Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In this week of reconciliation we focus on the disadvantages continuing for Indigenous communities throughout our country, whether they be in urban capitals like Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane or Perth; whether they are in regional centres like mine, Shepparton and Echuca; or whether indeed they are in some of the remotest communities you will find anywhere in the world, places like Areyonga and Haasts Bluff. In those communities we are deeply concerned that one of the scourges that are now well and truly entrenched is the problem of high-risk consumption of alcohol. I am not suggesting for a moment that Aboriginal people only have problems with drinking, that they do not drink at levels which cause absolutely no harm, which in fact contribute to their enjoyment of life and wellbeing. But the fact is that, although many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians are teetotallers, those who do drink tend to drink at much higher rates of risk and harm than non-Indigenous Australians.

On Friday of this week we are going to take the Standing Committee for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs inquiry into the harmful impacts of alcohol use to the heartland of Melbourne. We have some excellent contributors to give evidence to this inquiry, which amongst the terms of reference includes the social and economic determinants of high-risk drinking; some of the strategies that have been tried to overcome the problems to give Indigenous high-risk drinkers a chance to break their addictions and to get back to a normal life; the trends in this business of what appears to be increasing harmful uses of alcohol; and international comparisons to see if other countries, particularly countries like ours—Canada, the United States and New Zealand—have come up with better strategies, strategies that have real impacts on the human communities.

Also, we want to investigate very carefully what the cost of alcohol and access to alcohol do in terms of high-risk drinking. Then with the special support of our Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Senator Nigel Scullion, we are including special references to foetal alcohol spectrum disorder problems. FASD, as it is more commonly called, is not just terrible brain damage afflicting Indigenous communities where mothers have been drinking during their pregnancy—of course that is not the case. FASD, at times also called FAS—foetal alcohol spectrum—is a scourge, a word I use deliberately, which in some cases is endemic across our Australian communities, particular as young girls join their male partners in binge drinking episodes, often over a weekend. They may have become pregnant and, with a mixture of drink and drugs, often do not seek any support for their pregnancy for several months. Indeed, they may not even be diagnosed as pregnant. By the time they are aware that they are in their second or third month of pregnancy, damage has been done to the foetus and the child is born with brain damage or with physical disabilities, depending on when the mother was drinking and what quantities.

It is irreversible harm. The child is born irreversibly damaged and all you can hope for is, if the child is diagnosed young enough, that some special care and strategies will ease that child's life. But too often in Australia, where we have no diagnostic clinics at all for foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, these children go undiagnosed. They move into the school system where they immediately become a problem, given they have serious learning difficulties. Their memory capacity is impaired. They have great difficulty in controlling their inhibitions, including their libido. As children reach puberty, girls have serious problems being preyed upon or there are other difficulties if they are boys. It is not long at all before most of them end up, particularly the boys, in contact with police and in jail. This is a problem right across Australia which our magistrates, our judges, our police and our social workers understand only too well.

We still do not have a corrections systems geared up to provide diversionary treatments or support for people who are brain damaged and are unable to be rehabilitated, whose reoffending when they are released is virtually guaranteed. We had a recent tragic case where a young woman was incarcerated indefinitely in Western Australian with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. She had had a life of shocking deprivation and was a victim of so much violence herself and, because there was no other place for her protection, was being kept in custody in Western Australia. The expectation was that she may have been relocated closer to her home community in Alice Springs. That was a work in progress last time I looked.

We have this prolific problem in Australia of high-risk drinking. It was highlighted in the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs inquiry into FASD. The report, called The hidden harm, was released in November 2012—that is, heading towards two years ago. The reference came jointly from the Minister for Health and Ageing at the time and the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. The series of recommendations which came out of that inquiry led to an Australian government action plan to reduce the impact of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder being announced for 2013-14 through to 2016-17. Some $20 million over four years were to be committed to this action plan. Unfortunately, as was the way with Labor, we had a lot of commitment and not much cash underpinning the commitments that were made. So it has fallen to this government, the coalition government, to find that $20 million, or as close as possible to that amount, to get the work under way.

The original response of the previous government was an action plan which was to have further development through consultation with key stakeholders and agencies. In one of our key recommendations, we wanted a panel of experts to be brought together to advise government on exactly what was needed, whether it was the Australian medical diagnostic tool to be completed; whether it was the multidisciplinary diagnostic centres to be set up to make sure that these babies and young children were diagnosed as soon as possible so that some interventions or therapeutic strategy could be put in place; or whether the advice was about what we should do to prevent another child being born in Australia with this irreparable brain damage, which is 100 per cent preventable if the mother does not drink a drop when she is pregnant.

It is no surprise that we have the recommendation from the 2009 National Health and Medical Research Council statement. Their recommendation is for zero alcohol consumption for women who are planning a pregnancy, who are pregnant or who are breastfeeding. Tragically, that is one of the best-kept secrets from the National Health and Medical Research Council's listings of recommendations. We still have a significant proportion of women who drink while pregnant. We have a significant proportion of medical practitioners who do not advise the women presenting to them asking for pregnancy tests or knowing that they are pregnant about the dangers of drinking alcohol while pregnant. We still have maternity hospitals, particularly private ones, which advertise the wine list in their maternity wings and how wonderful it is that, if women come to that particular hospital, they can have the very best of the reds and whites on offer. We have, of course, denial, often from young female journalists in the media, saying: 'It's not really true. I drank like a fish, or my mother did, and, look, my children are little Einsteins.' Tragically, there is too much research evidence from around the globe that foetal alcohol spectrum disorder is sapping the potential of children in ways that we have never seen before in the history of human development.

The one study that has been undertaken in Australia, the first comprehensive multidisciplinary team assessment of the incidence of FASD in an Australian community, has found that we have in that community the highest rates of FASD in children under eight in the world. This is horrific. How can it be the case? And yet we still do not have a national alcohol strategy or a national foetal alcohol spectrum disorder strategy which is making sure that every man and woman, every male and female—this is not just the woman's business—and every family in Australia is aware that, if they wish to protect the potential of their newborn, if they wish to protect the brain of their newborn, they simply do not drink alcohol for nine months. I would not have thought that was a very big ask to protect the child; all of their future opportunities; their capacity to learn, to grow, to get a job and to stay out of prison; and their capacity not to be bullied, misunderstood or called simply 'naughty' because they cannot take instruction. All of those are problems that our FAS, or FASD, children experience, and we are still very much turning a blind eye to them.

I am hoping that in my community of Shepparton, in northern Victoria, where we have a serious problem of binge drinking amongst our young men and women, we will have a multidisciplinary diagnostic clinic established sometime soon. We have a specialist in our community who is now taking his work into our schools, where teachers are in despair—and that is not just in regional Victoria but in places like Tennant Creek and Darwin and right throughout Australia. They are in despair about these little children in their classroom who have very limited capacity to learn. They have no aid funding or special support in trying—as they described it in Tennant Creek—to just keep these kids in the classroom.

One of the tragedies of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, or FAS, is that it is not inheritable—it is not a condition passed from mother to child genetically—but, too often, women who suffer from FASD themselves give birth to children who are in turn brain damaged from this condition because they typically are heavy drinkers and drug takers themselves. There is very little support for any women whether they have FAS or FASD, or anyone else in our community. If they have an addiction to alcohol, there is very little support for them when they are pregnant to reduce drastically their alcohol consumption or to cut out their drinking altogether.

One of the pillars of the action plan that was identified in 2013-14—and this plan was to go on to 2016-17—was the fact that we must have targeted measures supporting prevention and management of FASD, which would include targeting women with alcohol dependency. There was to be $4.8 million for that but, as I said, the promise was there but not the cash. There was an understanding that the action plan would have to promote consistent messages through primary care providers about the risk of consuming alcohol during pregnancy using the Medicare Local network and that they had to promote and embed awareness of the risk of FASD.

Again, in Australia we have this extraordinary situation where we allow alcohol companies to advertise in prime children's' viewing time through the sponsorship of sport. We do not have labelling on alcohol mandated, which is extraordinary given the efforts we made with tobacco. As a cost to the Australian community, tobacco has far less impact than alcohol consumption in terms of violence, premature death, a whole range of diseases and, of course, the brain damage done to the unborn. So why is it that we are out there on tobacco as an addiction and as a horrific health problem for Australians but we are pretty much silent when it comes to the impact of alcohol on our human communities? We seem to have so much bravado associated with how much can you drink. Can you remember your party? If you can, it was not a great party. Or let us celebrate you are pregnant with a bottle of bubbly or let's celebrate you winning anything with some alcohol, and, if you are not smashed, you do not have many friends. We have this unfortunate culture in Australia that has taken drinking to excess as some mark of manhood and, increasingly, a mark of you being a good-time girl as well.

Let's get grownup about alcohol consumption in Australia. I am not a wowser myself. Let's drink wine, beer and spirits in moderation and sensibly, but let's not touch a drop if you are pregnant or breastfeeding. Let's make sure our Indigenous communities, who are most severely affected by high-risk drinking, do not have a whole generation written off in a form of cultural genocide because their children are brain damaged irreparably when every baby's birth with that damage is preventable.

In this week of reconciliation, I beg our collective effort from both sides of parliament to focus on this issue. I am disappointed the Victorian government chose on Friday not to make any submission at all to this alcohol inquiry. I think that is a disappointment. (Time expired)

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Murray made some important points, and I am pleased to associate myself with many of them. The OECD has developed a really interesting alternative method of measuring social performance and wellbeing to the widely discredited GDP. As part of this they have been asking people to tell them what issues concern them the most. The issue that concerns people around the globe the most, it turns out, is health. Given that I have said a number of times that we as members need to be more responsive to our constituents and do what people want, I have decided to make it my business to become more expert in health issues and health policy.

One of the key features of this budget is its impact on health. These impacts are extremely adverse. Do not take my word for that; do not take the word of other Labor personnel; do not even take the word of Liberal premiers; look at the comments of those who work in this area and who are most familiar with the probable impacts of the government's proposals. The welfare agency Anglicare said it is particularly concerned about the $7 Medicare copayment levy. For families and individuals on Newstart and on very low incomes, this represents a significant proportion of weekly income. People with a disability, families with young children and the elderly have higher access rates to medical services. Copayments for these groups and for low-income households generally will lead to delays in seeking medical assistance. The end result will be reduced access to medical support for those most in need and, in the longer term, increased costs for the health system. That was Anglicare.

The Mental Health Council of Australia said that any changes to the assessment of eligibility for the disability support pension will have a significant impact on people living with psychosocial disability and those who care for them. What did MS Australia say? They said they were deeply concerned about the effect of budget measures on people with multiple sclerosis. They said it was a major concern that people under the age of 35 on the disability support pension will be subject to medical reassessment and may be moved onto Newstart or youth allowance. They seek an exemption from medical reassessment for people with MS. The chief executive of the Consumers Health Forum said:

The introduction of a $7 co-payment to see the GP , the prospect of charges to attend public hospital EDs, plus a $5 increase in PBS fees, shatters the notion of universal access to primary care under Medicare … Other shocks are the $635 million cut to dental spending over four years when poor oral health is widespread among low income Australians, $121 million cuts for indigenous health "rationalisation" and nearly $100 million in cuts to eye health services.

The Consumers Health Forum chief executive said:

This is a retrograde health Budget … The removal of the Australian Preventive Health Agency and proposed shrinking of Medicare Locals reveal a disturbing absence of recognition of the pressing health needs of Australia in 2014.

The Rural Doctors Association of Australia said:

… the introduction of a $7 Medicare patient co-payment for GP consults is of serious concern to rural patients and rural doctors.

The $7 Medicare co-payment—together with patient co-payments for pharmaceuticals, out-of-hospital pathology tests (like blood tests) and diagnostic imaging services—will impact significantly on rural patients and could lead to much greater costs on the health and hospital system in future years…

The Services for Australian Rural and Remote Allied Health described the budget as a:

Horror budget for rural and remote Australians

In the lead-up to the federal budget, Treasurer Hockey made a point of saying that everyone in Australia had to do the heavy lifting in order to bring the budget back into surplus. But this budget is not within a bull's roar of the Treasurer's stated intention. It is about draconian savings measures and an ideological crusade against the social wage and universal health care. It is not equitable; it is regressive.

The ramifications of the cuts are that a newly unemployed university graduate or retrenched worker must live with no income for six months before claiming Newstart, forgoing benefits of more than $7,000. Interest payable on student HELP loans will increase from the CPI—2¼ per cent in 2014-15—to 6 per cent, and there will be a 20 per cent decrease in the government contribution to university funding and deregulation of course fees. Hospitals and schools—vital pillars of our society—will lose projected funding of $80 billion on the rationale that they are state responsibilities, creating a pretext for an increase to GST, a regressive tax. There will be a $7 tax on GP visits, an increase to PBS co-payments of $5 for general payments and 80 cents for concessional payments, and provision for state governments to introduce emergency room or hospital taxes. There will be $534 million cut from Indigenous affairs programs and cuts in indexation for the aged pension and the disability support pension. This will lead to the bottom one-fifth of earners losing around five per cent of their disposable income, compared to the top one-fifth who will lose only 0.3 per cent, based on modelling undertaken by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, who point out that the burden of this budget overwhelmingly falls upon people in the most precarious position.

In a litany of cuts to our social wage it is the changes to Newstart that really stand out. In relation to the proposed changes to Newstart for under-30s, we are told that young people should be earning or learning. It is fine in theory. But the reality is otherwise, with those applying for Newstart having to wait six months while still having to service their rent or mortgage. If that is not bad enough, when you do receive it but do not find a job in six months you are booted off it again. This is a recipe for misery, poverty, physical and mental health problems and crime.

Youth unemployment is at 12.4 per cent, and the budget is projecting that unemployment will rise. So where are the jobs going to come from? The situation is compounded by cuts in the budget to organisations like Youth Connections which specialise in helping young Australians who are unemployed.

There is the distinct possibility that the problem of homelessness will be exacerbated. Advocacy groups are warning that thousands of young people living in community housing and low-rent private apartments face eviction if their Newstart and Youth Allowance is cut off as a result of new measures in this budget.

It is alarming that long-term youth unemployment in Australia has tripled in the past six years. In 2008 there were 19½ thousand long-term unemployed young people in Australia. Now there are over 56,000. In Victoria, there are now over 81,000 unemployed young people, and 14,000 of them have not worked at all in the past 12 months.

It is not that young people do not want to work. Many of them apply for dozens or even hundreds of jobs without success. If, through structured training, the long-term unemployed can gain formal skills in areas where demand from employers exists, then there are likely to be positive employment spinoffs. However, for such programs to be effective, employers would need to be willing to provide the necessary training—and yet the government's loosening of 457 visa rules will undermine employer incentives to train the long-term unemployed. Long-term unemployment is likely to become a growing issue in the event that the labour market deteriorates as the mining investment boom unwinds and the car industry turns out the lights.

It is outrageous that we make it so hard for young people to break out of this trap by bringing in ever-increasing numbers of migrant workers on both the permanent and temporary migrant worker programs. Last year, net overseas migration was 240,000, and we now have over a million people from overseas in Australia on temporary visas which give them work rights. How can we seriously expect to bring down the unacceptable number of young people who are long-term unemployed when they are subjected to such ferocious competition for entry-level jobs? Australia is not short of people or short of workers. What we are lacking is the sense to realise that our migrant worker programs are way too high, given the number of people here who are ready, willing and able to work.

Increasing the age pension eligibility to 70 is another regressive measure in the budget, with the IMF noting that adverse increases in retirement ages disproportionately affect the poor. Australia is one of the wealthiest developed countries, and its share of age pension spending is comparatively low. Age-related spending in 2013-14 was estimated to be 2.6 per cent of GDP, against an average spend among developed economies of 3.9 per cent. The idea that we have a budget crisis caused by welfare spending on the age pension is a sham and a nonsense. Those receiving an age pension are being targeted with indexation changes which will cut the real value of pensions, which, in today's terms, will be a cut of about $200 a fortnight by 2030 to people who can ill afford it.

This will be made worse by the introduction of the Medicare copayment which will lead to the process of unravelling universal health care. The Liberals and Nationals have always hated universal health care—as far back as the Whitlam government, forcing the government then to a double dissolution and joint sitting of parliament before it was passed. The copayment represents the thin end of the wedge.

As the Consumers Health Forum of Australia research shows, copayments will result in people delaying treatments, leading to higher health costs overall. There is a significant body of international evidence to show that copayments create barriers to access to health care for many consumers without decreasing overall healthcare costs. The eight-year-long RAND Health Insurance Experiment found that greater cost-sharing reduced appropriate or needed medical care as well as inappropriate or unnecessary medical care. In fact, the experiment also found that the poorest in society are most likely to defer medical treatment when the price increases, meaning that the health costs of this policy will disproportionately fall on our poorest citizens, including the unemployed and the elderly. This longer-term impact will be compounded by the $5 copayment for PBS-listed medicines, and the abolition of, among others, the National Preventive Health Agency, which is focused on promoting preventive health approaches and primary health care designed specifically to reduce pressure and costs in hospital and acute settings.

The myth that everyone is doing the heavy lifting in this budget is also apparent with the money that has been slashed from clean energy innovation and the protection of nature in favour of subsidies for polluting industries. There was no reform of the fuel tax credit subsidy—the cost of that to the taxpayer over four years is a cool $28 billion—and no change to the accelerated depreciation statutory effective life caps rules that allow resource companies to claim that their equipment lasts half the time it actually does, with a cost to the taxpayer over four years of $6.9 billion. The fuel tax credit subsidy alone costs more than the federal government provides to public schools.

The government managed to make the following cuts, however: $1.7 billion from the abolition of the clean energy measures, including the Australian Renewable Energy Agency; $150 million from research programs, including CSIRO, the National Environmental Research Program and the Australian Climate Change Science Program; and a $438 million loss to Landcare. These cuts are deeply damaging to the environment. As the Australian Conservation Foundation has pointed out:

The government had a chance to continue cutting pollution through a carbon price that works. It has chosen to forego $18 billion in revenue, instead handing taxpayers' money to polluters through the Emission Reduction Fund.

… The cuts to renewable energy risk keeping Australian workers and businesses using 19th Century technology to address a 21st Century challenge.

