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

If you have read some of the headlines today, you would think that the timing of what I want to speak about is somehow linked to revelations about hacking, but that is not what I want to focus on. I want to speak about and pay tribute to ASIO. Looking around the world in recent times—and I am not just talking about last week but over many years—we have seen great internal threats to Western nations, threats which have come from radical followers of Islam who interpret the religion to give them some justification for attacks on civilians—terrorism by any other name. As is the nature of terrorism, they are acts designed to create fear, acts designed to elicit a media response, which is always quite successful, and nevertheless acts designed to push a philosophy which is inconsistent with Western values and Western thinking.

Looking particularly at the recent event in Boston, people who had come from Chechnya were responsible for the attacks which took lives at the Boston marathon. They were people who had sought a better life in the United States but then, having taken all the advantages offered by the West, they chose to find such fault with those systems and attacked innocent, undefended civilians, taking lives for a political cause in the name of religion. Similarly, in Stockholm an immigrant population is resisting the rule of law. In Paris, the attack on the soldier in the metropolitan area was by a member of an immigrant population which has chosen not to be part of the mainstream or to benefit from the opportunities provided to them, but instead to find fault and try to change the nature of the country which had so willingly and generously provided them support and protection.

What happened a week ago in London shocked us all. We heard the matter of fact manner in which one of those murderers, having run down the innocent soldier Lee Rigby, then set upon him in the worst, cruellest and most violent way. He justified his actions in such a broad English second-generation accent. He justified the killing, the ambush and the murder of that young soldier on the basis of aggrievement by what happens in, as he described, 'our lands'. He defined himself as no longer a citizen of Britain and owed his allegiance to a higher authority in his mind—that being his interpretation of his religion. Again, he was aggrieved by perceived injustices in a foreign land.

It is the case that western democracies face the threat of those who have been offered sanctuary and a better life and benefited from that law-and-order safe environment and been afforded an education by the taxpayers of those western democracies. Those people come to find so much fault with that society—the society that has given them succour—that they then choose to attack it. It is a philosophy that we struggle with and one that I find difficult to comprehend.

Here in Australia the reality is that we too face exactly these problems. The arrests that have taken place in the last few years—such as the planned attack on Holsworthy army barracks—these are exactly the same threats that other countries face. High-profile cases seem to be focused in Melbourne and Sydney, but I can tell the parliament—in tribute to ASIO—that I was approached last year by a person who had been a Christian, converted to Islam and came out of Islam to find Christianity again. This man witnessed and heard the conversations of young Islamic men in a mosque in Perth discussing the political benefits and value of attacking infrastructure in Perth. Having heard this, I contacted ASIO. I was very pleased to have seen that man who had come to me several weeks or so later at a public event—I did not wish to follow up with ASIO to make sure they did their job—and he told me he was up to his third interview with ASIO.

I am very grateful that this country is so well protected by such a dedicated group of professionals as ASIO. While they are completely different organisations, ASIS and the Office of National Assessments are other organisations in which we should have great faith. The only trouble is that there has been a very severe increase in workload, coupled with an unfortunate series of cutbacks in their budgets, and this has added pressure on organisations like ASIO. When a professional and a highly competent organisation such as ASIO is faced with a mountainous workload, we cannot have faith that the best interests of the country are being served—no matter how good they are.

As we know, since the 2008 changes to the border protection policies brought in by the Rudd government and furthered by the Gillard government, there have been some 40,000 illegal arrivals by boat who have come from places where there has been fighting, who may possibly be terrorists or used to fighting and who may have causes that are unlikely to be in the best interests of this countr When we are faced with that sort of incoming group of people, the need for ASIO to do a security assessment on them obviously is paramount. But if you are faced with a reduction in your budget, not enough staff to do the job, and pressure from some media and some irresponsible fringe parties such as the Greens, then there is always a risk that people will slide through. When you look at some of the people that have been arrested in this country for terrorism related charges then there is obviously a history of people having slipped through. That is a terrible situation.

The incident that I referred to before, which I reported to ASIO—again I pay tribute to the quick and very effective manner in which ASIO responded to that—was a counterterrorism security matter. I understand that there has been an 11 per cent rise in counterterrorism security assessments that have been required. When that is coupled with, in recent years, 34,000 in visa assessments, there is a big strain for ASIO to do their job. They do not have enough staff to do that job.

When we look at exactly what has happened around the world, we must know that the threat is as real here as it is in other places. There might be different numbers per capita of immigrant populations in various places around the world, but the reality is that we, too, have that sort of threat here. I have heard from one of my constituents of that threat. There is no doubt that we are facing a problem in the future and a problem right now.

At the start of 2011, in a speech I made—this fact was well reported at the time—it was said that in the four months leading up to February 2011 there were some 22 Australian citizens that had effectively disappeared in the Middle East trying to enter terrorism training camps in Yemen. I am sure those 22 Australians were all from immigrant backgrounds—first or second generation.

An honourable member: Are you sure?

I am certain of it, mate. You can draw a comparison between that and one of the murderers in London, Michael Adebolajo, who was arrested in Kenya. He was part of the al-Shabaab movement, which is an al-Qaeda linked terrorist organisation. That suspect—one of the murderers in London—pretty much falls into the same sort of category as some of those 22 Australians that have entered training camps in Yemen.

What we see is that there is a very real threat to the security of this country posed by Australians—or people who are now Australian citizens—and in that context we should be very careful about undermining or rendering less effective the great job that ASIO can do. When we have ASIO and other security organisations within this country—organisations that serve the interests of our nation—hamstrung by a reduction in their budget and further challenged by a massive increase in their workload due to the policies of government, then that threat becomes worse and worse.

The job of any government—the job of those of us who serve the nation in this place—is to make sure that our country and our people are safe, first and foremost. We are not lords of the manor here. We are not VIPs. We are merely the chief servants of our electorates and of our nation. We should keep in mind always to not increase the dangers or limit our ability to keep safe our population. What needs to change in the future is that we make sure that ASIO, that great organisation, is properly resourced for the benefit of all Australians.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure for me to rise to speak on the 2013 appropriation bills. I have spoken on many budgets since being elected to this House in 1998, in opposition and in government, but this is the first time I have been able to do so as a member of the executive, as the new Parliamentary Secretary for the Arts.

So I am delighted to be able to say that this is an excellent budget for the arts. The credit for that goes to many people, including the former Minister for the Arts Mr Crean, and the current minister, Mr Tony Burke. Above all, credit goes to the arts sector itself. Since I have been in this job, and for a long time before that, I have been impressed by the dynamism, imagination, enthusiasm and vision of the people who work in Australia's arts sector. That includes the arts practitioners themselves—Australia's visual artists, writers, classical, jazz and contemporary musicians and film and theatre people—as well as the dedicated administrators who manage the myriad of arts organisations. This budget rewards their talent and their commitment. The fact that, despite difficult economic circumstances, we stayed with our budgetary commitments to them shows that the Australian government does value their work.

There is a perception in some sections of the community that government funding for the arts is a luxury. Recently, the Institute of Public Affairs think tank, which is the ideological spear point of the Liberal Party, and which seems to get such a free ride in the media, published an article by John Roskam, Chris Berg and James Paterson called '75 radical ideas to transform Australia.' No. 62 of these radical ideas was: 'End all public subsidies to sport and the arts.'

