Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Two weeks ago, I met a pensioner at his home in Pagewood in my electorate. He was a man in his 70s who outlined to me his struggles to live his life. He still had a mortgage on his home, which he has lived in for decades. His wife was still at work. He enjoys no luxuries in life—the annual holiday and the odd night out here and there. He has not seen a dentist in years. He told me that his fortnightly fixed income passes through his bank account on the way to his bank to pay his mortgage and to the supermarket to pay for groceries and essential items.

A day earlier I had spoken to a single mum who was dropping off her daughter at the Maroubra Bay primary school. She relied on the schoolkids bonus to help meet the cost of sending her kid to school. She described it as a 'big help' in meeting the cost of buying uniforms, books, shoes and musical instruments to ensure that her child could participate actively in school activities. She was receiving family tax benefit B. She worked, helped to put food on the table and paid the bills to ensure that her kid did not go without.

These are the battlers of our community. In the wake of last night's budget, I cannot stop thinking about that pensioner in Pagewood and his wife, unable to sleep at night and concerned about the fact that he knows that his fortnightly costs are about to increase and his life is about to get a lot harder. I cannot stop thinking about the mother from Maroubra worrying about her kid's education and the family budget.

The Abbott government's budget does not reflect the struggles of Australian families to make ends meet. There is no sympathy and no concern for families in my community who see most of their monthly pay packet or weekly pay packet disappear into their mortgage or their rent. Those opposite do not seem to realise that pensioners have a set income each two weeks and that a $7 co-payment for a couple of trips to the doctor once a month, or an increase in the payment for prescription medicine, is enough to blow their budget each month and put them over the limit when it comes to their family budget.

It appears that the government is not conscious of the fact that, for many families in my community, the childcare rebate is the difference between having a child in child care and mum and dad being able to work and not having your kid in child care. Freezing the childcare benefit and the childcare rebate is going to make it much more difficult for them to afford child care. I feel for the parents of kids in our community who are living with disabilities, hopeful that their kids would finally get the support that they needed at school through the Gonski funding reforms and the loadings for disabilities. They had their hopes dashed last night by one of the most callous decisions that I have ever seen from a government: to renege on the commitment to fund the disability loading under the Gonski reforms for kids and students at our schools with disabilities.

These are the Australians that government should be trying to help out. The government should not be making their lives harder. Yet, this is exactly what the Abbott government will do with this budget. It will make life harder for Australians. I understand the need for a sustainable budget—to restrain spending and to generate more income to fund education, health and infrastructure. But I also know that some large multinational mining companies are making billion-dollar profits off resources owned by the Australia people, and that asking them to pay a little bit more in tax is not a big ask. I also know that Australians with whopping large superannuation accounts worth more than $2 million earn significant incomes off those superannuation accounts. Asking them to pay a little bit more is not too much. But the Abbott government does not believe that these people should pay a bit more. No, the Abbott government wants to hit the pensioner from Pagewood and the mother from Maroubra. Budgets are about priorities and this government— (Time expired)

David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to hear that the member for Kingsford-Smith purports to understand the need for a sustainable budget because I want to talk about that tonight and about how important it is for the people of my electorate. The budget marks the end of an era—an era of irresponsibility. It is a clear contrast between a previous government that always spent like it was someone else's money and a government that treats every dollar of taxpayers' money with respect. There is a clear contrast here. I do not believe that members opposite fundamentally understand how important this is. I do not believe that members opposite are truly committed to running a sustainable budget and truly believe that that is a critical issue for the future of the nation. When you believe that, it influences the way you behave as government and it means that you are cautious about how you spend. It means you do not do things like blow $11 billion on failed border protection policies. It also means that you do not go from having $45 billion in the bank to a couple of hundred billion dollars of debt within just five or six years. I have a sneaking suspicion that members opposite just see numbers on a page and a bunch of graphs, but in their gut they do not believe that budget sustainability is important.

