Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the morning of the last of federal budget, the Liberal MP for Hume, Angus Taylor, set the tone for the day by sharing some ancient wisdom, which I picked up in a note today. In a series of tweets, he cited the values of Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero:

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

Certainly Cicero knew a few things about a hostile Senate, which we also face. He was eventually decapitated. I hope that is not the case with this budget!

Having mentioned the new member for Hume, I cannot help but remember his predecessor, Alby Schultz. Alby Schultz was a great warrior for his cause, and for many causes he and his wife had—especially farmers in their district and those across the nation who were suffering as farmers. Now why do I mention Alby? I went to a party room meeting this morning, Alby, and nobody attacked the National Party. Without you there, we do not have that solid resonance from those who come from your side of the square. You are so different, so special, and we wish you all the best in your retirement. I believe you have just had very, very good health news. All the best to you.

There is one thing I want to say to the wider Australian community, to the truck driver on the road, to the school teacher listening now, to the person hearing this in a remote part of Australia, in our suburbs and anywhere else—to each one of you. Firstly, with regard to the nation's health and wellbeing, especially its financial health and wellbeing, whatever we were doing was not working. Doing nothing, the status quo, which meant staying in the mess we were in, was not an option. It was not an option to allow the country to continue on the road it was on because all the forecasts were not prudent courses for appropriate outlays on your behalf to achieve a beneficial, healthy resurgence in this country.

I, like many other members of parliament, have desires for my electorate. For the nation, yes, there are many outlays that, whether you like it or not, whoever you elect is locked into making those payments. There are very small parts of the budget that can be adjusted to put us on a road back into the black. Basically, for health, education, welfare, support for older people, most of the costs are already locked into today's and our future budgets. So we have a small opportunity, in parts of the budget, to look at how we can make a change to what we are doing that will be beneficial for our future.

Not all debt is negative, either at a local or state or federal level. If you are building infrastructure for the future, sometimes, as with the business I was in, you need to be in debt. At other times you need to be in surplus, and you have to have the goal of being in surplus, otherwise you will forever remain in debt. Understanding that is clear to everybody across this nation. You have to have a goal to be in surplus in your family budget. You do not want to leave the debt to your children after you are gone. One thing we know for sure, in this place and outside this place, is that one day it will all be gone.

You have few chances to do the right thing by the nation while you are in power. For me it is not the office I hold that is important; it is the outcome that I deliver after holding that office. If I came here and I said nothing and I did nothing, I would be marked down. If you come here as an individual or you come into power as a government, you get hold—as Paul Keating said—of the levers of power. If you do that and leave the train just sitting on the rails at the station, going nowhere, you have done nothing for your community and you have done nothing for the nation. So it is not the office I hold but the outcome. In everything I do, both in this House and more broadly, I have taken those positions because I believe we can deliver a better outcome internationally, nationally, at our state level and our regional level. We have a large role to play in that.

As local members, though, we have desires for our community. I do not know what it is like in your electorate but, for me, it is not hard: I need a new hospital in West Gippsland. I cannot have that new hospital if we are in such great debt here that I cannot go to the government and say I need an outlay of many millions of dollars because over a long period of time the hospital that has served the community so well is one that was placed in a regional country area but is now directly on the outskirts of Melbourne, if not actually included in the outer Melbourne area. It has all the pressures of Melbourne's outer growth and at the same time it has the Latrobe Valley pressing on it from the other way. It is a very important health facility for our community in the West and South Gippsland areas as part of a framework of other hospitals, in Leongatha and Wonthaggi and, closer to Melbourne, in Casey, but it is the next port of call for people.

The committee, thoughtfully, have purchased the land for the new hospital, but what they will need is the go-ahead for the funds to build. The Leongatha bypass has just been funded by the federal government. We were blessed to get that through. It will make a difference to that community. It will change that community completely from having massive trucks going through it. We funded that.

There is the long jetty restoration at Port Welshpool, which I have been campaigning for ages. It is a beautiful old jetty that has heritage values. It has been burnt recently by vandals, and that is why it needs a complete rebuild. It is going to cost some millions of dollars to do. It has been a promise of mine in every election campaign up until the last one, when it was refused because of the situation we found ourselves in. I was not making promises during the election campaign. It will give access for disability fishing, it will change the nature of the town, tourism will grow, you will save the kindergarten, you will save the school, you will increase the business opportunities around the port area, and the whole area around Port Welshpool will be enhanced.

The West Gippsland round football stadium regional hub at Pakenham is needed because of massive growth. One family every day moves into my district around the Cardinia shire area, but particularly around the Pakenham-Officer area. There is one family every day. Probably on the figures, some days, two families. Their needs for infrastructure for sport for the young people are being catered for by the community as best we possibly can. The next step is a fairly major round ball—we used to call it soccer—football complex. That is a request of mine for the next election campaign and that is what I will be putting to my leadership.

The Moe Rail Precinct Revitalisation project has been funded, signed off, ticked off by the government. That will make an enormous difference to Moe and district and our pride in our community. The business community are right behind this. The two girls I am talking about will know who I am talking about, because one has a surname like mine, so I cannot really use it because it sounds like we are related. That is not the case at all, but can I just say to the two girls in those two businesses: congratulations on your work to push all the way through for the Moe revitalisation precinct, and I look forward to the turning of the sod for the next part of that.

Unless we can get our finances in order, we are not going to be able to fund the Korumburra Early Childhood Community Centre. I am very desirous of funding these projects, but governments have to have the money to be able to fund them. The only way we can do that is to make the sacrifices, as the Abbott government has outlined in this budget.

We had the great blessing of opening Prom Country Aged Care, as I said in an address the other day. They have asked for an extension. They now have a long waiting list of people who would like to join in that centre, and they are asking for more funds. I also met with Hillview aged care the other day. They have a proposition that they want to put to government, to the department, to say that we can join these two parts of the building up here, it will cost $900,000 and they don't need any more facilities—for example, kitchens and facilities to back it up; all the services are there. It is $900,000 and the former minister at the table knows exactly what I am talking about. It is a great opportunity at little cost, shovel ready. What is the problem? There is $5 million in capital works grants to be spread right across Victoria. That is one drip in a very, very big bucket needed for aged care right across the country.

There is one particular issue—treating young people with respect and saying to them: 'Look, we want your first work payment not to come from the government.' We want your first payment to come from your endeavours, so we are striking an accord with you to say that we do not want your first payment to be a dole payment.

I do not know what I would have been like as a 15-year-old when I did my first part-time job if I had been looking forward to my first payment being an unemployment benefit. I was always looking for my first payment to be what it was when I was 15 and went out carting swedes, hay and potatoes and weeding onions. You may say that those jobs are not there today, Russell, because the hay carting has been taken over by the big round bales and there are special insecticides now to remove the weeds from onions et cetera. But there are other jobs out there that were not there in my day of opportunity. I agree with the message that is coming from the government that for the first six months, surely, you can either learn or you can earn. If you have special disability, of course we are going to look after you, but I want your first payment to be an exciting payment.

When my dad first saw that cheque for £15, after I had spent two weeks digging and carting swedes, he was excited. I was the slowest digger and carter of swedes of the whole group of people in that paddock, but I earned £15 for the two weeks and I was pretty excited about that too. My father was so excited about it that he kept the cheque and gave me the money—he never thought I would earn anything!

Having said that, it is important that we send a message to the young people of Australia: here is the opportunity. If you are thinking that when you leave school you are going straight on a government benefit, no, we want you to have a view that you are going into the workplace. We want to change the culture of the nation to one that says, 'I am not after a government handout; I am after the government supporting me into opportunity either through learning or any other way that can support me into a job.' I think the government in this budget wants to change the culture of the nation.

Paul Keating said that when you change the government, you change a nation. Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey and their team have put forward this budget. Let us give it the opportunity to work over time and the benefits will flow to the generations. Rather than leaving our generations with a debt, rather than leaving the next generation to pay the bill, we can be the generation that began the cultural change and began the great opportunity to make something of this nation, starting with its young people.

Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow the member for McMillan. I do not agree with everything that he said but as usual he says it eruditely and with sincerity. It is a pleasure to talk on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2014-2015 and related bills. They are part of a set of the most important bills, certainly in my time in parliament and I suspect much longer, because they lie at the centre of a budget that does more to challenge and confront what we understand to be the Australian way of life than any other in my memory.

Before addressing the details of the budget underpinned by these bills, I want to talk a little bit about the seeds of the response that has come from the community about this budget, because in my view the seeds of this budget and the response that it has generated in the community go back to last year, a time when the now Prime Minister as opposition leader was presenting himself to the Australian people as all things to all people. He was trotting around the country talking very negatively about our government's agenda—which I guess was his role as the opposition leader—but not telling any hard truths to the Australian people about the challenges that our country and so many other countries confront in the 21st century. It was all going to be, according to the then opposition leader, beer and skittles.

It was clear though from feedback that I received in my electorate and when travelling the country with the then Prime Minister, and the research we received—and, I suspect, the anecdotal feedback that all members at the time received—that the Australian people were concerned that, if elected, the then opposition leader now Prime Minister would cut services, that he would cut health services, education funding and a range of other things. They knew that he was a member of parliament who had form, particularly when health minister. They knew that the member for Sturt had been trash-talking the Gonski school reforms for months and months. They had concerns that this Prime Minister, if and when elected, would cut seriously into services that they cherish. Clearly, the Prime Minister was getting the same feedback, because he gave the clearest possible assurances to the Australian people right up to the day before the election that there would be no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no changes to pensions, no cuts to the ABC or the SBS and no changes to GST arrangements.

The Australian people, rightly and understandably, took the then opposition leader at his word. Well, the deception started within weeks, with the release by the Treasurer of the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, the MYEFO. This, as was very helpfully pointed out by the minister for immigration today in question time, follows the PEFO, the Pre-Election Fiscal Outlook, which is signed off by the secretaries of the departments of Treasury and Finance, with no political overlay, no consultation with the political leadership of the government, the Treasurer, the finance minister, the Prime Minister of the day—a very clear set of books that was countermanded in a spectacular way by the Treasurer only several weeks after being elected into government.

The MYEFO released by the Treasurer in December changed extraordinary economic assumptions. It gave $9 billion to the Reserve Bank of Australia and it more than doubled the deficit over the course of the forward estimates, adding more than $68 billion in deficits in a matter of weeks, just weeks after the government being elected in 2013. The Australian people rightly ask, 'Why would the Treasurer have done this?' and the answer unfortunately again is crystal clear. The Treasurer was hell-bent on trying to manufacture a crisis, trying to give the sense of a budget emergency, which he has maintained ever since. Never mind the truth—that the previous government had achieved AAA credit ratings from all three major international credit agencies. No matter the fact that the public finances of this country are the envy and have been the envy for many years of the developed world, the Treasurer was hell-bent on manufacturing a sense of crisis and budget emergency.

The next phase of the deception was an old trick of the coalition, a trick they have engaged in for as long as I have been involved in politics—the Commission of Audit, to come in and write a blueprint for an incoming coalition government, be it a state government or a Commonwealth government, to start hacking into government services cherished by the Australian people. On this particular commission there was no diversity of views. There was no vague attempt by the government to ensure there was a diversity of views on this Commission of Audit—all good people, I am sure, but no diversity in this group. It has been said I think by the opposition leader that this was a report by the big end of town for the big end of town. Then the Treasurer sat on it. To add to the deception, the Treasurer sat on it. While the people of South Australia and Tasmania went to state elections, while the people of Western Australia unfortunately were dragged back to another Senate election, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister refused to release the hard truths of their blueprint for cutting services.

On budget night a few weeks ago 12 months of this calculated deception finally crystallised into a budget of broken promises. This budget hits pretty much every group in the community that you can imagine, except obviously the big end of town, which was protected by the Commission of Audit report. It hits pensioners in the Port Adelaide electorate, it hits low- and middle-income families in an appalling way, it hits young people trying to get a start in life in the way in which the member for McMillan talked about, it hits motorists, it hits Australians visiting their doctor and so much more, all to halve a deficit that the Treasurer had created only a matter of a few months earlier.

It is hard to know where to start with this budget. As I am sure is the case with all other members—although on this side of the table we are probably being a bit more frank about this—I and my office have been inundated with calls from members of the electorate I represent, Port Adelaide. I have been spoken to at street-corner meetings over the past few weeks about the measures they are most concerned about in this budget. Without ranking them in any particular order of concern, it is quite clear that the measure attracting the most calls and the most significant feedback to my office and to me personally has been around pensions.

The Prime Minister could not have been clearer before the election, including the night before the election, when he said that there would no change to pensions under a government that he would lead. Well, there clearly are. The lift to the age of 70 is quite profoundly and qualitatively different to the package of pension reforms that the Rudd government put in place in 2009. A lift to the age of 70 as the eligibility age for the age pension would be the highest eligibility age that I am aware of. No-one is able to point to a higher eligibility age anywhere, at the very least in the developed world.

The difference also between this change and the 2009 reforms was that those reforms by the Rudd government were part of a package that importantly included the largest-ever increase to the single pension in its history—an increase that finally saw the single age pension brought up to a benchmark of two-thirds of the couple's rate. This is something that seniors group had been agitating for, for many years and something that was not delivered by the Howard government, although I do acknowledge that the Howard government made some positive changes to the pension, which are impacted by this budget.

I particularly refer to the Howard government's decision effectively to index, effectively to benchmark, the age pension to earnings or to MTAWE. This is perhaps the most insidious change proposed to pensions in this budget. Not even the Commission of Audit recommended that pensions be indexed according to the consumer price index. Even the Commission of Audit recommended that indexation at least be at the PBCI, which, in the vast majority of quarters, will be higher than the CPI. As I said, there is effectively and has been for a decade and a half a wages link, an earnings link, for pensions in this country, which is so important for maintaining the value, the purchasing power, of the age pension, the disability support pension, the carers payment and a range of other pensions as well. A couple of days ago, the Treasurer in the parliament said that the CPI, apparently in one quarter recently, was higher than MTAWE, the male ordinary times average weekly earnings. I challenged him to find another quarter in the last 10 or 20 years where CPI had been higher than MTAWE, and of course he could not. For the vast bulk of modern Australian economic history, MTAWE has been significantly higher than CPI.

We have seen a change like this before in the early 1980s. We saw Margaret Thatcher get rid of the earnings link for the British basic state pension and link it instead to CPI. What we have seen over the course of three decades is the purchasing power, the value, of the basic pension in the UK deteriorate markedly, to the point where it is now probably only around 15 per cent of average earnings in Britain—a country which now finds 30 per cent of its older citizens aged over 65 officially living in poverty. This is an incredibly poorly thought-out change in this budget—something which does nothing to recognise and value the contribution of particularly older citizens in this country, who have worked hard, paid their taxes, raised their families and built the society that we so often, unfortunately, take for granted. This is a measure that will be resisted very, very strongly by the Australian Labor Party.

Time does not permit me to go through all of the other measures that people in the electorate which I have the privilege of representing have raised with me. The electorate is also very concerned about the changes to family payments, the freeze on rates and the exclusion or the removal of family tax benefit part B for families when their youngest child turns six. It is a shocking hit to single income households, including single parent households, along with a whole range of other changes and hits that this government has inflicted on those families—for example, removing the schoolkids bonus. Apparently, this is part of the Prime Minister's tough choices—the tough choices that include a tax increase to people on $200,000, which, by contrast, involves them paying $7.70 a week extra in tax for just three years, while single income households, with a primary and a high school aged child, might take a hit to family payments and cuts to other benefits that would total more than $6,000 in a year in 2017-18.

I would also like to talk very quickly about some measures in my portfolio, the environment, climate change and water portfolios, that have again shocked the constituencies in those areas. It is not easy to shock stakeholders in the environment portfolio when it comes to decisions by this government because, in eight short months, they have shown themselves to be a government that is disdainful of environmental protection, science and evidence based policy in the areas of environmental protection and climate change.

I particularly want to point to the decision in this budget to abolish ARENA, Australia's renewable energy agency, in spite of a very clear promise before the election that ARENA would be maintained by an incoming coalition government. It is yet another broken promise, perhaps overshadowed by the extraordinary broken promises in the areas of health, education, pensions and the like, but a very significant broken promise on the back of more than $400 million being stripped from that agency in MYEFO.

Half a billion dollars has been taken out of Landcare. The Minister for the Environment will say that that has been replaced with the Green Army program, a program that the opposition will not oppose, but natural resource management bodies and Landcare bodies will tell members of the coalition, as much as they tell members of the opposition, that a labour market program like the Green Army is no substitute for Landcare programs. As much as the Minister for the Environment might pretend otherwise, if you go out and talk to farmers and NRM bodies, which have been working on land care for years and years, they will say that switching $500 million out of that program into the Green Army is nothing more or less than a sleight of hand. Another $500 million has been stripped from the Solar Roofs program; a million solar roofs was a rock-solid promise made time and time again by the Prime Minister and the Minister for the Environment. It disappeared under this budget, as so many other things in the environment, climate change and water portfolios did.

I did want to mention one or two things in closing that are not in my portfolio, but are close to my heart. In spite of the Prime Minister's promise to make no cuts to health, I was very disappointed to see $50 million stripped from Partners in Recovery, a program designed to support the needs of perhaps the most vulnerable Australians in the community—people with enduring, chronic and very severe mental illness. I was very appreciative of the support that we received from the shadow minister for health in the Mental Health Reform package. I was very disappointed to see that cut to the program that was intended to support perhaps the most vulnerable Australians.

Labor will fight this budget; we will hold the Prime Minister to his word and we will make sure that Australia retains the pillars of a fair and prosperous society that have been attacked by this budget and that so many Australians fought to build up.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a privilege to speak on the first occasion as the member for Barker on the budget that was recently delivered. I thought I would begin by waxing lyrical about the process, but in truth—perhaps because I am feeling a little homesick—I will reflect on a discussion I recently had with my daughter who is four. I must say, she is particularly advanced—she takes after her mother rather than me. I knew Bella had reached a level of maturity when she said, 'Daddy, I have made a mess and I'll have to clean it up.' That speaks to maturity. My daughter, barely a few days over four, knew that having made a mess she would have to help to clean it up.

It is disappointing that those on the other side of the chamber do not have that level of maturity. Having made a mess, and that mess is a gross national debt of $667 billion, they intend to make it difficult for us to clean that mess. The other difficulty here is—it is new to me as a new member of this place—the exercise in misinformation. It is a monumental attempt at academic dishonesty, if you like, when it comes to the situation we find ourselves in—as I said a gross national debt of $667 billion and the interest alone is $1 billion a month. If we are to talk about what is best for the young people of Australia, and much of this debate has been about what is best for the young people of Australia, clearly what is not best for the young people of Australia is to saddle them with our debt today to be dealt with tomorrow. That is why difficult decisions with respect to this budget have had to be made.

I thought I would take my time to debunk some of these myths, because quite frankly I am alarmed at the level to which the Labor Party will sink to effectively scare the constituents of this nation. They want them scared, they want them to fear the decisions that are being taken in this budget, because if they did not want to scare them they would not be using words like 'cut'.

