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

Before the debate is resumed on the bill, I remind the House that it has been agreed that a general debate be allowed covering these bills: the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2014-2015, Appropriation Parliamentary Departments Bill (No. 1) 2014-15 and the Appropriation Parliamentary Departments Bill (No. 2) 2014-15. I have a feeling I am not going to enjoy the member for Throsby's contribution the same as I enjoyed the previous member's contribution.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I encourage you to have an open mind on that matter. As parliamentarians, we have got to leave ourselves open to the possibility of persuasion.

Before the debate was adjourned, I had some passionate things to say about what I believed to be the absence of a plan for jobs, industry and employment in the government's program. I was passionate about that because I am watching around the area that I represent and immediately adjacent to that people are losing their jobs, industry, particularly the Australian paper mill is closing down and people that I know are losing their jobs. It is hitting those towns very hard.

I also want to repeat the observation that these appropriation bills are effectively a part of the budget making process. They are a requirement for the parliament to authorise the approval of additional funds for the purposes set out in the budget and for the government to reallocate funds where they think they have got something wrong, where unanticipated things have come up between the budget making process in May last year and where we are today. In that light, I have to say, they are a perfect opportunity for members of the government to revisit some of the harsh measures within the budget and attempt to persuade their cabinet colleagues of the wrongheadedness of those measures.

Nowhere is that requirement for persuasion of the members of the government and the cabinet more important than in the area of health, because, if there is a set of initiatives that have galvanised the opposition to what the government is proposing to do, it is in the area of health. The $55 billion worth of cuts to the health system is having a knock-on effect right around the country.

In my own state of New South Wales, we are seeing the situation brought to light by the Australian Medical Association this very week, where hospitals facing a shortfall of $17 billion are effectively having to become fundraisers just to provide the same sorts of services that they were providing five, six or seven years ago, because of the federal government funding cuts. Seventeen billion dollars is a lot of cake drives. That is a lot of sausage sizzles. It is simply going to be beyond the capacity of many communities, particularly communities such as mine, where they do not have the capacity for that private fundraising, to make up the shortfall from the federal government and the state government funding cuts.

So I am using this opportunity to call upon members of the government to put as much pressure as they can on their frontbench colleagues and say, 'These budget proposals must be axed.' They cannot continue. The cuts to the health and hospital system, coupled with the proposed changes to Medicare, are having a devastating impact upon communities such as mine, and they must be dumped. When it comes to the GP tax, we have had GP tax mark 1, GP tax mark 2, GP tax mark 3—in fact, as I was preparing to come down to parliament this week, I counted no less than four health policies that have been adopted and then dumped by this government inside a 2½-month period. That is right: no less than four health policies adopted and then dumped by this government in a four-month period.

I am asking members opposite—in fact, I am asking the government—to rethink this. It is the wrong approach. The consideration of these appropriation bills is an opportunity for the government to say: 'We got it wrong. We've heard the Australian people, and we are going to dump these wrongheaded policies.'

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Broadbent, I note how generous you were with the member for Throsby, as the clock indicated. It just shows what a generous spirit you are in allowing people to speak in this House! Well done.

I too rise to speak on the appropriation bills. I do so because standing order 76(c) basically outlines not only that we are talking about money bills but that reflection on some of the money bills that are required for this House allows us to also talk about issues in and around our electorates. This gives me an opportunity to focus on measures that are currently relevant to my electorate, and I bring to the attention of this House the issue of fires in my electorate.

We have had devastating fires both in and around my electorate and in Western Australia generally. I know this is often the case in your state of Victoria, Deputy Speaker, where you have had devastating fires. Given that many of our fires are in areas where the population is not as dense, we do not have the same devastating human effect, but we do have a massive effect on property and people and certainly infrastructure.

Recently we have felt the effect of these fires in the areas of my electorate called Waroona and Boddington. Boddington, for the knowledge of the House, is a town that is probably not well known to everyone, but it would be if they knew that it currently houses the most productive goldmine in Australia. Something like 700,000 ounces of gold a year come from the Boddington mine.

Canning is no stranger to bushfires. In 2011, the Roleystone-Kelmscott bushfire caused mass devastation and resulted in large areas being evacuated for more than a week. Both career and volunteer firefighters played a role in assisting my electorate. These professional and volunteer bushfire fighters need to be recognised, and all levels of government need to be aware of the risks that are manifest to these people when they involve themselves in firefighting.