… Rather than boost investment in clean energy jobs and innovation, the government chose to scrap the profitable Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

In a speech to the parliament earlier this year, I outlined how the richest one per cent in Australia have doubled their share of national income since 1980 and inequality has widened significantly. We were told before this budget that everyone needed to do some heavy lifting, but, with a nod and a wink to those vested interests that could do more, they were spared, and the heavy lifting will be done on the backs of the working poor, students, pensioners and the unemployed. Economic disadvantage for the overwhelming majority translates into ill health, missed educational opportunity and, increasingly, the familiar symptoms of depression: alcoholism, obesity, gambling and criminality.

What matters is not how affluent a society is but how unequal it is. Sweden and Finland, two of the world's wealthiest countries by per capita income or GDP, have a very narrow gap separating their richest from their poorest citizens, and they consistently lead the world in indices of measurable wellbeing. Conversely, the United States, despite its huge aggregate wealth, always comes down low on such measures. This budget is about greedy, well-funded, vested interests looking after themselves through the Commission of Audit, driven by a narrow and discredited ideology rather than a nation-building, burden-sharing policy solution for all.

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

This is what happens after Labor governments have a go at running the country. This budget is a clean-up job. Under Labor, the spending gets out of control, the country gets into debt, and then the electorate votes the coalition in to sort it out. It reminds me of a jingle that was put together in 2007 for the 2007 campaign in my electorate of Swan. They wrote a jingle saying, 'Vote Labor back in and you'll just vote for debt and deficit,' which turned out to be what it was. This more than any other is the reason that the coalition was voted in last September, and the people of Australia now fully expect us to sort out Labor's mess. The Howard government did it in 1996, and now it is the responsibility of the Abbott government to do it in 2014. History repeats itself in that respect.

The challenge facing the Abbott government is unfortunately on an altogether different scale compared with that confronting Treasurer Costello in 1996. Howard and Costello faced a Labor debt legacy of $96 billion, and that required some difficult and unpopular decisions at the time to bring the budget back under control. To pay back the $96 billion debt inherited in 1996, there had to be some quite severe expenditure cuts. Again, it was about cutting expenditure, not about increasing revenue through taxes. These were, of course, opposed by Labor. If you remember, there was a riot by the unions outside Parliament House. Now there are riots in universities. But the government stayed the course and turned Australia's financial situation around, paying back the debt and leaving money in the bank and a $20 billion surplus, saving Australia in the process.

At the time, I was running a small business under the Keating government. I know there are some other people in the room who were high-profile business people then. The member for Fairfax might have gone through that period in 1992 when interest rates were up to 22 per cent. To save my business, I went without wages for 12 months. All my staff got paid but things were that tight that it was a terrible experience, again under a Labor government.

So a debt of $96 billion confronted the Howard government after 13 years of Labor government. In September 2013, the Abbott government inherited Labor debt of $667 billion and projected deficits of $123 billion. If you listened to those on the other side of the chamber and to the previous speaker, they think that is a good economic record. Incredibly, $1 billion is currently being spent every month on interest payments on the debt we owe to those from whom Labor borrowed the money.

This is the scale of the job confronting this government and the people of Australia. This is the money which has to be paid back and the problem we have to confront as a nation. All Australians recognise that the $667 billion of projected debt cannot be paid back without some tightening of the belt and some restraint. All Australians recognise that you cannot go on borrowing money to service interest on debt. It is unsustainable and eventually leads down the path of some of the debt-ridden European countries. It gets to a point where you no longer control the debt but the debt begins to control you. All Australians recognise that, just as a household has to balance its books, so does this country. So after six years of Labor chaos, what do you get? You get a bill and this is where the country has to pull together to get rid of that bill.

Sadly, the debt is a burden for all Australians to pay. It is a burden which the Labor Party, to its shame, has put on the shoulders of all Australians. We must make sure that that burden is fairly distributed. We must all do our fair share. While there will be people who do not like some of the measures, I think this budget attempts to share that burden. In the context that I acknowledge this budget is tough and tough in a number of areas, at a local level it certainly delivers for the people of Swan.

At the last election, in addition to promising to get the budget back under control, to stop the boats and to scrap the carbon tax, the coalition also made a commitment to build the roads of the 21st century. This budget delivers an unprecedented amount of spending on road infrastructure in my electorate of Swan. I say unprecedented because $300 million is budgeted for the Gateway WA road upgrade project in my electorate of Swan during the 2014-15 financial year. We have been working on this project for some time. It was under a cloud of funding uncertainty under the Labor Party.

The previous government said they would fund Gateway WA entirely through the proceeds of the mining tax. That became an impossibility. Like some of the surpluses they produced, it became a terrible uncertainty. The uncertainty generated was typical of the uncertainty that proliferated during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. It became the hallmark of how Labor ran the nation.

By contrast, the coalition has had an unambiguous commitment to Gateway WA for the past two elections and we will deliver it without a mining tax. The election of the Abbott government last September has finally given the project the certainty it needs. I included it as part of my five-point local plan for the electorate and we are now delivering on it for the people of Swan. The spectacular part of the funding in this budget is that the Abbott government has looked beyond isolated projects and to the integrated Perth road network as a whole. This is the first time I have seen a federal government look at roads funding in this way since I have been a member of parliament. This is a model of strategic thinking which the previous government and ministers just did not possess. We see the Abbott government's vision in projects such as WestConnex and the Western Sydney airport plan and here we see it in my electorate of Swan with the Perth freight link announced in this budget.

The budget looks beyond Gateway WA, with an integrated freight transport route which is the connection between Perth airport, Kewdale freight terminal and the Fremantle port. This is a joint project between the WA state government and the federal government. It will include a five-kilometre Roe Highway, a four-lane dual carriageway extension from the Kwinana Freeway to Stock Road in Coolbellup and improvements to Stock Road and High Street. What a great vision for Perth and a great boost to economic productivity in the state. As a result of this strategic thinking, there is much more bang for the buck both in the immediate sense in the funding of the project and the long-term impact of the productive infrastructure.

In the immediate sense, this is a $925 million contribution from the Commonwealth to a $1.6 billion project. The Commonwealth and West Australian governments will be seeking opportunities for private sector co-contribution to fund the balance, and this will ensure maximum value is achieved from taxpayer dollars with minimal impact on the federal budget. In terms of long-term benefit, the Western Australian government estimates that the Roe Highway extension will deliver benefits of $5.20 for every dollar invested—a great return for the people of Western Australia. I would say at this point that I think the Howard government also possessed this strategic approach to infrastructure demonstrated by the Abbott government in the budget. At the 2007 election at which I was elected, John Howard announced the Perth roads package, which focused significantly on the Great Eastern Highway. My Liberal campaign for the seat of Swan was thrilled at the time as we had run a community campaign for an upgrade to the Great Eastern Highway with Belmont Mayor and now MLA for Belmont Glenys Godfrey. But John Howard and then minister Truss had not just seen it as one-off project, or an opportunity to win a seat; he saw the broader strategic importance of the Eastern Gateway to Midland and the East, which is how the Perth roads package originated. After John Howard announced the package, I must admit that Kevin Rudd at the time thought it was such a great package that he announced it four days later, so it was a benefit to the people of Swan and to Western Australia.

Labor and the previous minister did not possess this thinking or vision about the Perth roads package in the original instance. Consider the money shovelled out the door over the last six years, the borrowed money that has left the country in the perilous financial position that it is in. It was not carefully targeted or spent as part of an overarching strategic vision or strategic plan. It was just splashed out on pink batts and overpriced school halls. I remember a particular roads example in my own electorate of Swan where the Labor Party candidate promised before the 2010 election to build a roundabout at the corner of South Terrace and Labouchere Road in South Perth. It was ranked over 270 on the black spot roads program but all of a sudden it became a priority for my seat of Swan. I know this intersection particularly well. It is at the bottom of a steep hill just round the corner from my house in South Perth. This was clearly no place for a roundabout. There had been another one 500 metres the other way that had to be taken out because it caused a road blockage. There had clearly been no real thought put into the suggestion by the Labor candidate and the Labor Party for that roundabout. It was just about doing something for the sake of doing something. The road of course never went ahead in the end, to the embarrassment of the Labor candidate. The money was actually sent to the city of South Perth, which on investigation thought it was such a bad idea it returned that money to the government. Can you imagine how much economic benefit this would have generated? I think it would have had the opposite effect as it generated congestion and road problems. I am pleased that the Abbott government infrastructure package in this budget continues a great tradition of coalition roads funding for my electorate of Swan that started in my political lifetime with the Great Eastern Highway and continues with Gateway WA today.

In addition to our roads funding commitments in the electorate of Swan during the last election, we also put forward a proposal for a $1 million Swan-Canning River recovery program. This particular commitment was one I started working on in 2008-09 after consulting with the environmental groups in the electorate and took to the 2010 and 2013 federal elections. It was a fantastic moment to see this project in the black ink in the budget papers and I thank the Minister for the Environment for his personal interest in the program and for ensuring that it can be delivered at the first possible opportunity. I do not propose to say too much more on that recovery program today, as I spoke about it in some detail during the debate on the Social Security Legislation (Green Army Programme) Bill 2014 recently. Last Monday I went down to the Canning Wetlands to celebrate the grant with the Wilson Wetlands Action Group, who were coordinating a day of planting with Wilson Park Primary School. Along with Russell Gorton I donned some waders and went into the Wilson Lagoon to help remove some of the hydrocotyl weed on the surface. This grant will be significantly aimed at getting on top of the hydrocotyl problem once and for all. If you go into a lagoon, make sure the waders you are wearing fit you, otherwise you will end up in the drink, which I happened to do. The local media did not get a copy of that, fortunately. I can say to the House that the local environmental groups are very happy with the $1m commitment and already have some good plans for putting it to use, which will develop in due course.

Also in the budget was $45,000 for the City of South Perth Aquatic Centre feasibility study, delivering on another election commitment that we made locally to the people of Swan. This is another very pleasing commitment to see in black and white, in the budget papers. The South Perth Aquatic Centre is a local issue campaign that I started working on in 2011, after being contacted by a constituent. We ran a survey in the local area and had over 1,000 responses from members in the community, saying that they wished they could have an aquatic centre. After consultation, we were told that a detailed feasibility study was required to take this proposal to the next level, and that is what this funding provides. So we will continue to fight for money and, hopefully after the study from the $45,000, we will come out with a positive response. The City of South Perth has voted to accept the funding, and I look forward to working with them on the feasibility study over the course of the next budget period. I know that the people of South Perth and the aquatic organisations in the local area are pleased to finally see a feasibility study budgeted for. I am pleased that the Abbott government has seen fit to deliver on this 2013 election commitment at the first opportunity.

The coalition takes a strong stand when it comes to crime and anti-social behaviour and has had a particularly strong record on delivering security infrastructure in the City of Belmont. The Howard government pioneered the rollout of CCTV in Rivervale and Kewdale. This budget builds on that legacy, with a $100,000 CCTV grant for the perimeters of the Belmont Forum and the Belmont Village. This funding will be delivered through the $50 million Safer Streets program. The City of Belmont supports this commitment, because CCTV is already working to make Belmont safer. In Belmont, between January and August 2013, some 48 incidents recorded by closed circuit television were given to the police, with 20 positive results where offenders were identified and prosecuted; 24 were filed, pending further information; and four are still under investigation. These are all results which could not have been achieved without closed circuit television. So I am pleased to be able to help deliver these security improvements at what is the main shopping and meeting place in the Belmont area.

While this is no doubt a tough budget, it is a budget that delivers for my electorate of Swan. We are delivering on the local plan put forward to the people of Swan at the last election. And we are delivering on our national commitment to get the budget back under control—a commitment that the public expects us to deliver. We hear from the other side many things about the budget, and how it is cutting here and there, but I think we need to stop scaring the pensioners, to stop scaring the people who want to go to university and to clearly explain to people in Swan in Western Australia that there are safety nets. I am happy for people to contact my office about them. We need a budget that gets rid of the debt. We see one of the major business people in Australia in this room. I know that he has no debt. He understands that no debt is an important part of running any business and being successful in that business.

I seek leave to table to two documents from the City of South Perth in regard to the aquatic leisure centre.

Leave granted.

Clive Palmer (Fairfax, Palmer United Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When truth prevails over injustice, we are all the winners. Last week in Australia, the truth prevailed over injustice and the Australian people were the winners and the government was a loser in the court of public opinion. Australia's debt is around 12 per cent of GDP, according to the OECD, and the average debt for the OECD is 73 per cent. The IMF confirms this position. Australia's debt is 12 per cent of GDP and the average in the OECD is 73 per cent. So while Australia is only one of 13 countries in the world with a AAA credit rating—the best rating in the world—and one of the lowest debt levels in the world, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister tell all Australians that we have a debt problem.

Why do they tell such untruths to the whole country? No member of parliament should vote for any appropriation bill for a government that lies to Australians and does so for an improper purpose. It seems the Liberal Party wants to fool Australians and grab their money and grab control of their lives. How can an appropriation bill for any purpose be believed? How can we have faith in appropriating one cent to a government that has misled the Australian people over our debt levels? The Treasurer and the Prime Minister seek to destroy Australia's standard of living. Every Australian in and out of parliament must hold the government to account. These bills stem from the Treasurer's betrayal of the election promises made by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer in the election campaign, after the campaign was called. While the Prime Minister was very quick to attack former Prime Minister Julia Gillard for breaking promises, these bills break many, many promises and together with the appropriation bills for the budget and the accompanying legislation will destroy the livelihood of millions of Australians. Now is the time for the nation to unite and make it clear to the government that these changes to our lives will not stand. As a great man once said, 'An injustice done to a man anywhere is an injustice to all men everywhere.'

Four female members of my electorate contacted me last week. They are aged between 73 and 86. They are living in a nursing home and for the last 50 years they have voted for the Liberal Party. They informed me that they did not vote for me at the last federal election, that they had always voted Liberal. They reminded me what a great Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies was, how important the work that Malcolm Fraser had done was for Australia and what a great friend John Howard had been to the elderly people of Australia. Every payday, they handover their pension to the nursing home that looks after them and the home gives them back $15 a week. It is enough for them to pool their money every Friday, so that they can catch a taxi and based on their concessions go and see a movie. Sometimes a relative will give them some additional funds and they can buy a chocolate or have a coffee. That is their life, but not anymore since the budget was brought down. They have done nothing but worry that that $15 will have to be kept for maybe a visit to the doctor or maybe two at their age.

Fifty years of voting Liberal means nothing. Their lives are shattered, their lifestyle diminished. They informed me, like many Australians have, they will never vote for the Liberal or National parties again. Why be elected to parliament if you are going to make pensioners suffer and cause misery to so many people? No senator of the Palmer United Party will vote for any change to the pension or the co-payment imposed by the Treasurer, the Prime Minister or Minister for Health in this budget. Trying to reduce the rate of increase in the pension is a cut to the pension, a breach of another election promise. The Prime Minister is talking semantics and, yet again, trying to mislead the parliament.

To extend the eligibility for pensions to the age of 70 years is not just an extension to the age of the pension. It is more than that; it is an attempt to set up conditions to extend the entitlement date for super to 70 years, so that fund managers of Australia will be able to earn fees over 50 years from the savings of average Australians. Thirty per cent of all Australians who may die before they reach the age of 70 will never receive their super and never receive access to their life savings before they die. Imagine working as a tradesman or a labourer and having to retire at the age of 50 because you are worn out, and you need to get access to your super but you will not get the pension or your super until you are 70 because the fund managers have it. They have your life savings. They have the sum total of your work as a tradesman because they want to earn excessive fees out of it every year. If the fund managers want to sell their businesses, the value of that business increases dramatically if the entitlement age for Australians receiving their super is, as has been foreshadowed by the government, extended to 70 years of age. That is what it is about: selling their business, making money on the quick at the cost of the people of Australia.

The cost of 12 years education is equivalent to the cost of one year's unemployment to our nation. A good education policy is not only good social policy but good economic policy. We rob the nation of the creativity and the excellence of its most promising citizens if we load them up as soon as they leave university with mountains of debt to handicap them or to inhibit their choice in careers. When you are 20, 22 or 30, it is the time of your life to take risks and to be bold. The history of the world tells us that it is the young, the cream of the nation, who create the need and the leadership for incentivising the nation to do better. It was a young Thomas Jefferson aged 30 years who wrote in the US Constitution that all men are created equal. Silicon Valley in the United States stands as a testimony as to what can be done and what has been done by so many young Americans. They gave the world Facebook, Yahoo and Google. None of these leaders of the world's industry were saddled with HECS debt. They were free to pursue their lives and their dreams in their 20s at a time when life was as it was meant to be: free and independent. They were free to provide real leadership.

The cost of the Paid Parental Leave Scheme will be nearly $20 billion and still a stay at home mum with four children will not receive anything and still a mother in part-time employment juggling two roles will get a pittance. The cost of a free university education in Australia is around $12 billion a year. I think freeing the best among us is more important than creating a scheme designed to make well-off women in our society more well-off by burdening our youth, senior citizens and those who cannot fend for themselves.

When I left school I registered for unemployment at the age of 18. I did not know what I wanted to do in my life. Sometimes I was depressed. Sometimes I felt a failure. I tried a number of times but could not find employment. After a few months I got myself together. Since that time I or my companies have paid millions of dollars in tax to the government, employed thousands of people, and invested in the nation through billions of dollars in investment and exports. The small investment I received from the Australian government when I first left school was paid back many times over.

Australia cannot abandon its young citizens. The whole move to deny government assistance to one group of citizens because of their age would, if implemented, increase the crime rate and youth suicide. All Australians—whatever party they belong to—must stop moves by the government to destroy the lives of Australians before they start on their journey in life. Palmer United will vote in the Senate against any attempt to make any citizen ineligible for government assistance on the basis of their age.

Queensland and Western Australia are vast states. The use of motor transport in those states is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Australians living in these states, especially in the bush, more than any other state, will suffer from the increase in fuel excise. The government fails; Australians pay. Palmer United will join with our colleagues in the Senate from the Motoring Enthusiast Party to vote against changes to the fuel excise. The most disturbing feature of this measure is, however, the fact that increases are indexed. This means every year, regardless of the state of the economy, regardless of the state of the debt of Australia and the states, the excise will increase—regardless, they will pay more. This indexation will avoid political and public notice, but it will mean that millions of Australians will pay more each year without any announcement in any budget, without any political responsibility.