There was a rally recently in Mount Gambier and you will not be surprised, Madam Deputy Speaker, that a stalwart of the Labor Party spoke at that rally. A chief organiser of the CFMEU spoke at that rally, and I happened to listen to the coverage. What people heard, with the recitation of these lines of misinformation, is that effectively this budget is about cuts when in fact it is nothing of the sort. I was concerned to speak to a pensioner, who said to me, 'Tony, why is my pension being cut? I am being told that my pension is being cut.' I took a considerable amount of time to speak to this particular constituent and, at the conclusion of that discussion, she said to me, 'So you're telling me that my pensions will continue to increase twice yearly.' And I said, 'That's exactly the position.' She said, 'That's not what I'm being told. I'm being told that my pension is being cut.' Herein lies the harm. We need to be honest with the Australian people—not just honest with the headline gross debt figures but honest in terms of the impacts on individuals of the decisions we have made. There will not be pension cuts. What there will be is a continuation of twice-yearly increases, at a different rate and calculated on a different basis, but still twice-yearly increases.

Much of the rally in Mount Gambier spoke to the reforms in the education space. As someone who was lucky enough to achieve a tertiary degree, this is an area I feel passionate about. ABS statistics that have been quoted consistently throughout this debate tell us that, over the course of a lifetime, those who attain tertiary qualifications are, on average, likely to earn a million dollars more than those who do not. Equally, under our current system we have falling standards in our universities, in that we no longer have a university in the world's top 20, and we have very few in the world's top 100. What we have is a system whereby 60 per cent of the costs of delivering a tertiary degree is met by the public purse and 40 per cent is met by the individual. There is obviously good reason why we embark upon educating our young, but what we are doing through these reforms, and what we have made clear through these reforms, is asking for an increase in the contribution by individuals towards their education in a such a way that they will be, along with society, the principal beneficiary of that education. I need to also remind the chamber that not a single individual student will be prevented from undertaking a tertiary degree. There will be no requirement for up-front fees. When I heard at this rally the alarmist suggestions that nobody will be able to afford university and that university will be just for the rich, quite frankly it saddened me, because that is nothing more than a wolf whistle. It is the kind of politics that I thought we had left behind in this country in the 1960s. It is divisive. It is class politics. It is base politics and, quite frankly, it is incredibly sad.

Speaking briefly in the area of health, in this country 260 million GP visits are provided free. Of course, medical treatment has never been free to the public purse and I respectfully suggest that it should not be free to the individual. What we are asking for is a modest contribution from those who seek medical treatment. There are adequate and substantial safety nets. You hear the catch cry from those opposite that this administration is taxing the sick, but they do not offer the academically honest observation that there are in fact these safety nets; for pensioners, for people with health care cards and for children under the age of 16, the number of co-payments they have to pay is limited to 10 a year.

None of this is easy; cleaning up a mess and correcting errors is never easy. But the first and most important thing one has to do when embarking on this course is to accept that there is a problem. That is why, as disturbed as I have been about the rhetoric around this budget, what disturbs me most is that those opposite continue to promulgate the idea that there is no problem here. Of course there is a problem. With the interest payments on our national debt, we are effectively using one credit card to pay off a liability on another credit card. Ordinary Australians know that we just cannot sustain that. If we had not taken corrective action, each and every Australian would be saddled with $25,000 worth of debt. For the average household, for a family with two children, that is $100,000 of debt.

Those opposite who say this is a budget that takes from the poor and gives to the rich ignore the fact that not only is there to be an adjustment to the highest marginal tax rate but those who find themselves in that tax bracket—including me and other people in this House—pay close to $60,000 per annum in tax. Notwithstanding that fact, we have moved to increase the tax rate for those in the top marginal tax bracket. Why? Because everyone needs to do their bit. Whether it is local government, state government, high wealth individuals or those in receipt of benefits, each and every Australian needs to do their bit.

There has been misinformation around the decision to move the age of eligibility for the age pension to 70 by 2035. The level of misinformation on this has been quite surprising to me. I have dealt with inquiries from people close to the retirement age who say it is unfair that they should be expected to retire at 70 as a result of decisions taken in this budget. It has taken some time to explain to them that this change will take effect from 2035—that it will affect me but perhaps not them. We should be celebrating the fact that, as Australians, our life expectancy is increasing. We should celebrate the fact that 70 is the new 55 and not be scared of working until 70 if we can. Of course, we should remember that the Labor Party put us on this trajectory in 2009 by raising the age pension eligibility age to 67 from 2023.

I began my comments by talking about my young daughter. In the few minutes I have remaining, I wish to mention her again. She, like many people her age, is a massive fan of Peppa Pig. I never thought I would become a connoisseur of children's television, but I can recite almost every skit the Wiggles have ever embarked upon and I find myself knowing about not just Peppa Pig but her extended family. So if we are talking about the egregious way in which those who oppose these measures have gone about whipping up hysteria in the community, I cannot go past the suggestion by the ABC that this budget will see the end of Peppa Pig.

Let's be clear: the ABC and the SBS as the nation's broadcasters have been asked to find a one per cent efficiency dividend. I come to this place having spent a long time in private business. I grew up at the feet of my parents operating a small business. If they were not finding efficiency dividends of that and more per year they would not have been lucky enough to continue in business. This might go some way to explaining why particularly the ABC and particularly in my electorate of Barker has given such significant coverage to the budget. Quite frankly, I am glad they have, because it has given me the opportunity to explain the need for these measures.

Nobody makes tough decisions because they think that it will be a fun ride. The Prime Minister and Treasurer have not taken these tough but fair measures because they thought it would be great to run these ideas around the park. They have taken them because they, like me, do not want to bequeath to the next generation of Australians mountains and mountains of debt—$667 billion if we take no action. Quite frankly, that is a debt limit you could not fly a rocket over, and yet those in the Labor Party would have you think, 'There is nothing to see here. There is no need for change.' Indeed, recent announcements would have seen that debt level increase by over $100 billion.

I am proud of the budget that has been delivered. I am proud because, having been asked to make the difficult, sensible and appropriate decisions, the Abbott coalition government has done that. This budget is one that will show its merit in years to come. I am certain that not only the constituents of Barker but the wider Australian community are ready to fix the problem. They elected us to fix the problem. We have taken the first step on that road, and I am looking forward to completing the job.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the appropriation bills that are currently before the House. In total, these five bills seek parliamentary approval for around $1.3 billion in the 2013-14 year and $88.4 billion in the 2014-15 year for both the ordinary continuing operations of government as well as a number of new measures contained in the 2014-15 budget. It is this budget, the Abbott Liberal government's first budget, that I wish to speak to today because it is this budget that betrays the trust of the Australian people.

This is a budget built on broken promises and wrong priorities. This is a budget that exposes the Abbott government's systemic deceit—their false promises to the Australian people about reducing the cost of living, their false promises about the state of the budget and their false promises about returning the budget to surplus without imposing new taxes or new spending cuts beyond those they had already identified before the election. This is a budget that makes clear that what this government say before an election bears little, if any, resemblance to what they say and do after an election. Every day we see the Prime Minister on his bike pedalling as fast as he can to escape his pre-election promises and commitments. Does the Prime Minister honestly think that no-one will remember? It is not as though all those press conferences, billboards, signed pledges, glossy brochures and photo opportunities did not exist, and it is not as though there are not more than a few traces left behind to remind us all. Prime Minister, I can assure you that the people of Newcastle remember well what you said before the election and they, like the vast majority of Australians, have completely and comprehensively rejected this budget.

This is a budget that compounds inequality in our society, and Australians everywhere have denounced it. But it is not just Labor members of parliament making this point. As one senior Liberal MP put it, this budget is a stinking carcass around the government's neck. And while the Liberal Minister for Small Business is more polite in his observations that there are no clear winners in this budget I can assure the minister and the Abbott Liberal government that there are plenty of losers. There have been cuts to education, cuts to health, cuts to family payments, cuts to the ABC and SBS, and cuts to legal services, science, the arts, the environment, the Human Rights Commission, foreign aid, social services, Indigenous affairs—the list goes on and on. To make matters worse, the so-called justification for these savage cuts is a fictitious budget emergency concocted by this Prime Minister and his Treasurer to suit their own political purposes. No amount of spin, however, can hide the fact that these budget cuts are a complete betrayal of the Australian people, who put their trust in this Abbott Liberal government.

Let us be clear, this is a budget based on a long list of broken promises and commitments that this government made when seeking office. Who can forget the Prime Minister's words on the eve of the election when he was interviewed by SBS news? He said there would be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions, no changes to the GST, and no cuts to the ABC or SBS. This was the same Prime Minister who told the ABC in July last year:

The great thing about the Coalition is you know exactly what you will get from the Coalition.

Well, Prime Minister, this budget was certainly not the budget Australians thought they were getting or that they were told they were getting.

This budget is, however, unravelling before our very eyes, as an understandably very nervous government tries to sell the stinking carcass to the Australian people. Given the enormity of the task ahead you would think that the government would at least be across the detail of what they were trying to sell, but as we have seen over the last two weeks that could not be further from the case—with the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the ministry in complete disarray over their own budget measures.

Last week, we had the education minister floating the idea of collecting student debts from the dead as a way of boosting the budget bottom line. He said he had no ideological opposition to collecting debts from the estates of former students who died owing money to the government—a new death tax, the burden of which could be passed on to future generations. While the minister for education got the backing of the Treasurer, the Prime Minister moved swiftly to rule out any notion of collecting fees from dead students' estates, telling ABC radio that the existing arrangements regarding HECS debts would not be changed. What a shambles. The minister, Treasurer and Prime Minister are at complete loggerheads over their own budget measures.

And it does not get any better when it comes to health, where we have the Prime Minister and the Treasurer providing answers to questions on the new GP tax that directly contradict information in the budget papers. Who are we to believe? The Prime Minister, the Treasurer or the relevant minister? Can we even trust the budget papers—who knows? The question remains: if the Prime Minister and Treasurer do not understand the policies they are introducing, why should the Australian people have to pay for them?

Why should the Australian people have to pay a new tax every time they visit a doctor or are sent for x-rays or blood tests, when they already pay a Medicare levy through the tax system? This new tax on doctor visits hits everyone—pensioners, parents, unemployed, low-income earners, people with a disability and even veterans. For those who think they are not affected because their doctor does not bulk-bill, think again. Next time you go to get your Medicare rebate you will notice that it is $5 short because this government has cut the fees they pay to the doctors.

Why should pensioners and carers be asked to take a hit and accept lower rates of indexation when the government increases the pension age to 70, cuts the seniors supplement and rips up the national partnerships that deliver concessions to pensioners and seniors across Australia while this government insists on paying millionaires $50,000 to have a baby? Why should Australians accept this government's refusal to invest in education? We know that education is what shapes the future of our children and our nation, but this government is ripping out $20 million from our local schools, putting an end to the Gonski reforms and abandoning needs based funding. Along with cuts to trades training, huge increases to university fees and ever-spiralling HECS debts for students, this government is attacking education on all fronts, despite promising before the election that they were on a so-called unity ticket with Labor. Before the election, Tony Abbott promised no cuts to education; after the election it is a very different story—another broken promise from this deceitful government.

Let us take a look at some of the perhaps lesser known but no less nasty cuts contained within this budget. A close reading of this budget confirms that the government have no plan for Australian jobs and, just as shocking, they fail dismally to understand the needs of regional Australia. We have seen job cut after job cut in Newcastle since this government were elected, with hundreds more in danger. Yet we have seen no action or plan on jobs from this Abbott Liberal government.

To make matters worse, if you are under 30 and are one of the unlucky ones to lose your job, this budget makes it clear you are on your own. There are the cuts to apprenticeship and job seeker support programs, the abolition of career advice and mentoring schemes, the cuts to Youth Connections and the cuts to tools of the trade grants. Massive changes to Newstart and the freezing of payments in six-month intervals while you are trying to find work are especially cruel. These programs help people keep and find work and support job seekers in transition, yet this government is abandoning them at their time of greatest need.

The social and health impacts of these cuts are profound and tear at the social fabric of our community. Professor John Mendoza of the University of Sydney and the University of the Sunshine Coast notes that this budget is particularly cruel for younger Australians and is concerned about the ongoing effects. He said:

… younger Australians are been actively excluded by Government. It is discriminatory, divisive and dangerous. The changes to Newstart allowance in particular are the most egregious and dangerous proposals. The links between mental illness, suicide and under-employment and unemployment are well documented and known.

Removing this very basic safety net provided by Newstart will put more unemployed people at even greater risk—possibly unprecedented.

This is a shameful legacy for the government to leave for our young Australians.

In Newcastle we have benefited in the past from the decentralisation of federal government departments and agencies, creating local jobs and offering dedicated services to the community. We are proudly home to a major ATO facility and CSIRO's clean energy centre, a world leader in solar and thermal research. Indeed, I would like to put on the record my congratulations to the scientists in CSIRO in Newcastle who this week announced success in using solar energy to generate the hottest supercritical steam ever achieved outside of fossil fuel sources. Dr Wonhas said:

Instead of relying on burning fossil fuels to produce supercritical steam, this breakthrough demonstrates that the power plants of the future could instead be using the free, zero emission energy of the sun to achieve the same result.

The $9.7 billion research grant for this project was supported by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, ARENA, which this government has also cut. Only a government with no vision for the future would contemplate cutting science and scientific agencies like CSIRO and ARENA.

This budget contains no joy for our shipbuilders at Forgacs, where 900 highly skilled men and women continue to face an uncertain future with a lack of government commitment to major Defence shipbuilding contracts. The work is there—successive Defence white papers have identified the need—but this government continues to sit on its hands.

This Prime Minister also went to the election on a platform of no cuts to the ABC or SBS, yet in his first budget he has stripped $232 million from the ABC and $8 million from SBS. In Senate estimates last week ABC Managing Director Mark Scott confirmed that these cuts will result in job losses and a reduction in news services. In regional areas like my own electorate of Newcastle, the ABC is more than a news provider and a kids TV station; it is an integral part of our community. In times of disaster and emergency, like the bushfires experienced in our region in October last year, the ABC dropped everything to support our community. Cuts to the ABC in Newcastle are direct cuts to our community. Mr Scott also said in Senate estimates that local radio was the spine of what the ABC delivers but was uncommitted on its future in the wake of the announced funding cuts. He said:

I just hope that our budget envelope is one that allows us to continue to be able to invest in the renewal of local radio. It is the lifeblood of what we do.

On emergency broadcasting, he said:

… we look to be responsible stewards as emergency broadcasters. We take the role very seriously. I think in any circumstances we would look to deliver the best possible service that we can. But it is expensive and we continue to try to prioritise funding for it.

The ABC are trying to do their best for regional Australia, but this government is undermining their efforts.

This government has also removed a key voice for people with disability through the abolition of the dedicated Disability Discrimination Commissioner role from the Australian Human Rights Commission. Earmarked as a cost-saving measure to repair the budget, the cutting of the role currently held by Mr Graeme Innes AM, who is legally blind, is ill-considered and illogical. Five members of the Human Rights Commission have expressed their disagreement with the decision. As confirmed last week in Senate estimates, nearly 40 per cent of the Human Rights Commission's caseload is from the disability area—nearly double the next highest caseload. It deserves to have a dedicated commissioner. I echo the call of my colleagues and Mr Innes: Prime Minister, do not abandon this important voice for people suffering from discrimination.

Let us take a look at the government's $16 billion cut to overseas aid, another broken promise that will hurt the world's poor. Sixteen billion dollars in overseas aid can make a world of difference to some of the poorest countries and people on earth. For example, it could teach 53 million people to read and write, provide 3.2 billion lifesaving malaria treatments, deliver antiretroviral treatments to 20 million people with HIV-AIDS or train 6.4 million new midwives in developing countries. Australia is a rich and prosperous nation and it is our responsibility to support those in need. In a year when we are chairing the G20, we should be setting an example to the rest of the world about how to look after others less fortunate. Instead, we are tearing up our commitment and abandoning those who need our help the most. Again, it is not just Labor highlighting the unjust aspects of this government. In response to the budget cuts to foreign aid, Helen Szoke, Chief Executive of Oxfam, said:

Unless countries like Australia invest more in humanitarian assistance and efforts to reduce disaster risk we are going to see more people go without life-saving assistance—

Australia needs to be part of the solution, not backing away from its responsibility.

Budgets are about choices, and while the Prime Minister likes to talk about making tough decisions and tough choices, the Australian people have every right to question his priorities. Just how tough was it to produce a budget that makes the lower income earners do all the heavy lifting while high earners are left with barely any change or are indeed better off. Just how tough was it to cut health, education and pensions while giving $50,000 to already wealthy people to have a baby? These are not the values or priorities of the Australian people. This is a budget that divides Australia and entrenches inequality. That is why Labor will be fighting this budget and making the case for a better future, a more equitable future. Australia can and must do better.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Newcastle for her contribution but, as usual, there is nothing constructive from those opposite to help the future direction of this country. It is important in this debate to reflect on some of the reasons why we need a responsible budget. History is a wonderful teacher in this regard; listen to the wise words of Cicero some 2,600 years ago. He said:

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

For far too long politicians of all persuasions have failed to have an honest discussion with the Australian people about the limits of government and what governments are actually capable of providing and not providing. It is wise to reflect on a little story that illustrates the situation very well. I quote from an article titled 'The Tragedy of the Welfare State' by Tom Palmer. He uses this little analogy:

The welfare state has something in common with fishing. If no one owns and is responsible for the fish in the lake, but one does own all the fish he or she can catch and pull out of the lake, everyone tries to catch the most fish. Each reasons that “if I don’t catch the fish, someone else will.” Each of us may know that catching lots of fish now means that the lake will be fished out, but so long as others can catch whatever I don’t catch, none of us have an incentive to limit our fishing …

The consequence is that we do not:

let the fish population replenish itself. Fish are caught faster than they can breed; the waters are fished out; and in the end everyone is worse off.

Over the past six years we have seen exactly that scenario play out in this great country. The end result is that we are at a point where approximately 50 per cent of Australians pay little if any income tax once the various government benefits are taken into account; the top 10 income earners pay approximately 45 per cent of all income tax; and we have one of the higher corporate tax rates in the world—certainly well above OECD and Asian averages.

I acknowledge that this budget does make some difficult decisions, but as with the story we have just heard, if difficult decisions are not made what are going to have left the future generations? We need not only to look at the short-term impact but also to consider the longer term outcomes for this country. Far too often we focus on the here and now and, unfortunately, more often than not for political not national game, as we see from those opposite. We should also be considering the impact of today's decisions on future generations. That is exactly the purpose of many of the measures in this budget. They will create a system that is sustainable for the long-term future for not just current generations but the generations to come. If we do not start to manage our expenses and the long-term sustainability of government programs there will come a time when, just as in the fishing story, they will become unaffordable. This is of no benefit to current recipients or those who may seek to claim a benefit in the future.