Last week I saw an example of what it would mean if this radical anti-government agenda were to be put into practice. At Glenorchy in Hobart, I had the pleasure last Friday of opening stage 2 of the Glenorchy Arts and Sculpture Park, locally known as GASP. This project has transformed a rundown industrial area into nine hectares of recreational and environmental reserves, including a bird sanctuary, boardwalks and educational facilities, as well as a showplace for art and sculpture, linked to the legendary MONA gallery, making that whole area into an arts precinct.

GASP will provide direct employment for many people in Glenorchy, but it will also bring more visitors to Hobart and stimulate growth and employment in tourism and related industries. This was all made possible by $2 million of federal funds. If the IPA has its way under a future coalition government, arts projects like this will become much more difficult to fund, perhaps impossible. Australia, and particularly regional Australia, would be poorer if that were to happen.

Our most important arts funding organisation is the Australia Council for the Arts, founded by the Whitlam government in 1973. New funding is now being provided for the Australia Council. This investment by the Australian government will respond to the 2012 review of the Australia Council, giving it greater flexibility to meet the challenges of rapid change in music, performance, art, literature and emerging arts and increasing its base funding by $75 million over four years, or more than $18 million per annum. As the new Parliamentary Secretary for the Arts, I had the opportunity to introduce that legislation, my first. That was a great honour and this is a great development for the Australia Council, its first reform in 40 years.

New funding of over $20 million will also be provided in this budget to our national elite arts training organisations such as the Australian Ballet School and the Australian Youth Orchestra. This will sustain and increase training available to students and ensure that these organisations continue to provide leadership in the performing arts and creative industries.

New funding of over $9 million will also be provided to six major performing arts companies: Bangarra Dance Theatre and Belvoir (Company B) in New South Wales; the West Australian Ballet and the Black Swan State Theatre Company in Western Australia, and the Malthouse Theatre and Circus Oz in Victoria. This initiative will secure the financial bases of these companies. It will ensure that they are able to meet the standards of excellence, creativity and innovation expected of major performing arts companies. It will enable them to continue to deliver their core program of activities while increasing access for Australian audiences to their high-quality performances and educational services.

This government is committed—and I am personally committed—to supporting the growth of Indigenous art in Australia. I recently opened a wonderful exhibition of Indigenous women's paintings from Western Australia and the Northern Territory at Alliance Francaise in St Kilda in my own electorate. The budget includes continued funding of over $11 million over four years to support and strengthen the Indigenous visual arts industry. This supplements the government's already significant investment in this area. There is new, additional funding of nearly $14 million over four years to develop community driven digital and multimedia language resources and activities as an extension to the Indigenous Languages Support program.

I am particularly pleased that $8 million has also been provided in the budget to the Creative Young Stars program. This is a program that will encourage, support and celebrate creative young people up to 25 years old, funding available in every federal electorate. This is a completely non-partisan program, which I hope all members of the House will take part in. The great trumpeter James Morrison, when I was inducting him into the Hall of Fame at the Bell Awards recently, explained to me that 3,500 young Australians were that weekend in Mt Gambier participating in jazz training with all of the leading jazz musicians in Australia—3½ thousand young Australians out of a population of 23 million. It does say something about the yearning for creativity in this country.

Arts policy in Australia has generally not been the subject of partisan controversy and I do not wish to make it one, but I think it is fair to note that the opposition has committed itself to budget cuts of something like $70 billion. That was the figure put on it by the honourable member for North Sydney. Would the arts sector be immune from these cuts? It is hard to believe they would. Has the opposition given a commitment that would not cut arts funding? Not so.

As I noted earlier, the IPA, which is becoming increasingly the theoretical arm of the Liberal Party, suggests cutting off funding to the arts, taking us back to the 1930s. I do not expect the opposition would go that far, but the IPA's radical agenda gives us an indication of where conservative thinking on arts policy—and, indeed, on other policy—is heading. It is headed back to an era where only the wealthy had access to the arts, when artists were solely dependent on patronage. I am pretty sure that that is not where the arts sector wants to go and not where the Australian people want to go.

I want to reflect on some of the comments made just briefly by the member for Cowan, talking about the excellent work that ASIO does and some critique of my dear old friend, the member for Holt, the 'M', the chairman of the intelligence committee, in the budget. Within its budget it is true that ASIO does excellent work. We have had seven groups of people arrested, charged and convicted—jailed—for attempting terrorism within Australia. There have been no effective attacks in mainland Australia. Of course, 88 of our countrymen were foully murdered in Bali. But ASIO is doing an excellent job and there is no evidence—the member for Cowan was talking about ASIO's checking of overseas people—that any of the people who were involved in these terrible potential crimes against the Australian people were boat refugees. It is absolute nonsense. Of course, the major threat to the activities of ASIO comes from the very ideological zealots in the Institute of Public Affairs that I have pointed to time and time again and who should really have been the focus of the intelligence committee's report to this parliament, because the ideological zealots in the Institute of Public Affairs are very influential in the Liberal Party, very influential on people like Mr Ciobo and Mr Turnbull—some people would even suggest Senator Brandis—who have said that they do not support the security services' concern about the fact that they are 'going dark'. This is an expression which explains the security services' concern with the fact that they have less and less ability to intercept telephones and telecommunications compared to what they were able to do in the past when we all had more primitive forms of technology—one telephone line, one fax line. If the security services are not able to fulfil their tasks because of the influence of the IPA and its influence on the Liberal Party that will be the real reason, Member for Cowan, why we cannot prevent attacks on mainland Australia, as we have successfully to date. That will be the real reason. Be assured that, if I am the only person in this place who remembers these facts, I will slate it home to the Liberal Party and the IPA for their wilful neglect of the requests of all of the different security services to have the ability to see that there is a fair policy of data retention.

Any serious person interested in the issue of privacy, unlike the ideological zealots of the IPA and some of the people in the coalition who are influenced by them, would know that in New Zealand and other countries there is a piece of legislation called 'data breach legislation'. If you are really concerned about privacy you could pass legislation with the extra ability of the security services to retain data and examine data under warrant with the same kinds of conditions they are forced to undergo now. You could safeguard against commercial people or terrorists accessing Australians' private data by having a severe program of data breach, which exists in other countries. There are fair ways of addressing privacy.

There is a severe interest in the ability of the security services to continue to perform their tasks and to keep Australians safe, but it is not being addressed by the IPA through the great influence they have over the Liberal Party. If anything happens in this country as a result of the security services not being able to intercept these people before they commit their act, the blame should be slated home to the people preventing this legislation. That is the issue which the intelligence committee should have been primarily concerned about, and I hope the government will take it up.

In the remaining time I will make some comments about the budget as it affects my electorate. The government and I are proud to present the fully funded National Disability Insurance Scheme, DisabilityCare. Around 1,980 carers in Melbourne Ports will now receive a $600 carer's supplement boost to assist with financial pressures associated with caring for a loved one. Those who care for a child with disability will now receive an extra $1,000 per year. Over 1,600 local people with disability may be eligible for Labor's DisabilityCare Australia scheme, giving people with significant disability and their carers lifetime support and the care they need.