As the OECD tells us, confirmed by the Australian Parliamentary Library, Australia's debt is 12 per cent of its GDP, and the average debt for the advanced economies is 73 per cent. So for the Treasurer to say that we have a debt problem is just untrue. It is not one promise that has been broken by the Liberal government; it is many. The government is seeking to change our way of life as Australians, to scare us so that they will destroy us out of fear.

If I told untruths as a director of a company to my shareholders and raised money for them or got elected to a board position on false representations, I would be charged with deceptive and misleading conduct. So it must be with the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and all the ministers that serve in the government. To seek to impose a new tax in the form of a debt levy, when our debt is not a problem based on its national standards, goes against every Liberal policy, from the day of the foundation of the Liberal Party, and is a betrayal of not only all members of the Liberal Party but all members of the community. The Liberal Party has always been a party that sought to reduce taxation. How can a Liberal government betray their members by imposing a so-called debt levy? The government is trying to create a false impression that there is a debt problem when there is not. Australia's public social expenditure is less than half of the average of the OECD. Now, more than ever, we need to unite all Australians and oppose this sham budget, make it an election budget for the government and allow the people to vote on it. That is what democracy is all about.

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

I wish to make it clear that no government ever wants to have to introduce a difficult budget, but a responsible government realises when it is necessary and acts accordingly. For six years the Labor government engaged in the biggest spending binge in our nation's history. They saddled Australia with a $123 billion deficit and a national debt on the way to reaching $667 billion in 10 years—the fastest deterioration in debt in dollar terms and as a share of GDP in modern Australian history. Every one of Labor's governments since Federation has left Australia's public finances in worse shape than they inherited, but never have we faced conditions as perilous as the conditions we face today. Once again, it falls to a coalition government to clean up Labor's mess and pay off their bill.

We all have to live within our means. Governments are not an exception. Putting government expenditure on a credit card, like the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments did, mortgages our future and transfers the economic pain onto our children and grandchildren. I strongly believe that it is immoral to shackle future generations with debt because of the incompetence of Labor governments which cannot keep their economic house in order.

The 2014-15 federal budget makes the tough but necessary decisions to put government finances on a more sustainable footing so that Australians can all share in prosperity and not crushing indebtedness into the future. This budget is a key component of the Abbott government's Economic Action Strategy, and it calls on everyone and every business to contribute, to join or grow the workforce, to boost productivity and to help build a stronger economy with more investment.

This budget takes responsible steps to strengthen our economy, promoting jobs, growth, infrastructure and education. The Infrastructure Growth Package will take the government's transport investment to $50 billion by 2019-20. As a result, total infrastructure investment from Commonwealth, state and local government, as well as the private sector, will build to over $125 billion by 2019-20.

The government are expanding opportunities for more people to study through our reforms to higher education. Australian universities will be able to compete with the best in the world by being given the freedom to innovate, a greater ability to invest in world-class research and the capacity to respond to the needs of students and business. Education is our fourth-largest export after coal, gold and iron ore. Our universities have been held back and are starting to be outdone by our neighbouring countries. Many fewer students are coming to Australia, and therefore billions of dollars annually are being removed from our economy. The government's education plans will see that our universities become competitive with those in the United States and Europe.

I would like to point out that, contrary to the scaremongering by Labor and the Greens, the coalition has not cut any funding to schools. In fact, we have increased funding to schools by $1.2 billion in the forward estimates after Labor snuck it out in the lead-up to the last election so they could hide the true state of their budget. The $80 billion alluded to by Labor was never in their budget. It was a pie-in-the-sky pipedream of funding that Australia could never afford because of Labor's poor and reckless fiscal mismanagement. Labor hid this $80 billion beyond the forward estimates so it never had to be written down in any budget papers and was never committed to by their government. It is disappointing that so many were deceived by these empty promises. Australian schools are $1.3 billion better off under the coalition. We are increasing funding in line with CPI and enrolments after the 2017 school year.

The coalition government is investing in our future health with the world's largest medical research endowment fund, the $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund. This means that Australia can continue to advance world-leading medical research projects, attract and retain first-class researchers like Professor Ian Frazer and deliver improved health and medical outcomes for all Australians.

This government has an earn-or-learn philosophy, where young people with a work capacity will be required to work for the dole. Otherwise, they can choose to learn, studying a now uncapped tertiary education course or undertaking an apprenticeship, which can now be put on HECS, with an additional $5,500 allowed for the tools of their trade. Businesses will receive up to $10,000 for employing workers older than 50 who have been on income support for six months or more, meaning that there will be stronger incentives to hire older workers.

For veterans, the government are delivering on our commitment to fairly index the Defence Force Retirement Benefits Scheme and the Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefits Scheme.

However, the budget repair does require everyone to do their part. Family payments will be changed to target payments to those who need it most. Eligibility will be tightened on family tax benefit part B to those families where their primary income is under $100,000, as opposed to the $150,000 it was previously.

There are no changes to the pension supplement in the 2014-15 budget. The pension supplement will continue to be paid to eligible pensioners. Age pensioners will also continue to receive the energy supplement, formerly the clean energy supplement, even after the carbon tax is scrapped. The coalition government is honouring its commitment to make no changes to the age pension during this term of government. From September 2017, the government will link pension increases to inflation.

There seems to be a lot of speculation and misinformation about the eventual increase to the pension age. It is a sign of a healthy, strong nation that Australians are increasingly living longer lives. An Australian woman born today can expect to live for 85 years, and an Australian male can expect to live for around 81 years. When our pension and welfare system was introduced it was a very different story, with life expectancy of 59 years for women and 52 years for men. This is why we need to take a good look at how to make our age pension system strong for all our futures.

The government understands the challenges facing older Australians. Many seniors have not benefited from a lifetime of superannuation, and for many the age pension is a wage replacement. Changes announced to the age pension will not start until 2017. This is a continuation of the Labor government's policy, which had already increased the pension age to 67 by 1 July 2023. This government will continue this growth and increase the age pension age to 70 by 1 July 2035.

The family home will not be included in the pension means test. All pension assets test and income test thresholds will be fixed for three years from 1 July 2017. Maintaining these thresholds will not lead to any reduction in the rate of the pension. From 1 September 2017, the government will link pension increases only to inflation.

The coalition government is honouring its commitment to self-funded retirees to index income thresholds to the consumer price index for the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. This means that even more retirees will be eligible for the benefits of the Commonwealth concession card. This change means that modest variations in income will not affect eligibility and will reduce uncertainty for people in this group. The threshold did not increase under the last six years of the Labor government. The Commonwealth Seniors Health Card income test will include the income from superannuation from 1 July 2015. This is in line with the income test already applied for the age pension. All current holders of the Seniors Health Card will be grandfathered, meaning they will not be affected by the change. The benefits of the seniors card currently include and will continue to include lower Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme medicine costs, lower general practitioner appointment costs and lower out-of-hospital medicine costs.

I wish to make it clear that, with regard to the state and local government concessions, these are provided by state, territory and local governments for state and local services such as public transport, utilities costs and local government rates. The concession amounts vary between each state. Previously, the Commonwealth provided a relatively small proportion—approximately 10 per cent—of the overall funding directly to the states and territories to offset the costs of these concessions. The Commonwealth does not and never has provided the assistance directly to the concession card holders. State and territory concessions are the responsibility of the respective state or territory government. The changes announced in the budget will mean state and territory governments fully fund their concessions in the future. The Victorian state government has already said that they would match the original Commonwealth contribution.

To assist in paying down Labor's deficit and the $1 billion per month we are paying in interest on the debt they left, there will be a three-year temporary budget repair levy. It will, from July 2014, be payable by individuals with a taxable income above $180,000 at a rate of two per cent. The levy will raise an estimated $3.1 billion over the forward estimates period and will ensure higher income Australians contribute to the budget repair.

The coalition is determined to deliver an ambitious infrastructure program. The government will secure funding for additional road infrastructure by reintroducing twice-yearly indexation of fuel to CPI from 1 August 2014. In difficult budget circumstances, this is the responsible way to immediately start building the productivity-boosting roads Australia needs, and this will be linked, and protected by legislation.

The coalition budget will take steps to put health spending growth on a sustainable path. All Australians will need to make a greater contribution to the cost of their own health care. While continuing to support the most vulnerable in the community, government spending must be targeted to those most in need. The reforms this government is making will ensure all Australians have access to world-class health care and affordable medicines. Every dollar of savings from health expenditure reforms in this budget will be invested in a new, capital-protected, Medical Research Future Fund until it reaches $20 billion.

From 1 July 2015, previously bulk-billed patients can expect to contribute $7 towards the cost of standard GP consultations and out-of-hospital pathology and imaging services, meaning not more than $70 per annum in total across all services.

The PBS safety net for all patients will be increased from 1 January 2015. A general patient and their family will now pay an expected $145 more to reach the safety net, after which they can purchase medicine at the concessional rate. A patient with a concession card and their family will pay an expected $61.80 more to reach the safety net, after which they can receive free medicines. Currently, the government spends almost $10 billion a year on providing Australians with medicines on the PBS.

It is quite clear that our government have inherited a budget position that is unsustainable. There is a strong case for change. Health is a key area of spending growth. Health expenditure is currently 4.1 per cent of GDP, but the Productivity Commission recently estimated that, without changes to government policy, over time this would rise to seven per cent.

In particular, high growth in spending on Medicare and public hospitals is projected to place the budget under increasing pressure. Medicare levy and Medicare levy surcharge revenue will not be enough to offset the increasing cost of health care. The combined revenue from these sources is less than 20 per cent of total Commonwealth health spending.

Advances in medical technology mean that demand for medicines and health services is expected to grow for all age groups. Demand is also expected to grow faster, as Australia's ageing population increasingly relies on the health system for care. Between 2010 and 2050, the number of people aged 65 to 84 is expected to more than double and those aged 85 and over to more than quadruple. Given these pressures, government spending on many health programs will continue to grow at an unsustainable rate, unless fundamental changes are made.

I would like to touch on the government's plan for foreign aid. In psychology 'behaviour' is defined as irrational if an action continues to be repeated despite its repeated failure to achieve the desired outcome. On this definition, aspects of our foreign aid budget have, for many years, been irrational.

Despite many millions of dollars in Australian aid to address key development indicators, such as literacy rates, infant mortality, life expectancy and real income per capita, they are in many cases deteriorating. While this has started to turn around in recent years, we have known for decades about our delivery shortcomings. In the light of inherent failures, many advocated for a more interventionist aid policy on our part. While this view may have had popular appeal in the media, it would have had serious adverse implications for our relationship with aid recipients, including Pacific island countries and even Indonesia.

This is why it is vital for our foreign minister to continue her efforts to improve the efficiency of our foreign aid program, realising that success should not be determined on dollars spent, but rather on actual results on the ground.

This budget ensures a sustainable pathway, while ensuring affordability and fairness. Yes, it is a tough budget, but it is the budget that Australia needs. It is the right and responsible action to take if we are to have a stronger, more sustainable future which will benefit all Australians.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the weeks leading up to the budget, a conservative Treasurer—not just any Treasurer but a conservative Treasurer—Joe Hockey, started talking about the year 2050. For a moment, I thought we might be about to hear something quite interesting. There are so many countries to our north and around the world that are actively building their nations for long-term growth and prosperity. There are happily talking in decades, even 50-year plans, in terms of their education and infrastructure spends. We need to be considering our long-term objectives. Much of the talk about the budget challenge, the actual challenge—that is, the talk from economists, not the political spin of the government—is in the changes in the world. Growth and increasing sophistication of our neighbours, new competition coming from nations as they develop, not just low-skilled manufacturing jobs but competition for higher skilled jobs, tourism, education, services, innovation, R&D, leaps in technology, challenges in climate change and change itself are at a speed which is unimaginable. We will not have the historical advantages of high skills and technological superiority for long. The advantages that we have had will slip away unless we act. Every year that we fritter away our talent for the new is a year lost.

Unfortunately, when the Treasurer was looking forward to 2050, it was only to demand that we cut pensions. He looked ahead and did not see the challenges of climate change and the possibilities of renewable energy. He did not see an explosion of innovation and skills among emerging economies, with all the opportunities and threats that brings. He did not see the inevitable slowing down of Australia's advantage in mining. He did not see the real need to innovate in agriculture. He did not see the opportunities that grow an economy. He saw only threats and the simplest of threats. He saw a threat to the government's bottom line: if the government did nothing for the next 35 years and if the trajectory remained the same, the bottom line would be in serious difficulty.

He showed an extraordinary lack of imagination and in almost every case, every area he dealt with, he made the problem worse. He tried to fix his own bottom line by attacking the bottom line of families and households around the country and those that are least able to sustain such an attack. He thinks there are too many people on the pension or that there will be by 2050. Well, if you think there are too many people on the pension, one of things you can do is try to reduce the number of people that need it by 2050. Superannuation, for example, is one solution. But no, they slowed the rate of the increase in superannuation and, in doing so, have made it more likely that by 2050 people will need the pension And then they cut it. They make it more likely that you will need the pension and then they cut it.

We remember what CPI adjustments were like in the 10 years of the Howard government. Last time we had CPI adjustments, we saw pensioners struggling in the last years of the Howard government and it is hard to believe that this change in indexation is a permanent change. In 10 years' time we will once again see pensioners struggling and there will be remedial action without doubt.

He saw too many young people unemployed but rather than help them get work, he cut the programs that helped them get jobs. He cut Youth Connections, for example, and industry partnerships. And then, having made it less likely that they would get jobs, he made it harder for them to get unemployment benefits by requiring that they wait six months for Newstart. Undoubtedly, these changes for people under 30 and the changes in the pensions will lead to a greater need for social housing. Did we see an increase in social housing funding? No. We saw an increase in the need for it and we saw a cut to affordable housing. We saw public transport and infrastructure projects all around the country cut, making it more likely that you would have to drive and then they raised the cost of petrol—not good for most of us but good for the government because if you drive, you have to pay. It is good for the government's bottom line but bad for families and households.

They were concerned about the rising cost of hospitals but, rather than try and find ways to have fewer people need those hospitals, they have actually cut preventative health funding. They have cut $703,000 from Holroyd City Council's health programs, for example. Holroyd has: incredibly high obesity rates of 19 per cent; 52 per cent of people are overweight; and 10 per cent of the population of Holroyd has diabetes. They are preventable illnesses but they have cut funding to preventative health and they are cutting funding to the preventative health agency. In doing these things, they are making it more likely that you will need to go to a doctor and when you do need to go to a doctor, they hit you with a $7 per visit GP tax.

They have deregulated university fees so that there will be more places. But, in doing so, they have made it less likely that people will be able to afford them. They have done it, supposedly, to raise standards but it will undoubtedly hollow out our newer and our regional universities and lead to a drop in standards in some universities. But, hey, it improves the government's bottom line and that seems to be what this conservative Treasurer cares most about. If you graduate from university as a doctor, for example, you will have higher fees with a bigger debt. You will find that the Abbott-Hockey government has cut funding to clinical placements so you will be less likely to get a job that you trained for. It is not such a problem for the government because they made it easier for people to bring in people on 457 visas, so we will have more foreign doctors coming in. But if you trained as a doctor, you will be less likely to get a job. And then, of course, every year that you do not get a job, there will be a six per cent compound interest on your HECS so your debt will go up—good for the government, more money for the government but more debt for the community. Less debt for the government means more for the community. It is almost a transfer of debt.

They do not like debt, they say. They rail against debt but they have cut funding for a tool allowance for apprentices and instead brag in parliament about providing them with $20,000 of debt. Take away the funding for tools; give them debt instead. Debt is bad for government. It is really good, this government thinks, if they transfer it to families and to the community. If you put off having children until your 30s because you have been carrying the extra HECS debt that the government has given you, you will discover in your 60s, when you are eight to 10 years off Abbott's new retirement age, that your late 20-something children have lost their jobs and are moving home because they are not eligible for Newstart. You really will have to work til you are 70 under this government's plans for you.

If we prosper in 2050, it will not be on the back of cuts to vulnerable families in our communities; it will be on the back of people born today who go to school today, get a university education and graduate. It will be highly skilled people that will drive this economy in 2050.

We will prosper on the back of two great strengths: our minds and our diversity. We have the world within us. There is not a language we do not speak. We had the stuff in the ground in the era when that was important and we have an extraordinary capacity to think and innovate at a time when that will be the driver of growth. Coal will not be king in 2050. It is assets that are created from the mind that will drive prosperity.

We have to ensure that our young people and those to come have the best possible opportunity to own part of the new economies growing through, for example, action on climate change, through renewable energy, through all those technologies—yet the government cuts that. The government cuts the possibility of Australia being at the forefront of the exponentially growing field of renewable energy—knowing full well that every year delayed is a lost opportunity to cash in on the new and raises the cost of acting on climate change. We have to ensure that our young people, from the day of their birth, have the best opportunity to develop their minds, their capacity and their strengths, yet the government cuts funding to early childhood support, it slashes money to schools, it rips money out of universities and it reduces the number of people who will be able to access university.

The world will be connected in 2050 in ways that we cannot imagine. We need the best cutting-edge communications technology and we need it now—so that our young inventors and entrepreneurs can own the very way that things will be done in the future. Copper will not be king in 2050; copper is not king now. To pull back from investments in things like renewable energy and fibre to the home puts this country back. It sets us back and it does not serve well the people who will drive this country's prosperity in 2050. We need serious investment in R&D and innovation and funds to commercialise the intellectual property of Australians. Yet the government cuts billions from innovation, R&D and science and withdraws the very funds that Commercialisation Australia should be using to assist Australians to commercialise their work.

This government is about the government's bottom line today. It is not about Australians, it is not about growth and it is not about prosperity. The government protects its bottom line by tearing away at the bottom line of Australians now and in the future. You think there are too many pensioners? You stop them from finding ways to avoid needing the pension, then you cut the pension. Do you think there are too many young unemployed? You make it more difficult for them to get a job, then you cut support through Newstart. You cut funding to public transport, making it more necessary for people to drive, then you raise the cost of petrol. You deregulate university fees, then you make it harder for people to afford those fees. You cut funding to preventative health, then you charge people more to go to the doctor.