We clearly stated during the election campaign that our four key areas of focus would be: stopping the boats, it is well over 150 days since a successful boat arrival; repealing the carbon and mining taxes, our legislation for both of these has passed the House of Representatives but is being blocked in the Senate; building the roads of the 21st century, we are spending some $50 billion on road and rail infrastructure in this budget alone; and, crucially, bringing the budget back into order. This budget is the beginning of that process. In my electorate of Forde during the election we announced that a coalition government would deliver some $3 million towards the upgrade of the Beenleigh town centre, as well as close to $1 million for CCTV cameras and some $20,000 for our local SES groups. I can happily say that all of these items are being delivered in this budget.

In this debate it is worthwhile to have a little bit of history and some perspective about how we got into this situation in the first place. When Labor came into office in 2007 the previous coalition government had left them with a surplus of some $20 billion, with no net debt and some $45 billion in the bank. The following six years of Labor government saw that situation deteriorate markedly with the result being that if nothing changed over the subsequent 10 years we would not see a budget surplus and we would finish up with gross debt of some $667 billion. During those six years the previous Labor government promised on some 500-odd occasions that we would have a budget surplus. It was like they had been wandering around in the desert for six years and every now and again saw a mirage of a surplus that, as they got closer, disappeared and turned out to be sand and more desert. That is the debt and deficit disaster that the previous Labor government left the Australian people. The Australian people elected a coalition government to clean up the mess. We have a choice to be a responsible government and repair that damage, not just for the here and now but for the longer term. If we do not make any changes in the way we are going, the budget will be in deficit for another 10 years, which would be longest stretch of deficits since World War 2.

It is important to note that the dollars we borrow today and spend today are a cost to future generations because we are spending their taxation income today. Unless these policies change, as I said earlier, we will be facing $667 billion of debt in 10 years time, equal to $24,500 for every man, woman and child in this country. We currently pay $1 billion a month in interest. If nothing changes it will be close to $3 billion a month. The current $1 billion a month is equivalent to the cost of building a world-class teaching hospital each month or, to bring it closer to home, of upgrading the M1 between Loganholme and Daisy Hill.

This budget seeks to begin the process of restoring long-term financial stability for future generations in this country. As a result of some of the difficult decisions we are making, debt is forecast to be about $275 billion lower in a decade. This is vitally important because we would then not be paying so much on that interest bill and we would not be paying it to overseas. When you strengthen the economy, small businesses succeed, families have less pressure on them and jobs are created.

As other speakers on this side have quite rightly pointed out, those opposite have been running a scare campaign to frighten the Australian people with their apocalyptic versions of this budget. We have taken the time in my office to sit down with many of my constituents and explain the realities of what we are actually doing and to inform them of the true facts about what this budget is seeking to achieve. So let's clear up a few of the misconceptions from those opposite.

Let's look firstly at health. We are not cutting health funding. Despite the rumours going around, the annual federal funding to the states for public hospitals will increase by more than nine per cent every year for the next three years and by more than six per cent in the fourth year. Labor says that that six per cent is a cut. Well, that is based on their blue-sky mining promises that were never sustainable in the long term. As I said earlier, it is our responsibility to demonstrate prudent fiscal management for the longer term. In total, there is an increase of 40 per cent over the next four years. In addition, we are looking to improve the long-term sustainability of the Medicare system with the introduction of the co-payment fee, of which $5 will go into the medical research fund to provide funding for cures for diseases such as cancer, diabetes and stroke, many of which Australians suffer regularly.

In education, again, we are not cutting funding. Students and schools will benefit from the government's record funding investment of some $64½ billion over the next four years. Schools in Forde will benefit not just from that funding because we plan to put other reforms in place to improve the quality of teaching. In the first part of this year schools in the Forde received some $3 million from the federal government, and that funding would never have been received if Labor had been re-elected. From 2013-14 to 2017-18, total Commonwealth funding to all schools in Australia will increase by some 34 per cent. From 2018 funding for schools will be based on the CPI plus growth in school enrolments. But, again, it is about putting the budget on a long-term, sustainable footing.

In higher education, for the first time ever, the government seeks to provide direct financial assistance to all students studying diplomas, advanced diplomas and associate degree courses in addition to bachelor's degrees. The coalition government's reforms expand opportunities for Australian students and will provide additional financial support to over 80,000 students each year by 2018.

In addition to tertiary education, we see increased support for people wishing to pursue an apprenticeship or trade vocation through the trade support loans, to help more apprentices finish their training and get straight out into the workforce by providing support across the entire period of their apprenticeship and providing an incentive to complete their course.

There has been much discussion about the impact or lack thereof on pensioners. As I mentioned earlier, there has been a lot of misinformation surrounding pensions, largely thanks to a great scare campaign by those opposite. I have been out in the community making myself available to constituents to discuss their concerns regarding this fear campaign. On Saturday I met with a number of seniors at a local coffee shop to discuss their concerns and to advise them that we are not—I repeat not—cutting their pensions. I explained that the government seeks to continue increasing the rate of the age pension and that pensioners will keep their Commonwealth concessions and benefits. Age pension payments are increasing and they will continue to increase twice each year to keep up with the cost of living.

In March this year the pension rate increased by a maximum of $15.70 a fortnight for single pensioners and $11.90 a fortnight for each member of a couple. There will be a further pension increase in September. I think in this debate it is relevant to note that the March increase for pensions was based on CPI, not on MTAWE, which is exactly where we are looking to go from 2017-18. Pensioners will also continue to receive the pension supplement, which will be indexed twice a year. This government is focused on creating a long-term, sustainable system for all Australians.

We are also supporting small business, which is the engine room of our economy and, in Forde, our largest employer. The budget contains a range of measures for small business, including establishing a Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. We have also spent significant time already reducing the huge amount of red tape.

In summary, this budget is focused on creating a long-term, stable financial situation for the long-term benefit of this country. (Time expired)

Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am glad to have this opportunity to be heard on the government's appropriation bills, which underpin a budget based on a fictional emergency and are driven by a set of ideological prejudices. It is a budget that amounts to a dismantling of Australia's future. It is a budget that is punitive towards those who have least and it makes no attempt to address the areas of expenditure or tax concession that are ineffectively directed towards those who have most, especially large corporations. It is in many ways a cruel and distorted budget. There is no other way to explain an approach that seeks to penalise the unemployed, age and disability pensioners, university students, single parents and low-income families while making a big show of getting a balanced contribution from high-income earners and big business with what amounts to a slap with the limpest of limp lettuce leaves.

Under this government's proposed budget, single parents will be poorer as their support is reduced, as they face GP co-payments, as they lose the schoolkids bonus and as they deal with the direct and indirect effect of higher petrol prices. Meanwhile, there is a tax cut for business, and even the biggest companies, at worst, will stay the same. The levy they face, which offsets the general tax cut, will be used to pay for an unnecessarily generous paid parental leave scheme, in a strangely firm adherence to the one commitment the Prime Minister apparently does want to keep.

The attempts to sell the budget have involved repeated claims that its harsh and conflicting measures are necessary for the long term, yet the budget takes a number of incredibly retrograde steps in relation to future costs. Some of the so-called budget savings, though dealt with by separate legislation, are created by unwinding national preventative health coordination and research and by decreasing investment in technologies that improve energy efficiency, increased renewable energy and support for the low-carbon jobs of the 21st century. These cuts conform to the coalition's general disregard for the role and responsibility of government in taking the long view and in shaping Australia's economic and social future. The cuts conform to a belief that the market will automatically provide wonderful solutions to the challenges that lie ahead even though history shows that without proper guidance, regulation and support the market is a poor mechanism for getting ahead of the curve. Health services and costs in the US are a great example where a much higher mix of private to public funding and service provision delivers significantly worse and less fair health outcomes at a much higher cost to the public purse.

The retreat in the area of climate change action is particularly muddle-headed when you consider that a set of balanced revenue and investment arrangements are being taken away, to be replaced by a direct action spending plan that all the experts agree will not sufficiently reduce emissions. So big polluters will no longer pay for the cost of their pollution. The incentive to lower emissions and improve efficiency will disappear, and the historic investment in Australia's renewable energy capacity, innovation and jobs will drop away at a critical period in the industry's burgeoning development.

Last week I had the privilege of meeting several young people from Kiribati and Tuvalu who were visiting parliament with the Pacific Calling Partnership facilitated by the Edmund Rice Centre's Eco Justice campaign. They discussed the devastating impact that climate change is having on their tiny islands, with increased cyclonic, drought and storm surge events, and sea level rise eroding precious land and polluting crops and freshwater with salt. There is nowhere for them to go as their islands become thinner and thinner. Nineteen-year-old Apisaloma Tawati from Kiribati described the 'slow and horrible decay of life—life of plants, animals and humans'. They called on Australia as a rich and developed country to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and to help finance small island countries to adapt to the damage that climate change is causing.

Unfortunately this coalition government is taking Australia down the opposite path in turning our back on climate change and pulling out of international climate finance agreements that would help developing and small island states to adapt to the damage caused by climate change. This has consequences not only for our international reputation but also, far worse, for our Pacific Island neighbours whose nations are slowly drowning. If we truly care about the Pacific, as the government says we do, then we need to take appropriate and urgent action on climate change both here in Australia and internationally.

It goes without saying that there are a number of impacts that this budget will have on the people I represent in Fremantle. The changes to support for pensioners and senior Australians including the planned reversion to CPI pension indexation, the reset of deeming thresholds, the cutting of the senior supplement and the abolition of the national partnership through which state-based concessions are supported, will all have the effect of reducing the real income and the real quality of life for older Australians. Mr Abbott said 'no change to pensions' on the eve of the election. That commitment has been shattered.

As a co-chair of the newly-formed Parliamentary Friends of the ABC launched last week, I note with particular regret that the budget also includes cuts to the ABC and the SBS of $232.3 million and $8 million respectively. On the eve of the election Mr Abbott said 'no cuts to the ABC or SBS'. This is another promise given, another promise broken. Fremantle is a diverse and multicultural electorate with a community that has special regard for the value that exists in a properly resourced public broadcaster and a properly resourced multicultural and multilingual broadcaster. These cuts and those false words will be keenly felt in Fremantle.

We are all fortunate that Australia is, to a large extent, free of the phobia that exists in much of the US, for example, when it comes to government and the Public Service. We recognise that good government is a good thing—politics and politicians aside—that government is a critical guarantor of fairness and balance, an essential custodian of public institutions and free public goods and a particularly important regulator when it comes to the protection and conservation of our shared environment and natural resources. Unfortunately, as I said earlier, the Abbott government feels it has a duty to be a government in retreat, to abandon the role of custodian, to abdicate the responsibility of leadership. All around us, with perhaps the sole exception of defence and border control, the public institutions, public servants and public services that Australians depend upon are being whittled down and weakened.

We have seen cuts to the CSIRO, the abolition of the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council, the disappearance altogether of AusAID and the prospective dissolution of the Medicare Local network—all steps that reveal a fundamental disregard for public servants and publicly-funded services. While the member for Tangney and I do not agree on major policy all that often, I believe he made uncommon good sense on the radio last week in relation to the CSIRO cuts when he said that it appeared that this government and this Prime Minister simply did not understand science—on this, he is absolutely right.

The Abbott government does not understand medical science or else why dismantle the recently established structure of preventative health research and coordination within our health system. It does not understand climate science or else why dismantle the historic and forward looking changes to reduce emissions and grow renewable energy production and jobs. It does not understand environmental science or else why propose changes that seriously weaken the regulatory effectiveness of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act by devolving decisions that are rightly for the Commonwealth to consider, including World Heritage and the application of the water trigger, down to the states and even to local governments.

As Adjunct Professor Rob Fowler from the Law School at the University of South Australia said in an address to parliamentarians last week titled 'Rolling back the years—regression in Commonwealth environmental laws':

Given the scale of the environmental challenges needing to be faced in this country, and globally, at the present time, and given also the growing sense of urgency on the part of scientists concerning the need to address these problems, it is difficult to understand the rationale for a substantial withdrawal from the field of environmental management by the Commonwealth.

It is the combined effect of the government's policies and budget measures that deliver compound harm in my electorate of Fremantle. The best example of this is the Abbott government's commitment to fund the construction of Roe Highway Stage 8, in combination with its decision to make no investment in urban rail and its intention to devolve EPBC assessments to state and perhaps even local governments.

In the case of Roe 8, this means providing funding to a massively expensive and out-of-date road project in the absence of a clear port and freight network plan. It means going forward with a road project whose only certainty is severe damage to a rare and precious remnant wetland and the cutting in half of local communities. I take this opportunity to again thank community campaigners from the Save Beeliar Wetlands group, including Nandi Chinna, author of Swamp Poems, Kate Kelly, Felicity McGeorge, Joe Branco, and Nyoongar elders Patrick Hume and Reverend Sealin Garlett. I congratulate them for their successful community workshop that was recently held in the Bibra Lake area.

The final substantial area of the government's proposed budget that I want to touch upon is international development. As someone who had the honour and privilege of holding, briefly, the role of Minister for International Development, how disappointing it is that, since its election, the current government has perhaps moved faster and more savagely to undermine both the organisational capacity and the funding for Australia's foreign aid program than it has in relation to any other area of government operation. Sadly, foreign aid continues to be seen by those opposite as a kind of misguided niche interest held by those with a bleeding heart—and therefore naturally the primest of prime candidates for funding cuts at every turn.

The reality is that Australia's international development program under the Labor government secured its place as a world leader in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. It has been making an incredibly important lifesaving difference to the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the world—many of whom are in our region. Even if you were the kind of person who thought Australia should not make that sort of contribution to the wellbeing of our fellow men and women, you should reflect on the fact that, dollar for dollar, well-directed foreign aid is as effective in improving economic capacity and for building regional peace and stability as spending in any other government program area.

It is profoundly depressing that some people will hardly bat an eyelid at the most astronomical expenditure on certain defence projects but will enthusiastically applaud the taking of money out of programs that give children the chance of living beyond five years of age. It is appalling when politicians say that we cannot commit funds to reduce poverty and disease in other countries in the circumstances of our own small and manageable national borrowings, yet heartily welcome the fact that we have committed to sending $24 billion overseas to purchase a set of warplanes in precisely the same fiscal circumstances.

For all the people of Fremantle, this budget is disappointing, short-sighted and dishonest. For many of them, it is also frightening and punitive. People in my electorate are bewildered at the conduct of a government whose single act of creation so far is the reintroduction of dames and knights and whose principal focus seems to be the relentless practice of negativity they honed in opposition.

Those opposite who spent the entire to period of the Labor government opposing measures that were not only for the broad economic and social benefit of this country but were also matters that Labor had canvassed openly with the public can have no reason to believe that we on this side should go along with policies that harm low-income and disadvantaged Australians and that were loudly and plainly disavowed by Mr Abbott in the course of the 2013 election campaign.

We will not go along with a budget that dismantles Australia's public health and education, our welfare safety net, our scientific excellence, our environmental protection framework, our public broadcasters, and our Clean Energy Future. We will not go along with a budget that goes blindly into massive defence spending commitments and turns a blind eye to the poorest people in the poorest countries. We will stand up for the values and the people that Labor has always represented—for fairness, for those who need support, for the public goods and services we share, and for a progressive approach to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. We will do this government the favour of holding them to their promises, which means opposing the broken commitments and backward measures contained in this budget and these appropriation bills.

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

I do welcome the opportunity to speak on behalf of the future generations of this country and to say to the opposition that it is not business as usual. Things have changed and they should be very clear on what has changed. Back in 2007 there was $50 billion in the bank. Now, after six years of deficits—six years where the reality that followed the budget papers a year later never reflected what was in those papers—things have changed and things now must change. So for those that have created the mess to now complain and whinge and appeal to the worst in human nature in this country—self-interest—it is a real shame. There are things that just need to be done differently.

Of course, when I look at the budget, there is lots of it and I am not happy about. Sure, no-one needs to be happy about it, but people need to realise that something has got to be done. It just cannot go on having bigger and bigger deficits. Things have to change; spending needs to be changed. Otherwise it comes down to a betrayal of few generations of this country. I do want to, in the years ahead, way after I am gone from this place, looking into the faces of my daughters and maybe their children and say, 'We just handed the debt onto you because I adopt the path of least resistance and did what was easy rather than what was right.' So I see this as things that need to be done. Again, no-one needs to be happy about it, but the reason why they need to be done is the last six years of spending, of borrowing and promises into the future.

So it has come to this. I did not use to be like this. There was $50 billion in the bank back in 2007. Now it is $1 billion a month in interest payments—borrowing just to pay the interest. And, possibly, if we do not get this budget through, then the $667 billion that this country would have been saddled with after 10 years will be at that much or even more. Instead, if this budget gets through, then we will be looking at something far less in the future of $389 billion. Of course, things need to change. Again, we do need to get back to surplus and we will see that in the future just beyond the forward estimates.

I look at this budget and I see that this is an appeal to the best of the nature of Australians. This is an appeal to people to say: 'There is a problem and it is all hands on deck. Everybody needs to make a contribution.' It is an appeal to people to say, 'Apart from making that contribution, we must also think about the future in terms of infrastructure, in terms of higher education and in terms of better health outcomes for people around this country.' It is, again, asking people to look beyond their own circumstances and say, 'As part of the Australian team, we need to do things better and we need to look to a better future.'

The Treasurer talks about contributing and building, but part of that is the petrol excise, which will take 40 to 60 cents a week extra from the people who use the roads for better roads. In your own electorate, Deputy Speaker, the Swan Valley Bypass is an important regional road to give business and industrial traffic, commuters and tourists the safer option of bypassing the Swan Valley in moving north onto the Great Northern Highway. All around the country that petrol excise will be used for the betterment of roads and people. Again, if you do not use a car, you will not pay; and so the user is paying.

On the point of the doctor co-payment, $5 of it will go to the Medical Research Future Fund and when that fund reaches $20 billion we will see research from the proceeds into things like diabetes, cancer and dementia. These are great afflictions on Australians. I am sure all members will have had contact with people afflicted by type one diabetes—a young child whose life is made far more difficult or their families woken during the night for the pinpricks on fingers. Then there is the acquisition of the pumps for insulin. It is a hard life, but through this fund we can hopefully get all the tools to beat these disease—type one and type two diabetes and the cancers that ravage so many Australian families. Again, it is asking people to contribute to these greater future outcomes and to build something bigger and better.

On higher education there is a lot of concern. I believe Australia has only one university in the top 20 and only about five in the top 100. Here people are also being asked to contribute to help universities compete in the region and around the world. Why shouldn't more Australian universities be in the top 100 and in the top 20? Why can't Australian universities be among the greatest universities in the world? If there was more money in the Commonwealth coffers, then it might be possible for greater continuing contributions from the government. But I am afraid there is simply not any money any more—again, the $1 billion a month on the credit card—and the options are few. When students are being asked to pay around 50 per cent of their tuition fees, the government is still there with the people. The days of free degrees have passed. Fees have increased over time, and co-payments are the way of the future. People are being asked to contribute to their own education; they will be better off for the outcomes they receive—opportunities and wages from higher qualifications.

