and at some stage in your life you are going to be just sitting around and you will open up the mail and there will be a $1,000 cheque from the government—just because. Just because it is your turn. Do not do anything, do not get up off your backside, do not get out there and do the extra work, do not work hard, because that is not what you are after.

What we are after here at the moment is a free handout. We want free money. That is what the whole society seems to be jumping up and down about at the moment. What this budget says is that if you qualify—if you sit at home and you do not do anything—then you are going to pick up $2,190 for doing nothing. Whereas the men and women out there, and the small businesses, who are working 70-, 80- or 90-hour weeks are not getting the tax refunds, they are not getting the tax cuts, and they are not getting anything out of this budget. They are the ones that should we be feeling sorry for.

As a parent, you have to set an example for your children as to what it means to be a person. You have to set the parameters as to how they will behave. You have to start that very, very early. If, as parents, we allow our kids to just sit there and they see that they will be given stuff for nothing—if they do not have to do the dishes, if they do not have to clean up the yard or they do not have to clean up their bedroom—then that is the example that we set for them. As a government, we must set an example for the country. We are given a ton of money—we are given a lot of money in this place. We are taking a lot of money out of Australia and we must use it the best way possible. Handing out cheques to people all over the place is simply not the best way to do it.

Everyone knows that, all the way through, this is a cover-up for the carbon tax. This is a cover-up because the carbon tax is coming in. This is a cover-up because the world's biggest carbon tax is going to hit absolutely everyone. The Treasurer stood there last night and said: 'It is only the big emitters that pay it.' But it is not the big emitters that pay it, because they will just pass it on. It is the people who are at the bottom of the pile who will pay it. It is the ratepayer, it is the wage-earner, it is the pensioner and it is the sole parent: those are the people who will pay with this carbon tax at every level. Every time you turn an electric light on, every time you open your fridge, every time you buy something you will be using electricity—and it is a tax on electricity. If you want to compensate people, do it by getting rid of this toxic tax. In Townsville—and they are using the Treasury's own figures—it is going to cost the Townsville City Council $5 million in carbon tax to run the dump because of the greenhouse gases.

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member has strayed significantly from the content of this bill and I ask that he be brought back to it.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Herbert will make his comments relevant to the bill before the parliament.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, my points are relevant. They go to the way that this money is being handed out and to the way that this government is throwing money around. They are therefore relevant. We have to look at the way we are teaching our children. We have to look at the way that we as a government and we as a parliament are handling money on behalf of the Australian community. To stand here in this House and tell people that the best way that we can use your tax dollar is to send cheques out in the mail is a slap in the face for those people who are trying their best. This is what it is about: we have to make sure that we as a parliament are working our hardest to justify the people's faith in us. Is there any doubt out there that we are held in such low esteem at the moment because of the way that we are handling money? Is this the most productive way of handling money? Is this the most productive use of taxpayer dollars? If this is the best that the government can do, then I suggest that it go back to the drawing board and start again.

This bill is a pox on both our houses. This bill is not good policy. This bill does not make sense. This bill is doomed to failure and this money will not be spent where it should be spent. I thank the Deputy Speaker for his indulgence.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, at 9.26 this morning, the Gillard Labor government introduced this bill, the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill 2012. This policy was first announced in a preplanned, pre-budget leak only a couple of days ago by the Treasurer, the member for Lilley. The coalition supports Australian families, but we must consider today's bill in the context of the worst budget, the worst Treasurer and the worst government this nation has ever seen. Today, it can be plainly seen that instead of rushing this bill through for the benefit of Australian families and for the education of our children, the Gillard government seeks to rush it through for only the basest political reasons, which I will outline today. The coalition has a proud history of supporting Australian families. The family tax benefit system was itself reformed by the Howard government to support hardworking Australian families and to ensure that parents of school children received adequate support from the government to which they pay so much tax. The coalition under the Howard government made sure that parents with schoolchildren as well as parents with only one income earner were looked after. From 1 January next year, under this bill, families will receive $820 for each high school child and $410 per primary school child. These payments will go to families who are eligible for family tax benefit A. Under this program families will not be required to keep an account of what the money is spent on; indeed, they can effectively spend it on anything they like, whether or not it is related to education.

This bill would be completely unnecessary if Australian families had a competent government. Australians have a very important question for the Treasurer: where has he directed the hard earned tax dollars of Australian families in the four years that he has been Treasurer of this nation? We know that he has not directed it towards programs delivering effective outcomes for Australian families. Under the member for Griffith, and the current Prime Minister and the current Treasurer, hard earned taxpayer money has been spent on government programs which were failures from start to finish. These failures amount to billions and billions of wasted dollars—money which would have been better spent in the hands of individuals and families. I remind the House again of the pink batts fiasco, which resulted in the deaths of Australians. I remind the House of the Building the Education Revolution scheme, which directed funds to building school halls at schools already scheduled for closure. I remind the House of the hard earned taxpayers' money spent on an inefficient solar rebate program, which was not only economically inefficient but also did almost nothing for environmental outcomes. How can we forget the unnecessary and exorbitant cost of giving set-top boxes to pensioners at a cost higher than that of a whole new television? Nor have we forgotten the $900 in stimulus payment which was sent to both people living overseas and people who are dead. How can we have confidence in this latest effort at pork-barrelling?