We recognise working parents for how much they put into their families; working, caring for children, managing cost-of-living pressures and often supporting ageing parents. We are making sure that new families can spend time with each other through the Dads and Partner Pay initiative, providing two weeks leave to spend time with the new child and their family. Indeed, someone in my office has had the opportunity to experience that program, and I congratulate Sean Carroll and Natalie on their baby, Duncan. Mazel tov from all of your friends in the office: well done. Also, 6,170 local families will benefit from the childcare rebate, which will deliver up to $7½ thousand a year to assist with the cost of full-time child care.

We are also looking after older people on fixed incomes and those with disability, as well as their carers. More than 9,200 local pensioners in my electorate are now benefiting from the biggest increase in the pension in 100 years. We have over $200 more being received per fortnight.

This budget will keep the economy smart by making investments in education. More than 2,850 eligible families in my electorate, with 5,000 schoolkids, will get help with Labor's Schoolkids Bonus, with $410 per primary school kid and $820 for each high school kid. Of course, Mr Abbott has pledged to abolish those assistances to families with primary and high school students, and this will affect 5,000 children in my electorate.

Labor's balanced approach supports both jobs and economic growth with real local rewards such as the one I have outlined. The budget is about making the right choices for Australia's economic growth while keeping Australia fair and supportive of those most in need. The average Australian family with a mortgage of $300,000—not an enormous mortgage these days—is $3½ thousand better off in annual interest rate payments than they were in the last days of the Howard government. That is a measure of which the Treasurer and this government can be very proud. It is a budget which I am proud to present to Melbourne Ports with a government I am proud to be part of.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Primary Healthcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a very important principle to have budgets in balance over the economic cycle, something that the Labor Party have been completely incapable of delivering. We have seen Labor go from temporary budget deficits to, now, a string of six budget deficits and budget deficits to come as far as the eye can see. One seasoned Canberra observer described it as the worst budget since 1974. Ross Gittins described it as the strangest pre-election budget he had seen and that any of us were ever likely to see. It is a budget which confirms that the government is in chaos. It is a budget which delivers more debt, more deficits, more taxes, more broken promises and more uncertainty. Families who are struggling with rising cost-of-living pressures will get no reprieve from this budget. In fact, they have already had snatched away from them what was promised in last year's budget.

To read last year's budget papers and what was promised then and see what we ended up with is illuminating. Only last year, the Treasurer forecast a surplus of $1.5 billion this year. What he has delivered is a $19.4 billion deficit. Gross debt is likely to exceed $300 billion, and we will be borrowing almost $50 million every single day. The major concern is that those opposite have a spending problem. Every excuse under the sun has been given about revenue, but the problem is a spending problem. Revenue in 2013-14 is almost $80 billion higher than in the last year of the previous coalition government; however, spending is $120 billion higher. This is a government that has lost control of its spending and has spent more than it has earnt from the very first day that it occupied the government benches.

Families understand, households understand, the importance of living within your means. As I move around the electorate, I hear a lot of wise heads saying they have seen all this before: Labor will wreck it and the Liberals will come in to fix it.

The coalition's real solutions plan will take pressure off households and strengthen our economy so that over time there is more to go around, for everyone. The coalition will abolish the carbon tax, but we will retain the income tax cuts, fortnightly pension and benefit increases associated with it. So, under our plan, people including families will have tax cuts without a carbon tax. We will keep interest rates low by ending government waste, paying back the debt and balancing the budget. We will undertake a commission of audit in government to identify the waste and ensure that government is only as big as it needs to be.

A strong economy is the fundamental responsibility of an Australian government. It is key to everything. It means more jobs, higher wages, more government revenue, better services and, eventually, stronger and more cohesive communities. We will cut government red tape by $1 billion per year to give small business and everyone else a break.

I would like to focus on some of the specific announcements made in this budget—firstly, the GP MBS freeze. The government will realign the indexation of the MBS fees to the financial year. The indexation, currently on 1 November each year, will now be on 1 July each year. The last indexation date was November 2012 and the next indexation date is 1 July 2014, so there will be no indexation of their schedule fees for 18 months. This is a demonstration of the fact that this is an emergency budget situation. This is a budget in crisis. There is real chance we will see increased out-of-pocket costs for patients. By doing this, the government are pocketing $664 million over four years. It is not a change which will lead to improvements in health care—it has been driven by the budget emergency and by fiscal desperation. This is the end result of years of wasteful government spending and it is the only reason the government have had to make this change.

The government have also announced in the budget $10 million for a communications campaign to 'inform Australians about the benefits of Medicare Locals', and $6½ million will be spent in 2012-13. That means that in the next 33 days or so there will be $6½ million spent on informing Australians about the benefits of Medicare Locals, and $3½ million will be spent in 2013-14, presumably by 14 September. At a time when we have a budget emergency and with the sort of budget deficit that we have seen, this is an outrageous waste of taxpayers' money. Just think what $10 million could have done in front-line services; instead we have a $10-million vanity program from the government.

I want to touch on South Road in Adelaide. The Leader of the Opposition last month announced that the coalition will support the continuing upgrade of the North-South road corridor in South Australia. This is a $500 million commitment for South Australia and it is a stretch of road that the state and federal Labor governments have been promising to fix since 2006—specific promises, costed promises that have not happened. The coalition understands the importance of a proper non-stop North-South corridor from Darlington to Wingfield. In August 2007 John Howard announced that South Road, south of Sir Donald Bradman Drive, would be added to the National Road Network. The North-South corridor is the RAA's biggest priority in South Australia. It has been understood in South Australia since 2006 that one of the major priorities to address was the South Road-Sturt Road intersection. The RAA's Towards 2020 report said this:

Inclusion of this section on the national road network ensures that federal funds can be allocated to major works complementing the State Government's own funding and forward commitments for the upgrade of the Anzac Highway and Sturt Road intersections. These two locations are the two busiest intersections and most congested on the corridor. The next largest intersection, Grand Junction Road, is located at the far end of the route and has also been identified for improvements in the short term.

In this report from 2009, the RAA assumed that the state government and the federal government were going to fix Sturt Road. The South Australian government, in their own discussion paper to update their infrastructure plan, made it very clear that the biggest cause of delay was Anzac Highway, which was dealt with by the Gallipoli Underpass. The roads coming equal second were Grand Junction Road and Sturt Road. Grand Junction Road has been dealt with by the Superway.

After seven years of being in the state's own infrastructure update plan, only two weeks ago—at five minutes to midnight—the federal government announced what they would like to do post-2014 on a different section of the road. According to the RAA, in their traffic surveys, none of the major north-south arterial roads in the south meet minimal, acceptable standards for travel times during peak travel. In 2012, the RAA said that motorists are opting to take Goodwood Road, which is also slow and congested, as an alternative to South Road. The upgrades to South Road need to be completed to reduce the pressure on Goodwood Road and ease congestion around the city.

In the latest RAA traffic survey, they found for a commuter who travels from Majors Road, O'Halloran Hill, all the way down Main South Road, Ayliffes Road, Fiveash Drive and Goodwood Road into the city that nearly all sections of this road fall far below minimum standards, but the section between Majors Road and Flinders Drive is the worst with cars inching forward at just 11 kilometres an hour during the morning peak.