It is not unreasonable to ask people to make those sort of contributions, and there is a history of doing so: for HECS fees, co-payments were introduced. There has been something similar to doctor co-payments in the past; there have been co-payments with the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. This is just a continuation of past schemes.

I want to go back to what the opposition has been talking about. There has been a lot said and there have been many questions about $80 billion in education and health cuts and also foreign aid cuts. The opposition has promised to put $80 billion back into education and health and $16 billion into foreign aid. It is clear that that has been promised, and that would of course have to go back onto the bottom line of the budget, should Labor get the opportunity to do that. Unfortunately, what has always been missing is an explanation of how that is going to be paid for. We have been trying to reduce the amount of spending and get back to a budget surplus, so we have put some stuff out there which obviously it has not been popular—there is no doubt about that. Lots of people have concerns, but what we have to think about is the future. Rather than just passing on big debts and deficits to future generations, someone has to actually do something about it. While we did not create the problem we are trying to do something about it.

I note the member for Fremantle spoke about the ABC and the SBS. It is clear that as government agencies or bodies there are no special deals for them. The efficiency dividend is applied to them as it is to every other government agency and body. It is unwise for any government to offer special deals. Again, that is where we were are at.

I should also have mentioned when I was talking about education and health that the health budget will continue to grow, by nine per cent, nine per cent, nine per cent and then six per cent in the fourth year. For schools, it will be eight per cent for the next three years and six per cent after that. So growth is always guaranteed. There is always going to be an increase in spending from the Commonwealth. As we also know, and this is particularly where the rubber hits the road for Western Australia, when we came to office in September the education minister was able to find $1.2 billion that the former government had taken out of education and to put that back in. That benefitted the schools in Western Australia. So, despite what is being said, there continues to be growth in education and health funding and we are continuing to support these areas.

I have noticed that there have been a lot of complaints. In my electorate I have only received 35 emails complaining about the budget, but we have gone back to people and explained what it is about and why we needed to do the things we have done. What concerns me is the violence in protests particularly around universities. There is no problem with protesting, of course, or even showing passion, but violence is deplorable. That is just not the way things should be done.

I would also like to express my concern about how many children are being politically indoctrinated to hold up signs at protests, being dragged along—maybe dragged out of school—to hold up placards when they do not even know what the words say or understand the content or the meaning. I think we occasionally find this when we are out and about in our schools, including in primary schools. I remember one day when I was speaking to a year-4 class that a young boy told me he was on a particular side of politics. He said, 'I am'—I will not mention the party, but he said he was that. I said to him, 'I guess that is the view you have been told. I am a member of the Liberal Party. I am a member of this parliament, and I have two daughters aged 15 and 11. I do not tell them which side they are on.' I think it is very wise for parents around this country to be very careful about trying to impose their views or about dragging their children out to make up the numbers in these sorts of protests. I do not think they should force upon the children of this country a political opinion when they do not have the knowledge or the experience to determine what the issues are for themselves. I think it is pretty much an abuse of children, particularly when we have seen some children holding up signs which use four-letter words; it just goes far too far.

In conclusion, I think we are all elected to do what is right and not what is easy. I will not betray future generations by taking the path of least resistance in this matter. This is a cause worth fighting for and, as I have always believed, if the cause is worth fighting for then I am prepared to risk my seat over it. If I lose my seat for a good cause—for this cause—then that is the way it should be.

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

It is always good to follow the member for Cowan. I, too, remember those children being forced to hold up the untruthful carbon tax signs. I want to rise tonight to record my disgust at the distrust that the Abbott government has delivered with this budget. Let us start first with the health sector. The introduction of the GP tax is a cruel and broken promise that will hurt the most vulnerable in McEwen. Mr Abbott told the people of Australia, time and time again, that there would be no new taxes but here he is imposing a painful tax on the sick, the elderly and the vulnerable—those who can least afford it. The GP tax means that people in the electorate of McEwen will be taxed almost $8 million a year just for being sick or injured. This comes on top of the $270 million cut from the current provisions of Medicare offers and the increased cost of medicine. What are the sick and the elderly to do? They certainly cannot visit their local public hospitals, since Tony Abbott has cut $200 million from the public hospitals, as well. His budget is forcing the sick and the vulnerable out of the health system, unfairly.

On the night before the election, Tony Abbott promised there would be no changes to pensions, but this budget confirms that that is a broken promise. These vicious cuts will have severe effects on the lives of 24,600 pensioners who live in McEwen. Right across the electorate, pensioners have been coming up to me to express their concerns about the cuts to pensions. I am extremely sad to say that their worst fears have been confirmed. Tony Abbott is slashing the current system that makes sure pensions keep pace with the cost of living; he is instead going to index the pensions by CPI. That highlights just how out of touch the Prime Minister is, since he is oblivious to the fact that CPI increases do not come close to reflecting the real cost of living—especially with all the new taxes he is introducing. These savage cuts are ensuring our pensioners will not be able to make ends meet, especially now, when they are only living off $20,000 a year—or, to put it in terms that the government likes, the equivalent of two-fifths of the paid parental leave scheme. The government wants to pay wealthy women $1,923 per week for having a baby but our pensioners are expected to live off $384.

What about the other callous cuts to important concessions and assistance packages pensioners rely on to keep their heads above water? These programs are designed to help the disadvantaged—and it is just a slap in the face to our seniors and pensioners who have worked all their lives only to be thrown on the scrap heap by this government.

McEwen is going to be hit especially hard by the privatisation of Defence housing. We have 300 families in the Whittlesea area and 308 families in Puckapunyal and the Mitchell Shire living in Defence housing. What are these families going to do when the government privatises the DHA? These families have been left in limbo because their futures in our community are in doubt.

The budget is slashing millions of dollars from local councils, which hits regional areas of Victoria particularly hard. In McEwen, the Macedon Ranges Shire and the Mitchell Shire, which make up the bulk of my electorate, stand to lose $1.1 million each—up to 14 per cent of their revenue. This is going to wreak havoc in the flow-on effects to our communities since these councils will have to increase their rates or cut services to keep pace with rising costs of maintenance and services that they provide to our community.

I have already received dozens of emails and phone calls from constituents concerned about the consistent increases in council rates, but now because of this cruel Abbott government they will face further strain on their family budget. Fewer families in McEwen will be able to make ends meet with the Abbott government's lowering of the threshold for both family tax benefit parts A and B. We have 16,139 families receiving family tax benefit part A and we have 13,856 families receiving the important assistance of family tax benefit part B. So there are 29,995 families in my electorate that are going to be worse off because of the short-sightedness and the heartless money-grubbing tactics of Tony Abbott.

McEwen is one of the biggest users of child care in the country. Our demographics show that. We have the largest population of children aged nought to five in the country. That is how we rely on childcare services right across electorate. The Abbott government has cut millions of dollars in preschool funding, childcare services and accessibility programs outside school hours along with freezing the childcare rebates. Even Mr Abbott's fellow Liberal Party member, and Premier of Victoria, Dr Denis Napthine stated:

The more we look into this federal budget, the more we're seeing impacts ... that are detrimental to our state and our families.

I would not normally agree with Denis Napthine, but on this occasion I think he is dead right. He knows that this federal government is punishing Victorians just because of an ideological position of the Prime Minister.

I would also like to discuss how cruel this budget is in ruining the future of young people in McEwen. The Prime Minister has cut $1 billion of support the apprentices and trade training centres. Labor's program of trade training centres has been integral to building the skills and expertise of young people. Before the election the Prime Minister promised Australia's 400,000 apprentices more financial assistance to help them learn their trade and find a good job—another broken promise. He has cut assistance through the tools of trade program. There are now hundreds of apprentices who are going to be out of pocket, since these cuts come into effect on 1 July.

I would like to highlight the significance of the heartless cuts to youth programs. In McEwen we have several community organisations that work hard to ensure that our youth either remain in school to complete year 12 or at least engage in some sort of training, such as trade training, which I mentioned earlier. The government has stripped away funding for these essential programs, where only $130 million was needed to keep them going until 2015. Ben Falcone-Mayo is a very bright young youth worker from Craigieburn. He is furious about the cuts to youth programs and support made by this government. Regarding the funding cuts, Ben states:

We're looking at a hard future. If you go around stripping programs supporting youth, you're in a lot of trouble. I am a big advocate for counselling for young people when they need it, but for many young people this will be more confusing. We [Australians] are letting young people down. We're all a bit frightened and we have the right to be. There's just so much going on; we've really dropped the ball here.

Cobaw Community Health Service and Kildonan UnitingCare are two organisations also involved in delivering the Youth Connections program in McEwen that will have to close their doors. Young adults are now destined for a lifetime of unemployment and reliance on the welfare system, which has also been cut. In some parts of McEwen, we have a 17.5 per cent youth unemployment rate, which is the fifth-highest in this nation. These young adults will be completely at a loose end with Newstart payments not kicking in for six months. So now they will have no job and no money and, to add insult to injury, the government wants them to completely upend and move away from their families and support networks to find work.

What if they want to study to follow their dreams and make a better life for themselves? With the Abbott deregulation of university fees this is also off the cards. Tony Abbott has deregulated the system so universities can name their price. Experts all agree that if universities get the chance to increase fees, they will. Swinburne University vice-chancellor has stated:

… deregulation will inevitably lead to much higher fees for our students … Over time, full fee deregulation will lead to a higher education system characterised by the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’.

Stuart Edwards from Riddells Creek in my electorate is a single dad with four kids, who works as an alcohol and drug counsellor whilst studying psychology part time. Stuart said:

I don't want to live in a nation where uni places are given to the rich. I don't know how I could afford to send my four kids to uni if these changes happen. Certainly nobody is offering my kids a free education Mr Abbott!

It is an important point, because those opposite in the government, that are making these decisions all benefited from free education. Across McEwen 36.5 per cent of students who completed year 12 last year went to university. All these students will be hit hard by the government's changes to the HECS-HELP debt repayment, changes that will come into effect in 2016. They will be crippled with debt for the bulk of their lives just for striving for a better life and opportunity. Education is just another promise broken by the Abbott government, a government by a party which, as Tony Abbott promised the Australian people before the election, would be 'the party of political honesty'. All this government has shown us is a steady stream of broken promises and no compassion.

But really, we should not be surprised. After all, Tony Abbott said:

We will be a consultative, collegial government. No surprises. No excuses.

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind you that you should refer to the minister by his title.

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

I am going to finish on one particular point which directly affects my electorate of McEwen possibly more so than any other electorate in Australia—the Prime Minister's fuel tax, this great big untruth that was put on the people of Australia. It is one of the cruellest blows yet. In fact it was so cruel that even the former Liberal member for McEwen came out and attacked the government for being untruthful.

Due to the particular makeup of the different regions in our electorate, families rely heavily on their vehicles to get from A to B. We in McEwen have one of the highest rates of cars per household across the nation. With a lack of other transport options, cars are often the only form of transport available. For example, take a mum in Romsey or Lancefield who has to drive her kids to and from school in a neighbouring town, then to their swimming lessons in yet another township. There is no alternative transport in that area. Why should she have to pay more just to give her kids the same opportunities as the kids who live in an inner city?

What about those residents in Mernda, Sunbury, Gisborne or Laurimar who have to drive to and from work in order to put food on the table for their families, or those of us living in towns like Whittlesea, Wallan and Kilmore where 70 per cent of people commute an hour each way to work? Again, there is no other option for transport in some of these areas so why should we be punished for providing for our families?

Any tax that affects one community far more than others is categorically unfair. In addition, any increases in the cost of fuel are going to adversely affect farmers in rural and regional Australia particularly across McEwen. The National Farmers Federation has stated on record that the price increases in the supply chain 'will be felt at the farm-gate'. So despite the rhetoric from those opposite, it is going to cost more—more every day for the food that you put on the table, more every day for the clothes on your back and more every day just to get to work or just to get to school. Communities right across our electorate have every right to be furious with the Liberal government's introduction of the fuel tax. This is a direct tax on our electorate.

I would just like to finish by stating how appalled I am, yet not surprised, by the Abbott government's budget. The Prime Minister Tony Abbott has cut health funding, pensions, family benefits and education as well as taxing people for things like going to the doctor, getting older or driving a car. People will not forget this budget and they will not forget the broken promises by the now Prime Minister, and I will be there every day with them fighting to make sure that they do not forget.

Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of what is the most important budget in nearly two decades, a budget that not only tackles head-on the economic issues facing our nation but also begins a cultural change that will wean us off our welfare mentality and encourage a return to the thriftiness and self-reliance that once formed our national identity. As a nation, we have to get out of our borrow-and-spend mentality and, to get the budget back on track and build a more prosperous economy, we have to start living within our means. We cannot wish away the challenges that we face.

This is a budget designed to redirect taxpayers' dollars from unaffordable spending today to productive investment in the future. It is a budget that will help us build a more prosperous nation. It is a particularly important budget for my electorate of O'Connor because, while this budget heralds a new attitude that will hopefully be the beginning of the end of the age of entitlement, it also delivers on the fundamental projects that will help our nation's economy get back on track, boost productivity and create jobs.

The $50 billion Infrastructure Growth Package is critical for the country and critical for O'Connor. We are an electorate of more than 900,000 square kilometres. Our mining and agricultural industries, our major export earners, depend on good road transport links to get their products to market. O'Connor's share of the Infrastructure Growth Package over the next four years will help create safer and more efficient links for our industries and our communities.

The budget confirms the Commonwealth's commitment to fund an upgrade of the Great Eastern Highway between Walgoolan and Coolgardie, which is heavily used by miners and other freight transporters. This is a vital intrastate freight link as well as linking Western Australia to the broader national network. Thirty-six kilometres of highway will be widened and three overtaking lanes will be built, increasing regional economic productivity as well as delivering a safer road. This funding commitment highlights the importance of the Great Eastern Highway freight link to the broader national economy. I will be fighting for as much of the $50 billion fund as possible to be directed towards other projects in O'Connor that will ease the transport burden for our industries and our communities.

The very successful Roads to Recovery program has been extended with a further $350 million per annum to extend the program to 2018-19. The black spot program targets dangerous sections of local roads by funding safety improvements, such as traffic signals and roundabouts. The Australian government has extended the black spot program and will provide $60 million per annum from 2014-15 to 2018-19. Both these programs will provide very important funding across the whole of O'Connor.

As an electorate with a large agricultural base, the $100 million for rural research and development to support innovation is a welcome investment in the future of farming, but there is also $15 million to help small exporters with export costs, $8 million to improve access to agricultural and veterinary chemicals and $20 million to develop a stronger biosecurity and quarantine system. Each of these initiatives is a welcome boost to rural Australia.

The Exploration Development Incentive scheme is an election commitment to encourage investment in greenfields exploration by smaller mining companies. This is obviously of great importance to the mining sector based in the goldfields and Yilgarn. The budget has confirmed that $100 million will be allocated to the EDI over three years, and that is very good news for our region.

In a vast electorate like O'Connor it may be expected that there will be areas where there is little or no mobile phone coverage. When I say that I am thinking about the desert and remote lands that make up a significant portion of the electorate, but it is untenable that just a few kilometres outside some of our major towns it is impossible to get a mobile phone signal. That is the situation in much of our populated areas. The $100 million allocated to improve mobile phone coverage has been welcomed in O'Connor. I will continue to lobby Minister Turnbull for more funds to significantly upgrade our coverage.

In rural and regional Australia access to an efficient and effective internet service is not a luxury; it is a necessity. In this technological age much of our business is done online. We need fast and reliable internet access not to download movies, although that would be nice, but to do business, whether that be banking, selling grain or fixing the tractor remotely. So I welcome this budget's commitment to streamlining the rollout of the NBN. Under our plan the NBN will be finished four years earlier than under Labor's plan and nine out of 10 Australians will have download speeds of 50 megabits per second by 2019.

Access to quality education is critical for all Australians, but young people in regional, rural and remote areas face particular challenges. That is why I am so pleased to see some very important changes to our higher education sector, some of which will have a positive impact on the young people in my electorate. This is the biggest reform in higher education in 30 years, and not before time.

Deregulation of the higher education sector will remove fee caps from universities and expand the demand-driven system to bachelor and sub-bachelor courses to create more competition. That has been particularly welcomed by regional universities, and I expect the University of Western Australia's Albany campus in particular will be able to expand its courses and make it easier for young people in the southern region to study for at least some of their degree from their home base. The demand-driven system gives universities the opportunity to do more of what they do best and that will make regional universities more viable.

For the first time all students—students studying at TAFE and for diploma courses offered by registered training providers—will have access to HELP, the Higher Education Loan Program. Loans for apprentices finally recognises the importance of financial support for trade qualifications.

Most importantly for us is the setting up of a renewed Commonwealth scholarship scheme which will help disadvantaged students. In the past, Commonwealth scholarships made it possible for young people from regional and rural areas to pursue higher education. This system this government will introduce is the biggest scholarship scheme in our nation's history and I believe it will again open the doors to higher education for many young people in my electorate. Will they have to pay for their education? Of course. That is as it should be. There is no reason why the taxpayer should subsidise a student's education if it gives that student an opportunity to earn a good salary as a result. I find it offensive that a tradesman on a mine site who received no government handout while getting his trade qualification should be subsidising the education costs of a mining engineer working alongside him who is earning a significantly higher salary.

What the budget does not address is the issue of youth allowance for students from rural and regional areas. Together with other regional members I have made representations to Minister Andrews and will continue to push for changes that recognise the difficulty country students have when they leave home to pursue a university education in the city.

In O'Connor we have some problems with high youth unemployment which in some cases is becoming a generational issue. For young people who have grown up in an environment where unemployment benefits are a way of life, there is the danger that it may become the norm rather than the exception. That is why the 'earn or learn' model is so important. It has the capacity to change the thinking of those young people who think it acceptable to live on the dole. 'Earn or learn' is a very simple philosophy: 'If you are not earning then you had better get some skills that make it possible for you to get a job and earn an income. We will support you through Austudy and youth allowance while you get those skills.' To those who raise their voices in opposition to this initiative I ask, 'Why is it okay to condemn young, unskilled people to a life of welfare?' The best possible gift we can give young people is the capacity to learn and to live a full and productive life with the ability to support themselves and their families. This is the first step towards changing the disturbing mind set that has permeated our society over the past few decades, that hanging off the welfare system—for some, in some cases, for a lifetime—is an entirely acceptable way to live. The dole should not be a default position for young people looking for work. Young people should be encouraged to move into employment before they embark on a life of welfare. I think we need to question whether we have made it too easy for people not to work or study when they have the capacity to do so.

This is a budget that focused on training and creating work. We have introduced a $476 million industry skills fund to streamline training and make us globally competitive. It will deliver close to 200,000 targeted training places over four years. That will complement the trade support loans and encourage people to take up a trade. There are $20,000 loans for the life of an apprenticeship and, like HELP loans for uni students, they will be repayable once recipients are on a sustainable income. We have specifically target occupations on the National Skills Needs List—diesel mechanics, fitters, electricians and plumbers.