But perhaps the biggest contradiction in all of this, in everything we have heard from the government in the last few weeks since the budget, is on the issue of debt itself. They claim that they have made these terribly harsh cuts—which they accept are harsh—right across the Australian landscape. They claim they have done this to fix what they call the 'debt and deficit disaster'. Unfortunately for them, anybody who actually pays attention to this—and I know a number of economists have—knows that they have not actually reduced the projected debt and deficit. In fact, the 2014-15 debt is actually higher than in the pre-election projections. The debt in 2017-18 is also higher than was projected. In fact, the projections through PEFO were for a sliver of a surplus. Remember how they used to get up and say that there would be a sliver of a surplus in 2017-18? Now there is a sliver of a deficit. So the debt in 2014-15 is bigger than the PEFO projections and the level in 2017-18 is also bigger—and so is the deficit.

The reason I go back to PEFO rather than MYEFO is a simple one. When Joe talks about MYEFO, as in the midyear economic forecast, he is really talking about Joe's EFO. It is based on figures that the Treasurer has had a hand in. He increased spending by $10 billion between the election and the midyear economic forecast, or Joe's EFO. He increased it by $10 billion and changed a whole range—

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker—

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

Order! The member will resume her seat.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I am not prepared to accept a question.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker: please ask the member for Parramatta to refer to the Treasurer by his correct title.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was referring to the mid-year economic forecast as Joe-EFO; I was not referring to the Treasurer at all, and I have referred to the Treasurer by his title for the entire speech.

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

The member for Parramatta has the call.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The reason I choose PEFO, the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook, is that it was used the last time the Treasury and the Department of Finance actually considered the finances of the country and produced the projections without the influence of the Treasurer. I am not convinced that treasurers do have that much influence on the Treasury but the Treasurer Joe Hockey seems to think they did in the Labor years, so I am assuming that they do for him now.

Just before the election, PEFO was done in a period where the government and the opposition were separate and Treasury and Finance put together the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook. Again, when you look at PEFO, the deficit for 2014-15 is actually higher than PEFO. They have increased the deficit. You can see what they have done. They have cut billions from the vulnerable through cuts to family payments, through the GP tax, through tax increases that they promised they would not make et cetera. But they have spent it in other ways. There is $20 billion on paid parental leave. They reversed the tax cuts for the high-income earners through superannuation, so there is quite a bit there. They have given enormous tax cuts to the miners through abolishing the minerals resource rent tax and of course enormous tax cuts to the biggest polluters if they manage to abolish the price on carbon. There are quite a few there.

Essentially, they have cut from the poorest section of the community and given back to areas that they obviously see as a priority. This is a clear example of a twisted priority, that you would cut so much from the vulnerable in society for no improvement in the 'debt and deficit disaster' as they call it at all. In fact, it is worse than it was in PEFO. So every time the Treasurer gets up and talks about these harsh measures and 'We all needed it, we had to do this—we had to cut $5,000 from single-income families earning $50,000 because we had to put our budget back on track,' remember there is no improvement in the budget position because of these harsh measures to the most vulnerable in our society. These broken promises—promise after promise after promise broken—for no gain in the financial position of this country. For zero—in fact, slightly worse, a 'sliver worse', to use the words that they used when they were in opposition. It is a fraud, it is a broken promise, it is based on lies and it is a deception of the highest order.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always entertaining to listen to members opposite in their various states of denial in relation to the budget. I urge the member for Parramatta to refer to today's editorial in The Australian Financial Review headed 'PBO confirms the budget problem'. Perhaps the member for Parramatta would also like to read the attached article 'Budget crisis is real, says PBO.' It goes on:

In remarks that effectively endorse government warnings that left unchecked gross debt would balloon to $667 billion, Parliamentary Budget Officer Phil Bowen said it was time to begin the return to surplus to protect the economy against future crises.

And just as those opposite did as they built up the accumulated debt and deficit, and accumulated a mess for the coalition to clean up, the member walks out of the chamber laughing. I encourage all members from the opposition to read this article. It goes on:

It is time to start coming out of [debt and deficit] otherwise the longer you leave it the more exposed you become and the harder it is to wind it back. If you just continued on the trajectory of payments and revenues prior to the budget net debt is forecast to grow rapidly. I think at the highest rate in the OECD.

I do not think that is a fiction at all, but neither am I saying that we have an immediate emergency. And I recognise the Parliamentary Budget Office's Mr Bowen for his comments. Surely we are currently at a very low level relative to the rest of the developed world, but frankly we do not want to find ourselves where the rest of the world is. We have to have a buffer. One of the reasons we came through the global financial crisis so well was because we started with assets.

How did we start with those assets? Could it have been through years of good financial management by the coalition, by Liberals and nationals in government? Then we had the Labor Party in office, racking up year after year of deficits, despite promises by the former Treasurer, the member for Lilley and despite the repeated promises of a surplus which never eventuated, and now it is up to the side of the House to clean up the mess. I urge those members opposite to acquaint themselves with the facts, to stop being in this process of denial and let the coalition get on with the job of cleaning up the mess.

There are two other matters I want to raise today in relation to the Appropriation Bills. One is a far more bipartisan initiative which I am sure the Deputy Speaker is aware of. It is the formation of the new Parliamentary Friends of Road Safety group. It is a friendship group which has the support of me as a co-chair and Senator Alex Gallaher and has been initiated by members from both the House of Reps and the Senate and has received strong support in the six or eight weeks since its formation. The new parliamentary friendship group has an aim to elevate the issue of road safety to a new level within the Commonwealth and to help provide national leadership on issues relating to road trauma. One of my key concerns in joining the group and agree to be the co-chair is a disproportionate number of rural and regional road users, motorists, pedestrians and cyclists, who continue to die or be seriously injured on our regional highways and our local road networks. It remains an enormous challenge for us as a community and at all levels of government to address the road trauma which continues to exist.

I acknowledge that increased enforcement activities and improved driver behaviour are important. We must also recognise in this place that investing more funds in roads and building a safe road network is a critical aspect in reducing the incidence of road trauma in our community. The research that underpins the National Road Safety Strategy found that 50 per cent of the anticipated reduction in road fatalities in the future would come from building safer roads. That is consistent with the earlier work by the Australian Road Assessment Program, which argued that building safer roads had the capacity to save more lives than the combined impacts of improved driver behaviour and increased law enforcement put together. So I am very keen to work across the party divide with the Parliamentary Friends of Road Safety group in this coming term of parliament and I encourage other members who are keen to participate in a bipartisan manner for projects to reduce road trauma right across Australia in the years ahead.

The first event which was organised by the friendship group involved our public support for an event called Fatality Free Friday. Fatality Free Friday provided an opportunity for members and senators to sign the Fatality Free Friday pledge. We had many parliamentarians attending on that day. By taking the pledge the members in this place were joining a large group of Australian people taking the pledge online. I checked this morning and more than 80,000 people had signed the pledge in relation to road safety. By taking the pledge what you are doing is promising that on Friday, 30 May, this coming Friday, you will remind your family, friends and workmates to take extra care on the roads. You will put your lights on for safety. You will be mindful to drive safely and follow the road rules. You will not speed are not drink and drive. You will take care at level crossings. You will slow down in the wet and drive to suit the conditions. You will not tailgate other drivers and you will look as far ahead as possible. Your will wear your seat belt. You will not use your mobile phone while driving. You will set a good example to your passengers by driving calmly and safely, and you will take care as a pedestrian when crossing the road or street. I must say that that list of things that we pledged to do only a matter of two weeks ago is pretty much common sense, but I guarantee you that every member of this place and everyone who happens to be listening tonight would have broken one or two of those the last time they drove. It does help to remind us that some of the road safety initiatives really come down to common sense and come down to us repeating appropriate behaviour time after time.

Fatality Free Friday is just one day and we acknowledge that the road trauma issues in our nation will not be solved on Monday. But it does serve as a reminder. Since its inception in 2007 the campaign has continued to expand its operation and is now recognised that Australia's only national community-based road safety program. It has successfully fostered community ownership for complex road safety issues and encourages those who can make a significant difference in reducing road trauma. As I indicated, this campaign is more than just about a single day. Our target is to have a fatality free Friday this week but ultimately we are aiming for a longer term change in community response. Last year's Fatality Free Friday event was a great success nationally and the organisers would like to thank everyone for their support and also encourage them to be supportive in the future.

It is an alarming fact that since records began in 1925 there have been 180,000 deaths on Australia's roads. That is a staggering figure—180,000 deaths since 1925. However, we need to take some heart that road trauma has declined considerably in the past 40 years and we have been making some improvements.

The national road toll fell from 3,798 in 1970 to 1,192 in 2013. That is quite a remarkable achievement over the passage of about 40 years. We have seen the toll drop from almost 4,000 to about 1,200. I recognise that a whole range of measures have led to that, and road safety is recognised primarily, perhaps, as a state responsibility. States have responsibility for funding, planning, designing and operating our road network, and for managing vehicle registration and driver licensing, and for regulating and enforcing road user behaviour. But there is a federal responsibility as well, and I think that is why it is so important that we have the Parliamentary Friends of Road Safety. The federal role includes regulating safety standards for new vehicles—an incredibly important opportunity for us to reduce the road toll. The federal responsibilities extend to allocating infrastructure resources, including for safety measures across our national highway and local road networks.

The federal government, under the coalition, has continued many initiatives that were supported by the previous Labor government. It also decided to continue to fund the successful keys2drive program, which was in danger of losing funding under the previous government. The Roads to Recovery model is continuing under this government. It will have expanded funding, which I think is a great initiative. The Black Spot Programme will continue and be expanded into the future. The national network of funding priorities will continue.

I am pleased to acknowledge the Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, the member for Mayo, Mr Briggs, who announced only a matter of days ago that the coalition government would continue to provide funding for ANCAP, the Australasian New Car Assessment Program, which works on improving road and vehicle safety. I had the opportunity, as the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport, to work very closely with ANCAP, and we should be very proud of the work they do. The 2014-15 federal budget commits $1.1 million to support ANCAP in its work over the next two years. ANCAP is the leading independent vehicle safety advocate in Australia. When any members have the opportunity—and perhaps we will seek to organise this for our parliamentary friendship group—to see ANCAP in operation, the crashing of a test vehicle is quite confronting. It is quite sobering to see a brand-new vehicle smashed into a concrete block. Then the researchers get to work on making the measurements and checking how the occupants of that vehicle would have fared in an accident. If you get to see that crash testing in person, it rapidly reminds you of your responsibilities on the road, perhaps unlike anything else. So I am very pleased that the assistant minister has been able to announce that funding commitment. I am very pleased that ANCAP will continue to do its very good work across Australia in the two years ahead.

In relation to the budget measures and road safety, I would like to acknowledge the work of the minister himself, the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of The Nationals, Warren Truss, who has provided for ongoing funding through the Roads to Recovery Programme, which will see in my electorate of Gippsland something in the order of $6 million made available for local road funding initiatives in the 2013-14 period. This ongoing commitment to Roads to Recovery is something that the parliament can be part of. It is a program that was initiated many years ago under the previous Howard coalition government. It was continued to be funded under the Labor Party during its time in government. It is one of the few programs I can think of which has survived the change of government and has not had its name changed, which is quite an achievement in itself. There is a recognition across the party lines that Roads to Recovery is an important issue and works well in providing local governments with the opportunity to fund important local road priorities.

In my electorate I have had the opportunity to meet with many of the councillors and to inspect some of the programs which are underway, many of which have a safety aspect to them. I am very pleased to see that the local shires are working to improve road safety on their own road networks.

Also in the budget from a road safety perspective is $565 million to fix dangerous and accident prone sections of local roads and streets through the Black Spots Programme. There is an additional $100 million for that program in 2015-16 and 2017-18. Again, it is an important initiative because it addresses one of the fundamental challenges of improving the actual safety of the road environment. As I said at the outset and as I mentioned through the Fatality Free Friday initiative, driver behaviour enforcement measures are important but in the complex equation of road trauma and improving road safety we cannot be shy as a state government or as a federal government in recognising that the investments we make in road safety and infrastructure help to improve the outcomes for drivers, their passengers and other road users.

In addition to the Black Spot Program, the coalition government, under the stewardship of the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, will be providing $300 million for its new bridges renewal program, which again has a safety aspect to it. For many of our regional councils, it is very expensive to try to replace or repair local bridges, and what we have seen in many parts of rural Australia is load limits being placed on those bridges. A load limit placed on a bridge inevitably has a productivity impact but also has a safety impact. It means that things like local fire tankers cannot necessarily access all parts of the community until the bridge is repaired or replaced. So the $300 million for the bridges renewal program, operating in much the same way as the Roads to Recovery program, will be very welcome across regional Australia, particularly since it is going to require the states and the shires to match that funding, so we will leverage off the $300 million from the Commonwealth and provide $600 million worth of work.

In my own electorate of Gippsland, I was very pleased to see that the federal minister visited, met with me and discussed the importance of a number of road safety initiatives in the Gippsland region. The budget provides for the ongoing funding for the Princes Highway duplication between Traralgon and Sale. It is a program that has had bipartisan support throughout its history. There has been $175 million allocated over the past five years, a mixture of Commonwealth and state funding. The next stage involves $40 million under the new coalition government. There is a genuine desire within the community, and there was a recognition by the minister himself during a visit in January that funding will need to be forthcoming for future stages. In the order of $250 million will be required to finish that duplication work between Traralgon and Sale. I am also very pleased that in the budget there is some funding for the Princes Highway east of Sale, in the order of $11 million of combined funding from state and federal budget commitments, to install three overtaking lanes, which will have a significant benefit, again, in terms of road safety on the Princes Highway in my electorate.

I have tried to illustrate through my comments here tonight that road safety is a complex equation. It is very satisfying that we now have a Parliamentary Friends of Road Safety group working in this place. I look forward to working closely with Senator Gallacher and the other members of the friendship group as we endeavour to promote and strive for national leadership on what is a very difficult area of public policy. It is not just about driver behaviour, although that is important. It is not just about enforcement, but again that is important. And it is not just about improving the safety of the road environment, although, as I have illustrated with my comments tonight, that is also important. The efforts to improve the safety of the vehicles on our roads are another critical factor. So it is a very complex equation, and it is terrific to see that this term of parliament will have members from both sides working in a spirit of bipartisanship to address the horrific road toll we have in Australia. Still in excess of 1,100 people died on our roads in 2013. We have made some improvements in recent years, but the challenge is ahead of all of us to continue to strive towards a toll of zero in the future.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to start speaking on these appropriation bills by reading from part of an email I received from a constituent just this afternoon. As the member for Richmond would know, when you start receiving large amounts of email expressing very similar sentiment and your mobile offices and other interactions with your community start saying the same thing, you know that, broadly, this is the opinion of the people whom you were elected to represent. I will just read from part of this. This is from a lady named Fay who lives in Lalor Park. It says: 'Thank you for your efforts on behalf of those in your electorate, most of whom will be adversely affected by this cruel and unnecessary budget. Please keep pushing the government on this and other aspects of the budget, especially all cuts to health and education and also welfare changes. I truly feel that this budget, if it gets through, will create a very divided society in Australia, with a much larger gap between the rich and the struggling. They appear to be keen to squash the poor and push the middle class downwards as well, while shaking hands with the rich and making life sweeter for them.' That is the view of a real constituent whom I represent and, as I said, many of my constituents feel very similarly, and so they should.

I firmly believe that, when you examine all the evidence and all the impacts of this budget—and I am not the only one to come to this conclusion—this is an anti-Western-Sydney budget. I want to focus on the cuts and the impact of those on the people whom I represent, including Fay, and also to touch on the areas of citizenship and multiculturalism and the communications space. I have been out and about in the electorate of Greenway, from one end to the other. It is a very diverse electorate with lots of new housing estates and lots of established areas. It is one of the youngest electorates in Australia. The message is very clear that constituents feel betrayed by a government which has made it clear that nothing and no-one is off limits when it comes to the most vulnerable in our community.

It is a budget which punishes low- and middle-income earners, as Fay has said, and I want to highlight that you do not have to take this from me. I am looking at an item that appeared in the Daily Telegraph which ranked electorates hit by measures in the budget. It looked, for example, at the number of bulk-billed services, the amount of family tax benefit and youth unemployment rates. Right up there throughout, when you look through the list, are the electorates of Western Sydney: McMahon, Blaxland, Macarthur, Chifley, Watson, Fowler, Parramatta, Werriwa and Greenway. On all of those criteria, these are the electorates that will be hit particularly hard, and Greenway being on that list is something that my constituents are acutely aware of, as am I.

I want to point out that before the election the now Prime Minister was very keen to talk up a big gain in Western Sydney. In just one of many examples, as reported in the Daily Telegraph on 28 August, when he went out for a leaders' debate in Western Sydney, he said:

I look forward to the debate and talking about our positive plans for the people of western Sydney…

Well, he did not mention the cuts. He did not mention the impact of a Medicare co-payment. He did not mention the impact of increased fuel prices. He did not mention all of these things. So it is no wonder that a key word which comes up when I go out in my electorate is 'deception'. These are people, constituents, who heard these promises, including promises he even made the night before the election—standing in Western Sydney—no cuts to health, no cuts to education and all the rest of the promises that are gradually being broken one by one.

Turning to some of the specific examples, one of the ones that is really irking people more than anything is the attack on Medicare. Despite promising no new taxes and no cuts to health, this government is slugging local families with a GP tax. It stands to hit Western Sydney families harder than anywhere else, costing families nearly $100 million every year. I think it is up to the Prime Minister to explain why he thinks families in the western suburbs of Sydney should bear this. When you look at the bulk-billing rates, for example, of the electorates Australia-wide that will be hardest hit by this new GP tax, Greenway is again right up there with one of the highest bulk-billing rates in all of Australia at 97.53 per cent. So we are going to be particularly hard hit by this new tax, and it will hit everyone. For the first time we are going to have people, such as pensioners and concessional patients, charged for services that they would have previously received without a co-payment.

On top of that, this government has broken its promise to steer clear of cuts to Medicare Locals. We have no certainty for the Medicare Local system. WentWest, the Western Sydney Medicare Local, has done some extraordinary work under Labor in addressing issues such as chronic disease—diabetes, cardiopulmonary disease and many other chronic conditions—which end up costing so much more when prevention is not put first. What we are talking about here are front-line health workers providing services in crucial areas of primary health care and, as I said, the management of chronic and lifestyle diseases. If it is the case that Medicare Locals, such as WentWest, are eliminated, it will be in addition to this new GP tax which is going to be hitting the people of Western Sydney.