The town of Waroona, in the electorate, is 113 kilometres roughly south of Perth and is accessed from the South West Highway. It only has a population of something like 2½ thousand people. At the end of January they were faced with a very real prospect of losing homes as a result of the fire there after lightning strikes had started these fires. Over the course of a week, both volunteer and career firefighters worked tirelessly to save homes and livelihoods. The community worked together under the common goal of protecting the township.

I cannot commend the volunteers enough. Those who took leave from their day jobs, those who worked during their time off and those whose efforts continued through the night deserve endless amounts of gratitude from the local community and from the wider community. Their dedication is something I cannot speak highly enough of.

My sincerest condolences go to Mrs Sharon Wilson who lost everything, aside from a few items she was able to take in her car before she had to vacate the area. She lost her house in Waroona. This is not to underestimate the losses of those who had sheds, equipment and livestock perish in this fire on some of the outlying properties.

Boddington, another area within the Canning electorate, came under severe threat of bushfire within the town itself. West of Waroona and approximately 120 kilometres from Perth, the district of Boddington has only around 1,000 people within its precincts, although it is an area of over 2,000 square kilometres. Again, under threat of enormous loss, the community banded together in an effort to save the homes of those at risk. At its worst, the perimeter of the Boddington fire was 145 kilometres long. Just think of that: a fire front of 145 kilometres. You can imagine the resources it took for the bushfire brigades to try to bring that under control. Even though the firefighters fought courageously, not everything could be saved. I would like to convey my sincerest condolences to all those who have suffered loss but especially to Councillor Elizabeth Hoke, an elected official of the Shire of Boddington since 1998 and an active member of the community, and her husband, Ray. I have a press-clipping here which unfortunately shows Ray Hoke standing at the front of his house, which is totally burnt down. They not only lost their home but suffered extensive losses in and around the property. Another notable loss was that of Long Gully Bridge, a feature of significant historical value in the area often enjoyed and admired by those walking the Bibbulmun Track. The Bibbulmun Track is a track from Perth to Albany. It was used by Aboriginal people centuries ago to walk north-south in Western Australia. The Bibbulmun Track goes right over the Long Gully Bridge, which has now burnt down.

One of the best approaches to preventing mass devastation as a result of bushfires is prescribed burning. Vice President of the Association of Volunteer Bush Fire Brigades WA, Mr Dave Gossage, attended both of the fires in the zones of Waroona and Boddington, as well as the great fire that was happening further south near Albany in a place called Northcliffe. He noted that where prescribed burn-offs occur, the impact of a fire is significantly reduced. What Dave has said is nothing new; it is well recorded. Low levels of fuel result in low levels of risk. If all levels of government understood the need to create a consistent and audited approach to prescribe burn-offs, some of these fires would not have the same impact. I pause to add that one of our former long-serving members—who was, I might suggest, dearly loved by some of the members opposite—Wilson Tuckey, when he was forestry minister, made this very point: no fuel, no fire. It is the case in certain areas in the Perth Hills and surrounds where, because of the lack of prescribed burning, you can have significant amounts of leaf litter on the forest floor that builds up over the years and, when it eventually catches fire, you end up with a real wildfire with a lot of heat.

The action of prescribed burning is a responsibility of the state government but as a federal government we also need to encourage our state colleagues to be more active in this approach. This is taken directly from the DPAW website:

Scientific research shows that prescribed burning is very effective, especially when managing bushfires. We know from experience over a wide range of weather conditions and vegetation types that direct attack on bushfires with flame heights of more than three meters or where fires are moving faster than 200 metres per hour (in forest) is not likely to succeed. Fire behaviour is directly affected by the amount of available fuel. Therefore, direct attack on the flanks of a fire is likely to succeed where fires run into recently burnt areas of low fuel.

As I have previously mentioned, the 2011 Roleystone-Kelmscott bushfires were also located within the electorate. One hundred and four houses were affected: 72 homes were destroyed and another 32 were damaged. The special inquiry report into the event, titled Shared Responsibility, highlights an example of the effectiveness of prescribed burning. It goes on to say:

The reduced fire intensity and rate of spread observed when bushfires enter a reduced fuel area allows firefighters greater opportunity to effectively combat the fire and to limit its impact. In fact, the Special Inquiry heard evidence that the Roleystone-Kelmscott fire was extinguished on one front when it entered a section of the Banyowla Regional Park that had been the subject of a prescribed burn by DEC—

now the Department of Parks and Wildlife—

four years ago, as discussed later in this chapter.

The Nyungar people, who are the Indigenous people of the south-west of Western Australia, would conduct a style of prescribed burn-offs called mosaic burning. This was not initially done to control the risk of fire but more as a technique to herd larger animals into specific areas for hunting. However, early European settlers noted the other impact of these burns, which was the regeneration of local fauna as well as the limiting of fuels available for regular fires caused by lightning to become out of control.