We are establishing a wage subsidy scheme for mature-age job seekers. It is up to $10,000 for employers who take on mature-age job seekers who have been unemployed for more than six months. We are delivering on our commitment to establish a single entry point into the Commonwealth for small business. $8 million has been allocated to the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman to contribute to reducing compliance burdens as well as to act as an advocate for small business. We are committed to cutting the company tax rate by 1.5 percentage points from 1 July 2015. For big companies, the reduction will offset the cost of the Paid Parental Leave scheme, but for an estimated 800,000 small- and medium-sized companies there will be a net boost of productivity and profitability.

Making sure that the fundamental programs that underpin our way of life—the age pension scheme and Medicare—are sustainable is the key element of this budget. The $7 co-payment will be capped at 10 doctors visits for concession card holders and children under 16. That is a maximum impost of $70 per person per calendar year. The co-payment is designed to ensure health services are sustainable and used efficiently. Other countries provide universal health systems that are underpinned by patient contributions. In New Zealand it is $15. Our healthcare system is under such enormous pressure that there is a real danger, if we do not make some changes, it will collapse under the weight of financial strain. This change is a start.

This government is committed to GP training in rural and regional areas. That is great news for O'Connor. Rural medical training continues to receive dedicated support in this budget, with at least 50 per cent of general practice training places required to be located in rural and regional areas. The budget provides for about 500 new allied health scholarships, with $13.4 million allocated to support the delivery of these scholarships over three years and to target workforce shortages in regional and rural areas. The government has already committed $40 million over four years to support extra medical intern places in private hospitals and in regional and rural areas. Seventy-six interns begin their one-year placements in January 2014.

Aged care is a special concern of mine, and this budget contains good news for the aged-care providers in my electorate. Providers who receive the viability supplement will get a 20 per cent increase in the supplement in recognition of the unique challenges they face operating in regional, remote and rural locations. The supplement is particularly targeted at small providers, who face very different challenges to the large providers operating in metropolitan and larger country centres. It is worth $54 million to help provide quality aged care for people who live in the country and want to spend their final years in the towns and communities they have lived in all their lives.

I can assure you that the aged-care providers in O'Connor have been particularly pleased to learn of this measure. As part of our election commitment to repurpose the previous government's aged-care workforce supplement, which imposed additional red tape on providers, payments for all providers have been increased by 2.4 per cent across the board. For providers in my electorate that is a 2.4 per cent funding increase on top of the 20 per cent increase in the viability supplement.

We have expanded the Home Care Packages Program, which is going to be a terrific boost for those O'Connor residents who wish to stay in their community or home, and an additional $103 million in capital grants under the Rural, Regional and Other Special Needs Building Fund will be offered as part of the 2014 ACAR round. The Abbott government recognises that many older Australians wish to remain in their home as long as possible, and these extra residential aged-care places and home care places will help further meet the growing demand for aged care. So it is a funding boost but is also giving individual providers the flexibility to direct funds to areas where they need it most. It means that they can get on with what they do best—that is, providing quality aged care for older Australians.

The bottom line is this: for our economy to prosper, we need confidence. Confidence is essential if our businesses are to invest and grow. That is what this budget is designed to provide. What this budget is also designed to do is to start the cultural change that will encourage a return to the thriftiness and self-reliance that once formed our national identify.

I have been intrigued, although not surprised, by the reaction to the budget from those opposite. The fact is that this is the first budget in nearly two decades that takes away instead of handing out. As a nation we appear to have become pretty comfortable with the taking mentality and not so comfortable with the concept of tightening the belt. The howls of protest from those opposite are deafening, and what a fine job they are doing stirring up the fear and loathing, with some spectacularly inaccurate interpretations of the measures contained in this budget. But encouraging outrage is a far easier option than recognising that the budget legacy they bequeathed us has to be fixed, or indeed offering any solutions of their own.

The Commission of Audit developed a set of common-sense principles to guide its deliberations. The first, No. 1 rule was: live within your means. We have to start doing that and we have to start doing it fast, and that is what this government has started with this budget, and I commend it to the House.

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

As Ross Gittins outlined earlier in the week, this budget is all about shifting—cost shifting and blame shifting. It shifts cost to the states, families, pensioners, students and young adults. It shifts the blame to welfare recipients, to parents, to the vulnerable.

I have spoken on several occasions in the past weeks about the impact of this year's budget on my electorate of Lalor, about the cruel budget cuts and the impact this will have on education provision, from our youngest pre-schoolers to our rapidly expanding school system and for our young adults to access university, TAFE, apprenticeship and employment support. But today I want to focus on something different—the impact of this budget on women.

The average gap between men and women's earnings in Australia is approximately 17 per cent. We know that women take time out of the workforce for child rearing and caring responsibilities in much higher numbers than men. Women are often employed in part-time positions so that they can juggle their family responsibilities, and they are under-represented in high-paid executive positions. These factors alone mean this year's federal budget will result in a disproportionate impact on women.

I agree that responsible governments will always look for ways to ensure we keep spending under control. This is as it should be. But much has been made about all sections of Australia sharing the burden, when the reality of this budget means it is unfairly weighted against women. As we know, this year's budget was the first budget since 2005 not to include a family impact statement. It is also missing a women's impact statement, a tradition that goes back 30 years. This has meant it has taken time to assess the impact in full. However, we are fortunate that the ANU and the National Foundation for Australian Women, amongst others, have taken the time to unpack the potential impact on women. The budget savings have been shown to fall disproportionately on those who rely on benefit payments. Which group is in the majority for relying on benefit payments? Women. This means this budget adversely affects women. Those women in caring roles, those women with low or modest incomes and especially those young women making a start in education training or the workforce.

Women want to engage in the workforce. They also want to provide for their families. This means many juggle work and caring responsibilities with part-time work and with periods of time out of the workforce. A paid parental leave scheme is a great way to support women during their child-rearing years. That is why Labor introduced a sensible scheme in the last parliament. This government, however, is committed to its deeply unpopular, gold-plated parental leave scheme—paying women on high incomes $50,000 while others receive so much less or indeed nothing if they are out of the workforce. This expensive, token bone thrown to women who do not need it is designed to mask the real nasties in this budget: the cost-shifting to women who can least afford it. And it may well be less token, this commitment to the rolled gold PPL scheme, given there is not one cent allocated in this year's budget—that is right, there is no income source identified in this year's budget for the Prime Minister's gold-plated parental leave scheme.

A paid parental leave scheme is one part of the women's workforce participation puzzle. Child care is another. The changes to family benefit and the increased cost for health services will necessitate women returning to work. We know women are already under-represented in the workforce, are concentrated in service industries and earn less than men. This government is introducing a range of measures that will punish women into the workforce—in itself not necessarily a bad thing, depending on your perspective; however, at the same time the government is choosing to withdraw existing support for women to work. Single parent families are predominantly headed by women. The learn or earn requirement will be difficult for these women to meet unless there is suitable access to child care, especially out-of-school-hours care. So what does this government do? It changes various childcare support measures. It has frozen the cap on the childcare rebate and the threshold for eligibility. This will have the impact of making child care less affordable, especially for low-income women. The Jobs, Education and Training Child Care Fee Assistance will drop from 50 hours to 35 hours per week. Cuts to Aboriginal Child and Family Centres will hurt Indigenous women. There has been $450 million cut from out-of-school-hours care, and the abolition of the program that provides training places for teenage parents will hit young women before they even get a chance to enter the workforce. They will be left with the prospect of a life of low-paid, low-skilled work.

And where they have got support, like the much-lauded Trade Support Loans scheme, it is heavily weighted to male-dominated industries. It will do very little to support female apprentices. For those women wishing to start or to return to the workforce by returning to study or by upgrading their skills, this budget just brings more bad news. This budget contains no new measures to encourage participation. And just when women might have been making healthier contributions to their superannuation in their 40s and beyond, they may now be left to support their young adult children up to the age of 30 due to changes to Youth Allowance and Newstart. We know that women retire with less than their male counterparts. In recent years Labor introduced measures to try to address this: the increased rate to the Superannuation Guarantee and the low-income superannuation contribution. The budget measures to defer the increase to the Superannuation Guarantee and the abolition of the low-income superannuation scheme will have a greater impact on women, who are more highly represented in low-income employment.

The list of fails for women in this budget are extraordinary. There is an impact with the health measures. Medicare was established 30 years ago. It is our much-lauded universal health system, the envy of many other countries. This budget puts that under threat. The burden of the GP co-payments again will fall unfairly on women. The planned GP co-payment is not just a pressure on the cost of living but a back doorway to eroding the Medicare system. It the pathway to a two-tiered health system for the haves and the have-nots. And who are the have-nots? By and large, they will be women. As already outlined, women are generally lower paid, so the impact of the GP co-payment will have a disproportionate effect on them.

Women often take on the role of health manager in families. We know that visits by women make up around 60 per cent of visits to the GP. Mothers take their children, and often their elderly parents, in addition to attending for their own needs. For many on fixed incomes, this financial pressure will be an extreme burden. These women as health managers will also be disappointed by the withdrawal of preventive health programs. Keeping family members well and out of the health system through these beneficial programs will now be far more difficult. My electorate has an extremely high rate of diabetes, obesity, kidney problems and macular degeneration. Progress was being made through preventive health programs; this is now all at risk. The breakdown of the health agreements with the states will also impact negatively on the health system, adding pressure on health provision. Lalor is already under-resourced for its population size, and it seems no relief is in sight for additional resources coming our way.

Many of you know that, as a former school principal, I know what it is like to work in an area with low-SES families, with a high number of migrant students and students with a disability. You also know that I am a passionate advocate for the Gonski school funding model. Low-income families—the majority headed by women—were set to be the most supported families through these reforms. Bringing each school to an even standard meant many of the schools where I previously taught would receive an unprecedented level of funding—funding that would have enabled them to provide additional programs, employ specialist teachers, develop and support existing staff, have homework clubs and extra tutoring and provide equipment and textbooks when families could not afford to provide them. Education is a powerful tool to lift children out of a cycle of poverty and struggle. The dream for many women—to see their children succeed—is now dashed by the cruel cuts to the Gonski model. And the assistance to families on benefits twice a year, through the schoolkids bonus, to help pay for uniforms, books and excursions, was an early cruel cut by this government.

What does this budget offer the young women who do make it through and endeavour to take on further training? The Industry Skills Fund, a loan to VET students to support them through their studies, does very little to support female VET students, as it is weighted heavily to male-dominated trades. For those women who may benefit—if you call starting your career with a significant loan to repay a benefit—the lower incomes generally earned by women mean a longer loan repayment period, resulting in higher interest repayments. In a similar way, the deregulation plans for the university sector will also impact more adversely on women for the same reasons: lower pay and longer repayment times, resulting in more interest accrued and a higher debt.

Women currently make up 57 per cent of the higher education population. The current system has allowed for this growth in female participation in the tertiary education sector. What will this new system do? Once young women understand the financial implications, women will be caught in an education catch-22. They will need to learn to earn and then earn forever to pay for that learning. Even other small program cuts, like cuts to the workplace English language program, the VET fee waiver for childcare qualifications and the training program for teenage parents, all will have a detrimental impact, mostly on women.

The more we unpick this budget the worse the outlook is. I already knew that it would have a terrible impact on education, on health, on pensioners and on the young, but the common thread that runs throughout is women. I am not sure why this surprises me. The Office for Women has been swallowed up by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The minister for women shows no signs in this policy area for it to be a priority, other than tips on ironing. There is only one woman in the cabinet. Women make up 24 of the 125 LNP members and senators, and only one has, on merit, been included in the cabinet of this government. This budget is the first in 30 years not to include a women's impact statement.

Are these things indicative of an oversight, or of malice? Did no-one think to put a lens over the budget to test its imposts on women? Either way, it is a timely reminder that women can never afford to be complacent. I have rarely entered the women's debate. I have had the advantage of women going before me and changing the world. I believe strongly that women can stand on their merits and get ahead; I have seen so many strong women do just that. But recent history, and this budget, has taught me not to take the place of women in this society for granted. Australia is known for its sense of the fair go. This budget, however, has ripped away many beneficial programs that enable women to access that fair go. I implore the women from the government benches to take the time to read the budget analysis by the National Foundation for Australian Women.

In conclusion, I would like to make a few further points. This budget is built on a fabrication. First, the government attempted to establish a budget emergency. It has only taken a few weeks for the economists to put that argument to bed—and I believe the Australian public understand that now. Second, this budget sets up a divide between the haves and the have-nots, and the government's rhetoric lauds the taxpayer and demonises some mythical nontaxpayer for being a burden on the bottom line. The reality is that most pensioners have contributed throughout their working lives—and most women have contributed—and through access to education and training we can have a productive economy, with close to full employment, where our young people also can make their contributions.

So why make these cruel changes? Why do we have a budget where an unemployed lone parent with one eight-year-old child will lose $54 a week; where low-income earners, disproportionately women, lose $500 a year with the repeal of the low income super contribution; and where sole parents working part-time or on benefits stand to lose more than $3,000 a year? The budget fails the fairness and equity test. Australia is a mature society where we value the fair go and those who work hard get ahead. This budget does not reflect the Australia I know and love. I call on the government to rethink its budget measures and ensure Australia remains a strong and equitable society.

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking in this budget debate and on these appropriation bills I have had the opportunity to listen to many speeches—but not all—from those opposite, and I have just listened to the last 10 minutes of the previous speaker. Whilst they have all covered varying topics, they are all absolutely united in a couple of respects—that is, no apology for and no acknowledgement of the mess they left the budget in, which we are now discussing here in this chamber. They have absolutely no plan to fix the mess. For those opposite to come in on this debate after six years of fiscal failure and not acknowledge the mess they have created, nor put forward any alternative plan that would deal with it, really tells the Australian people that, if Labor had been re-elected, it is very clear where they would have headed—further along the debt and deficit road.

What we are seeing here in this debate and in the wider parliamentary debates and public discussions is the Labor Party of 1996, 1997 and 1998 and all those years where this side of the House was cleaning up their last fiscal mess. After inheriting net government debt of $96 billion and taking the difficult decisions to get the budget back on track, returning the budget to surplus, delivering surplus after surplus to pay down that debt and, finally, after 10 years having completely paid off that debt and starting to inject those future surpluses into the Future Fund, at that time we saw Labor doing what they are doing today—refusing to acknowledge any fiscal fault and refusing to put forward any plan. They are doing one thing now, however. They are doing everything they can to stop the clean-up of that fiscal mess.

In 2007 those opposite were elected proclaiming to be fiscal conservatives. In fact in their first budget they were criticising the coalition for not having large enough surpluses in those final years. Fast forward to today to a situation when on taking office this government and the people of Australia confronted combined deficits of $123 billion over the forward years, leading to gross debt that would peak at $667 billion. Labor's plan is to stay on that road and to not acknowledge their failure.

By necessity, this budget has had to take some very difficult decisions. We have heard lots of criticisms in the contributions from those opposite, but what the Australian people are owed is Labor fessing up. If Labor really believes Australia should keep living beyond its means, if Labor really believes that we should continue to rack up deficit after deficit and continue to increase debt, they should say so. If they think that the budget should be brought under control in other ways, they should say so. But they will not. That is the thing that has united all of the speeches from those opposite.

Another thing that has united the approach and so much of what has been said in the days since the Treasurer delivered the budget, has been the utter hypocrisy of those opposite. We have seen it in full glare in the last week on the issue of the Medicare co-payment. I am going to take a little bit of time to go through the history of this. The Prime Minister has rightly pointed out some of the history of it, as has the Minister for Health. But I think a full exposure of the history of this issue and the history of those opposite is an interesting way to view the hypocrisy and the populism of the approach of those opposite under this Leader of the Opposition.

We have heard in the chamber how a Medicare co-payment was invented by the former Hawke Labor government. Back in the budget of August 1991, the then Treasurer John Kerin announced a co-payment, because at that time the Labor government recognised that a co-payment needed to be introduced to deal with the challenges confronting the health system then and confronting it, more importantly, in the decades ahead.

Some of my colleagues have pointed out that this idea, in more recent years, has been advocated by the member for Fraser, the shadow Assistant Treasurer, who outlined it in either a book or an article some years back. It has been rightly pointed out that not only has the member for Fraser advocated it but, on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme co-payment—also extended on numerous occasions by the Hawke government—many members opposite have strongly endorsed the necessity for a co-payment. The Prime Minister yesterday quoted the member for Hunter, who said back in 1996 that it was a very brave decision by the Hawke government and a very necessary one.

Let me add to the debate the words of a former Treasurer who went on to become Prime Minister, and that is former Treasurer Keating, who, in his 1990 budget speech, announced measures that were enacted to extend the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme co-payment. He justified it on the sustainability of the system. Here is what he said on budget night in 1990:

The alternatives are stark: reconstruct the scheme so that it remains fair for everyone, or lose the scheme altogether, so that access to complete health care would only be available to the wealthy.

Those on my side of the House have rightly pointed out the hypocrisy of those opposite opposing this government's actions on the Medicare co-payment when they support just such a co-payment when it comes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

The other issue I want to take a bit of time to address in this budget debate is why it was that the Hawke Labor government introduced the Medicare co-payment back in 1991. As has been pointed out, the then Minister for Health, Mr Brian Howe, announced in detail with that budget that the government had decided to take this course of action following a review of health that had been led by none other than the member for Jagajaga, then Jenny Macklin, private citizen. In fact the budget papers themselves contain these statements:

Last June the Government announced the establishment of the National Health Strategy … to develop ways to refine and improve the health-system    to meet the health challenges of the future:

…   …   …

The measures being introduced in this budget relate to the preliminary findings of the National Health Strategy. They are the first steps in dealing with structural problems in the health care system.

The budget papers then go on to justify the introduction of a Medicare co-payment, initially of $3.50 but later $5. So it is very clear from the budget papers that the review led by the now member for Jagajaga led to the Hawke government introducing the co-payment. There can be no denying this. The budget papers of 1991 say that the work of the review led the government to introduce this co-payment.

As the Prime Minister rightly pointed out, there is a father of the Medicare co-payment in former Prime Minister Hawke; there is a mother of the Medicare co-payment in the member for Jagajaga. I suppose there is an uncle in the former health minister. Of course, we have Dr Leigh, who is perhaps a child of the Medicare co-payment. But not only that: on my count there are two members of the Labor Party today sitting in the parliament, in the House of Representatives, who actually voted for that co-payment—because the co-payment was legislated. It is true that it was subsequently repealed by Prime Minister Keating, but it was legislated through both houses. It was guillotined through the House of Representatives, and two members who voted at that time to support the passage of those bills include the member for Lingiari and the member for Werriwa and, in the Senate, Senator Faulkner. So the Labor co-payment family keeps growing.

The member for Jagajaga got up in the parliament and made a personal explanation. I want to take a little bit of time in the minutes remaining to address this. Amongst other things, the member for Jagajaga said the following:

They wrongly accused me of supporting a Medicare co-payment. This is completely untrue. As correctly reported in the Australian today, I was opposed to a Medicare co-payment in 1991 and I am opposed to it today. This was confirmed in the paper today by the then Secretary of the Department of Finance, Dr Michael Keating.