This is followed closely by the stretch near Sturt Road, which averages 14 kilometres an hour. When you look at the Southern Expressway, for someone travelling from Morphett Vale into Bedford Park—this is a 100-kilometre-an-hour expressway—the slowest sections during the afternoon are before Sturt Road and also between Sturt Road and Flinders Drive. Here vehicles slow to just 25 kilometres an hour—well below the acceptable level. In the morning, traffic generally moves at an acceptable speed, but with major congestion around Sturt Road.

Unfortunately, the announcements by federal Labor on South Road in this budget will not address this traffic congestion. What we see is a whole lot of roads—Marion Road, South Road, Goodwood Road, Belair-Unley Road and Fullarton Road—falling below the threshold level of 30 kilometres an hour during peak times. Completing the entire north-south corridor upgrade will benefit residents right across metropolitan South Australia.

A failure to invest in infrastructure over decades has seen increasing traffic congestion and transit times throughout Adelaide. The RAA have been advocating for a true north-south corridor for years. They have stated that improving the South Road corridor will greatly decrease traffic pressure on other arterial roads like Marion Road, Brighton Road, Goodwood Road and Belair Road.

The stretch of South Road at Darlington is the most congested part of South Road that is yet to see any upgrades. This is outlined in the state government's strategic infrastructure plan discussion paper. This state government document clearly identifies Darlington as the next priority for the north-south corridor upgrade. The north-south corridor upgrade needs to be done in stages, and Darlington is clearly the next step. The coalition has committed $500 million for reconfiguration of South Road between the Southern Expressway and north of Sturt Road, to expressway standard, for underpasses below Flinders Drive and Sturt Road, and for connection of the Darlington interchange with the Southern Expressway to provide for two-way flow.

We have not just plucked this out of the air. These were actually Labor Party promises at a state level in 2006 and 2010,and federal Labor promises in 2007. They promised them, they costed them; they just did not do them.

In addition, the coalition will work with the SA government to develop a business case for this project and for the remaining sections of the north-south corridor over time. We understand that the entire north-south corridor upgrade is a major project that will take many years, but we will work with the SA government to make it happen over time. We expect construction to begin with in the first term of a future coalition government.

This is something that, on behalf of my constituents, I have been fighting for since 2007. I am proud to say that a coalition government will follow through on its commitment and upgrade the stretch of South Road at Darlington near Flinders University and Flinders Medical Centre. This will make a massive difference to traffic congestion and to commuters in the south.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the appropriation legislation. This legislation is about making Australia stronger, smarter and fairer, and making the Ipswich and Somerset regions in south-east Queensland stronger, smarter and fairer. We are supporting jobs and growth—I will outline how that happens in the budget—and we are also making it smarter, through our historic investments in the national plan for school improvement, and making it fairer by delivering DisabilityCare Australia to 3,800 people with disability in the Blair electorate, and 4,300 carers who care for them.

In really challenging times—at a time when revenue write-downs have made a huge impact on the budget—this federal Labor government has made a very big commitment to jobs, growth and economic development. We have seen the economy grow by 13 per cent—five times faster than the US and Germany—since we have been in power and since the global financial crisis. We have seen 960,000 jobs created while the rest of the world has seen about 28 million jobs lost during this time.

We have a AAA credit rating and have kept inflation low. And people in my electorate are paying, on average, about $100 less in terms of interest payments every week than they were under the coalition government led by John Howard. So this government has been economically responsible but has invested strategically in Ipswich and Somerset as well is in Queensland generally.

I will talk about a couple of portfolio areas before I talk about the local issues in my electorate. First, as Parliamentary Secretary to the Attorney-General I am pleased to see the increase in legal aid funding. The previous coalition government gutted legal aid funding in this country. Everyone knows it, they know it, the law societies know it, the bar associations know it. The impact on disadvantaged and disabled people, Indigenous and low-income Australians was felt very tragically and the systems in the courts were clogged as a result of the coalition's attitude to legal aid. We have reversed this in large part. In our first budget we put in about $53 million extra in legal aid funding in 2008 and we have increased legal aid funding in this budget. We have increased legal aid funding over the next two years to legal aid commissions by an additional $30 million on top of the $420 million already allocated. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services received a $12 million boost, and it was a great privilege to call Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services around the country to advise them of that increase and to speak with people like Shane Duffy from Queensland, to talk to him and see the impact that that is going to have on the services they deliver not just in Queensland but throughout the country.

Community legal centres will be boosted by $10 million over four years, and this is in addition to the $32 million they received this financial year and the $160 million since federal Labor came to office. The contribution of 138 community legal centres to this country cannot be underestimated in creating a fairer society. Sadly, in my home state of Queensland the LNP state government under Campbell Newman has seen fit to cut funding to legal aid, to legal services and to community legal centres, to get rid of the drug courts, the Murri courts, to get rid of funding to organisations that help those in need. They reckon they are tough on crime but they are not tough on crime, they are not even tough on the causes of crime. They are more interested in boot camps than they should be and they are obsessed about those sorts of things. At the same time they are happy to boot out tenants in Housing Commission facilities across Queensland and in low income areas in my electorate like Riverview and Redbank Plains and elsewhere. That is what they are doing at this time. We have budgeted for an increase in funding to those types of services, having to step in last year with $3 million. We have stepped in again with $2.5 million at a time when Liberal governments around the country do not have a problem with this, nor do Labor governments' tenancy advice services, but the Campbell Newman government did. So we have provided funding recently in relation to this budgetary item. I am very pleased to see what we have done in that regard.

I am also pleased as Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing to see the commitment that we have made in relation to two independent clinical registers for cardiac devices and breast implants, a $5.1 million commitment. We have got several successful clinical registers run by medical craft groups, professional organisations. These are in relation to joints—shoulders, hips et cetera—and these registers we are going to create follow in the footsteps of the National Joint Replacement Register established by the Australian Orthopaedic Association in 1998 with the help of the Australian government. That is a budgetary item of about $5.1 million and I am pleased to see that happen.

I am pleased too that we have followed up the commitment we announced on 7 April this year in supporting what is now known as paid leave for living organ donors. It is a $2.6 million commitment. It means that if you wish to donate, say, a kidney, and 90 per cent of living donors donate a kidney, or partial a liver, you will get paid to employers six weeks of salary support to be passed on to the donor, who usually gives that kidney to a loved one or a close friend, often to a child or spouse or partner. This is the commitment over two years and we will review and consider outcomes of the trial in early 2015.

Living donors make an incredibly generous offer. We believe this act of kindness should be financially supported. Clinicians tell us that the six-week period is appropriate, that it will be paid at the minimum rate of pay, the national minimum wage, which is $606.40 a week. I reject the headline on the Sunday Telegraph which talks about 'Cash the kidneys'—it is completely erroneous. The six-week period is for two weeks of pre-surgery evaluation and four weeks for the convalescence.