Inefficiency is the hallmark of this government, and Australian families have suffered under its incompetence since 2007. As a result of its profligacy and incompetence, the Gillard government had even before last night introduced 19 new or increased taxes. This government has turned $70 billion of net worth into accumulated deficits of $167 billion and $136 billion of net debt. The figures are indeed alarming. In 2013-14 w will see net government debt climb to a record never before seen in this country. It will represent an increase of over $40 billion since last year's budget. This country and its economy will be struggling after four years of Labor debt totalling $174 billion. By 2015-16 the government will be spending over $8 billion a year—around $22 million a day—on interest payments alone. Considering the government's love of accumulating debt, these payments are more like a schoolkids mortgage than a schoolkids bonus. The Treasurer must think that he has an unlimited credit limit for which he requests an increase that is automatically provided. But Australian families know what it is like to be in debt—to struggle financially with an ever-increasing cost of living—and, although the government would like to claim that today's schoolkids bonus budget measures bill is supporting such people, as I previously said, it is merely a bandaid for the government's reckless financial mismanagement.

On the other hand, Australian families know that with a coalition government they receive strong economic management. They know that there would be absolutely no need for a bill such as this schoolkids bonus budget measures bill if the Gillard government were not imposing such a destructive, economy-wide carbon tax. This tax, finally included in the budget last night, is going to hit Australian families. It will hit jobs in this country and significantly harm investment. It will do nothing for the environment. The payments specified in this bill are an admission by the government that the carbon tax will hurt families more than the government is admitting.

Efforts to harm Australian families would be abhorrent at any time, yet the Gillard government is introducing this measure now, when the global economy is in complete dire straits and when consumers and businesses in this country are not sure what the future holds—so of course they are worried. We also heard last night of possibly one of the most ridiculous budget measures for decades: the increase in the pig slaughter fee—the bacon tax. The message to Australian families last night was: 'We're going to hit you. We're going to hit you hard and in ways you've never even thought of.'

It is clear that this bill is not introduced genuinely to support Australian families but is instead a measure to hide the disastrous effects that the carbon tax will have on the family budget. The government's own modelling shows that under the carbon tax there will be an immediate 10 per cent increase in electricity prices and a nine per cent increase in gas bills. Food costs will increase due to the electricity price rise and increased transportation costs. Be in no doubt that the basic necessities of life will cost more. If families cannot save through not buying necessities, they will buy less—less entertainment, less clothing and less generally from the already struggling retail sector.

Since 2007 Australian families have been struggling under incredible cost-of-living pressures. I list some of these increases in the cost of living to remind those on the opposite side of the House what has really been occurring for Australian families. From the December quarter of 2007 to the December quarter of 2011, electricity prices have increased by an average of 61 per cent across Australia. Gas prices have increased by an average of 37 per cent across Australia. Water and sewerage rates have increased by an average of 58 per cent across Australia. Health costs have increased by an average of 20 per cent across Australia. Education costs have increased by an average of 24 per cent across Australia. The cost of food overall has gone up by 13 per cent across Australia. The amount of rent people are paying has increased by 25 per cent across Australia. Australian families are struggling, and today's bill will do little to compensate these families for what has occurred under Labor governments.

The government earlier this year slugged tens of thousands of people with significant extra costs by reducing the private health insurance rebate. There are now tens of thousands of families in Ryan alone who will face higher premiums and more strain on their everyday cost of living if they choose to protect their own health with private health cover. Last night the government announced changes to the tax offset system for out-of-pocket medical expenses, so adding further misery to the lives of thousands of Ryan residents.

If you combine the carbon tax, the debt and deficit incurred by this government, the cost of the NBN, the reduction in the private health insurance rebate and everything else I have mentioned today, it is clear that this government is not committed to reducing the cost of living or to supporting Australian families. Moreover, if this bill was truly aimed at improving educational outcomes the government would have introduced it in a way that directly benefited educational outcomes. Instead, this payment is a free-for-all measure so that parents can spend the money in any way they please. Clearly, this government has given up any pretence that this bill is about offsetting education costs. Under this bill, the money given to parents of school children may be spent on the education of their children, but it is of great concern that it probably will not be. This government should come up with a targeted campaign to ensure that the money is spent effectively. We already had a program designed to do such a thing. It was called the education tax refund. But this government dumped it last night.

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

Order! It being 1.45 pm the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at another hour.