Indeed, on 29 May, that day, it did mention that, when asked by the Australian about her role, Ms Macklin told a Melbourne Institute function in Canberra this month that she had argued, with the then head of the Department of Finance, Dr Michael Keating, against the co-payment. That conference was on 21 May.

What is interesting is that, if this is true—and I have my doubts, of course, as you can tell—what we are expected to believe is that the person who led the review that led to the co-payment was opposed to the co-payment but never said so, was happy to stay on leading the review for the next couple of years and, at no point that I can tell, until a couple of weeks ago, has come forward to make this convenient statement now. In fact, I did a calculation. If it took her from budget night 1991 through until 21 May, what that means is that it took the member for Jagajaga 22 years, nine months and one day to reveal that she was opposed to it. That is very strange indeed. It does not pass the sniff test.

Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Every government has the right to try to implement the platform they took to an election. It also has every right to deal with the countless other issues that come along in a way that is consistent with its broader ideology. But no government has any right to wage an ideological crusade against the poorest and most disadvantaged members of the community—and, in particular, against students, the unemployed, the poor, the sick and disabled, the aged, single parents and anyone else, for that matter, who just needs a fair go in one of the richest and most fortunate countries in the world. There is simply no excuse whatsoever to bring down the budget it did a few weeks ago and which we are now being asked to pass judgement on.

That is exactly what this budget is. It is an ideological crusade that attacks directly the poorest and most disadvantaged members of the community, not the big corporates, the miners and the armed forces, which did very well in this budget, but the rest: those on low incomes and those with disadvantages which could be, and really should be, remedied in a country as rich and as luck as ours.

It is perfectly understandable for the supporters of one side of politics to complain when the other party or parties are in power. That is obviously fair enough. It is also understandable that there be calls for an early election when the government is embroiled in controversy, as was obviously the case during the 43rd Parliament. It was certainly my experience that for three years my office was periodically bombarded by calls for me to help in that parliament. Of course even the most unpopular government should as a general rule be allowed to run its course because the time for judgement should be at the next regular election, except that right now a line has been crossed because this budget is such a miserable piece of work that the convention of waving through the appropriation bills is, or at least in my mind should be, fundamentally in question. It certainly is for me.

In fact, I have wrestled for many days now with the rights and wrongs of voting against the supply, if only to force the government back to the budget drawing board. In the end I have decided to do so—to vote against the appropriation bills—because I do believe that this budget should be redone before it can reasonably be approved by the parliament. I feel confident that my vote, for what it is worth, will represent a clear majority of Denison constituents and indeed the broader community.

Whether I will be joined by anyone else in trying to block supply remains to be seen although, going by all the huff and puff of recent weeks, I should be able to expect to be joined by Labor, the Greens and the Palmer United Party. If I am not, if the opposition and crossbenchers wave through the appropriation bills and leave their fight to the separate budget enabling legislation, then effectively they will have shown their support for the weight of the budget, and let the record show that.

Of course, if non-government members and obviously senators where the numbers exist to achieve a bloc were to join me then the government would be forced to go away and redo the budget and to return with a better and fairer set of proposals. If Labor, the Greens and others do in fact join me here and in the Senate but the government refuses to rewrite the budget then so be it. If supply is blocked then we can go back to the polls where the people can decide this budget and indeed the government's fate.

Let us not be fooled by any claims that it is only the budget's enabling legislation that really matters because if you want to find the $43.5 million cut to the ABC and SBS and the cut to CSIRO, as well as the weakening of indexation for government pensions and payments, just for example, then you need look no further than the appropriation bills. These bills are a part of the problem and anyone, any party, genuine about opposing the budget is in fact compelled to try to block the appropriation bills until they are remedied.

I am every bit as exercised about all of this as are many Australians worried and even downright scared about the consequences of the budget for them. We all feel betrayed not just by all the pre-election promises but also by the very notion that we have a budget emergency in the first place and that it should be justification for targeting the disadvantaged members of the community. In my electorate of Denison in 2013, for instance, there were 5,334 people on the disability support pension, 11,223 people on the age pension, 1,816 people on the parenting payment, 3,867 people on Newstart and 12,973 family tax benefits were paid. All of these people will be adversely affected by this budget, and I will not support this budget, if only for them.

The change to Newstart is an especially nasty proposal and one that will, undoubtedly, see many people left without any financial support whatsoever for six months at a time. What about single parents?

They have the perennial difficulty of finding gainful employment between dropping their kids off at 9 am and picking them up at 3 pm—and when it comes to the parenting payment they have already taken a big hit with the reduction in the qualifying age of children from 16 to eight. But now they face cuts to family tax benefits, co-payments for seeing the doctor and getting their prescriptions filled, and even more to fill the tank in the car. What is going on here? Why are single parents, and in particular single mums, being singled out for even harsher treatment than the rest of the community?

Talking about co-payments, this is an especially miserable proposal—not only because it will disproportionately impact people on low incomes and the sick but also because the reform will be a significant dismantling of Australia's universal free public healthcare system. In Denison in 2011 the GP bulk-billing rate was 72.5 per cent, and all of these people will be adversely affected by increased fees when visiting their doctor and filling their prescriptions. Even those receiving a concession on their medication will have to fund two or more additional prescriptions themselves each year.

I am also particularly alarmed by the attack in the budget on people with a disability, in particular the tightening of assessments for the Disability Support Pension. In fact, over recent weeks a number of people with a disability have approached me about the prospect of such changes, and all were alarmed and some were beside themselves with fear and panic. I fear some will be driven to take their own lives.

Moreover, Australia can afford to give people a world-class education but the moves to deregulate university fees, to increase HECS debts and to alter the HECS repayment arrangements are entirely at odds with that noble aim. Students will now pay more fees and have no certainty that the fees for their desired course will be the same in the future. That alone will deny many potential students the opportunity to gain and benefit from tertiary qualifications—all of which is especially relevant to my electorate and Tasmanians more generally. In fact, in Denison in 2011 there were 30,232 people attending education in one form or another, including 6,700 at university or other tertiary institutions. Many of these people, and those that will or would follow them, will be adversely affected by this budget.

More broadly, Australia's wealth and good fortune should not be hoarded, and the cut to foreign aid in the budget is bitterly disappointing and short-sighted. Obviously we have a moral obligation to assist the world's poor. But doing so is also clearly in our own national interest, because development assistance creates stability and opens up markets—so much so that the slashing of over $7.6 billion for official development assistance over five years is patently a false economy for Australia. Yes, we do need to deal with the structural revenue and expenditure weaknesses in the nation's finances, and the move to tax the wealthy more and tighten the means testing of government pensions and payments is sensible. And, yes, the previous federal government let us down badly by putting the majority of spending for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the Gonski education reforms beyond the then forward estimates where it did not need to be properly explained. But none of that gives the current government license to attack the poorest and most disadvantaged members of our community. Nor does it provide any justification for the government's determination to implement a paid parental leave scheme that would pay up to $50,000 per eligible person in just six months. This is extravagant, unaffordable and set to disproportionately benefit relatively well-paid recipients.

There are also a range of other measures, not addressed in the budget, that would help to put the budget on a better footing—for example, a super profits tax on any company making a super profit, like the banks, just four of which are in the process of running up some $30 billion in profits in one year alone.

Tasmania will not be spared any of the downsides of the budget, and Denison in particular will be hard hit by the $111.4 million cut to CSIRO nationally and the other Public Service job cuts. While the Antarctic Gateway Partnership will receive $24 million, this is not new money, and what there is will be sourced from the already underfunded Australian Research Council. The Tasmanian environment will not fare any better, with $4 million being stripped from Tasmanian forest reserve tourism. The government has pledged not to support any further reserves in the state.

In closing, let me make the point again that Australia is a rich and fortunate country, and one that can easily afford to look after those in genuine need of assistance. There is simply no good reason for students, the unemployed, the sick and disabled, the aged, single parents and others not to be able to access high-quality care or an income to live a decent life. That is why I oppose the budget and why I will seek to call a division on the appropriation bills. In other words, I will try and supply block supply. It is also why I challenge Labor, the Greens, the Palmer United Party and all of the other crossbenchers to join me and put an end to this miserable budget. They have the power to act and not just to talk.

Budgets are a chance for governments to show the community what they think is important, and this government has sent a clear signal to the Australian people that it is more interested in a surplus than in their future.

Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the appropriation bill because I think it is important for us to understand and to articulate clearly where we are as a nation and why we need to make some changes now and not before it is far too late, when more austere measures are required. We need to do that so that the case for budget repair is understood by the public out there.

The constituents of Hindmarsh and people of Australia know that something has to be done. They know that we cannot go on in the same way that we have in the past. Without change, Australia will record the fastest growth in spending of the top 17 surveyed advanced economies. People know that we need to reduce the unsustainable spending. We know that our demographics are changing. Life expectancy is increasing. This is increasing pressures on social welfare and welfare payments, which we want to maintain. The budget repair will allow us to fund future spending commitments on necessary social services, whether they be health, aged care, pensions or education. It will also allow us to fund future unexpected events.

If you think back to the Howard years you will remember that they made some tough decisions. They ran budget surpluses in 10 out of 11 years. So when the global financial crisis hit they had money in the bank. There was money there to spend on necessary social infrastructure such as education or other areas to help families during those difficult times and to help with employment. But the government could do that because the hard yards had been done because we managed our finances and we lived within our means.

Furthermore, the Commission of Audit talked about expenditure increases over the next decade—a doubling, or even more than that of expenditure on health, aged care, education and pensions. What does this add up to currently? Where is our budget at? What is our financial situation? We have interest repayments of $1 billion a month. Worryingly, around $700 million of those repayments go overseas—out of our economy. That amount is unable to help the people of Australia to manage their costs, to get on with their lives.

What could we do with $1 billion a month? This is the question I put to the Labor Party, opposite. We could do so much. We could help the people that those on the other side of the chamber want to help. We could assist local communities. We could build a new hospital. We could build new schools. We could build new infrastructure—new roads. We could do so much. We could help families with their daily struggles. But that money is wasted; it is going overseas.

This point has not been addressed by the member for Denison, who just spoke, or by our opposition, the Labor Party. What do we do about that situation? Where is the solution? If we do not do anything now the repayments will increase to $3 billion a month within 10 years—hence, something needs to be done now. It would be a travesty to have more interest payments going overseas—more wasted money so that we are unable to fund community services, the social services and the physical infrastructure that we need.

If action is taken now, which we intend to do, it will save us $16 billion over that 10-year period. This is more than the NDIS, this is more than higher education and this is more than the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. That is what the end dividend is, that we will make these savings which we will be able to contribute back into our budget revenues and help to fund the necessary expenditure that we need.

What is Labor's solution to the debt problem? Wasted money on interest repayments and more expenditure in the future. We are going in the right direction. It will be a shared contribution. As the Treasurer said, and as Menzies said many years ago, 'We are a nation of lifters, not leaners', where all Australians must contribute in a fair way. We are discontinuing the trend of industry assistance, away from corporate welfare, towards programs that facilitate innovation and self-reliance. So we are making necessary changes across the board, looking at taxpayers' money and how to spend that in the best possible manner.

Low-income households will continue to receive significant payments, and when we get rid of the carbon tax every household will benefit by $550 per year. This is where the Labor Party, who cry out about the cost of living, can do something. They can vote for the carbon tax to be removed. But, no: they sit on their hands.

There are structural reforms that we are undertaking to address the ageing population and our slowing economic growth. We are making sure that everyone makes a contribution by asking higher income earners to pay the budget repair levy. They already pay a significant amount of the tax—around 50 per cent of all tax revenue is from high-income earners—admittedly, they are only 10 per cent of the population. This is very much an equitable measure.

We are building Australia's future, with $50 billion in infrastructure and social infrastructure, with education reforms, is not to be forgotten. The $50 billion in infrastructure is a record amount, as we all know. It will improve our economic activity and productivity even more so. It will reduce congestion, lower our business costs and get people home quicker so that they can spend more time with their families rather than being stuck in traffic. In South Australia alone, the South Road upgrade of $1 billion is a great announcement, and I commend the Prime Minister, who committed to this upgrade of South Road within 10 years last October, and Minister Briggs for the work he has done. In my area, the $448 million Torrens to Torrens project is to commence in 2015.

Still on the economy, the people of Australia know that Liberals are businesses' best friend. The small-to medium-size enterprises out there will benefit from a tax cut to around 800,000 small-to medium-sized businesses in Australia. This may provide incentives for those companies to expand, to buy some new capital equipment, to look at new research and development or to employ people: 'Wouldn't that be a great initiative?' the Labor Party says. Ultimately and importantly, the workers benefit.

Lower taxes—the mining tax being removed will help my state of South Australia with iron ore. And, naturally, there is the carbon tax. The member for Makin is here again today, and he heard me speak last night about the benefit of removing taxes. He knows that the companies, the small businesses and the households in his electorate are finding it tough because of the high utility costs, where the state Labor government is contributing to higher power prices through their solar feed-in tariffs and the previous federal government did through the carbon tax. The member for Makin is happy that at least now there is a government that will reduce taxes and help the people in his electorate. On reducing taxes: the tax take for this budget will be $5.7 billion less. That is a significant change to the previous Labor government.

To leverage further private sector investment, the government is prepared to use its balance sheet to help manage risks that might otherwise impede private sector financing. We are looking at new and innovative ways and we are working with the states in how we can finance infrastructure. We are breaking new ground in this sense. In my local community of Hindmarsh there have been infrastructure projects that will help local people. There are CCTV cameras in Henley Square and the redevelopment of the foreshore at Glenelg, where the Foreign Minister was just recently.

We are supporting local clubs through the budget, whether they be football clubs, soccer or other sporting clubs. And we are supporting environmental projects—the Green Army is just one of those initiatives.

I now want to move to education. There have been some groundbreaking education reforms introduced in this budget by the Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne. Let us just reflect on where we are now with tertiary education. We have no university inside the top 20 in the world. A nation such as Australia deserves to have a very high quality top ranked university. Our universities, moreover, are slipping in global rankings—going in the wrong direction. Asian universities, especially those in China, are improving. Something must be done to enable our universities to improve and be the best that they can be.

The Commonwealth will provide around $16 billion to universities this year, with increases each year. Importantly, there is a new initiative to expand opportunities and provide support for students through direct Commonwealth financial support for those studying higher education diplomas, advanced diplomas and associate degrees with all registered higher education institutions, whether they be in the city or in the country, whether it be TAFE or vet, whether it be universities or otherwise. There is considerable support for students going forward in terms of financing their studies in the first instance.

Significantly, we will be establishing a new Commonwealth scholarship scheme to assist students from a disadvantaged background so that they do not miss out. The new Commonwealth scholarship scheme will expand opportunities for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, Indigenous students and students from regional Australia. These new arrangements will mean our smarter students can receive a world-class education no matter what background they are from. You would think the Labor Party would be supporting such an initiative. Well, we do not hear anything from members opposite; there is a lack of consistency in their ideals at times.

Other support and equity measures include that 80,000 more students will be supported as they pursue the best course for them. There is $820 million overall to expand access to education. We are removing the FEE-HELP loans for students and we are ensuring graduates will only begin paying their HELP debt when they are earning a decent income. This is fair. The Group of Eight universities unanimously support the core elements of the government's proposed reforms, as they said in a recent press release. They said:

In particular we support: expanding the demand-driven system to non-university providers, with adequate quality controls—

and something that has been overlooked in the education debate is that there will be more students wanting to attend university and tertiary education—

extending funding to sub-Bachelor Degree programs (e.g. Diploma and Associate Degrees); and deregulating tuition fees.

I want to quickly touch on education funding, which will increase for schools year on year. Students and schools will benefit from a record funding investment of $65 billion over the next four years. From 2013-14 to 2017-18 the funding will increase by 34 per cent, a $4.6 billion increase. So this whole notion of education being cut is ridiculous and misleading. This is over $1.2 billion more than Labor would have spent over the next four years. From 2018, there will be a stable and sustainable system for schools funding based on the CPI. In South Australia alone—and this is something the member for Makin should again take note of—the funding will increase by an additional $74 million in 2014-15, $64 million in 2015-16, $68 million in 2016-17 and $70 million in 2017-18. I am sure the member for Makin will tell his South Australian Labor colleagues that they should be clapping their hands for the record increase in funding that the federal Liberal government is providing to South Australian schools in this budget.

In addition to what we are doing in terms of funding, we are looking at increasing excellence in teaching and school leadership. It is not all about funding, as we know. This debate requires a much more analytical approach than just throwing money at things—we know that is what the Labor Party love to do, but they do not get the outcomes. As we know, the quality of teachers is one of the biggest influences on student results and development.

The Medical Research Future Fund is a groundbreaking initiative. I want to quote what the member for Sydney said in August 2013:

Labor wants more Australian research advances to be taken into the marketplace by Australian firms rather than watching the commercial benefits of our ideas exploited by overseas companies with better access to investment funds.

She will be pleased to know that what we are proposing will help significantly, through the Medical Research Future Fund and other initiatives we are taking, in terms of changing corporate welfare to look at innovation.

In closing, I want to quote another opposition member, now retired, former PM Julia Gillard. She told parliament on 14 March 2013:

In line with our fiscal strategy, we are asking the nation to take some tough decisions and to make some tough choices.

Yes, this sounded good, but Labor failed to deliver the fiscal strategy. Well, they gave us the five highest deficits in history—tough decisions—and the mining tax: how much did that raise? They changed their mind so many times. Tough choices? The only tough choice the Labor Party made was to bring back Kevin Rudd and change leaders so many times. They were not focused on being a good government for the people of Australia. They were more concerned with their leader and who was going to get the spoils of office. They were all talk and no action.

We are making some challenging decisions so that we can repair the budget, as we said we would do, and provide sustainable finances to fund expenditure in the future. We did not make this mess. We are taking responsibility to clean it up. This is not our desired course of action, but we are cleaning up Labor's mess and taking the responsible course the Australian people need.

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

Over the past weeks there have been a lot of calls from government MPs and business leaders—not all but some—for people to stop complaining about the federal budget measures and to get on with the business of putting shoulders to the wheel to collectively address the so-called pending budget emergency or the debt problem—as the member for Hindmarsh constantly referred to it in his contribution this evening—by putting an end to the age of entitlement. Underlying these calls is the message that the Australian people have never had it so good and therefore a bit of pain for the sake of the nation's prosperity is justified.

There are so many ways in which this narrative is so very, very wrong. It is wrong because these budget measures are predicated on a series of untruths, concealments and broken promises, as evidenced by the Prime Minister's own words throughout last year leading up to the federal election. I want to quote the now Prime Minister, who was then the opposition leader, because he ran on a strategy of credibility and not breaking promises. The then opposition leader, now Prime Minister, on many occasions said to the Australian people: 'no changes to pensions', 'no cuts to health', 'no cuts to education', 'no plans to increase university fees', 'no cuts to ABC and SBS'. He said: 'We are about reducing taxes, not increasing taxes. We are about getting rid of taxes, not imposing new taxes.' Finally, the one that I like most: 'A dumb way to cut spending would be to threaten family benefits or to means test them further.' So, rather than telling Australians to stop complaining about the federal budget, the government—and in particular the Prime Minister—should explain why they have misled the Australian people, why this budget is so unfair and why it is a budget where most of the heavy lifting will be left to those who have the least capacity to do.