Living donors will be able to apply to the Department of Human Services and the funding will be paid to their employers by the DHS. I am very pleased to see those sorts of items. We have also provided another $800,000 to the Food and Health Dialogue, which I chaired at a roundtable this morning. That money will continue the good work done to take about 2,200 tons of sodium out of our food on staples such as bread and cereals. The work being done by the Australian Food and Grocery Council, the Australian Heart Foundation, other health providers and other interested parties is making a difference. That $800,000 has been budgeted for as well. We have a record amount of funding for health and hospital services, particularly contrasting the LNP government in Queensland, which sacked 4,140 public servants, frontline doctors, nurses and clinicians, and gutted $3 billion out of the health system. We are increasing funding to Queensland a record $3 billion, an extra $1.1 billion across the forward estimates to hospitals in Queensland. At a time when the coalition in Queensland sees fit to defund services, we are increasing services to Queensland and nothing contrasts more to Queensland in the budget we have produced compared to the LNP government in Queensland, and more so to those opposite. Let me give a couple of illustrations of that.

In my electorate we have a number of rural towns. We have a little town called Esk at the heart of the Somerset region where there is a civic centre opened with $2 million of federal government money, through the Regional Infrastructure Fund. Those opposite opposed it—they opposed every last cent. We see in this budget $500,000 for the Kilcoy showgrounds upgrade. Those opposite opposed it. We have just announced another $500,000 for the Toogoolawah arts and cultural project to the Summerset Regional Council, which will revitalise Esk, Kilcoy and Toogoolawah. Those opposite claim they support regional and rural areas, but they oppose the funding for them.

When it comes to road funding, the budget contrasts what we say compared to those opposite. Election after election, vote after vote, those opposite have opposed the Ipswich Motorway upgrade between Ipswich and Brisbane—every election. They went to the last federal election with a policy to stop construction on the Ipswich Motorway. That is what Warren Truss, the Leader of the National Party, announced: stop construction and put 10,000 jobs in south-east Queensland at risk. This budget, having provided $2.5 billion or more in previous budgets, we have provided for the last section of the Ipswich Motorway $279 million. The first instalment, the down payment, is on the Darra to Rocklea section, all in the electorate of the member for Moreton and a bit in the electorate of the member for Oxley. My electors in Blair use it every day on their way to and from Brisbane. Those opposite have not said a word about this. The LNP candidates in Blair and Oxley are hiding from the media. That is what the Queensland Times records on their front page. The LNP candidates in Oxley and Blair are hiding and will not make one cent of a commitment.

It took the Leader of the Opposition five years, six months and 16 days to come to the electorate of Blair.

He does not announce a dollar in his budget reply speech to our community. He does not even tell the local media he will be there so that you will look at the transcript of what happened. There is nothing on local issues, no commitment to the Ipswich Motorway and no commitment to Kilcoy, Esk or Toogoolawah. Nothing there. But in the budget, we provide those sorts of things. What a contrast between those opposite—who could not care less about regional and rural Queensland—and us.

What about important rail projects in Queensland? What about the Brisbane Cross River Rail? Having agreed with the LNP Lord Mayor of Brisbane, the Brisbane council and the LNP Queensland state government, and having signed up memoranda of understanding, with letters back and forward, we agreed to provide money in the budget. We provided $715 million towards the construction of this core project—10 kilometres of new underground tunnel—from Yeerongpilly to Victoria Park. There will be four new underground stations that will help increase the capacity of the Brisbane rail network. And the member for Brisbane opposes it. The LNP members opposite oppose it. They claim they support Brisbane and South-East Queensland. This is a rail project for all of South-East Queensland—for members in Oxley, Blair, Moreton, Brisbane, Griffith, Ryan and Bonner. But those opposite oppose it. They need to get onto their colleagues and comrades in Queensland and tell them to not bother turning up to the events when we are announcing it.

We agreed with the Queensland government to do it and we put a record amount of funding into road projects. All the opposition leader can say is that he will do parts of the Bruce Highway. They put in $1 billion in 11½ years for the Bruce Highway in Queensland—we put in over $8 billion. Look at a map of the Bruce Highway and a map of Queensland. There is project after project done by this government. Those opposite are opposed to one of the most important projects currently under construction in South-East Queensland: the Blacksoil Interchange. It is the most important project, said the mayor of the council of south-East Queensland. It is a $93.4 million project and the federal government put $54 million into it. Those opposite voted against it again and again. It is now under construction. There are 100-odd jobs being created by Fulton Hogan, the construction company.

That is the difference between Labor governments and conservative governments. We invest. We believe in jobs, growth and economic development in Queensland—those opposite oppose jobs, growth and economic development in Queensland. We believe in disability care—those opposite have more positions than you could poke a stick at. We believe in national improvement in schools—those opposite believe in school autonomy and class sizes going up. That is their only answer. We believe in making sure that every kid gets an opportunity and every child, whether they be from a working-class background in Ipswich or a rural community in Somerset, gets a chance in life.

This budget is all about jobs, growth and economic development. Those opposite should hang their heads in shame that they oppose so many budget measures. They oppose everything that is for the benefit of Queensland, everything that is for the benefit of Ipswich and everything that is for the benefit of the Somerset Region.

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

The electorate of Forrest has not been well served by the 2013 Labor budget. But then for the last six years it has not been well served by the Labor government, by either the Rudd or Gillard Labor governments. We all know that the budget has a number of very questionable and rubbery fiscal predictions, but none more so than those on the carbon tax.

The Labor Party has had a reality check on its carbon tax, which was effectively the EU saying, 'Tell 'em they're dreaming!' Following the set carbon price next year of $29 a tonne, the reality of forward estimates shows an expected carbon price of $12.10 from 1 July 2015, based on EU carbon-trading price predictions. That is in the budget figures and is another questionable assumption. We all know—certainly in my electorate—that the carbon tax is a major cost for business and industry.

Collie is one of those great centres of industry in the south-west and a place where a fair proportion of the electricity for Western Australia is produced. The annual carbon outputs of the major electricity generators in Collie are, for Muja Power Station, five million tonnes of CO2; Collie A, 2.2 million tonnes; and Bluewaters 1 and 2, 2.6 million tonnes. That is a total of 9.8 million tonnes. With Labor's carbon tax high of $29 a tonne, this puts the Gillard government carbon tax cost to the Collie industries at $284 million in the 2014 financial year. They are costs that have to be recouped. Even with the cost expected to come down to $12.10 per tonne in 2015, the impact on the power generators in Collie will still be $118 million. A coalition government will provide the best savings for Collie industry and for people throughout my electorate of Forrest by scrapping what is an altogether punitive and ineffective carbon tax.

The reality of linking the Australian and EU carbon prices is a great big $6 billion black hole—at least, and counting— in Labor's budget. I would have thought that a $6 billion budget black hole would have left the Treasurer red-faced. Of course, with the government's duplicitous approach to aged care, there should actually be more than one red face. The government's changes to aged-care funding which came into effect on 1 July last year, under the misnomer Living Longer Living Better, shows that they have no understanding of the issues facing small regional aged-care service providers and clearly no intention of trying to understand the additional costs of providing a quality aged-care service in regional and rural areas.

When the Labor government unveiled their plan last year, they deliberately failed to tell the Australian people that this program is in fact an attempt to claw back $750 million from the aged-care sector over the next 2½ years—another short-term budget fix. The real result, as opposed to the misrepresentations of the government, is that residential aged-care providers will get less funding for new patients than they got for patients last year. The 2013-14 budget alone will see $500 million of ACFI funding ripped out of a sector that is already doing it tough.