I want to also highlight one of the issues—and I know it probably does not make the front page too much—that is really raising the ire of the people I represent. It is the issue of young people being left to wither. They are not being supported when they find themselves in tough times and in a cycle of unemployment.

Western Sydney again is listed in most statistics as having a very high youth unemployment rate. I only have to look at some of the partnership brokers in the area who have been particularly hard hit. I would really appreciate an answer to some of these questions, and I hope to get them through the budget estimates process. With youth unemployment at unacceptably high levels, especially in Western Sydney, what evidence base was used to inform the government that axing all youth transition funding in the budget would actually be a saving into the future? There is no long-sightedness here when it comes to young people—when it comes to assisting youth to transition through school to employment, and, in turn, reducing the demand on social welfare, health and juvenile justice, as well as returning a dividend to the government in the long term by way of the taxes they will pay when they are actually employed. They see nothing, and I see nothing, in this budget which this government is doing to assist young people to gain practical, pre-employment work skills, experience and work placement so that they are ready for work when they leave school.

These are fundamental areas for assisting young people, especially young people who are at risk. I know that the member for Richmond represents many of these people. It is only through these programs that we can actually address these issues and, in the long term, assist young people to be involved in society and to have the meaningful experience that comes through work. The changes that are being brought through in this budget have not gone unnoticed by people who are concerned about young people. There is a whole generation of young people at risk of being lost as a result of this budget.

I want to also touch on the National Crime Prevention Fund. Speaking of Western Sydney, I noticed, as reported in The Guardian just recently, on Friday, 23 May, that the Prime Minister was in Western Sydney. Just to give you some quotes from that article:

Tony Abbott has attempted to draw a line under two weeks of budget controversy by declaring that the "watershed" economic plan included funding for a crime crackdown.

…   …   …

Making a law-and-order pitch, Abbott visited Campbelltown to highlight the allocation of $20m over the next 12 months to install new CCTV cameras and fund other safety projects around Australia.

He said the program—funded by seized proceeds of crime—was "an important element in our budget".

It is a sad fact that organisations which had been awarded funds from the National Crime Prevention Fund under the previous government in Blacktown were actually cut. One of them, COM4unity, was to be given a $270,662 grant to enhance a contemporary music program and expand the capacity of its SWITCH program; that was cut. Blacktown City Council had been going to receive nearly $200,000 to fund the installation of CCTV cameras in a hotspot area of Blacktown, the Patrick Street precinct between that Westpoint shopping centre and Blacktown railway station—that is gone too. I just find it incredible that this Prime Minister went to Western Sydney and spruiked what he termed the benefits of this budget, and crime prevention as being an essential element of it. Did something happen overnight to suddenly mean that Blacktown was no longer an area in need?

I would use COM4unity as an example of the positive things that can happen when the government and non-government sectors and members of the community and businesses get together to make a positive difference. This is a program supported by local businesses, the police, the council and, supposedly, the federal government. This program was making real inroads into turning young people's lives around. I will tell you this story to show why it drives me and my ethos in terms of policy initiatives in the multiculturalism space. After seeing some of the outcomes of COM4unity, I asked one of the young blokes who was involved in it a couple of years ago: 'How has this changed your life?' He had just finished a dance performance in front of a lot of people—one of the first times he had done that. I asked him, 'How has this program changed you?' And he said, 'Lady, if this was a year ago I would've been out the back stealing your car.' This is the kind of thing that turns young people's lives around. But it is not important enough, apparently, for this government to fund it. We can laud all of these crime-prevention grants that go to other areas, but Blacktown has been robbed of them—absolutely robbed.

I want to briefly turn to the area of communications. I especially want to talk about cuts to the SBS and also to the ABC. We know that, before the election, as I said, this Prime Minister said there would be: 'No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.' In Senate estimates earlier in the year, the managing director of the SBS could not guarantee that Abbott government cuts to the SBS would not affect SBS language services. He said:

… I would find it very difficult to imagine being able to absorb any material cuts without a change in services.

The SBS provides vital services to migrant communities, and these cuts in the budget will hurt these communities. Many migrant communities rely on ethnic-specific news and important language services, many of which are only provided by the SBS. As well, $33 million has been cut from multiculturalism in the budget. There is no detail given as to what programs will have their funding cut, what will be abolished completely and what programs, if any, will be safe and will continue to be funded. A lot of the multicultural programs funded by the government, and the many organisations that rely on these grants, are now bracing themselves because these cuts that we have already seen in this budget have created huge uncertainty in the multicultural services sector. They are already putting many critical programs and services at risk. Many organisations that rely on government funding work hard to build a cohesive Australia, often on very modest budgets, and the best way, as I said, that governments can help build harmonious and inclusive communities is by supporting initiatives like the Building Multicultural Communities Program, which unfortunately was axed by this government in December, or the Diversity and Social Cohesion Program. Cutting $33 million from important programs like these will have adverse effects on communities around Australia.

The Settlement Grants Program is not mentioned as an individual line item in the budget, so the budget does not say how it will be affected, but it is a fact that people rely on this program and the people who rely on it have been left in the dark by this government. Their future is uncertain as they await detail on whether the Settlement Grants Program will continue or if it will be abolished or if it will be changed. This government has not to date answered any questions on the status of the Settlement Grants Program. If this program has been scrapped, then traditional migrant resource centres will struggle to fund services to support new migrants in their transition to life in Australia, and ethnic community organisations will have a very similar fate. Humanitarian settlement services are also without specific line item mention but, again, newly arrived migrants rely heavily on this program to assist them in adjusting to their new life in Australia.

Making all these cuts that I have mentioned is not an efficient way to run a government—it is not an efficient way to ensure social cohesion in our community and to cater for young people. This is not the budget that Western Sydney needs. Western Sydney, as one of the fastest growing areas in Australia, needs support. This government needs to recognise that the big cost of living issues that they spruiked before the election are being betrayed in this budget.

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

This is a tough budget and one we would have preferred not to have had to deliver. The reality is that we have one of the highest rates of increase of spending and debt increase in the developed world. This projected trajectory cannot be maintained, and measures have to be put in place to reverse the trend and get the budget back under control. It is all very well for Labor to bleat about tough measures in the budget, but in most cases they are measures that have been forced on us as a result of the dire position regarding the projected trajectory of Commonwealth spending.

Having said that, there are aspects of the budget that I find troubling. First, I do not believe that we should have increased taxes—and, no, the GP co-payment is not a tax. The GP co-payment is something that I agree with as it will ensure that Medicare remains sustainable. One of the decisions I have real concerns about is buying joint strike fighters, or JSFs, for over $190 million a copy—over $100 million more than Defence is advising the minister and the Commonwealth. I was with the Defence Science and Technology Organisation when the decision was originally made, and the Air Operations Division had just worked up a methodology for comparing contenders. The analysis was never undertaken. The decision was made contrary to advice provided to the defence leadership group by experts in Defence as well is industry and academia. The agendum to the Defence Capability and Investment Committee of March 2002 clearly shows this.

The recommendation was not to proceed with the JSF for cost, capability and schedule reasons, in that there was significant risk of changes or lack of information on all counts. The advice of the DCIC was that the JSF would not be the most expensive option. That is ironic in the context of it being the most expensive fighter on the planet now. Despite expert advice given to the DCIC, Defence, in gung-ho fashion, recommended proceeding with the SDD phase of the JSF project.

I have to admit concern that senior officers who provide critical advice on capabilities that cost billions of dollars have no requirement to have a register of pecuniary interests, as politicians do. Indeed, I am aware of influence peddling by defence contractors with both Defence personnel and some journalists in the media, with all sorts of benefits provided. I believe we should implement a register of what largesse has been provided to senior Defence personnel by defence contractors. We also need to ensure that these personnel do not get jobs in the defence industry immediately they leave the services, gaining very cushy jobs following their retirement from the services. There are too many who get jobs with contractors where they have provided advice favouring that contractor's product. For transparency's sake, this must end.

All contenders that should have been part of a detailed analysis comparing contenders in the new air combat capability were 'switched off', to use Defence parlance, and all that has occurred since is that a watching brief has been maintained. The JSF has remained the solution despite huge blow-outs in cost, significant schedule slips and capability being redefined down. In fact, a Vietnam-era F4E Phantom out-accelerates, out-turns and has a higher speed than the JSF. Yet the current answer remains the JSF, despite the fact that we have seen the shape of threats in the J20 and the T50 from China and Russia-India respectively. These are stealth fighters in the F22 Raptor class, which will significantly overmatch the JSF.

In fact, despite the Lockheed Martin and Defence salesmanship of the JSF, it is not a true fifth-generation fighter. For fifth generation, the critical elements as defined by Lockheed Martin—before they changed the definition to force the JSF to fit the definition—were stealth, supercruise or the ability to cruise at supersonic speed without using thirsty afterburners, super manoeuvrability and sensor fusion. Some of the current European fighters better meet the definition than the JSF, which lacks two of those measures: supercruise and super manoeuvrability. These missing capabilities cannot be put into the design by modifications or upgrades. They are absent forever.

The term 'strike fighter' is also little understood. In globally accepted terminology, it would be a light bomber with some self-defence capability, and indeed that is what its design brief was, hence its initially only carrying two air-to-air missiles internally.

At a time of budget constraint, the JSF cheer squad, who are more interested in toys than anything else, are now pushing for a STOVL variant of the JSF for amphibious assault ships. There is no defined strategic requirement for this, no identified capability gap, just a wish by aficionados. This is no way to ensure that Australia's defence requirements are met and offer the best value for taxpayers' money.

The correct way to come up with the best defence force structure is, first, to define the strategic requirements, or what you expect the defence force to be able to achieve against known capabilities of strategic competitors or potential adversaries. The Howard government's 2000 defence white paper did this well, only to be ignored by the Defence leadership group at the time and replaced with their own agenda. From that, the next level down is to define the capabilities that will be required in order to achieve those requirements. In some cases, the difference may not be immediately obvious. Take World War II, where aircraft carriers more ably filled the capability requirement traditionally achieved by battleships. Thus the focus must be on capability, not platforms.

Once the capability requirements have been drafted, there should be consultation with industry. More particularly, there should be detailed analysis conducted to compare the various options for filling the capability gap—to compare the various capabilities and contenders. In this context, DSTO is critical. At a time when our Defence Force is undergoing a comprehensive restructure, we are at the same time significantly cutting funding to DSTO—at precisely the time this capability should be increased in order to save the taxpayer money.

In this context, the need for a dedicated science minister in order to achieve a coherent policy is critical. On one hand, we are setting up a huge medical research fund to massively increase medical research. How is this coherent policy when we have significant cuts to CSIRO, DSTO, ANSTO, the Australian Research Council and the Australian Institute of Marine Science. One of the advisers even suggested that a physicist working at CSIRO who lost their job could get one in medical research! I know that some people think that 'physicist' and 'physician' sound similar, but this is too much.

There are a lot of questions with this policy. Is the funding to medical research going to be general or specifically targeted at cancer, Alzheimer's and the like? How are we going to source those researchers? They do not grow on trees and the training required is long and arduous. Very long lead times are required. What is this saying to those might want to become mathematicians, physicists or chemists—hard sciences that are already in crisis?

As an aside, the PM asked me to draw up recommendations on science to improve the area, saying that, of those in parliament, I was the most interested in science. I consulted widely and I worked hard on my recommendations, which I presented a few months ago. They are now up on my website for anyone who wishes to see them—and please feel free to comment to me. Unfortunately, I see no evidence to suggest an improvement in science policy. In fact the reverse would appear to be the case. Not only are we not putting in place policy to improve science but we are putting disincentives in place for people who might consider careers in the hard sciences and maths.

I am not saying that the likes of CSIRO, ANSTO and so on should not be subject to review and restructure. Far from it, I believe there are issues that need to be addressed. Once again I refer to people to my website for some suggestions in that regard. However, it is foolish to have such a policy disincentive while at the same time massively incentivising medical research. This is not just about people's careers, important as that is, or about taxpayers, who have a huge interest in the money they have spent to train this cohort of scientists; this is about our national interest and how to maximise economic and other benefits to our nation.

There appears to be a lack of understanding of how science works. Many advances, including in the medical field, are not the result of directed research but arise out of more fundamental research that was not directed. Think of some of these advances. X-rays, CT scans and radiotherapy for cancer came from fundamental physics—looking at atomic structure. Similarly, magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, which was previously called nuclear magnetics resonance imaging, also came from fundamental physics. PET scans resulted from fundamental work on antimatter. These were not the result of some effort coordinated by government to achieve a specific breakthrough. They were the result of work driven by a quest for knowledge and understanding that had fortuitous benefits.

Consider that one-third of the world's economy is based on the work of what some would consider obscure physicists, mainly German, in the first quarter of the 20th century—nearly a century ago. Here I am talking about quantum physics and solid-state electronics, which resulted from fundamental insights. Consider 19th century physicist Michael Faraday. When asked by then Chancellor of the Exchequer William Gladstone what value electricity had, he replied, 'Why, sir, there is every possibility that you will soon be able to tax it.' Consider Albert Einstein in 1916, who rushed back to his wife, also a physicist, saying, 'I have seen a beautiful light' . He was talking about what is known as population inversion in electron energy levels—very esoteric!

That resulted in the first laser in 1960, which, at the time, critics referred to as 'a solution looking for a problem'. Now of course lasers are ubiquitous in Blu Rays, DVDs, CDs and even in communications where lasers are used in fibre optics for communications.

Consider general and special relativity without which an accurate GPS system would be impossible. How could Einstein have known these applications at the time? How could a government have directed research to that end? Indeed, you need look no further than Australia, where wi-fi came about as a result of radio astronomy research. It came about as a result of a failed experiment into finding atomic sized mini black holes. Herein lies the problem with the way that scientific research is being viewed and funded. Where is the coherent coordinated approach to science policy? Herein lies the problem with not having a dedicated science minister.

I have been quiet on the lack of a science minister since I first criticised when the ministry was first announced. It is the first time we have had no science minister since 1931. I am bitterly disappointed that my fears have come to pass. This is a critical portfolio. As I stated at the time, the issue is not necessarily one of a lack of coverage by the ministers responsible for various parts of the portfolio but the fact that there was a lack of coordination, a lack of a single chain of command, a lack of a clear line of communication not only within government but among those working in science. Not a single G8 nation lacks a dedicated science minister and this bodes ill for our future.

Our Western Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, clearly sees the importance of science and recognises the need for an identified single minister responsible. Premier Colin Barnett has seen the portfolio as so critical that he has taken portfolio on himself. These issues of defence and science are critical to our future. We neglect them or downgrade their importance at our peril.

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

I would like to acknowledge at the beginning of my contribution to this debate the passion, the knowledge and the commitment of the member for Tangney, and say on the record that I think it is a great disadvantage for this parliament that his knowledge is not being utilised properly. I think he can contribute so much to the scientific debate. We heard him tonight. It is really sad that his knowledge is not being utilised in this place.

This budget would have to be the most unfair budget that I have seen delivered in this parliament in the 15 years that I have been here. This budget attacks those people that look to government for support whilst on the other hand, as we have just heard from the member for Tangney, it is not really building our knowledge base for the future.

This budget is working towards creating a two-tier society in Australia. It is a budget that is based on ideology, not on what is best for Australia. At the end of the day, what will happen to Australia is it will have an underclass. We will have those people that can afford to enjoy the best that the country has to offer and we will have those people that struggle from day to day, week to week and find life extremely hard. On the global perspective, we will be missing opportunities when it comes to science and technological advancements, and we will also be missing out when it comes to being out there and being really active in the global market.

This budget has delivered a number of cuts in areas where, prior to the election, the Prime Minister said that would be no cuts. He said there would be no cuts to health. There will be cuts to hospital funding plus add to that the $7 GP copayment. There will be extra charges for x-rays and blood tests and there will be extra charges for medicines, an increase of five dollars for prescriptions. These things really will impact on the people that I represent in this parliament. Shortland electorate is not a wealthy electorate. There are a lot of senior Australians living there. It is one of the oldest electorates in the country. I know why represent find it really difficult to make ends meet. They will have to pay more for prescriptions. It is going to cost them more for fuel. Once again, the fuel excise is another of the 'no new taxes'. This is something that people in my electorate are very upset about. It is all very well to say that the pension is not going to be cut and that people will still get increases, but in actual fact the increases that they will get will be a lot less than what they would have received if the indexation method were not being changed. It is really important to put on the record that, if the indexation method to be implemented post this budget were in place, a single pensioner would be $1,560 worse off today than they were a year ago. It does not stop there.

Health and education cuts will have an enormous economic impact. A cut to education means a cut to our future knowledge base, our future expertise and our opportunities to be at the cutting edge when it comes to creating new jobs. With the cuts to health, the up-front payment may be less—people may contribute through a co-payment—but people will end up being sicker. People will not go to the doctor when they need to. They will not manage their diabetes. They will not have the immunisation that they should have. They will not do all those things that are about preventative health care and that make us a healthier nation. It is so important that people go to the doctor when they need to and not put it off until they are really sick. At the other extreme, it can lead to loss of life.

There are the increases to university fees and the higher HECS debts. The interest rate that will be placed on those HECS debts will create long-term debt for those young people. It will act as a disincentive for some people to go to university, particularly if they come from a fairly disadvantaged background. I struggle to come up with any positives in relation to this budget.

I look at the families in my electorate and at what the cuts to the family tax benefit will mean for those families. Family tax benefit B finishes when a child turns six. For some people in my electorate, this will have a devastating impact. People who cannot get a job or who do not have the skills to get a job—or the jobs just are not there—will be forced into a situation where they will receive a lesser amount of money. The 'earn and learn' aspect of this budget has created some concern for me. It is going to put additional pressures and costs on job seekers and low paid workers, amongst others.

This budget has also removed the majority of support programs that people who are looking for jobs rely on. Hundreds of jobs will be gone from the Hunter and Central Coast region, which is the area that I represent. We are still waiting to see what is going to happen in areas such as AusIndustry and Enterprise Connect. The Partnership Brokers will be cut from the end of this year. Youth Express in the Hunter, Carelink in Lake Macquarie in Newcastle and Youth Connect on the Central Coast provide great services and support to people who are out there looking for work. Youth Connect providers have been involved in a lot of the work that I have been doing in my office in looking job creation and setting up forums and activities to create employment. But Youth Connect providers will be gone from the end of this year. JobQuest is another group that has been actively involved in my Shortland group that has been working on job creation. There is also Joblink Plus in the Hunter and Youth Connections on the Central Coast. The Apprenticeships Access Program is gone. The Local Employment Coordinator is gone. All the pressure will be on the job seeker and job seekers are going to be paid less money. If they are under 30 and unemployed, they will receive nothing. What does that mean? The pressure will be placed on their families. If this is not a move towards creating a very unfair and inequitable society, I would like to see something that is more unfair. These are not changes that will actually bring about what the government is seeking to do. It will actually make things worse for a lot of people.