In the words of St Vincent de Paul Society New South Wales CEO Michael Perusco, more than one million Australians have consistently missed out on the prosperity this country has experienced over the past 20 years and this is the group who will be left even further behind by the measures in this budget. This is especially true of the people living in my electorate as it is my residents who will be the ones most adversely affected by the measures introduced in this budget, putting low- and middle-income local families under further pressure, making it harder for pensioners to make ends meet, and in particular—because this budget in particular targets young people—putting many young people under a lot more pressure than they are presently experiencing.

My constituents form a part of current public opinion that overwhelmingly has rejected the Abbott government's budget measures—not only because they disagree with its inherent unfairness and twisted priorities but because they take exception to being played for fools by a prime minister who was so eager and prepared to say anything and do anything in order to win the federal election.

My electorate has a long history of labour market disadvantage. Areas of my electorate are in the lower socioeconomic index, and as a community we have fought long and hard to secure government investment in our schools, our medical services, our roads, our manufacturing and industry and our social infrastructure in general. Opportunities for a job and for education and training is the bedrock of my community's aspirations and there is good reason for this, both current and historical. This Abbott government, through its budget measures, is slamming the brakes on my community's prospects, casting them into uncertainty and further burdening their struggle to make ends meet.

The most recent data for the Hume local government area shows an unemployment rate of about 6.3 per cent, well above the national average of 5.2 per cent. These figures reflect unemployment in my constituency which are consistently higher than any other local government areas across the country. My community both expects and relies on governments, both state and federal, to invest in programs that encourage, provide opportunity, assist and further their prospects for getting a job, especially when it comes to the young people in my electorate. It was for this reason, and in recognition of this, that in 2011 the then Labor government identified Calwell as one of the 10 neediest local government areas in Australia and, in doing so, allocated a pool of $30 million to address this issue across 10 electorates, of which mine was one.

The Better Futures, Local Solutions program was established in order to draw on local community expertise and knowledge so that all service providers could come together to work towards addressing unemployment in our area. Community Innovation Through Collaboration, which was one of four Better Futures, Local Solutions programs and measures, commenced in July 2011 with the appointment of the government action leader, Mrs Maria Axarlis Coulter, followed by the nomination and ministerial appointment of the local advisory group in February 2012 and the appointment of the community action leader, Mr Huon Damm, in March 2012. The Better Futures, Local Solutions fund was specifically targeted at providing opportunities for community members to gain skills and training in order to find employment. The idea was to give a wide range of agencies a platform to be able to come together to test and trial new ideas and to pool existing resources and know-how for meeting the needs of the local community. It also supported communities developing solutions to address disadvantage in our area. The Calwell community has since operated 16 Local Solutions projects. Nine were achieved in round 1 of the three-year funding cycle and 11 were achieved in round 2. Five received funding for two years, and 11 received funding for one year.

The Better Futures, Local Solutions program was making significant headway in addressing the number and complexity of issues facing long-term unemployed people in my electorate. It was creating a very positive ripple effect in my community, jobs were created and people received training. Some of those people were single mothers going back to work, some were people with disabilities gaining employment and training, some were long-term unemployed youth, and many were people of non-English-speaking backgrounds. Young people were shown and encouraged into new pathways, including visits to university campuses.

The successful strengths-based servicing approach which we adopted in Broadmeadows has informed the ongoing provision of intensive services to vulnerable families and job seekers as part of the Department of Human Services operating model across all of its sites. And even though unemployment rates continue to be much higher than the national average, the fact is that the rate was dropping and in my electorate we were making progress. Unfortunately, thanks to the Abbott government's budget, the axing of the Local Solutions fund is one of the most significant and highly political community cuts in my electorate, bringing to a premature end programs that were making a difference to my community.

The Hume Local Advisory Group, which is the group that oversaw the work of Better Futures, Local Solutions, did not forward spend its entire allocation like a number of the other LAGs did across the country. Instead, it decided to stagger its funding applications and had planned for a third round of funding. Unfortunately, it has lost this opportunity as the cessation of the Community Innovation through Collaboration Program means that the money is now gone. As a result, 10 projects will conclude at 30 June 2014, with the remaining projects—and I want to speak about this one in particular, Bridgeworks, which is a local organisation that helps disadvantaged youth. It will see its project, which is very nicely called Flip the Script and is designed specifically to help Pacific Island youth, end at the end of this year, in December. In addition, the key positions of government action leader and community action leader will also be concluding on 30 June 2014, one year earlier than the other two complementary Better Futures, Local Solutions measures for supporting jobless families and helping young parents in the Hume area.

These are examples of successful government initiated and funded programs that were seeded as a result of the Better Futures, Local Solutions fund. Unfortunately, should these programs wish to continue to do their very important work, they will be forced to look for alternative sources of funding or face the prospect of ceasing to operate altogether. Of course this would be an outcome that would have devastating consequences in our local area. I am particularly disappointed—that is an understatement; I am appalled that programs that were making progress are being treated by this government as investments that are frivolous and pointless. I think the member for Hindmarsh made reference to some of these 'not-so-worthy investments'.

The Future Pathways project, which is run by a very important organisation in my electorate, the Spectrum Migrant Resource Centre, is a program that is aimed at engaging 40 of our residents from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. It targets disadvantaged jobseekers, including single parents who are returning to work. Another one of the projects in my electorate that faces the chop is called the Brite Herb Farm project, which will also be forced to find alternative funding. This project is a particularly special one because Brite is a one-of-a-kind facility in my electorate: it provides training for people with a disability and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Another program that faces the chop is the Crossroads Indigenous Youth and Family project, which is run by the Salvation Army for Indigenous people aged between six and 25. It helps with training, it helps with child care, it helps people to focus on developing their strengths and it provides support to the family unit in order for participants to take up opportunities to gain employment. One other program that is very important, Imagineering, is raising aspirations in Hume. It is a project that is run by one of my local primary schools, the Holy Child Primary School. This project increases the aspirations of more than 400 students and parents in Broadmeadows by educating them about pathways to and the benefits of attending university.

I do not have much time left, but given that I have made reference to this particular program, Imagineering, I will just expand on it. It is focused on encouraging young children at primary school to think about going to university. This particular school, the Holy Child, has a very large number of students who are from refugee backgrounds. My electorate has a very large number of people coming to Australia from Iraq and it is very important that these young people understand the benefits of going to university. I think that we are making headway in helping them understand this. Of course there is a problem, because in this budget the deregulation of university fees means that these children in my electorate are likely to think twice about going to university if in fact it means that they are going to incur a higher cost and higher debt against them into the future.

So it makes our job that little bit more difficult when young people say to you, 'You know, I have got to find a job.' I have not mentioned yet how this government has made no reference to how exactly it is going to help people find the jobs that it wants them to have, whether they are young people or those on the other side who are going to be working until they are 70. The question is: where are these jobs and what is this government doing about investing in programs that are actually going to create jobs?

My young people who are very concerned about their futures in terms of their ability to go to university also say to me that they face the whole issue of the unaffordability of buying a home. You have got young people who are still at primary school worried about the enormous amount of debt that they are going to incur in areas of their lives and their families look at this current government and see no understanding and no empathy from that government for their predicament. A lot of people in my electorate rely on government to help them—not to give them handouts but to actually help them—and to invest in their communities in order for some sort of progress to be made and for job creation opportunities. I am running out of time, but this budget is going to have devastating consequences for the people of my electorate.

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

I rise to support these appropriation bills and the 2014-15 federal budget. The first Abbott budget is undoubtedly a contribute-and-build budget. It is in stark contrast to the many Labor spend-and-waste budgets we have experienced. It sets us on the path for a more prosperous future. It protects the support services we value like Medicare and the age pension by ensuring that they are sustainable in the future. Yes, we are asking all Australians to make a contribution and, yes, we acknowledge that some of these measures will have an impact on household budgets. But this budget is really about taking some tough and, frankly, unpalatable decisions now in order to avoid greater pain down the track. The government has not taken these decisions lightly. We take no pleasure in having to pare back some payments and adjust the rate of increases in others, but we have been mindful of trying to address the challenges we face in a fair and balanced way.

In contrast, there has been nothing fair or responsible about Labor's budget response. Rather than setting out an alternative plan for tackling the deficit and reducing the debt burden they created, Labor has hysterically misrepresented the budget, creating fear in the community and, worst of all, they have indicated they will oppose key measures that save $40 billion.

When those opposite stand in this place and preach about honesty, you have to wonder how honest it is to pretend that we should do nothing to fix the budget deficit. How honest is it to say that there is no budget emergency when we are borrowing $1 billion every single month just to pay back the debt we currently have? How honest is it to say that we have no debt problem when the IMF found our debt was growing at the third-fastest rate of developed nations and, more worryingly, that our spending was growing at the fastest rate in the world? How honest is it to pretend that this growing debt and deficit path will not create a major problem in the near future?

There has been no acknowledgement from Labor about the need to make changes to the fiscal path that our nation is on, and that is either intentionally dishonest or wilfully irresponsible. The fact is that if the coalition had inherited the same economic situation that Labor did in 2007, a budget surplus of $20 billion and $50 billion in the bank, we would not have had to make the tough decisions we have in this budget. It is astounding that in less than six years Labor saddled us with five successive budget deficits totalling $191 billion and racked up a further $123 billion in deficits into the future. We are facing a debt of $667 billion, which will mean an interest bill every year of $32 billion. That is more than we currently spend on aged care, schools and child care combined. That money will be completely wasted—gone in interest payments.

But I am pleased to say that I have been quite heartened by the number of my own constituents who have been in contact and said, 'Yes, this budget will affect me. There are things that I don't like about it, but I recognise it is necessary.' They recognise that vital institutions like Medicare and our age pension, which we all support, require the changes the government has announced to ensure they are sustainable and affordable for future generations. They recognise that our historic nation-building infrastructure investment fund will create jobs, boost economic activity and generate lasting benefits.

They recognise that establishing the biggest medical research investment fund in the world will ultimately pay an enormous social dividend in improved health treatments and will help reduce pressure on our health system in the future. They recognise that our young people should either be earning a wage or learning new skills to facilitate them getting a job. Our youth are far too valuable to allow them to languish on unemployment benefits.

My constituents recognise that those who are studying for a diploma or a pre-bachelor course are just as deserving of Commonwealth support as someone currently studying a bachelor degree at university. This is a fundamental shift in our approach to higher education, and an equity measure that I applaud. I think it is something that we really should be congratulating the education minister and also the assistant education minister for, for the historic extension of the Commonwealth funding for TAFE diplomas and a range of pathway courses to open up educational opportunities for the many young people who we have who may not want to or who may not be able to pursue a university degree.

Similarly, Trade Support Loans will offer assistance to those who are completing an apprenticeship, and will target occupations on the National Skills List, such as plumbers, diesel mechanics, electricians and fitters. This is a fantastic step forward. Having participated in and facilitated VET forums around the country I am very pleased that training and vocational education are being given the priority that they deserve.

My constituents also recognise that everyone who qualifies should have access to higher education but that those who reap the benefits of further study also have a responsibility to shoulder a little more of the cost of their education, to be paid back only when they are earning a decent wage rather than being subsidised by the 60 per cent of taxpayers who do not have the benefit of a degree.

I want to take some time during this debate to talk specifically about the higher education reforms, which are designed to make our universities more competitive and therefore improve the quality of our higher education system. I am delighted to have in my electorate of McPherson, just around the corner from my office, Bond University, one of Australia's private universities and, I believe, the most successful.

Bond is a not-for-profit private university, which has established a stellar record over the past 25 years for excellence in education. It is, in fact, a shining example of how competition can produce much better outcomes. As a private university that sets its own course fees, Bond has had to provide an excellent product in order to compete with public universities. The 2013 Good Universities Guide rates Bond University five stars, the most out of any university in Australia, for educational experience. Bond rates five stars across key performance indicators, including teaching quality, generic skills, graduate satisfaction, staff-student ratios and staff qualifications. In fact, Bond has the best student-to-staff ratios in the country. Many students are attracted to its accelerated learning, with three semesters a year. This means that students can graduate and begin earning sooner.

I am pleased to report that last September Bond University launched a five-year strategic plan, 2014 to 2018, that set out a vision and strategy to position high-quality and focused research as core to university business. Bond's success over the past 25 years is a testament to what can be achieved when a university has to be responsive to student, community and industry requirements.

I also very pleased that this budget extends Commonwealth funding to degrees at Bond and other private institutions. I am particularly pleased that our deregulation measures also provide more Commonwealth scholarships to reward excellence and assist those students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. I am also very supportive of the budget measure to remove all loan fees for FEE-HELP and VET FEE-HELP, meaning equal access to loans for students—no matter where they study. This will ensure that students who choose Bond University, or other private providers for that matter, will not be discriminated against in accessing HELP loans. This is another important equity change.

Australian universities have to be responsive to the higher education market, both the domestic and the international market. They cannot be responsive if they are lumbered with an outdated, restrictive funding model. I note that higher education provides our fourth largest export income, but sadly under Labor that income has fallen from $19 billion a year to $15 billion. Clearly we need to get in front of our competitors or that income will continue to decline.

I note that the budget changes announced in relation to course fees will not apply to students currently enrolled at university. I also want to dispel the myth that our reforms to higher education represent cuts to the sector. In fact, this government will spend $900 million more on higher education and research than would have occurred had Labor been re-elected. I also note that the education minister has indicated he will consult widely regarding the implementation of these reforms in 2016 to ensure an effective and fair transition. I have advocated that Bond University be included in that consultation process. Bond is a great example of how competition can result in high-quality outcomes and innovative approaches to service delivery. I do encourage others to look at the model of Bond. I certainly welcome and acknowledge the reforms in this budget that will provide equity for students who chose to study at Bond.

Earlier I spoke about those local residents who had contacted me to say, 'We understand you are doing the right thing,' in relation to the tough measures in the budget. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that there have also been many people who have contacted me with concerns about decisions that were taken in this budget. I am very, very mindful of those concerns. I understand that household budgets are very tight. My electorate of McPherson has a high proportion of seniors, pensioners and retirees who have worked hard all their life. It is sincerely regrettable that they, like every Australian, need to be asked to make a contribution.

I want to point out that we have kept our commitment not to change the age pension during this term. The pension will not change at all during this term of parliament. In fact, the amount of the pension will continue to increase twice a year, as it always has, at the rate it currently does. In March this year the base rate of the pension increased $14.30 a fortnight for single pensioners and $10.80 a fortnight for each member of a couple. The amount of the pension will increase again in September and age pensioners will also benefit significantly from the carbon tax being scrapped. Australians are living longer and healthier lives so the government has a responsibility to ensure that our pension system is sustainable over the long term. That is why from 2017, after the next election, pensions will be indexed to the rate of inflation rather than wages; however, the pension will still continue to increase each and every year.

I know that Medicare changes have also been a concern, particularly for our seniors. Again, while a co-payment is necessary to reduce overservicing, we have put a ceiling on the amount concession card holders can pay in any year, and that is 10 services or $70. That is the maximum. Doctors still have discretion to bulk-bill if they choose.

As I said earlier, other countries with universal health systems have much higher co-payments. New Zealand, for example, has a $17 co-payment. There are other countries that have higher co-payment levels. The national audit report recommended a co-payment of $15. So the government has been very moderate in its co-payment charge and has also ensured that it is capped for concession card holders and children. That is all concession card holders, which includes Commonwealth seniors health card holders. In fact, it includes a very large number of Australians. In our country of 23 million people we have 8.6 million concession card holders.

While I understand that there is concern in the community for those who are most in need, the Medicare co-payment, as I said before is capped at $70 each year. That is about one-eighth of what the average household is expected to save in energy costs when the carbon tax is scrapped. I just want to put that in perspective, especially for those members opposite.

I do acknowledge that changes to eligibility for family tax benefit B will impact on some families and this will be a concern for some households. Again, we have tried to be fair. The age eligibility changes where the payment is no longer available once the youngest child turns six and starts school have been grandfathered so that those currently in receipt of this payment for children over six will continue to receive it until 30 June 2017. The reality is that we cannot afford this supplementary payment and we do need all those who can work to do so.

Our changes to the disability support pension and our earn or learn plan for young people similarly sent a clear message: if you can work, it is reasonable to expect that you do so. Again, we have put reasonable exemptions and safety nets in place so that a young person who has done the right thing and has been working gets a reduced waiting period. Those with family responsibilities, similarly, will not have to wait six months. So a young family where the breadwinner loses his job will not be subject to the six-month waiting period.

However, again as I mentioned earlier, our young people are too important to allow them to languish on the dole. They need to know that our nation expects them to earn or learn. Sometimes that may mean that they have to take a job that is not exactly one that they would want. But as we know, employment is, of itself, an important step to improving skills and finding a better job.

In its totality this budget is about responsibility. This budget is about encouraging personal responsibility, ensuring that government support is given to those most in need, but asking people to make a contribution to ensure we can keep the universal health care and our welfare safety net in place for future generations. This budget is about taking responsibility for the challenges we face—not ignoring them and racking up more debt on the national credit card, as Labor is suggesting we should do.

Sometimes it takes tough decisions and sacrifice today in order to create a better tomorrow. The idea that you can have the fastest-growing spending in the world and one of the fastest-growing debts but you should wait until it hits a certain level before you do anything about it is nonsense. The time to act is now. This budget is about securing the future. I commend the budget to the House.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a budget which is built on a trifecta of trickery—a trifecta of trickery to justify smashing huge holes in the social safety net, which the government said, for three years before the election, that it would never, ever do. The first trick to justify this savagery is to claim that Australia faces an economic and budget emergency. That claim is laughable in an economy which has grown some 16 per cent since the end of 2007. Tomorrow, we will have the release of the March quarter national accounts and we will see that we have grown by much more than 16 per cent since 2007. That is not an economic emergency. Sixteen per cent growth over 7½ years with a global recession in the middle is absolutely stunning because it is a performance not matched by any other developed economy. So how could we possibly have an economic emergency in those circumstances?

The second trick—this was mentioned by the member opposite—is to falsely claim that spending in Australia has been, and will be in the future, massively out of control. If you accept the Abbott government's pessimistic economic forecast, government spending will average 24.9 per cent of GDP over the four years to 2017-18. In the last three years of the Labor government, spending averaged 24.6 per cent of GDP. So the Abbott government is planning to spend more than the average of the last three years of the Labor government in every year of the forward estimates. This is despite all of those savage cuts which are hurting people out there, because all of those cuts are simply making room for more new spending from the Abbott government—spending such as their paid parental leave scheme.