In aged care, as it has in child care, the Labor government has sought to enhance union control and government interference. It offers more money for wages, but to get it can cost providers more than they receive. Aged and Community Services WA estimates that an aged-care provider who operates a small 31-bed regional facility would be eligible to receive $17,000 under the workforce supplement principles but, in order to receive this, would have to commit to an additional $30,000 in wages. The Labor government's response to the crisis in aged care is to provide less support and simply more union bosses in control. So who are they looking after? Is it aged Australians or union leaders? As I said, their response to child care appears to be the same. Again Labor is prepared to sacrifice, in my view, our children's opportunities for the sake of union leadership.

The budget for natural resource management has also taken a hit from the Labor government in 2013, and as a very passionate advocate for practical, effective environmental management, and certainly for the issue of biosecurity in the south-west, I cannot believe that we have seen more funding disappear from the flagship for local cooperation on environmental outcomes, a key part of delivering outcomes on the ground and developed by the Howard government. That is another $145 million taken out of the NRM budget to be redirected into pet projects picked by the government, which you would have to question. Either way, it shows that the Labor government has contempt for the good works and community engagement that the NRM actually was developed to deliver, and does.

I know that about 96 per cent of farmers have historically been actively involved with NRM groups. With issues like Phytophthora dieback still not adequately addressed in my region and many others, the contempt Labor shows for the environment cannot pass unremarked. Dieback response is a critical issue for the south-west of Western Australia.

Beyond this one pathogen, the issue of climate change adaptation needs to be better addressed, and it is the NRM groups on the ground in regional Australia that will be best placed to manage that adaptation. Preparing for changing rainfall patterns and managing invasive weed and pest species are best handled at the local level on the ground, as is bushfire control. The Howard government understood this and invested heavily in regional capacity through the NRM process. It is not the time to be undermining that investment given the issues on the ground.

I want to touch on the issue of cybersafety, which is quite relevant here today. We know that 2.4 billion people in the world are on the internet and one billion are on Facebook. There is probably no greater threat to the safety of our citizens, especially our young people, and, more broadly, the business sector than the misuse of this great resource. The internet is not just a great asset; it may also be a great risk factor. This is why cybersafety is such an important issue.

We know that cybercriminals are becoming constantly more sophisticated. We need an Australian population that is much more cybersavvy than we are now. As the reach of the internet expands and develops, with constantly changing IT and faster speeds, the threat grows proportionately. This is why it is so important to educate Australians on how to protect themselves and their families. According to Telstra, Aussie kids aged between 10 and 17 are online for an average of two hours a day, amongst the highest internet usage rates in the world. We need to address whether this is two hours a day of safety, enjoyment and learning or two hours a day of risk. This is a national problem that needs a national, coordinated solution. I know firsthand that education is the key. I believe it needs to be part of the national curriculum.

The only way to assist people, particularly young people, is to help them to protect themselves. I see that happening as a key part of the school curriculum, so that current and future generations will know how to protect themselves. I have delivered countless cybersafety presentations in schools across the length and breadth of my electorate in the past three years. I recognised early the risk and the threat to our great young people. I want them to be aware, alert and better prepared to protect themselves. I see the need as so great that I am prepared to spend as much time as I can in helping to educate them. I want to teach them how to be safe. Equally I want to help parents—and I do—to help their children to be safe. I believe that young people are part of the answer in managing the risk. They are great ones to educate their parents and their grandparents as well as subsequent generations. This should be an Australia-wide activity. The only way to deliver cybersafety is to put in into the national curriculum.

It is impossible to look at cybersafety without looking at the provision of internet services more generally. In regions like mine, the government is playing catch-up to the coalition's broadband policy, which will bring better broadband sooner to everyone in the south-west of WA, including Margaret River, Augusta and Cowaramup residents. We have been waiting six years so far and nothing has changed. It is totally unacceptable that many regional people—six years after Labor's first election promise—are still unable to connect to broadband or are extremely frustrated by slow internet speeds. People tell me constantly that all they want is a decent internet speed. They just want to have access, for a start. People will receive better broadband sooner under a coalition government. By the end of 2016, everyone will be able to enjoy speeds of at least 25 megabits per second and certainly better mobile coverage.

The right thing to do for the people of the Forrest electorate is to get the speeds up to a level that at least enables people to do everything they want to, whether it is at home or at work. We know the government never even did a cost-benefit analysis of the NBN. We will do that, and I am positive that will show that regional areas like mine will benefit from improved broadband under the coalition. We will offer a mix of fibre to the node, wireless and satellite, and the cost will be about a third of Labor's at least $94 billion cost. That was the figure that early on was exactly what those who worked in the industry were telling the engineers and others.

The system will be flexible enough for upgrades. Constantly, as technology improves and demand increases it is going to keep changing. It is not going to stay the same. We know that the government's NBN is going to bypass communities like I have with less than 1,000 premises. That includes a lot of small towns in Forrest. This group of communities will rely on wireless and satellite connections with their slower connection speeds.

In contrast, our plan will deliver fibre to the node and direct connection by a copper cable to many of these residents, and—a really important and critical thing for people in my electorate—we are actually going to improve mobile coverage at the same time. How often is this raised with me? It is a constant issue. So many small regional communities will be much better off under a coalition plan.

This will be the legacy of a coalition government, amongst other things, if we are lucky and fortunate enough to be successful in September. I look and think of what Labor's legacy will be: we do know that this will be a legacy of budget mismanagement, budget deficits and what will be intergenerational fiscal debt, without any question. They are going to leave a total gross debt breaching the $300 billion-debt ceiling within the forward estimates.

We have structural deficits now. They will leave record net debt of $192 billion—$192 billion! That is $35 million a day in interest alone. And, of course, record deficits over five years and at least two more deficits to come. There is no credible pathway to surplus in what we have seen from the Labor government. Unfortunately for Australia and Australians—people in my electorate—this will be the legacy. There is going to have to be a significant amount of consistent surpluses to go anywhere near paying off at least $300 billion in debt. $300 billion!

People have got so used to hearing the word 'billion' that they actually do not think a much it is, and how tough that is to pay off. Of course, no amount of spin can erase the impact that this debt legacy is going to have on future generations of Australians.

What do you need to deal with this? Labor has not dealt with it in the last six years. You actually need a fair bit of discipline. You need some experience and you need to put a lot more confidence back into people; people and businesses on the ground and people in my electorate—whether they are in families or small business,. No matter what business you are in, you need some confidence. We have not seen any confidence on the ground with people, and no wonder when you look at what we have seen: just a chaotic process throughout this government.

But as I said: when you think of people looking back on this Labor government, what will they see? They will see a debt ceiling of over $300 billion breached. The debt and deficit are just unbelievable. They are really unbelievable! When you actually talk to people about this they cannot believe that there is no plan, that Labor has no plan, 'We actually ran up the debt but we have no plan to pay it off'. Here we are, six years on with a Labor government, and there is no plan to pay off a debt and deficit that they have created in this time in government. (Time expired)

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

The contribution from the member for Forrest is a reminder that the economic debate in this country has become so forced and fake. We get unmerciful spin from the Leader of the Opposition and, indeed, at the member for North Sydney, the shadow minister, rather than a serious contribution to economic debate in this country.