Whilst I am talking about that issue, one of the factors that determines whether a country is a happy country, a prosperous country, is social mobility. Australia has a high level of social mobility. It is one of the top six in the world. Social mobility is an incentive that helps people be productive and active members of the community. The changes that I have outlined will lead to a decline in social mobility.

In the time I have remaining, I will share with the House the thoughts of three constituents who have contacted me. I have been contacted by hundreds of constituents about this. I have had my weekly street stalls in shopping centres and people have come up to me and have made really strong, negative comments. I do not accost people; they come up to me. Members of the government really need to understand that people out there are hurting and this budget is not going down well.

Cam wrote to me about the budget. He said:

I don't understand how the clear, direct, unequivocal comments/promises, core or non-core made are different to the reality now, and for you Mr Hockey to stare down the camera in my parliament and tell me the age of entitlement is over and we need to do heavy lifting sticks in my ribs.

Why?

He earns over $119,000 per year. He is too well off for his wife to qualify for the Disability Support Pension. His wife is 40 and far too young to qualify for aged-care assistance. The GP has indicated that they only have a month left together. She is terminal. It is inevitable that soon she will no longer be with him. But they have fallen through every assistance program because of his salary and age, and they still owe $300,000 on their house. Cancer has depleted all their savings. He said:

I don't know how much more heavy lifting I can do ... We don't have spare money to make up for increased fuel costs, we have a weekly $70 medication bill and our GP does weekly home visits for my wife.

…   …   …

Cancer makes you strong, my kids have seen their mother fit on the floor—

and many other terrible things. He went on to say:

We know how to heavy lift, we do more to look after each other with no assistance from the FEDS—

the government. He then said:

Do you see what the Libs have achieved with this budget.

Then he makes a comment about politicians:

You have kicked and kicked hard the heavy lifters and you tell us to lift more!

He said the government thinks they are 'hopeless money managers on the drink, smoking cigarettes and need a lesson to become a good Liberal'. I had never met Cam before I received this email. I met with him last Friday and I know just how hard his life is, how he has tried and how he has worked so hard.

The next letter is from Anthony, who is employed full time in the research area. He earns $68,000 a year, is paying off a HECS debt and takes home $49,301 after tax. He pays $18,500 per year to the ATO. His wife gets family tax benefit A and B, and a part carer's payment of $168 per fortnight. He has a daughter with cerebral palsy. His wife is in a wheelchair after being injured in a motor vehicle accident. He has car repayments of $387 per month and spends $20 a day on petrol. They have private health insurance. He said to me that he throws all the bills in the air and whichever one lands on the table first is the one he pays. He is another man who has done the heavy lifting and done it hard. My heart goes out to them. I do not know where it will end for them.

Finally, I will read the words of Susan. She wants to voice her extreme displeasure about the budget. She has worked for 43 years in both private industry and public hospitals. She says the system is overloaded and 'the budget will disadvantage everyone'. She goes on to outline her problems in the budget. I include that in my speech.

I conclude by saying that this is an unfair budget. It is going to hurt those people who can least afford to be hurt. The government had choices they could make. They have made the wrong choices and they have done so saying one thing before the election and another thing after the election—and the Australian people recognise this. (Time expired)

Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has got to a situation where our country is at the crossroads. With $1 billion worth of interest having to be paid every month, each and every Australian owes nearly $25,000 to get our debt back to zero. It is time we turned this country around. If we do not take that step now, our kids will suffer. We have just blown the biggest mining boom of the last decade and have nothing to show for it. That is a disgrace.

During the global financial crisis, Labor compared us with Greece, Italy, Ireland and those European countries; they did not even look at Asia, which was quietly going about its business. The growth rate in countries like Thailand, Indonesia and China was seven, 7½ or eight per cent and Korea was going along just fine. But we wanted to compare ourselves with Greece and talk of how much better than Greece we were travelling. They inherited a surplus back in 2007 and we inherited a great debt of some $300 billion at the start of our term in 2013. During those six years, Labor went on a high-spending spree. There were school halls, pink batts, $900 cheques and an NBN with no plan and no funding. The NDIS was talked about and agreed to but not funded. It was the same with Gonski. We saw a growth in public servants of 23,000 in Canberra alone. This has all taken its toll. We have a record deficit, locked in at $123 billion. We have not seen a positive budget from Labor since 1987 and it is all catching up on us. Gross debt has jumped from $75 billion to over $300 billion and continues to climb. If we do not do anything about it, it will gobble us up. The gross debt for the next 10 years if we do not make changes is forecast to be $667 billion.

I would like to quote an independent budget adviser, who says that he has rejected Labor and the Greens' claim that the Abbott government has concocted a budget crisis, saying that without action Australia's debt will grow at one of the fastest rates in the developed world. In remarks that effectively endorse government warnings that if left unchecked, gross debt would balloon to $667 billion, Parliamentary Budget Officer Phil Bowen said it was time to begin the return to surplus to protect the economy against future crises. 'It is time to start coming out of debt and deficit, otherwise the longer you leave it the more exposed you become and the harder it is to wind it back.' That is what he told The Australian Financial Review. Personally, I have never seen so much government debt in my life, whether it be federal government, state government or local government. In fact, government debt has never been so high. Labor turned gold into mud. There is no doubt about that.

During their reign, unemployment jumped by 200,000 and 50,000 illegal immigrants came in on boats. Labor say debt is not a problem. I do not get that at all, when we have one of the fastest growing debts in the OECD countries. Our election promises to the Australian people are quite simple, and revolve around four main points. The first is to get rid of the carbon and mining taxes. The second is to stop the boats—and I am pleased to say that Minister Scott Morrison has stopped the boats. There has not been one here now for maybe 150 days. We have given up counting, but it could be longer. That was costing the nation a lot of money. With the displacement of people, we encouraged people smugglers. What sort of a system was that? The boats could not be stopped by Labor, but Scott Morrison has stopped them. The third of our promises was to build infrastructure for the future. That is infrastructure that will return money to the coffers, to the people and to businesses and, of course, provide jobs for our workers. The final promise was to repair the budget, which we want to do but we are running into a lot of hurdles there.

My primary focus is to look after my electorate, which covers big and small industry, small business, retailers, all primary producers, resource companies and fishing and forestry. They all exist in my electorate. By fixing the budget, we fix jobs. We fix business profitability, we build infrastructure for the next century and we enhance R&D in our regions. The 1.5 per cent tax relief for small businesses will go a long way to restoring some confidence in business and them employing more people. I am pleased to say that the fuel rebate has been maintained. As the excise on fuel goes up, the rebate goes up accordingly. So the people who do not use the roads but use diesel fuel on properties and those in the fishing and forestry industries will not be disadvantaged.

The budget is fair and responsible and most sectors have had to take a hit. You cannot improve a budget unless everyone across the board takes a hit. We are investing $50 billion in transport infrastructure over a seven-year period. There is an $11.6 billion infrastructure growth package and $6.7 billion to fix the Bruce Highway over a 10-year period. When you put that with the state government contribution, it is a very worthy figure and it will enhance the Bruce Highway—the condition of which, as some people say, is of a 1990s standard. It also includes measures to ensure safer travel conditions on our internal roads and all black spots will be looked at.

We will improve the transport corridors. There are a lot of bridges in our area that do not have the weight limits. Consequently, where we do have the roads to a standard we have not got the wooden bridges up to a good weight limit.

We are building our mobile phone service. We will spend $100 million in rural areas. Our towns and cities in the main have a good mobile service but many country areas are suffering. We have a program to fix that. After Minister Turnbull sorted out the NBN and put on the board people who could actually understand what the problems with the NBN were we got it up and running.

We intend to upgrade our ports. There are three ports in my area, Gladstone, Port Alma and Bundaberg. Money will be spent on those ports to enhance what they can export. I would like to see Gladstone, Port Alma or Bundaberg get involved in more grain exports, boxed meats and live cattle.

We have two free trade agreements signed up in Asia, with Korea and Japan. Our trade minister, Andrew Robb, has done a great job there. He has more work to do on China, but hopefully by the end of this year we will have an agreement signed with China. A free trade agreement has worked wonders for New Zealand, especially in dairy and beef products. We can only think that, eventually, it will be a good future for our agricultural businesses, which are very prominent in Flynn. We would like to fully restore the Indonesian trade in live cattle. Everyone, including the Indonesians, took a hit when the Labor government stopped the live trade to Indonesia. It put the villagers of Indonesia in turmoil. It put our own industry in turmoil. It wrecked cattle prices down the east coast of Australia. When the drought came graziers could not get rid of their cattle and the hardship suffered by our beef industry is still prominent today. It sent many graziers to the wall. They were unable to move their cattle to market when they normally would have, which would have avoided the big drought. A lot of Queensland—I think 80 per cent—is still drought.

In conclusion, the debt trajectory is one of the worst in the developed world. It is simply unsustainable. It must be turned around. The budget must be allowed to pass. In this budget the coalition government is making modest changes to ensure that Australia does not become a basket case down the track. Labor's alternative is no alternative. It is simply trying to stop the government fixing the mess that it created. Unless the government is allowed to make changes to turn it around the debt will become virtually insurmountable. Future governments will be forced to bring in drastic austerity measures to bring debt under control. Tough decisions have to be made and, once again, it has been left to the coalition to make them. The coalition government is committed to cutting red tape, building infrastructure and repairing the economy. Labor should get out of the way and let us fix their mess.

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

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No.1) 2014-2015, Appropriation Bill (No.2) 2014-2015, Appropriation Bill (No.5) 2013-2014, Appropriation Bill (No.6) 2013-2014 and the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) bill (no.1) 2014-2015 These bills are a part of the Abbott-Hockey budget that will go down in Australian history as the most un-Australian budget ever. These bills signify a step away from the Australia I hope to see, that I love and that I want my children and grandchildren to inherit. The Australia that I want to see and the Australia that I serve believes in giving people a fair go; this budget does none of that.

The Australia I serve gives our pensioners a fair income to live comfortably in their retirement after spending a lifetime contributing to our nation. I am not sure where the Deputy Prime Minister finds the pensioners he speaks to—the ones he said were blowing their funds on cruises and luxury items. They are not the people I talk to. Ann from Sunnybank, who I spoke to earlier tonight, has spent 12 years in aged care speaking to pensioners. They are not going off on cruises. The lives of the people I delivered meals to when I spent a day with Meals on Wheels a few weeks back were not ones of luxury items and throwing money away. Also, those Australians on disability pensions and their carers should be supported, not punished by a budget that delivers harsh cuts and gives what are effectively tax breaks to those at the top.

I believe in a prosperous Australia and I will stand up for the people in my electorate. They know that this nation will not prosper through us cutting pensions, cutting health care and introducing taxes such as the fuel tax and the GP tax. I believe in an Australia where your destiny is not predetermined by your parents' wealth or your postcode. I believe in a fair and prosperous nation populated by a creative and productive people.

But this is not the Australia we saw reflected in the budget a fortnight ago. It is a budget that targets our seniors and also schoolkids. Irina Bokova, Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, said:

From better health to increased wealth, education is the catalyst of a better future for millions of children, youth and adults. No country has ever climbed the socioeconomic development ladder without steady investments in education.

International research has indicated that early childhood education is crucial to promoting the educational and social development of disadvantaged children. In addition, measures to boost academic engagement and achievement—such as more hands-on learning, a positive school climate and mixed ability grouping—also emerge as key factors in retaining young people within full-time education. This is where we should be investing, not cutting.

In December 2011, the Labor government commissioned the most comprehensive review of our school education system in more than 40 years—the Gonski report. I remind those opposite that this was economic analysis of education by an expert committee led by a banker. It was not a bleeding heart lefty's plan for the future; he and his committee outlined an economic imperative in the Gonski education report. They indicated that there has been a performance decline in the last 10 years and a growing gap between the highest and lowest performing students of up to two years emerging by the time kids are 13 and 14. The Gonski report showed that to strengthen Australia's future the government must provide additional investment to schools, with greater concentration on disadvantaged students, needs based funding rather than the massive cuts to education outlined in the budget papers.

Labor invested $14.7 billion in additional investment in Australian schools because we know that education is fundamental to ensuring young people are equipped in the best possible way to take the path towards their passions and interests. I want to see educational inequality addressed in this nation by assisting disadvantaged schools, whether in Moreton or anywhere else in this land, whether in remote areas or lower socioeconomic circumstances, irrespective of the sign above the school gate. We do not need schools that are hampered by a lack of resources for our teachers or lack access to technology, which will inhibit learning in the digital world that we are embracing. In my electorate of Moreton, there are about 21,000 students attending 45 or so schools. Moreton is home to a large range of fantastic schools and I want to see these students given the best opportunities in life through education. We will not achieve that by cutting the education budget.

When voters went to the polls, they were told by the Liberal and National parties that in government they would not cut education. It was supposed to be a joint ticket. Instead teachers, parents and students were betrayed, with the biggest cut to school funding this country has ever seen. Higher education was not treated fairly. Education is fundamentally valuable because it allows children to develop, but these cuts to universities and TAFEs will restrict so many people who are not well off.

Labor has a strong track record that we can be very proud of when it comes to investing in our children's future at schools, in early childhood and at universities. After all, we are the party of Gough Whitlam, the political party that gave every smart Australian the opportunity to attend university, and we are committed to ensuring that higher education remains accessible and affordable for all clever Australians. This dumb-but-rich strategy that seems to be being advanced by those opposite, the member for Sturt leading the charge—this is a guy who, when he went to the university, according to the internet funded the Days of our Lives club at university and saw that as a significant achievement. I am hoping that that was a joke addition to the internet, but I am looking forward to him correcting the record.

When Gough Whitlam historically abolished university fees so that tertiary education could be more accessible for working-class people like me, Australia took a significant step towards bettering itself through investing in education. This current government is about to make another historic decision for Australia: a decision that reverses this accessible tertiary education and makes it harder for our children and grandchildren to attend university. On the radio today they talked about as much as a 33 per cent increase in the cost of degrees—maybe more at the sandstone universities and some of the red brick universities. I fear that Australia's youth will pay the price of the budget decisions of a fortnight ago. By cutting funds to tertiary education and deregulating university fees, we will return to a time when only the rich could afford to send their kid to university, which creates further inequality and unfairness across our great nation and misses the opportunities to harvest the great brains of those who are in poorer circumstances.

The future of our nation will be built on quality education, not on cutting. It will be built by focusing on skills and innovation, not by slashing these university budgets—especially if we are to strategically prepare for the Asian century, where we will be competing against these emerging nations on our doorstep. This is a budget built on the wrong choices and the wrong priorities. It is very short-sighted. There are short-term savings. Combine it with the Liberal and National parties' fraudband policy where they gutted the NBN, which was going to see innovation and the new jobs of the digital revolution rolled out, especially in services and education being delivered to Asia.

The LNP before the election made a promise to the Australian people that there would be no changes to higher education, and they broke that promise. It is basically the end of affordable higher education, and we will oppose the Abbott government's inequitable changes to higher education and fight to maintain the current assistance programs widely acknowledged and respected throughout the world as being fair.

I believe in a fair go. That is why I am a member of the Australian Labor Party. We are a party that believes in opportunity for all; academic freedom and autonomy; research that advances knowledge, critical thinking and, obviously, productivity; and that delivers access to university based on merit, not just the ability to pay. That investment in education has yielded significant economic and social benefits for our community. In the modern, competitive climate, it is important that the long-term importance of investment in education is not forgotten.

When discussing investment in our future through education, this goes hand in hand with effectively moving Australia towards clean energy and a sustainable environment and economy. Climate change poses a serious threat economically, socially and perhaps even militarily that will severely impact on the world's most vulnerable young people and future generations. Inaction proves that we are willing to pass on our issues to the next generation when it comes to environmental damage, and that is a short-term selfishness that no parent can be a part of. The Labor Party committed to addressing the big issues on climate change and pollution reduction. Those opposite supported that. I remember the 2007 and 2010 campaigns. The first act of the Labor government after coming to government in 2007 was to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and we then committed to putting a cap on pollution through an emissions trading scheme—one supported by those opposite up until a change in leadership.

Let's see what happened. In six years of Labor Australia's wind capacity tripled and solar went through the roof—and on the roof. We established the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which are already hard at work developing, commercialising and investing in new renewable energy technology. We also established the world's most comprehensive network of national parks in the ocean. The Great Barrier Reef is a magnificent asset that people from all around the world come to enjoy. It is great for tourism in Queensland.

These budget papers reveal some horrible choices from those opposite and some horrible challenges for the future. They are attempting to fundamentally change the nature of Australian society, which is why I have called it the most un-Australian budget delivered in our history. As has been acknowledged by the Prime Minister today and yesterday, Australia's economy is fundamentally strong and this is the legacy that Labor has left behind. There are challenges on the horizon, of course there are. But lets look at what the reality is today. We have low inflation, low interest rates and net debt peaking at just one seventh of the level of the major comparable advanced economies. We have a triple-A credit rating with a stable outlook from all three international ratings agencies—one of only eight countries in the world to have that rating.

Our superannuation savings are larger than the size of our whole economy. Since Kevin Rudd came to office in 2007, one million jobs were created under Labor and then under the Abbott government—although it is looking a bit crook at the moment. That is the real budget environment that we need to look at. We need to look at the budget delivered a fortnight ago. There were challenges if we had continued on course but, obviously, the Global Financial Crisis and decisions made by Labor, which were supported by those opposite, were different. Those decisions were made in the context of the Global Financial Crisis and since then there have been recalibrations and adjustments made.