The third trick, and perhaps the most damaging trick, is to irresponsibly claim that debt levels are large—unsustainable—and rapidly deteriorating through the decade. This claim is damaging to our international standing. It is completely inconsistent with our AAA credit rating, and it is not backed up with any analysis from international financial institutions. It is most certainly not backed up by analysis from the International Monetary Fund. It is not backed up with any credible private sector forecast. In fact, net debt over the forward estimates in this budget is higher than any forecast in the Pre-Election Fiscal Outlook. We heard today the honest view of the government that the Pre-Election Fiscal Outlook was the honest view of where finances were at the end of last year. In effect, a senior minister in the government repudiated the fiddled MYEFO forecasts, which were setting up the claim that debt and deficit was unsustainable.

So how can the government continue to go ahead and claim there is some form of economic emergency?—although I would note that the Prime Minister in the House, last Monday week, changed his language and said that we had a strong economy but a weak budget. Whatever that means, it is from the Tea Party universe.

But to justify all these exaggerated and extreme Tea Party claims about the state of our economy and the state of our budget they seek to provide International Monetary Fund endorsement, and claim that figures from the International Monetary Fund back up their claims. I believe they do not have that backing from the International Monetary Fund.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 20:15 to 20:31

I was saying before the break that the purpose of the government talking about the IMF in the way it does is to delegitimise what Labor did during the global financial crisis to support employment and to save our country from recession. The IMF has repeatedly made the point that what Labor did during that period was correct. The G20 has made that point. The OECD has made that point. And the IMF continues to say that our public finances are in good shape. So what we have here is a government which is intent on demonising deficit and debt and to portray any spending from the former government as wasteful.

The fact is that we have had a rapid decline in our revenues. They are slowly coming back to normal levels. Had we not borrowed during the global financial crisis we would have experienced far higher unemployment and far higher capital destruction, and that would have led to even further and higher levels of deficit and debt. The fact is that during the global financial crisis the previous government did the right thing about supporting jobs. The current government are out to demonise all those actions. They try to use IMF data to do that and it is hard to disprove some of the things they are saying because of the state of the current budget papers.

It is almost impossible to find any explanation in the current budget papers of what the government is up to. They are chaotic and they look like they have been put together with Clag glue. The fact is we do not have the supporting analysis of trends and economic impacts that we have had in previous budget papers. The budget papers this year are something like half the size they were last year. All of this demonisation of deficit and debt is all about the Abbott government seeking to get permission from the Australian people for the savage cuts they are imposing that they said they would not impose.

What does not stand out in the budget papers very clearly when all of these cuts are done in the name of reducing debt is that barely any of the saves in this budget over the forward estimates are reducing debt—they are not going to pay down debt at all. Instead, these new savings have been used to plug the $28 billion revenue hole left by the abolition of the mining tax, the carbon tax and the removal of measures to stop multinational profit shifting and a whole lot of other kickbacks to the top end of town. The government have not use their savings here to pay down debt.

This budget does not put its money where its mouth is. It does not in any way pay down debt significantly. Compared to the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook statement, which we have been told by the government today is honest, the levels of debt are higher, and they are higher over the forward estimates than they were in the PEFO. So, stunningly, net debt has not gone down. It has gone up from 12.5 per cent in September last year to 14 per cent in September 2017-18. Net debt is going up, despite the savagery of the cuts. In my view, the real GDP forecast and the nominal GDP forecast on which these budget outcomes are predicated are in fact government forecasts; they are not Treasury forecasts and they are deliberately pessimistic. The nominal GDP forecast upon which the revenue figures are based are significantly below trend and therefore revenue forecasts are likely to be exceeded in future years.

In practical terms, what does this mean? The government has deliberately depressed its revenue forecasts to give itself the headspace to upgrade its revenue forecast in the years ahead. This gives them the flexibility to come back to surplus earlier and to set the scene to cynically deliver tax cuts to people before the next election. The truth is the deficits as forecast are modest; their growth forecasts are very conservative and designed to pull the tax rabbit out of the hat in a couple of years' time. In the face of these outcomes, the government has been desperate to deflect attention by exaggerating future levels of deficit and debt.

Their latest trick has been to misuse IMF data on spending, deficit and debt to justify their savage cuts. Claim No. 1 is that among IMF advanced countries Australia had the second highest real expenditure growth per person between 2005 and 2010. That is simply untrue: Australia was around the middle of the pack. The second claim is that Australia's rate of fiscal consolidation is only modest when compared to other countries. That is simply untrue: again, Australia is around the middle of the pack. Between 2012 and 2018 it is around two per cent of GDP—just marginally above the average for IMF countries. The third claim, and perhaps the most damaging claim, is that Australia has the highest real increases in forecast real expenditure growth between 2012 and 2018 for IMF advanced countries. That is also absolutely untrue. Then we get to the clanger of them all: that our debt levels are unsustainable and out of control. Our rate of increase between 2012 and 2018 is lower than a number of advanced economies and in 2018 Australia's net debt is forecast to still be amongst the lowest of all advanced countries. In 2018 our gross debt is forecast to be the sixth lowest out of 35 IMF economies.

As I said before, the purpose of this trifecta of trickery and all the trash talking of our economy is ideological. The government wants to slash the role of government; it wants to shrink government. Of course, it seeks permission so that it is excused for not delivering on its commitments to: no cuts in education, no cuts in health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS. In addition to all the savagery that it has imposed on low-income earners, there is in this budget an intergenerational war being waged on young people. It is not just what is done to unemployment benefits for young people—as bad as that is—but also what it is doing to young people for the future, because they are the ones who will have to work to 70. They are the ones who will be building up very high levels of debt as they attempt to get their degrees. It will affect this country for decades. If these measures are passed, I regard them as an intergenerational war on young Australians.

What is particularly troubling, given all of this, is the way the government has been using its megaphone to trash talk our economy. We have a great future. We have had 23 years of uninterrupted growth—something that has not been achieved in any other developed economy, but we have a government going out there talking the economy down, hitting confidence and that is gradually flowing through to investment. We are seeing that in all of the data. When you join that with the attack on education, it is all proving to be a real risk to our economic prospects into the future.

On top of that, we had the completely incompetent answer from the Treasurer in the House earlier this week about our levels of debt. He prattled on about how the country was not living within its means. What he did not say was that our savings ratio is about average in the OECD and our investment ratio is one of the highest in the world. It is our attractiveness as an investment destination that means we do run a current account deficit in this country and we do it to make our economy more prosperous. We borrow to develop our economy, as we have done for over 100 years. So to run modest deficits in the appropriate situation is entirely appropriate to protect jobs and future security. But it is silly statements like that and the talking down of our prospects which impacts upon confidence, not just here but internationally. It damages the standing of our government and the belief that people want to have that it has the competence to run a $1.5 trillion economy.

A lot has been said about the spending of the previous government, but the last budget we brought down had in it two of the biggest reforms in our history—the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the Gonski school improvement program; one to lift productivity and the other to deliver fairness—fully funded over 10 years. What all of this has been about is unwinding support for those two important programs, because this government do not believe in them, they do not want them and they are trying to wriggle out of implementing them. That is what so much of this trash talk has been about.

Good budget management is the foundation of a strong economy and a pathway to surplus is critical, but that is not what this government has been about. It has taken on board more debt. It is spending more than the previous government because it has an entirely different agenda. Its agenda is to reorder priorities, to smash programs that it calls 'entitlement programs', which impacts a whole lot of lower income earners in our community, and to see a switch towards corporates and away from individuals. That is what it is all about. But, most importantly, it has been about trying to create an environment where the electorate would give it permission to wriggle out of all the commitments that it gave consistently for three years—no cuts in education, no cuts in health, no cuts in the social safety net, no cuts in pensions; there isn't a need for all of those things.

We do need to have sensible fiscal policy in this country, but what we have from this government is an ideological statement that is seeking to change the basis of the Australian way, which is a prosperous economy with a fair go.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister for Employment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak after the architect of the mess in which we find ourselves—Australia's worst Treasurer, who delivered the largest deficits that this country has ever seen. If action were not taken, we would be heading towards 16 years of deficits. I did hear the member for Lilley claiming that our forecasts are too pessimistic. He has left the room now, but the reality is that he missed every forecast in his own budgets. He got every forecast wrong. He came into the House as Treasurer at the time, saying—I can still remember it, and I am sure you can too, Deputy Speaker—'The four surpluses I announce tonight'. That is how he opened his budget speech, but the reality was very different. He never delivered a surplus. He delivered deficits year on year on year and left us with a mess. If action were not taken on it, we would be having deficits as far as the eye could see.

The budget that this government has introduced is one that is all about setting up Australia for the future. The great challenge for this parliament is to support the changes needed to be made to build a stronger, more prosperous and more secure nation, with new opportunities for the next generation. This basic principle is behind this budget: to redirect tax dollars away from unaffordable consumption—which was the Labor way—towards investment for the future. The budget contains a range of difficult measures, and there is no running away from that. However, it needs to be done because the previous government left such a mess. Not only did the Labor government leave a mess; they booby trapped the budget with promises of significant unfunded spending increases outside the forward estimates. We had the member for Lilley repeating the insult before he left, talking about the fact that a range of programs were fully funded. They were not fully funded, they were just hollow promises with no financial basis to back them up.

To understand this budget, you need to understand the context. When Labor came to office, they inherited a budget on track for a $20 billion surplus. The government had no net debt and $45 billion in the bank. From that starting point, Labor delivered deficits totalling $191 billion and the prospect of another $123 billion of deficit to come. Treasury forecasts predicted that the budget would be in deficit for the next 10 years if we do not change direction and, as I said earlier, a total of 16 years of deficits. Labor left Australia heading towards a debt burden of $667 billion. Every month, Australian taxpayers are forced to pay $1 billion just to cover the interest on Labor's debt. That interest bill will continue to climb as a result of Labor's mismanagement and waste. Each Australian's share of Labor debt is currently $13½ thousand and, unless we take action, this will grow by $1,100 every year and reach $24,500 within a decade. That is $100,000 of debt for every family of four. To put that in perspective, the $12 billion we are paying in interest on Labor's debt would be enough to complete the duplication of the Pacific Highway, with billions of dollars left over.

It is not just the nation's finances that went backwards under Labor; almost every area of policy suffered under Labor's mismanagement. Despite explicitly promising not to do so, Labor introduced a carbon tax, which was a $7.6 billion hit on the economy in its first year. Abolishing the carbon tax would save the average household around $550 next year alone. In health, hospital waiting times for elective surgery grew from 34 days to 36 days. Labor promised 64 GP superclinics but only delivered 33, and they presided over $4 billion in cuts to private health insurance. Labor's border protection failures resulted in more than 50,000 illegal arrivals, cost blow-outs of over $11 billion and, tragically, over 1,000 deaths at sea as people attempted to reach our shores. Defence spending fell to the lowest level in real terms since 1938. In education, despite spending billions of dollars on overpriced school halls and computers in schools, student results dropped, with Australia's education system dropping from eighth best in the world to 23rd, according to the World Economic Forum. In my portfolio of employment, under Labor another 200,000 Australians joined the unemployment queue. Long-term unemployment almost doubled and youth unemployment grew by almost three per cent. Under Labor the number of days lost to strikes more than doubled and productivity decreased by an average of 0.7 per cent.

This is Labor's legacy. It is a legacy of waste and mismanagement. We did not create the mess that Labor left, but we are certainly determined to fix it. This budget make substantial steps towards setting the nation back on a sustainable growth path. Because of this budget, gross debt will be almost $300 billion lower than what it would have been under Labor. This means our interest bill will be $16 billion per year lower in 10 years. This frees up money to spend on important infrastructure projects and programs that the country needs. By 2017-18 the deficit will have been reduced to just $2.8 billion. The medium-term projections show strong surpluses of above one per cent of GDP within a decade. Importantly, this budget improves Australia's structural position. Under Labor the budget was expected to remain in structural deficit for more than a decade. As a result of this budget the structural position will be balanced by 2018-19 and in surplus in the following long years.

It is important to recognise that getting the budget back under control is not an end in itself. As a government, we want to build a strong and prosperous economy. A strong economy means more jobs. A strong economy means more opportunities for our young people, higher wages and a better standard of living. But you cannot build a stronger economy until you fix the budget, which is what these appropriation bills are all about.

In my portfolio this budget includes programs to build on the work done since MYEFO. We have previously introduced the job commitment bonus to reward those young Australians who demonstrate a commitment to the world of work rather than the world of welfare. We introduced the Tasmanian Jobs Programme to provide an incentive for Tasmanian employers to take on new staff. We also introduced new relocation assistance to provide long-term unemployed job seekers with the opportunity to move to where the jobs are, with assistance of up to $9,000 for a job seeker with dependants.

In this budget we introduced a program called Restart, offering up to $10,000 to encourage employers to put on mature age workers so that their businesses can gain the benefits that older workers can bring to an enterprise. As a nation we need as many workers participating in the workforce as possible, and these measures will help job seekers get into the workforce.

Last week I announced the details of phase 1 of our new Work for the Dole program. Some $14.9 million has been allocated to fund this measure. Starting in July, young long-term unemployed job seekers in receipt of Newstart or youth allowance will be required to do work for the dole of around 15 hours per week. This will apply in 18 selected locations around the country. Employers are telling me that many young job seekers are presenting at the gates of their business without the necessary basic skills that would allow them to get by in the workforce. Work for the Dole has the potential to provide these skills that so many young people desperately need.

A recent survey by my department has revealed that employers believe improvements in basic things, like attitude, appearance and communication skills, would improve the employment prospects of young job seekers, and I could not agree more. Work for Dole equips young job seekers with these skills and often provides a link to the local labour market. Last week I visited a Work for the Dole project in the electorate of Dobell and spoke to several participants. Two of the participants have now secured jobs, and they credit Work for the Dole with giving them the motivation and attitude needed to get into the workforce.

The budget also introduces tough new measures to ensure that young job seekers are earning or learning. There are too many young people who are falling prey to the welfare trap. Fit, capable young Australians should not have the option of becoming welfare dependent and descending into the despair that comes with a life on welfare. It is in no-one's interests to have our young people not participating in the workforce. Under the changes within the budget, young Australians need to be either working or studying. Leaving school and becoming welfare dependent is not an option.

To ensure that young people have every opportunity to study or train, we have introduced new support for apprentices, expanded the range of courses subsidised by the government and deregulated our university system. These changes will give young Australians greater choice, and in most cases there will be no up-front fees for those who choose to study.

I would now like to turn my attention to the impact of the budget on regional Australia, particularly my electorate of Cowper. This budget will see works continue on key Pacific Highway projects, and we are aiming to complete the duplication by 2020. The federal government's commitment to deliver $5.6 billion to complete the upgrade, working in partnership with the state, provides sufficient funding to allow the project to be completed on the 80/20 basis that was always envisaged.

More than $4 billion in Pacific Highway works are either now under construction or tenders have been awarded. This is great news for our local area. Since September last year the federal coalition has announced almost $2.5 billion in additional Pacific Highway works. Make no mistake: we will get this job done, so vital to the people of the north coast, to ensure that people can travel between Brisbane and Sydney in a safe way, to provide safer motoring, faster travel time and a more efficient transport system.

Drivers in Cowper will also benefit from the millions of dollars in Roads to Recovery funding. Nationally, Roads to Recovery will be doubled for 2015-16, allowing local councils to properly fix roads they often cannot afford to maintain.

The budget also includes $565 million for black spots funding and $248 million for heavy vehicle safety projects. A $300 million program for bridges renewal is so vitally important, with so many councils in my area having a long list of timber bridges which require urgent repair or replacement.

This budget also delivers on our election commitment with regard to the Community Development Grants fund, which is supporting 300 projects around the country. In Cowper, we are delivering our commitment to the South Kempsey Recreational Parklands Project, the Clarence Valley Airport upgrade, the McLachlan Park upgrade and the Wherrett Park upgrade. These are all important pieces of community infrastructure and I am proud to have delivered these projects for my electorate. Next year our Stronger Regions Fund will be up and running, delivering funding for important community infrastructure around regional Australia.

In conclusion, this is a budget that sets Australia up for the future. The $50 billion of infrastructure funding will set Australia up to be more prosperous, more efficient and more secure, and it will generate tens of thousands of jobs in the construction phase and countless jobs as a result of the efficiency of these infrastructure projects. The $20 billion medical research fund will find cures and treatments that will allow us to live longer and more enjoyable lives. The structural changes within the budget will set Australia on a sustainable growth path so that our children are not saddled with a national debt run up by the previous generations—run up by the member for Lilley, I must say, the architect, as I said earlier, of the mess we find ourselves in. After six years of Labor mismanagement and waste, Australia can finally look forward to a brighter future with opportunity and prosperity.

However there is a challenge in this budget and the challenge is the Australian Labor Party. Labor must accept that they lost the election. They were thrown out. Australia decided that another three years of Labor mismanagement was simply unacceptable. Now Labor is seeking to continue their mismanagement from opposition. They are continuing to stand in the way. They are continuing to prevent Australia from moving forward on repairing the budget. They are always there—lots of words, lots of hot air and no solutions. Labor created the mess. We are about to fix the mess. I commend the budget to the chamber. It is a budget that is going to set Australia on the path to a prosperous future.

Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Following on from the minister, we know that they hate being over there—they hate being on the opposition benches—and quite often we see them scowling and hear them sneering and grumbling. Their self-righteous indignation sees no boundaries. The Labor Party just cannot get used to the idea that they are back on the opposition benches, and the Australian people had better get ready for the longest dummy-spit in political history. Now they are trying to dictate terms to the government duly elected by the Australian people to clean up the mess left behind after the wrecking ball years of the Rudd-Gillard administration.

I say to the members of the opposition: block our reforms at your peril. Stand in the way of debt reduction at your own risk. Ultimately, it will be you as a political organisation that will have to look the Australian people in the eye and explain why they are labouring under the burden of millions of dollars a month in interest payments, why we have failing infrastructure, why government funded services are under catastrophic pressure.

The 2014-15 budget is about future-proofing the Australian economy. The Labor Party is all about the past. Prime Minister Rudd and Prime Minister Gillard might have gone but their spirit still lives on within the parliamentary Labor Party. We have got Power Bill on the opposition benches. He is not interested in helping people and helping the nation in the long term. His focus is on trying to frighten people about key budget measures, about holding onto discredited Labor policies such as the carbon and mining taxes and also looking after vested interests like their dodgy union mates. His focus is getting back into government so he can spend more of the Australian people's money and can rack up more debt and more deficit and create more long-term pain for Australians and the national economy for his own short-term gain. As I said earlier, this budget is about future-proofing Australia and about honouring the commitments made before last year's election. In stark contrast, Treasurer Hockey's first budget deftly straddles the need for fiscal responsibility with delivering on its promises.

In terms of Solomon, the budget ticks the boxes towards building a stronger economy as well as establishing a safe and secure country for the people of Darwin and Palmerston. Last year while in opposition, shadow minister Keenan, now Minister Keenan, visited my electorate to announce that $300,000 would be spent as part of the coalition's safer street programs. For some time I had been lobbying the shadow ministers and the ministers for extra expenditure to tackle crime hotspots in my electorate, and I am delighted that as part of this year's budget we are going ahead with the community safety program and spending $300,000 on getting CCTV installed around Darwin and Palmerston.