Of course, unfortunately, that unmerciful spin from the opposition drives the government I think by necessity, to enter into the spin game. The general public out there must be wondering what in the hell is going on in the Australian economy and what is going on in terms of fiscal management.

Never these days do we hear the opposition leader take up the fight in some ideological sense; a debate about where we want our country to be in 10 or 20 years time both in economic terms and in terms of our social fabric—what will be the key drivers of increases in economic wealth and how we can best evenly distribute that wealth throughout our community. The Leader of the Opposition does not want to have that debate. It is called a small-target strategy. That is what the opposition leader has embraced. He wants to roll himself up in a small ball, say nothing controversial and ride the wave into government. Well, we have other plans for him.

He does, of course, go down the path of ideology on the rare occasion. The most obvious standouts come to the surface when he is talking about the carbon price and the mining tax. Why? Because these are articles of faith for the opposition leader. These are policies which from our perspective are responsible and make absolute sense in public policy terms but from his perspective are just another weight on some of the largest companies in this country. It is his ideological position to always oppose any additional responsibility on those big companies.

But, other than paid parental leave, the baby bonus and superannuation, we are not really having a serious economic debate in this country. We are not, because of the small-target strategy adopted by the Leader of the Opposition in not having a serious debate about where we want this country to go. All the opposition leader can do is attack the Treasury on the forecasts it delivers to the government—forecasts which the government relies upon when framing and shaping its budget—and then time after time after time again talk about the level of government debt, which of course by international standards is very low and is a direct consequence of the stimulus initiatives this government put in place post the global financial crisis to successfully keep this country out of recession.

We have a plan to retire that debt. We have a solid plan to return the budget to surplus and to retire that debt. This has been a responsible budget. That plan is a slow and steady plan, one which puts us back on the path to surplus without taking a sledgehammer to the Australian economy, not acting on a way which is going to be a brake on further growth, which would impact negatively on the economy and therefore affect jobs in the economy.

I have said in this place many, many times that, when I was first elected here, 17 years ago, I coined the famous Neville Wran—the former New South Wales Premier—phrase: 'There are only three issues in politics. They are jobs, jobs and jobs.' I have been very proud of the fact that since I have been representing the Hunter electorate we have gone from an unemployment rate of about 13 per cent to something like 3½ per cent. Maybe I should repeat that, because it is pretty hard to believe: from 13 per cent to 3½ per cent. At the moment it is rising, and these are challenges for us. It is mainly rising because the heat has come out of the mining boom, so we are going from 3½ probably back up to what might be described as our natural rate of unemployment—I would like to think so, because that is very low still, but we are going back to a higher rate of unemployment.

This is what makes it so important that at this point in the economic cycle we do not take that sledgehammer to the Australian economy. The Leader of the Opposition says he would have us return to surplus more quickly, yet he is going to abolish all the revenue which flows from the carbon price. He is going to abolish the mining tax. And let us not forget that, while the mining tax is not raising what Treasury had originally predicted it would raise, it is still raising a significant amount of money. Some of that money, I am very happy to say, is being returned to my electorate in the form of infrastructure expenditure. There is no magic pudding here. You cannot say you are going to spend more and take less in revenue and say you are going to go back to surplus more quickly. If he is going to go down that path, he is going to put a big brake on the Australian economy. That would be bad news for my constituents at a time when unemployment is creeping back up to around five per cent.

I should be very happy that the election of Tony Abbott is not a fait accompli. I do not believe it is a fait accompli. I believe that, as we approach the election, people will have a look at what this Labor government has achieved and give us some credit for it. Let me talk about the Hunter electorate. The $1.7 billion Hunter Expressway is something that I have been fighting for since the early 1990s, a project which was on track when we lost government in 1996 and which stagnated for 12 years under the leadership of John Howard and his government. Having had a Labor government plan it, it took a Labor government to fund it and build it, which it did, thankfully, in 2008.

By Christmas this year, Hunter residents and others will be driving their vehicles along that Hunter expressway. In the most recent budget, we got $45 million to address a very serious problem in Scone in my electorate, a significant town with a major highway through it—ridiculously cut off by a level railway crossing for up to eight minutes these days because of the length of coal trains—a very welcome investment in my local electorate.

All members in this place, including the member for Barker, have had their schools refurbished. We have all been to the school openings—I have done more than 80 of them. These are facilities which cannot be described as wants of the communities; these are needs. I had classes sitting on the floor in school halls, and many in unacceptable demountable buildings, before we embarked on this investment program in our schools. I have a new TAFE college, new trades training centres, new science labs and new community colleges. The list goes on and on and on. We have had a huge investment in social housing.

These are projects which were on the books of the state governments but would never have been funded if it were not for the stimulus package put forward by this government. We are also investing in housing infrastructure, like roads in inner Maitland to allow the council to open new building blocks for affordable housing—something they were not able to do previously because as a developer they were not able to meet the infrastructure costs. We have more money for all of our local hospitals. We have more GPs than ever before. We have new GP clinics in Lochinvar, Greta and Denman, and we are about to have one in Kurri Kurri. The list goes on and on and on.

This is a government with a deep-seated commitment to economic and social infrastructure in this country. These are projects that people have been crying out for for many, many years, projects John Howard could have funded in 12 years of government because he had rivers of gold in that first phase of the mining boom but projects he did not address. In not doing so, he had a deep impact on productivity in this country. Whenever you hear Tony Abbott try to explain how his magic pudding is going to work, he goes to productivity, but he never explains how he is going to lift it—but we do get a hint of Work Choices in there. There is no doubt about that. He goes to the cutting of Public Service jobs and more efficient running of government. We have heard that before. John Howard did that in 1996. He took a knife to the Public Service, only to have Public Service employment restored to a higher level three years later. There is no magic solution in this budget, and I believe this budget got it absolutely right.

This is a message for both sides of the parliament and for the broader community. Beginning with John Howard, when we were in that first mining boom, we started to give people more and more of what they wanted. He did not do anything like the investment in infrastructure we have done, but there was money spent on infrastructure. I think there was an increase in infrastructure spending, particularly on the national highway network. We were awash with middle-class welfare. Since his days, we have had pension increases, healthy wage rises and significant increases in public expenditure. Most of that expenditure, of course, has been welfare.

On the other side of the equation, there is a growing expectation of smaller government and smaller taxes. So everyone wants more money spent on everything, including health and education, but they want the government to take less money, they want the government to tax them less. I am talking about individuals and companies.

At the same time, in response to community expectations, we have put a constraint on the economy in terms of the carbon price—an initiative begun by John Howard. If you recall, Mr Deputy Speaker, John Howard had a policy to put in place an emissions trading scheme, Malcolm Turnbull had one, Brendan Nelson had one. In fact. Tony Abbott has one now with the same commitment to a greenhouse gas reduction target as the government. So we have all got this commitment to a carbon constraint. Why? Because the community has been making it pretty clear that a carbon constraint is what it wants. But at the same time we want to compensate everyone for any consumer impacts of the carbon constraint; indeed, we are compensating industry as well and, in fact, we are subsidising the renewable industry to meet these community expectations. These are not initiatives that give us a net income stream; they give us a net outflow.