I saw the budget a fortnight ago as being like an approach to someone like myself who likes to eat hot chips. Obviously if I spent every day of my life eating buckets and buckets of hot chips then that would create a problem. But what do you do? As somebody who is campaigning to make sure that people are aware of diabetes, what do I do? I talk to people about the decisions they are making and try to change their behaviour. The budget we saw the other night was a drastic response to some challenges on the horizon. It was almost like that scene from Pulp Fiction where they dried the adrenaline into the chest of Mia Wallace, played by Uma Thurman. It was a drastic overreaction to a challenge that was coming. It was almost like you solve the problem of somebody eating too many buckets of hot chips by cutting off their hands or their arms. The reality is we have challenges but we have the time and the strategies to solve those challenges and to avoid the big problems.

Sadly, the current government has no consistency in its approach. We saw that with the announcement that they are going to cut thousands and thousands of jobs throughout Australia at the same time as they announced cutting funding to employment services that will actually help those people that are made redundant to find new work.

The reality is this budget from a fortnight ago saw the coalition turn their backs on public schools and disadvantaged students in schools. The education minister, the member for Sturt, said that Australia does not have an equity problem in education. But the reality is, even though he was able to put out a press release before the Gonski report had even been released, he did not read it in great detail. Education is what we should be investing in as it is the economy of the future. Investing in broadband is what is Australia should be focused on. Instead, we have a budget that has provided a savage attack on Australian families, on our pensioners, on young people and—heaven forbid—on anyone that misses out on employment.

It also attacks our environment, our education system, our health system and all of those strong social fabric items that Labor invested so much in over the years including things like Medicare. I believe in a strong and prosperous Australia. I am proud to be a part of the Labor Party that will fight this Abbott-Hockey budget and the broken promises that are contained in it. The legislation before the chamber is a betrayal of Australia as far as I am concerned and should be condemned as such.

Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the appropriation bills. The government was voted in last year with a clear mandate. The people of Australia wanted change. Labor created an awful mess, and the people wanted it cleaned up. Remember the pink batts disaster—$4 billion wasted, 250 house fires and, most tragically, the death of four young Australians. We had the school hall rip-offs; cash for clunkers, Fuelwatch and GroceryWatch—I believe they were the favourites of the shadow Treasurer; and the set-top box farce. Then we had $900 cheques going out to deceased Australians and Australians living overseas, and that was done with the intention of somehow spurring on the economy. The list goes on and on—$100 million a day was being added to the national credit card to pay for all this mess; the Labor Gillard-Rudd mess.

The Abbott government was elected to stop the boats, repeal the carbon tax, build the infrastructure for the 21st century and get the budget back under control. We are getting on with what we were elected to do. The first duty of the government is not only to do what is easy; it is to do what is right and what is necessary for the country. Hard decisions on the economy are never easy. Governments, like families, need to live within their means. Decisions have to be made for the long-term welfare of our country, and the budget handed down by the Treasurer is the right budget for Australia at this time. From 2007 to 2013, government real spending outgrew growth in the economy by 13 per cent. We simply were living beyond our means. In those six years, household health costs increased 35 per cent, education costs increased 39 per cent, gas prices increased 71 per cent, water and sewerage prices increased 79 per cent and electricity prices increased 101 per cent. The government inherited a budget position which was unsustainable for the long term. Firm and decisive action is required to put the budget back on a secure and sustainable footing. To delay the action would only worsen the problem, imposing an even greater financial burden on future Australians. We could not go on running up massive debts for our children and our grandchildren to pay for.

After six years of Labor—who inherited a $20 billion surplus and left $123 billion worth of deficits, and turned nearly $50 billion in the bank into a projected net debt of well over $200 billion—we all face a record Labor debt and deficit situation. Each Australian's share of Australian government debt is currently $13,500. Unless we take action, this will have grown by $1,100 per year, reaching $24,000 in a decade. I must say, when the Labor Party sets out to destroy an economy, it really does a great job. We are paying $1 billion in interest a month on Labor's debt. Most people cannot comprehend paying $1 billion. It is one thousand million dollars—staggering. And this is just the interest. Can you imagine what we could do as a nation by just eliminating the interest payment? For instance, $12 billion, just one year's interest bill, could build us world-class teaching hospitals in every capital city in Australia. So what could we have done? Sat on our hands and left our children to pay off Labor's debt, or borrowed more money to pay off their interest bill? Not on the side of the House—we want Australia to remain the best country in the world. Without a healthy economy, this is simply not possible. We as a nation must live within our means. We believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. We must give every Australian the opportunity to get on and make the best of their lives. Only through hard work can we get ahead—but, again, we need a healthy economy.

I congratulate Minister Pyne on the budget's higher education reforms. They are innovative and equitable. The reforms are designed to spread the opportunity of higher education to more students across more institutions in our society. The reforms will ensure that our higher education system is not left behind in an increasingly competitive international environment. Not all students leaving secondary school necessarily want to do a higher degree.

A budget initiative which I was very excited about is the $20,000 trade support loans. These loans are designed to help young people doing accredited apprenticeships by providing them with an allowance to support their incomes. The money can be used in any way the recipient chooses, such as to buy tools, to put towards their mortgage, to pay rent on their house, to help with a car loan or to pay for the phone. The allowance will be set up to provide $8,000 in the first year, $6,000 in the second year, $4,000 in the third year and $2,000 in the final year. The great news is that, when they complete their apprenticeship, they will receive a 20 per cent refund. That is the incentive to ensure they finish their apprenticeship.

The pathways initiative gives students choice about where they want to start their higher education journey. For the first time ever, the Australian government will provide support to all undergraduate students in all registered higher education institutions. We will provide Commonwealth supported places for higher education diplomas, advanced diplomas, associate degrees and bachelor degrees. About 80,000 students will benefit from this change by 2018. That is an additional 80,000 young Australians going to universities.

Universities will be empowered to set their own fees for their courses, which in turn will generate more competition for students between a greater number of providers. More competition between the higher education providers is good for students. They will have a greater choice when it comes to courses. Competition will drive quality and encourage providers to be more responsive to educational needs.

The deregulation of higher education fees will also fund a significant new Commonwealth scholarship equity initiative. Twenty per cent of any additional revenue of higher education providers from increased fees will be allocated to Commonwealth scholarships and bursaries for the disadvantaged. That is absolutely fantastic for the electorate of La Trobe—20 per cent of any revenue increase arising out of the charging of higher fees by education institutions must go into scholarships.

All students will still be protected by the HECS loan system, no matter which university college or course they choose. All students under this reform package will continue to access the HECS loan system, ensuring they will only begin repayment of the cost of their education once they are earning a decent income—the income level where it kicks in is $50,000.

The welfare reforms in this budget are necessary for the sustainable future of our country. They are aimed at increasing everyone's ability to contribute to the economy. The basic philosophy is that everyone who can contribute should contribute. The government will continue to provide assistance for families, seniors, people with a disability and their carers, and those most in need. The budget includes $146 billion of welfare spending, which is 35 per cent of the entire budget expenditure. This includes pensions, family payments, unemployment benefits and child support.

The facts are stark. If we do not act on the welfare cost blow-out, the system will slowly grind to a halt. For instance, the ratio of people of traditional working age to those over 65 will decline from 5 in 2010 to less than 3 in 2050. Between 2010 and 2050, the number of people aged 65 to 84 will more than double—and those aged 85 and over will more than quadruple. The coalition government is taking responsible steps to ensure a sustainable welfare system is maintained now and into the future.

A good example of this is the 'learn or earn' initiative. The government believes that assistance to the unemployed should help them move into employment rather than encourage them to remain on welfare. In order to reach their full potential, all young Australians who can work should be earning, learning or participating in work for the dole. From January 2015, new job seekers up to 30 years of age applying for Newstart or youth allowance will participate in job search and employment service activities, funded by the government, for six months before receiving the payment. Current recipients of Newstart up to 30 years of age will also be covered by these same requirements from 1 July 2015. Young people who do not have a full capacity to work—that is, their capacity is less than 30 hours—who are in education and training or who have a significant disability will be exempt from these requirements, as will those with parental responsibilities. This will help our young people into a more secure future, while taking the load off our already strained welfare costs.

In regard to building Australia's infrastructure, the budget is responding to the needs of the economy by building infrastructure that will drive economic growth, create jobs and improve productivity. In Victoria, the East West Link is vital to the Australian and Victorian economies, and will help address the major transport challenges currently facing Melbourne. The estimated $14 billion to $18 billion project will reduce travel times by up to 20 minutes for commuters travelling from areas such as Geelong and Ballarat to the city, but will also be of great benefit to those in La Trobe. The East West Link will improve accessibility to important economic and employment centres across the city and will provide an immediate boost to the economy by creating approximately 6,000 jobs during the peak construction periods of both sections.

On health, this budget has the Abbott coalition government creating the world's largest medical research endowment fund, the $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund. It will find the cures of the future and be funded by the health reforms. Contributions will come from a new patient contribution to health services and from other health savings from the budget. The endowment fund when mature will double current direct medical research funding with an extra $1 billion every year.

Locally, in La Trobe we received $500,000 to assist with the redevelopment of the clubrooms at Emerald's Chandler Reserve; $250,000 to assist the South Belgrave Football Club build a new pavilion—and this will be used by the entire South Belgrave community; $1.5 million to build a basketball centre at Emerald primary school—also to be used as a home base by the Emerald Lakers; $50,000 has already been delivered to the Olinda Reserve for their hilltop project; $380,000 to assist the Rythdale-Officer-Cardinia Netball Club develop a new netball pavilion; $500,000 to assist the development of the Upwey Tecoma community recreational sporting hub—and, again, there will be so many who will use this facility; $1 million to assist the construction of the Officer Toomah Centre to offer care and support for vulnerable families and individuals in La Trobe and other surrounding electorates; and $500,000 towards the Cockatoo Ash Wednesday memorial project.

I am very proud to say $1.5 million has already been committed to Insight Vision, the only primary school in Victoria for the blind and visually impaired. That announcement was made two days before the election. There was no media; it was just one of those great initiatives by the coalition which I am sure all members of the parliament would agree is a very worthy cause. I am also extremely pleased to see that the Dandenong Ranges have done exceptionally well. The major issues there are bushfires and weed reduction. There has been $450,000 provided for on-ground activities to be delivered by the Community Weeds Alliance. I look forward to seeing a biological control for wandering trad delivered by the CSIRO. There is $150,000 for the Bullen Bullen Bush Tucker and Medicine Tours, and I very much look forward to seeing Indigenous leader Murrundingi lead these tours. There is $2.4 million to a range of community groups for wildlife recovery, weed reduction and bushfire fuel reduction under the guidance of a project steering committee, including the Olinda and Gembrook Community Advisory Group.

Overall, I do agree that the budget made tough decisions but the constituents of La Trobe and all over the country must realise that the mess this country was put in was simply due to the overspending by the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments and their members who supported every single measure.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in relation to the appropriation bills. I want to put to bed and to rest this nonsense we keep hearing from those opposite. Let us look at the budget papers and the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook. These are the figures that are on the public record done by the Treasury. For 2013-14 under Labor the budget is better than under the coalition by $18.8 billion. In 2014-15 the budget is better under Labor by $5.8 billion. In 2016-17 the figures from Treasury show, across the forward estimates, that the budget would be better under Labor by $15.8 billion, and there is a surplus of $4.2 billion.

According to the budget papers—the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook—compared to the Treasury papers from the budget overview produced by this government on budget night on 13 May, there is a deficit of $10.6 million in 2016-17. So do not come into this place and tell us that you are getting the budget back into surplus, that you are reducing the footprint of government and reducing the debt and the reach of government! In fact, the reality is—and this is what you look at—you look at the spend and the revenue in relation to the budget. Stephen Koukoulas, the economist, has said this—and this is a very interesting point for those opposite, because this is what it clearly shows—if you add the spend and the revenue as a share of GDP under this Abbott coalition government, it is 49.1 per cent of GDP in this country. Under the last Labor government it was 47.4 per cent.

They are increasing the size of government and blowing out the debt. That is what the budget papers show! Do not come in here and give us these sanctimonious platitudes about reining in the debt. They have made choices, and they are cruel choices. They are cruel cuts to pensions, to higher education, to taxes and to those who are vulnerable. As a result of the decisions they have made in relation to the Paid Parental Leave scheme and the Direct Action policy, and giving back concessions to millionaires in relation to superannuation—by virtue of these billions of dollars that they have wasted—the revenue they have foregone is $7.4 billion in the budget from the MRRT and the carbon pricing mechanism. They have made those choices. They have made choices to hit the most vulnerable and weak people in this economy and in this society with cruel cuts and increased taxes. That is what they have done.

I read an interesting thing by Waleed Aly the other day which I thought really summed up the dilemma and the day of reckoning for this government. He said this in a piece in the Brisbane Times on 22 May 2014. I thought it was a terrific piece and a very interesting comment. I will read the paragraph, because I think it is germane:

The reason the government broke so many promises in this budget is simple: the promises they made from Opposition were wildly contradictory. You cannot rein in deficits and abolish two major taxes, and replace one of them with a climate change policy that costs billions and promise no tax hikes and quarantine education, health, defence, public broadcasting and pensions from cuts. That’s like a weight-loss diet that does away with protein but promises no cuts to cake and lard! A platform like that was always going to have its day of reckoning.

And didn't it get it on 13 May this year! Didn't it come in?

Campbell Newman, the Queensland premier—no friend of the ALP—says that the changes in relation to this budget in terms of education, health and concessions to Queensland and to local governments in Queensland is 'not fair and not acceptable'. He believes the cuts are an attempt to wedge the states into pushing for an increase in the GST, which is distributed to the states by the Commonwealth.

This is a confected budget emergency, with broken promises that punishes Australian families and pensioners, and which will particularly hurt people in my electorate, which contains 70 per cent of Ipswich and all of the Somerset region. It will increase inequality in this country. This budget clearly shows that the coalition thinks of Australians as numbers, not as people. It is a fundamental shift in the relationship between government and the citizens of this country. It is a budget cooked up by the Commission of Audit and the Institute of Public Affairs.

The Prime Minister knew Australians would not have voted for this budget. That is why the Real Solutions booklet had so little that you now find in the budget in it. Where was the levy on higher income earners? Where was the indexation in relation to fuel excise? Where was the pausing of indexation for family tax payments? Where was the change in indexation that will result in billions of dollars of saves across the forward estimates and beyond in relation to indexation on pensions? Where was that mentioned in Real Solutions? It was not, because the Australian public would not have voted for a government who said in opposition that they would deliver this type of budget. The coalition knew it. It was a hoax, a fabrication. The coalition were not up-front in opposition in relation to this. They promised one thing to Tasmania and another thing to Western Australia and another thing to Queensland.

Self-funded retirees will be further hit by the elimination of the seniors supplement and the means-testing of the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. The Deputy Prime Minister went to a Liberal Party fundraiser up in Queensland and pilloried the people there, saying that self-funded retirees live the high life, splurging their money on cruises and the luxuries of life. That is what they think of our older Australians.

Now 91.44 per cent of people who live in Blair are bulk-billed by their GP. We will see, in my electorate, $6.4 million paid annually by the mums and dads and the pensioners in this GP tax, which was never promised in Real Solutions, ever. It was never mentioned. The coalition did not have the integrity to mention it when they went to the election, but they have brought this on. If they do not believe that is going to have an adverse impact on the health and welfare of this country, they are living in cloud cuckoo land.

In relation to education, there is a 20 per cent reduction, on average, in funding for higher education. Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland Alan Rix, at a breakfast I had last week at Brothers Leagues Club in Ipswich, told me that, at the University of Queensland—one of the sandstone universities and my alma mater—there would be a 29 per cent reduction in the money coming in from the federal government. That will be replicated across the country. We are going back to the pre-Whitlam days, where higher education was for the elites. The member leaving the chamber, when he went on about skills and training, did not say that half a billion dollars is taken out of skills and training. He did not even mention that $950 million is taken out of the Trade Training Centres in Schools Program across the country. We opened the biggest one in South-East Queensland last week in my electorate, the Ipswich Region Trade Training Centre, across five local high schools. The coalition said there would be an absolute unity ticket on education, but they put in $2.4 billion in funding and we committed $14.5 billion. How is $2.4 billion in four years the same as $10 billion in six years from the federal government? How is that the same? And the commitment to match $1 from the states and territories with $2 from the federal government is nowhere to be seen. It is not in the budget. There is no commitment. Instead there is $80 billion in cuts to education and health.

For the public hospitals in Queensland and elsewhere, there are billions of dollars in cuts. There was a promise to keep the Medicare Locals. The then Leader of the Opposition, during debates with then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, said he would not touch them. They are providing much-needed front-line services in Indigenous health, support for GPs, support for older Australians, after-hours clinics and HACC funding. All of that is being provided. The coalition said in the campaign: 'We won't touch them. We won't do away with them.' They have done away with them in this budget—another broken promise.

Then there is all the preventative health funding, like the campaigns against tobacco consumption. Because of what we have done in this country, we have gone from 47 per cent of Indigenous people over the age of 15 who consume tobacco to 41 per cent. Tobacco rates in this country have gone down to 15 per cent on average across the country because of the commitment of the federal Labor government. But they have got rid of it. Anything that had research, investment, innovation, climate change or prevention is gone entirely in the budget. Anything they could find that had any words like that were cut, slashed and burned. That is what they did, again and again.

Across Indigenous affairs, $534.4 million was taken out. The legislation is before the parliament right now. But they have not had the grace, humility and integrity to tell any of those organisations that they have lost their funding. They promised they would do exactly the same as we would. They committed themselves solidly. The now minister and the then opposition leader, the now Prime Minister who said he would be the Prime Minister for Indigenous affairs, slashed and burned across the area. Fifteen million dollars to the national congress has gone; $165 million across the four years of forward estimates years is gone in Indigenous health. There is no commitment to a national partnership in Indigenous health. There is no commitment in relation to a national partnership on Indigenous early childhood development. We put in $564 million, and it finishes on 30 June this year—gone. Thirty-eight centres, from Fitzroy Crossing to Ipswich, are under threat. This is so important in Closing the Gap. There is no commitment to Closing the Gap. There are cuts and slashing and burning across Indigenous affairs. They had the gall to say that the Prime Minister is a Prime Minister for Indigenous affairs. The minister is clueless on this stuff.

He claims all he is doing is reducing red tape and bureaucracy—slashing $534.4 million of red tape and bureaucracy and calling it streamlining. He has been reading 1984 by George Orwell, about freedom, slavery, peace and all that sort of stuff. He cannot get it right. That is what he has been trying to do. That is what they have done. We have seen it across the boundaries. This is a cruel budget. Its priorities are wrong. It is doing the wrong thing by the people of Australia. It is doing the wrong thing by the electors in my electorate: 22,700 pensioners are under threat in terms of their income and 8,000 people on disability support pensions are at risk.

