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

It is not just the unfairness of the budget that hangs around the neck of the government, nor the canyon between what they promised prior to the election and what they delivered. It is also that when you try to work out why they have been so savage in cuts to the vulnerable, yet so generous in other areas, it is almost impossible to see any reason. It is the contradictions in this budget as well as the unfairness and dishonesty that cause such outrage.

They say they are concerned about the number of people who will be on the pension in 2050, but they delay the very increases in super that would reduce reliance on the pension, resulting in more people needing the pension. Then they reduce indexation of the pension itself. They say they are concerned about health care costs, but rather than try to keep people healthy and out of the medical system, they cut funding to preventative health, making it more likely that people will need to see a doctor, and then when they do they slug them with a GP tax. If someone delays visiting a doctor as a result of the GP tax and gets more sick down the track, they have cut funding to hospitals.

They say they are building the infrastructure of the 21st century, yet they have walked away from a high-quality NBN and spend their time re-announcing road projects that were funded or even begun before they were in government. They have cut all funding to urban rail projects, so if you live in the city you are more likely to have to drive, and when you do, they charge you more for the petrol.

They say they want young people to work, yet they have cut the youth programs that help get vulnerable young people back into school or work. Then, when they cannot get back on track, they slug them with a six-month delay for the dole. They removed the cap on fees so that universities can charge whatever they like, supposedly so that there will be more places, but in doing so they put the cost out of reach for many people—more places, but less affordable.

They say they are about getting women into work, and they introduce an expensive paid parental leave scheme, but at the same time they reduce assistance for child care for the low- and middle-income families. They increase support for time off, but effectively reduce support for returning to work after parental leave.

They say they are open for business and they say they are about growth, but they downgrade the growth figures, trash-talk the economy and cut the very things that make us grow, including support for commercialisation, innovation, science and R&D.

They say they want to reduce debt, yet they happily increase family debt through student loans and brag about giving trade support loans to 16-year-olds who are still in school. Apparently, government debt is bad but all other debt is good.

They say they are about small government, yet they abolish the bodies that bring state and federal responsibilities together and thus push the tasks back to be duplicated by eight governments. They make federal government smaller by making state and territory governments bigger. Less cost for them, more for everybody else.

They say that we all have to do the heavy lifting, but poorer families carry the biggest burden and could lose up to 15 per cent of their disposable income in four years time. They say they are about bringing the budget back under control, yet in question time in the last sitting week even the Treasurer acknowledged that the fiscal consolidation achieved in his first budget is less than that of previous Labor governments—a mere 1.1 per cent of GDP over three years—even compared with his own massaged MYEFO. Relative to what the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection confirmed were the last independent projections in PEFO, the deficit is actually bigger over the forward estimates, not smaller.

They say they are about reducing debt, yet remarkably the budget fails to arrest the rise in net government debt, which is forecast to be higher as a share of GDP in 2017-18 than it is today. They say the budget had to be repaired, yet as a proportion of GDP they are a bigger spending government than Labor was in its previous three years. The spending of 24.6 per cent of GDP averaged over the last three years of Labor will rise to an average of 24.9 per cent over the forward estimates and in 2017-18 will still be 24.8 per cent, which is higher than that of the last Labor government.

They say all the pain is about fiscal consolidation, but their own figures show it is fiscal expansion, not consolidation. They say they are about reducing taxes, yet the tax-to-GDP ratio will rise from 21.4 per cent in the last full year of Labor to 23.2 per cent over the forward estimates, making them a higher taxing government than any Labor government back to 1970.

They say it is tough love, but there is certainly no love—and, while it is tough on the vulnerable and on low- and middle-income earners, they have made no discernible dent in the bottom line. Tough love, but for what outcome? It is a budget of extraordinary contradictions. It is a budget of pain for no purpose. It is very much all pain and no gain.