If you go through Labor's recent history in government, you have to go right back to 1989 to find a time when they ran a budget surplus. If it had been one year of deficit you might say that it was a particularly difficult year; if it had been two years, it could have been unfortunate; but 12 or 13 years is just a way of life—it is a structural way of life and a structural way of thinking by those opposite. It is a way of thinking that does not address the structural issues in the budget. It is not easy to address those issues. The government is very conscious of the impact that addressing those structural issues has, but you cannot pretend that those structural issues do not exist if you want to be a serious government governing in the interests of the people of the nation. One approach fritters away money, you never see a spending program that you do not like and you just think of more creative uses of bureaucracy, and the other approach uses government funding in a sensible way to build assets that deliver for the economy over time. It is about investment as opposed to frittering money away. It is about funding infrastructure such as the WestConnex, a fantastic project for the people of my electorate in Banks which will save more than 20 minutes on the trip to the city from Beverly Hills—a huge benefit to productivity in our economy and to family life in my electorate, allowing people to get to and from work quicker. The medical research fund announced last night will be a historic fund. Again, it is a tremendous example of the difference between sending $900 cheques off to people, who may or may not be in the country, and using government resources to build for the future.

We are at our best as a nation when we confront the problems we face. The Howard government did it, to its credit, the Hawke and Keating governments did it on occasion, but the Rudd-Gillard governments never did it—sometimes they just avoided the problem; often they actively made it worse. In my electorate, people are very cautious about how they spend their money. They value the work that they do. They do not simply throw money around like drunken sailors, because if you do that, as a family or as a small business, you get into trouble. So do governments. That is why it is so important for the people in my electorate of Banks and for all the people of Australia that we, as a government, behave in a grown-up fashion and manage the budget like adults. That is precisely what we are doing and the people of Australia deserve no less.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to condemn the 2014 Budget delivered yesterday. People say 'Change the government and you change the country'. Last night's budget shines a harsh spotlight on the truth of this. Even battle-hardened politicians and the most cynical in our communities are shocked by the draconian measures introduced in the budget last night. They are shocked by the sheer audacity and by the hypocrisy on display after the promises made before the election. My electorate of Lalor is one of the highest growth areas in Australia. It is also going to be one of the electorates most affected by this budget of broken promises and twisted priorities. Lalor is home to lots of young families and pensioners. We have newly arrived migrants, lots of single families and a high proportion of people living with a disability. We have been hit hard by the closure of the car industry and now we will suffer again.

When I talk to the local service providers in the electorate, people like Carol Muir from Werribee Support and Housing and Jennie Berrera from the Wyndham Community and Education Centre, they talk about the incredible cost of living pressures so many in the community already experience. This budget will only increase those pressures. We can expect more families requiring food vouchers, increased evictions and more homeless people. There are approximately 10,000 age pensioners and 5,000 disability support pensioners in Lalor. We have a 92 per cent bulk-billing rate. We have 3,300 students with a disability in our local schools. The youth unemployment rate is around 35 per cent. These are the people who will be most affected by this budget.

Lalor families will be whacked by broken promises—broken promises such as a $7 GP tax, not just for a visit to the doctor but for blood tests, scans and X-rays; the axing of the schoolkids bonus; less money for our local schools; less money for the Werribee Mercy Hospital; a reduction in the family tax benefit; reducing funding for students with disabilities; cutting carers' payments; and an increase in the price of petrol in an area where we rely heavily on our cars.

On top of that there is no plan for jobs, just cuts to industry innovation funds. Young people in Lalor will suffer also with increases to uni and TAFE fees; with changes making it harder to access youth allowance; with the cutting of apprentice support programs including Tools For Your Trade; by moving under-24-year-olds onto youth allowance, another cut; by changes making those under 30 who lose their job wait six months for assistance; and by cutting programs that support job seekers to find work. The cruellest cuts, though, are for older residents, those on disability support pension and pensioners. There are funding cuts to pensions. We are making people work until they are 70. The GP tax and changes to the PBS will leave many deciding between visiting the doctor and filling the pantry. There will be funding cuts to carers payments and cuts to preventative health programs.