A government member: There is no change.

Rubbish. That is absolute rubbish. They do not read the budget papers. Those opposite have no idea what they are talking about. They think they are in government. They might be in office, but they are not actually governing for the benefit of this country. They are not doing the best thing by this country, in health, education or Indigenous affairs. They are putting an impost of $653 million on the aged care sector, in my other shadow portfolio area. They are increasing the cost of aged care in this country, and they have put no conditionality on the work force supplement that they have rearranged—the nurses, carers, IT people and clerks who work in the aged care sector. We put the money aside to increase their wages and improve their training and professional development. They have slashed it with no conditionality at all. They are just rolling money out. They have cut funding in aged care. They have cut funding in Indigenous affairs. They have cut funding in health, education and local government—$925 million in local government.

They have even cut the funding for the flood reconstruction in Queensland and for flood defences and mitigation. That is what they have done across this budget. This government will hang this around their necks for the next election. We will make sure we campaign in every marginal seat—all of them—to tell the people in those seats what their members have done in this place and what they have said back home. This is a cruel government and a heartless government. They have committed a hoax on the people of Australia, and the people of Australia at the next election will have an opportunity to cast their verdict on a government which has betrayed them with broken promises, broken priorities and a broken record once again. This government deserves to be turfed out, and at the next election I have every confidence that the people will do that.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an incredible performance from the member for Blair. What confected outrage. Not once during his tirade did he mention where any of these funds were coming from. He should sit quietly and hang his head in shame for being part of the worst government since the Commonwealth was started. He was part of the team that got this country in this mess. How did the debt come about? It came through school halls that were overpriced and pink batts that burned down houses. That is why we are in the position we are now. That is why the coalition has had to implement the sensible budget that is in these appropriation bills that we are debating.

The financial irresponsibility of the Labor Party is absolutely breathtaking. They have been here in the last couple of weeks with their confected outrage about money that has been cut out. The member for Blair mentioned money that was cut out of the Gonski reforms. The money was never there. It was in years 5 and 6 of the budget. It was not accounted for. There was no indication of where the money was going to come from or how it was going to be funded. It was off on the never-never. It was a fake promise. Quite frankly, the previous government's actions were very irresponsible. As a matter of fact, they deliberately lined up budget booby traps so that as year 4 rolls into year 5 and they come on the budget papers we have these unfunded promises with no possible way of funding them. Look at the money that was wasted on the $900 cheques. If you surveyed the people of Australia and asked them what they spent their $900 cheque on, I guarantee that 80 per cent of them could not tell you. There were cheques to dead people and to people who lived overseas—it was an absolute debacle.

We have come to the point where we have had to take sound economic decisions in these bills we are debating that make the appropriations for the 2014-15 budget. We have had to look at the debt trajectory out to the end of the forward estimates, which had us heading towards a debt of $670 billion, an unsustainable level of debt. Admittedly, some tough decisions have had to be made. If the members opposite think that the general public outside the confines of this parliament and outside the confines of the cloistered world of the press gallery care, I think they are mistaken. The people I speak to in the streets, the people of Parkes, understand that you need to manage the budget of the country just like you do your own budget. I was in business for over 30 years. At times I would like to have had the Labor Party's attitude and gone out and purchased whatever my heart desired, but I knew that, ultimately, whatever I spent I had to pay back. It is exactly the same with running the country.

We have reduced the deficit. We are heading towards getting back into surplus in a few years time. How can that happen without making the sensible decisions. Just once in a debate I would like to hear how members of the Labor Party were possibly going to pay for all the promises they made. If they had won the last election how were they going to fund these things we are talking about now? They were based on a mining tax that raised no revenue. It is said that this budget hurts low-income earners. One thing that the Labor Party could do right now to help low-income earners is repeal the carbon tax in the Senate. That would mean $550 to every household. A carbon tax is a tax that based not on wealth or otherwise but on merely existing. It does not matter whether you are poor or wealthy, you pay for the carbon tax. If the Labor Party were serious about helping people in Australia they would vote to remove the carbon tax right now.

There has been a lot of negative discussion from the other side about this budget. I am not here defending a budget that needs defending. I am here, proud of the job that we have done. I think that the Australian people were looking to the coalition for someone to take control, to make the hard decisions and get this country back on track.

The investments that were made in this budget are investments in things that will actually grow the economy. Governments do not create wealth; people create wealth. When they have got confidence that the country is being run well then that confidence will flow through to small business. When small businesses start employing people, when people have got the confidence to start to get on with her lives then we will start to see this economy turn around.

Australians understand that we need to live within our means. But they also understand that if this country is going to go grow and prosper, we need the infrastructure to carry that. This budget has the largest infrastructure spend of any budget in the country's history. The coalition knows that to put in the hard infrastructure to help expand our industries in agriculture, in mining, to unplug our cities, to make them more efficient you need investment that is going to last for the long-term—investment that is going to create wealth, investment that is going to grow wealth and investment that is going to encourage people to invest in the country.

There is no greater example than the railway line from Melbourne to Brisbane, the inland rail. It has been a discussion in Australia now for many years. Indeed, the previous minister would mention inland rail but had no real commitment to it. In this budget we see $300 million going towards the implementation of the inland rail. That will go towards environmental studies, finalising the final route and some preliminary infrastructure work. The inland rail will not only have a genuine ability to reduce emissions and do something about our climate but it will improve the safety of our highways. Double-stack container trains will be travelling at over 100 kilometres an hour between the cities and moving freight cheaply and efficiently. But not only that, it will act as—as I call it—the steel Mississippi, giving the inland areas of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland an opportunity to grow. Businesses will grow. It will provide a corridor for agricultural and mineral exports to our neighbours.

With the free trade deals that were signed by this coalition government, by Minister Andrew Robb in Japan and South Korea—and we are very close to coming to an arrangement with China—we are going to see that the agricultural producers in my electorate are going to have access to markets that they only ever dreamed about. We will see a revolution. I will use that 'revolution' word only once. It was a favourite word of the Labor Party. We had revolutions here for everything a few years ago. We will see a revolution in agriculture as those markets to the north open up. We will see a change in the landscape where high-value produce can be delivered into the Asian market. But we need infrastructure to do that. We need that railway line and we need the roads that can connect the high-producing agricultural areas to that line.

In this budget, on a personal note, is money to complete the Moree bypass. One of great debacles in government misconduct was the previous minister, my predecessor, John Anderson, allocated $54 million to build a bypass around Moree on the Newell Highway. The New South Wales previous Labor government squandered that and ended up with half a bypass. Now, thanks to this budget and contribution from the New South Wales coalition under minister Gay, we are going to see that bypass finished.

In agriculture there will be $100 million over four years for a competitive grant program to deliver cutting edge technology. Australian farmers are the best farmers in the world. They are innovative and they understand research will drive that invitation to a higher level. The productivity of agriculture over the last six years has dropped by 1.7 per cent, and we need to turn that around, (1) by having infrastructure that can connect to markets, but (2) by research, and we have a commitment to the research.

There is $20 million over four years for stronger biosecurity. We nearly had a merging of our AQIS with other departments, and anyone who understands agriculture would know that we need to keep our borders secure when it comes to disease. What makes Australia such a valuable agricultural producing area is the fact that we do not have the diseases that many of our competitors do. So that $20 million will secure our borders and help with the ever-constant vigil against diseases such as foot and mouth.

There is $15 million to support small exporters with export grants to help them remain competitive. There is $8 million to improve access to registration of agricultural and veterinary chemicals. And there is $9 million towards fisheries projects, including OceanWatch, and more support for coordinated representation for the recreational fishers and an invasive marine pest review.

One of the big changes that is going to affect the people in my electorate is 'Earn or learn'. While there has been some criticism of this by those opposite, I can tell you that this program is going to be welcomed in my electorate. For too long, it has been an option for some people to opt out of school and go straight onto welfare. Not only has that been devastating for the individuals involved; the effects through entire communities have been devastating. We are going to see people actually out and doing things—for example, through Green Army projects such as the one that I have been working with, with the Moree Plains Shire Council in the Toomelah-Boggabilla communities. There is a Green Army project to improve the environment along the banks of the Macquarie River and give employment to young people.

We are going to see support for younger people to go into trades through the Trade Support Loans, which are similar to the HECS scheme. Now apprentices and people doing diploma courses can get similar help to university students. I have been overwhelmed by the response that I have been getting in support of this program. I do not think anyone quite realised how difficult it was for apprentices and people undertaking education that was not mainstream university education to gain financial assistance.

So this is a budget that I am very proud of. This is a budget that does not shirk the responsibility of being in government. This is a budget that clearly shows the Australian people that the government are in control and that they have their interests at heart. They are not pandering to interest groups. They understand that money borrowed is money that has to be paid back and that this is the first step on the long road for the Australian economy to get back on track.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No amount of denial, no amount of spin, no amount of pleading, and no amount of fudging the figures or selectively quoting will change the judgement of the Australian people that the Abbott government is indeed a government of broken promises, an arrogant government that treats the Australian people as mugs, a government with wrong priorities driven by extreme right-wing ideology, and a government led by a Prime Minister whom the Australian people simply do not trust because he cannot be trusted.

The polls clearly reflect the feelings and the judgement of the Australian people, and they also reflect the feelings of the people who have spoken to me in my electorate every day since the budget was handed down. In fact, I keep getting their emails on a continual basis, and if time had permitted I would have dearly loved to bring some of those emails into the House and read them out word for word.

No Prime Minister that I can recall has so blatantly breached the trust that was placed in him by the Australian people as has the member for Warringah. Not surprisingly, the member for Wentworth is strikingly quiet. He is not jumping to the Prime Minister's defence; he is just sitting back and smiling.

This is a Prime Minister who prior to September said that the trust of the Australian people had been lost in the previous Prime Minister but that he could be trusted, but nothing could be further from the truth. He promised that taxes would not rise under a coalition government and that health and education spending would not be cut. Those are critical issues for voters at each and every election. If you go to what matters most to people at each and every election, health and education are always at the top of the list, as is the integrity and honesty of the parties that are standing. On both those measures Mr Abbott has failed and he has betrayed the Australian people.

Whilst Australian people generalise about how politicians break promises and cannot be trusted, the truth is that they do not look kindly on politicians who blatantly lie to them and who have conned them. The Abbott government knew all along that they would not keep their election promises but they believed they could talk their way out of breaking their promises by telling another lie. It is common that if you tell one lie then you have to tell a second to try and get out of it, but ultimately you just dig yourself a deeper hole. That lie was to do with the state of the budget and the state of the finances of the federal government. The Abbott government confected a budget crisis through their own policies. When they came into office the budget debt was $58 billion and it rose by another 68 since this government has come to office as a direct result of policies that they have introduced and choices that they made. They made those choices quite deliberately to blow the deficit out so that they could in turn say, 'We have a budget crisis and we need to break the promises that we made to you in the lead-up to the election.' As I said earlier, these were promises they never intended to keep.

The Abbott government's rhetoric about a budget crisis simply does not withstand scrutiny. It is not just our scrutiny on this side of the House, it does not stand the scrutiny of so many others who have looked at it carefully. Firstly, we would not have a AAA credit rating from all three global credit rating agencies if our economy was in crisis. Secondly, we have a low debt of 11.8 per cent of GDP compared to about 65 per cent for the UK, 137 per cent for Japan and the US 81 per cent. They are just three of the countries I compare us with because those are three of our major trading partners.

I say to members opposite, if you genuinely believe there is a crisis, why would you support a very generous paid parental leave scheme that pays people up to $50,000? There is no pressure and no demand for that right now other than from a small sector of society, so why would you do that if there is a budget crisis? And why would you cut company tax by 1.5 per cent if there was a budget crisis? Sure, have that as an aspiration for the future, but why would you do it now? And why would you pay polluters $2.3 billion to keep polluting? When you do not care about the environment and you do not believe in climate change, why would you do that if there was a true budget crisis? The truth is that you would not. Again, if there was a budget crisis, why not close some of the loopholes that allow mining companies to get billions of dollars back in rebates? Why not close the loopholes that allowed some 70-odd millionaires in this country a year or so ago to pay not one red cent of tax? Why not close the other loopholes that allow people to transfer their money offshore and avoid billions of dollars of tax due to the Australian government? That is what you would be doing if you really believed there was a budget crisis. But there isn't, and the government knows there isn't. What there is is a confected narrative in order to bring about the real agenda of this government.

Nothing shows the truth about a government's agenda more than does the budget, because the budget exposes what a government's agenda is and what its blueprint for the future is. You can talk all you like about policies and what you believe in, but what you believe in is then reflected by the dollars that you put on the table, and that in turn reflects the truth of a government. This government's priorities are clearly reflected in this budget. The Commission of Audit appointed by this government has also prepared a blueprint for the future. This audit commission, handpicked by the government, handed down its 62 recommendations and I understand only two of those recommendations have been rejected by the government. That says a lot about the priorities of this government. I suggest that members have a good look at what those 62 recommendations of the audit commission are—they are certainly of concern to me and the people that I represent.

Adding $7 to the cost of each doctor's visit or pathology test or X-ray, adding $5.80 to the cost of prescriptions, cutting $50 million from our health funding into the future, cutting $30 billion of our education funding into the future, transferring young unemployed from Newstart to youth allowance and thereby cutting some $48 a week from their very low support in the first place, and making the under 30s wait six months before they receive Newstart and then after they are on it for six months taking it away from them so they have to start the cycle again are not the acts of a government that truly cares about the people who are doing it tough in this country. Changing the family tax benefit B so that the benefit cuts out when the youngest child turns six years old and indexing pensions by a lower rate than has been the case are measures that hurt the people who are the most dependent on government. In question time the minister talks about how they are not cutting pensions and how they simply used the CPI for the last increase. If that is what they believe, that the CPI is what they are going to use, why are they making the changes? The government is making the changes because it believes that by doing so it will save money because it will cut costs. If it is cutting costs, what it is really saying is that it is cutting the amount of money that goes into the households of pensioners. In my state of South Australia, some 200,000 pensioners are going to be directly affected by that.

As I have a specific responsibility for manufacturing on behalf my party, I note that this government does absolutely nothing to support Australia's manufacturing sector—a sector that has been abandoned by the Abbott government. The government has turned its back on the automotive industry and the 200,000-odd workers that directly or indirectly benefit from that industry in this country. It has turned its back on the fruit processing industry, and we saw what happened with SPC Ardmona—the state government had to support them. It has turned its back on the steel and aluminium industries right across the country. It has now done even more, by cutting industry support, to the extent of $845 billion, to programs such as the Australian Industry Participation Program, Commercialisation Australia, Enterprise Solutions, the Innovation Investment Fund, industry innovation councils, Enterprise Connect, industry innovation precincts, support for the textiles, clothing and footwear industries and small business, and Building Innovative Capability. These were all programs put together on advice, in most cases, from industry groups because they were of direct benefit and assistance to those industries. They have all been cut.

These are the industries that in most cases underpinned and supported the manufacturing sector of this country. They were not industries that the previous government had simply plucked out of the air and said, 'We will throw some money this way and we will throw some money that way.' This support arose out of industry groupings and industry need that had been demonstrated and highlighted and, in turn, those funds would help those industries grow their businesses, export their products, work together in a collaborative way and, where possible, even get management expertise and advice on how they should run their businesses. That has all been cut. There has been some attempt to reinstate a couple of other programs but, quite frankly, why would you cut programs which have been working effectively and well and then say you will substitute them with others? Just like the government turned its back on the automotive industry, the government is now doing the same thing across the board to so many other sectors. It is clear that this government believes there is no future for the manufacturing sector in Australia. I disagree with that view. I believe there is a strong future for the manufacturing sector in Australia and I will continue to support the manufacturing sector in any way I possibly can.

In a similar vein, cutting $1.3 billion from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency also directly affects manufacturing in this country. This agency has created thousands of jobs as a result of the projects that it has funded and been involved in. When the money is cut we will lose those jobs, we will those skills and we will lose the know-how and expertise that went with them. At a time when every other country is investing more in renewable energy and the associated support facilities that are required, Australia is going in the opposite direction. This does not make sense. The people who work in this sector have every right to be concerned not only about their jobs but also about the loss of the expertise and know-how as a result of these cuts.

The member for Parkes spoke a moment ago about apprentices. I just want to talk very briefly about the cuts to the apprenticeship scheme. Yes, there has been a program to fund apprentices. That program has come at a time when the cost for apprenticeships is likely to go up by 40, 50 or 60 per cent as a result of the cuts by this government to the higher education services in this country. So, yes, you will give them a loan, but you are increasing their fees and cutting $5,500 which they were otherwise entitled to—and then you say that they are on a good thing! Those apprentices are no fools. They will understand that they have also been dudded.

The other matter that I want to touch on very briefly is the cuts to science and research: $146 million worth of cuts to the CSIRO and similar institutions; $80 million worth of cuts to cooperative research centres; and $74.9 million worth of cuts to the Australian research councils. With those cuts, we will lose about 1,000 jobs—1,000 experts in the science and research area who have done great things for this country. Science and innovation equals competitiveness for us in a global environment. Science underpins the future sustainability of so many Australian industries, and that includes Australian manufacturing industries. Australian industry supports and creates Australian jobs. By cutting funding from science and research organisations, we cut our productivity and, in turn, Australia becomes less competitive in a global environment. It simply does not make economic sense to do so. Even if you want to do it for ideological reasons, it does not make economic sense. No smart company will tell you that they do not invest in research and development.

The last matter that I will quickly touch on, because it pertains to South Australia, is road funding. For years South Australia has been getting supplementary local road funding. We have been getting it because we have 11 per cent of the nation's roads and seven per cent of the population. We get about 5½ per cent of the national pool for road funding. This is as a result of a flaw that was implemented years ago and that has never been corrected. This government has now seen fit to cut that supplementary local road funding to South Australia after years of it being there, including by previous coalition governments. In addition, by freezing federal assistance grants to local government, local councils get even less money because most of the road funding goes to local councils. This cut will directly hit local communities right around Australia. The Australian people have already passed their judgement on this budget and the Abbott government, and it has failed their test of honesty and fairness.

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing 192.

Federation Chamber a d journed at 20:58