I do not see anything ahead which suggests a huge increase in our population. We have an ageing population, like most Western countries, so there is no great hope of any windfall in terms of population or demographics. We do not have any magic solution, despite what the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, might say on the productivity front, albeit we should always be working for greater productivity, and we do. But there is no magic solution ahead for us and so the community, while it calls for a more efficient government—as it should—is going to have to decide what it wants. Does it want more expenditure or does it want lower taxes? There is no magic pudding. It is no different from the family budget: only so much income is coming in and only so much expenditure can go out—unless, of course, you want to continue to rack up debt, and that is unsustainable in the long term. That is why the government has a plan to retire debt.

The community has to come with the political parties on this question. We have developed an expectation that we can have our cake and eat it too. The reality, in this global environment in particular, is that there are no easy solutions. We cannot expect growth to accelerate dramatically any time soon, particularly given the very long period it is going to take the Europeans to come out of recession, given the sluggishness of the US economy and given the relative sluggishness of many of the Asian communities, more particularly China.

This is all part of the reason we have to ensure that in communities like those I represent we take maximum benefit from the opportunities that serve us now. That means doing all we can to allow the mining companies to stay afloat through this difficult time and to take the new opportunities like the coal seam gas industry which I spoke about in the House yesterday, an industry which has the potential to bring great wealth to our communities with a minimal footprint. There will be some projects that might not be appropriate because of threats to watertables, for example, but there will be projects that can bring significant wealth to the Hunter and create many jobs in the Hunter with minimum, if any, environmental impact. We should not close our eyes to those opportunities. Some would have the coalmining industry and the CSG industry closed down in the Hunter. Well, what fools they are. Our unemployment rate would go through the roof overnight. It is important to our local economy and we all need to be standing behind it.

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

The member for Hunter raised an interesting issue: people expect more services, more products, more government help but they also want lower taxes. We all know that does not add up. What we really have to try and do is achieve the best use of taxpayers' money and more efficient use of taxpayers' money and not throw it away on things like pink batts, which this government did. I hasten to say also that I think you will find this election will be unusual in that there will not be a lot of promises out there for huge extra parcels of funding. I think in some ways that is a good thing. It is a good thing that people are starting to realise that we cannot keep up the continual spending of money that this Labor government has done in the nearly six years it has been in power.

He raised another point, about subsidising green industry. But unfortunately we have the perverse result, now, of poor people subsidising rich people, who can afford to put the solar panels on their roofs. That is one of the perverse results of subsidising industries. Those who most need the help to reduce their power costs—which have come about as a result of the carbon tax and other policies of this government—are not helped at all.

I was very disappointed with Labor's budget, but I was not alone in that. In my lifetime I have never seen such little and poor comment about a budget as we had this year. It was a very interesting phenomenon that we did not have much comment. I think there was not much expectation. Certainly the feeling I get out in the electorate is: 'The sooner we can get rid of this government the better. We have made up our minds; let's just get to the election as quickly as possible.'

This budget is in deficit for the fifth time in a row. The government promised last year that they will finally deliver years of surpluses—in fact they said they were delivering surpluses this year and the next three years—and we never thought that was achievable by this government, and we have been confirmed correct. It just further confirms the government's inability to manage money. It confirms that Labor's financial and budget management is in complete chaos—a stark contrast to the Howard government's strong economic record and consecutive surpluses. We achieved that through careful management.

In my lifetime I have seen three Labor governments. We had the Whitlam government from 1972 to 1975. I certainly remember their attempt to borrow $4 billion outside the normal constraints of government borrowing. That was nearly 40 years ago. I have not done the sums of what $4 billion would be worth today, but it would have to be something between $30 billion and $40 billion. The Whitlam government was trying to borrow that money outside the normal way. In fact, they tried to borrow it from the Baathist Party, of all places, which was Suddam Hussein's Party in Iran. The Whitlam government racked up debt and spending, and that is certainly in the DNA of Labor whenever they have come to government.

The second Labor government that I lived through was the Hawke and Keating governments. I point out to a lot of people that from Federation, in 1901, to 1991—in that 90 years—the government accumulated $16 billion of debt. We had to fund two wars, and as we all know they take a lot of extra funding that you would not normally spend. We had other skirmishes along the way. We built Canberra. We built the law courts, and certainly the federal government had to spend a lot of money over that 90 years.

In fact, there was $16 billion accumulated debt over 90 years. But in the next five years the Hawke-Keating government repeated that 90-year block of debt every year for the next five years, so that when we came into government there was $96 billion worth of debt. That was a record debt, until we got this government. We are already up to $176 billion of net debt. We have a gross debt which is going to go well over the $300 billion mark. Certainly that is a record in anyone's history books, by a long, long way.

That is the problem with Labor: they do not know how to manage the budget. They promise surpluses but deliver deficits. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, recognises that like families and businesses we have to live within our means. And it is with this guiding principle that we were able to deliver surplus after surplus when we were in government. It will also be the guiding principle for any incoming coalition government.

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

Order! It being approximately 1.45 pm the debate is interrupted. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for a later hour. The member for Barker will have leave to continue his remarks.

Sitting suspended from 13:45 to 15:30

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

On behalf of the opposition, it is my pleasure to indicate our support for this bill. It is, as members would be aware, a bill that comes before the parliament after each budget each year. As the Assistant Treasurer pointed out in his introductory remarks the day after the budget, it is important to amend the Medicare Levy Act to increase the Medicare levy low-income thresholds in line with the consumer price index. Otherwise, as he pointed out, it would be the case that those who were exempt from the Medicare levy in the previous income year without that adjustment—without that increase in line with inflation—would not continue to remain exempt. As the Assistant Treasurer is probably also aware, he and I have discussed this legislation most years when it has come in, and so when people look back at the record of the parliament in a hundred years they will think that the member for Lindsay and the member for Casey were experts in the field of the Medicare levy threshold. This has happened every year: it happened under our government. I will correct myself there: it did not happen one year, I recall, and that was when inflation was negative and there was no need for any adjustment. We support this piece of housekeeping legislation.

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

I would like to take the opportunity to thank the member for Casey for his contribution not just today but for all of those Medicare levy bills that have seen the threshold increased to ensure that low-income earners do not have to contribute to the Medicare levy until such time as they reach that threshold.

The Tax Laws Amendment (Medicare Levy) Bill 2013 amends the Medicare Levy Act 1986 to increase the Medicare levy low-income threshold for families in line with the consumer price index. The families threshold amount is to be increased from $32,743 to $33, 693 so that families in this cohort do not pay the Medicare levy when they do not have a tax liability. For each dependent child this threshold increases, and the amount this threshold increases will also change from $3,007 to $3,094. The amendments to the Medicare levy low-income thresholds apply to the 2012-13 year of income and to future income years.

The Medicare levy low-income thresholds for individuals and pensioners have already been increased for 2012-13 as part of the Clean Energy Future Plan Household Assistance Package. Full details of the measures in this bill are contained in the explanatory memorandum.

I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the presence in the gallery of members of the Penrith Christian School, from my electorate, who are visiting Canberra today and to welcome them as they get an insight into the way in which important legislation is passed through this place. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.