The priorities of this government are clear: let us get the most vulnerable in our community to do the heavy lifting; let us demonise our most vulnerable as taking more than they deserve. Poor, sick people will now pay through the GP tax for medical research that, once Medicare is dismantled, only the rich will be able to afford and will therefore reap the benefit. Families will face increased cost-of-living pressures because of reduced family payments and health care becoming more expensive. They will face a petrol tax every time they get in their car. While families struggle, the top three per cent of taxpayers will contribute a mere $7.70 a week through the debt levy. They will be paid $50,000 when having a baby, while others receive nothing.

The budget has taught us much about this government. They are a government of broken promises and twisted priorities. For my community this is a cruel budget—not just of broken promises but, for many, of broken dreams. And for what? There is no budget emergency, just an excuse to enact this pain and to further embed inequity.

Australia is one of only 10 countries with a AAA credit rating, and the previous Labor government's spending in the last four years was the lowest, as a percentage of GDP, that it had been in this country for 23 years. I will not stand by as this government tells us that we cannot afford to be fair. (Time expired)

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to highlight the investments in jobs that our budget is delivering to the people I represent in Corangamite and to the nation. Despite the difficult decisions that we have had to make, the Australian people would not have forgiven us if we had squibbed the hard decisions. We were duty-bound: we were elected to get Australia back on track, to repair our budget and to restore the nation's finances.

As I write in the Geelong Advertiser tomorrow, our budget shows that our government has a head, a heart and a backbone: a head because we understand the importance of making critical investments in long-term, sustainable jobs, which our economy so desperately needs; a heart because we are caring for those who most need our help, the most vulnerable in our society; and a backbone because we have the courage to tackle Labor's shocking legacy of debt and deficit, even if it does involve some difficult decisions. This is the courage that Labor never had.

One of the first emails I received on budget night concerned the Restart program that we announced, which will provide businesses which take on an unemployed person aged over 50 with a bonus of up to $10,000. This person wrote: 'Even though I am now employed I still wanted to thank you for the help you have offered my generation in getting work. I know firsthand how difficult it is and I am hopeful that my fellow unemployed 50-year-old Australians will be better off in the future.'

The budget reflects our government's determination to deliver a cultural shift in the way we work. Older Australians will be supported where necessary and younger Australians need to earn or learn. Despite what the member for Lalor has said, this is the best thing that we can do for youth unemployment.

The key message in the budget is that Australia must contribute and build. There is no greater demonstration of that than our unbelievable commitment to infrastructure: $50 billion in infrastructure investments over the coming years which will deliver and support $125 billion of construction activity. It is absolutely shameful that one of our most important projects in our region, the East West Link, to which we have committed $3 billion, is being opposed by Labor. The western section, the section that will service the people of Geelong, is being opposed by Labor. Clearly no-one from Labor has ever had to cope with the 'car park'—the two-hour wait to get to Melbourne in peak hour. That is an absolute disgrace.

There are plenty of other initiatives: $482 million for the Entrepreneurs' Infrastructure Program to help bring research and business together to develop and commercialise home-grown ideas; $476 million for an industry skills fund; $20,000 available in low-cost loans for apprentices to support their pursuit of a career; Commonwealth funding will be extended to students studying higher education diplomas; and $50 million for manufacturing transition grants. Of course, there is our commitment to abolish the carbon tax, which will save families on average $550 per year, to abolish the mining tax and to deliver a 1.5 per cent cut to the company tax rate.

A number of weeks ago the Prime Minister announced in Geelong a $155 million growth fund. It was very disappointing that the Secretary of Geelong Trades Hall, Tim Gooden, wrote a very deceptive article, 'Jobs scoreboard not looking good so far'. He did not bother to even mention this incredible fund for our region, which was announced in the wake of the end of car manufacturing: $30 million for regional infrastructure and another $60 million for advanced manufacturing, so important for jobs and for opportunity. We are a great city, we are a great region and we have so much opportunity. Frankly the efforts of Mr Gooden and Geelong Trades Hall to talk down our potential, to not convey this important information to members, does his membership no service and they certainly drag down the reputation of our entire region.

We are very proud of our commitment to the jobs growth and investment that we have demonstrated in the budget. Certainly I ask the people of my electorate to look closely at what we are doing, because it is very positive for jobs growth.

House adjourned at 20:00