I pause to bring to the attention of the House somebody I have a great deal of admiration for, a gentleman called Mr David Ward. David Ward is an expert in this particular area. I refer to his article in News Weekly on 15 February 2014, titled 'Bushfires rage because of whitefella's ignorance'. He goes on to point out the prescribed burning methods undertaken by the Indigenous people before white men came. It is a fascinating study into the way the Indigenous people burnt the forest. In this article, and other articles David Ward has published, he tells how you can measure the frequency of burning by the rings on black boy trees, which some politically correct people now call grass trees.

He showed me in my office the rings of burning on these trees. Some of these trees are more than 200 years old and you can see the regular burns on them. As white man has come in and stopped the burning the marks on the stems of the black boys have gotten wider and wider, which shows the burning did not occur as frequently as it did under the Indigenous people. This is why we have ended up with these wildfires. I recommend any people interested in prescribed burning read David Ward. It has to be done more often and more effectively because we will suffer the consequences if we do not.

I admire greatly the volunteer bushfire brigades. I want to once again thank them. When I was going through Boddington the other day I saw signs along the main street saying, 'Thank you, fireys,' because they had saved their town.

I want to finish by talking about the Bannister-Marradong Road. The Bannister-Marradong Road links Albany Highway and Pinjarra-Williams Road for regional traffic. It provides intertown access to Boddington from Perth via Albany Highway and from Mandurah and Pinjarra via Pinjarra-Williams Road. The road also provides access for traffic servicing the gold mine at Boddington.

Bannister-Marradong Road is a Western Australian Main Roads operated thoroughfare and there are currently works being undertaken by them in an effort to widen the section of road near the main access point from Albany Highway. While this measure is certainly appreciated and needed by locals who utilise this road regularly, it falls far short of increasing the safety of those entering and exiting the town of Boddington and travelling beyond. Regular feedback received by my office from emergency service volunteers, such as ambulance drivers, reflects that the state of the road prevents emergency service vehicles from utilising this road in a safe manner. This was highlighted during the recent fires.

Despite the obvious wear and tear, which is a result of both increased traffic stemming from the gold mine operations and population increases, Main Roads have not seen fit to resurface the entirety of this road. A recent visit to Boddington allowed me to experience the state of the road and what caused me the greatest concern is that the section of the road with the most bends and a significant number of blind corners requires the most improvements but instead the area that is presently being resurfaced and widened is the straightest section of road, which offers the widest field of view for several hundred metres. I have been informed that that will be where the work will stop. This presents an unacceptable risk to locals and tourists alike.

There are no objections from my constituents of Boddington about the work being undertaken. They would just like to see it done properly. The local volunteers taking people injured in these fires had to take their ambulances many tens of kilometres on an alternate route to get to Perth. It is a safety issue and it should be addressed. I raise it in the House today because I will be following this up with Main Roads Western Australia when I return.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the second reading amendment to Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2014-15 because it is really clear from the events of this parliamentary sitting week and the first parliamentary sitting week of this year that what is occupying the minds of the frontbench of this government is their own jobs. Last time we were here, two weeks ago, we had the Taylor Swift example of 39 people voting for blank space and one person voting for Taylor Swift for the Hottest 100. This week it has been more like a blooper reel from X factor. We have seen audition after audition from the frontbench for their own jobs and for other people's jobs. We saw the Treasurer this week auditioning for his own job. I suspect it has been an interesting time for him as he stands up to fight off as yet unknown challengers for his position. But of course the person who was really auditioning for his own job this week is the Prime Minister.

All of the people sitting behind the Prime Minister have been hanging their heads and finding something to look at instead of listening to the Prime Minister in question time. You see them sitting over there looking at their phones and reading the paperwork they have got because they want to be anywhere else but backing this Prime Minister. Yesterday's display in question time, for example, was completely unedifying, and that has certainly been a matter of some comment in the newspapers today. So we have seen everyone focusing on their own jobs.

What does it take to get this Prime Minister and this government to scrap the Paid Parental Leave scheme—the famous Paid Parental Leave scheme where the more you earn the more government support you get? You want to talk about middle-class welfare. What does it take to get this government and this Prime Minister to scrap a scheme where people on $100,000 or more would get $50,000 in support from this government when they have a child and the less you earn the less support you get? Does it take calls from business groups saying that they do not support this Paid Parental Leave scheme policy of this Prime Minister? Does it take calls from the opposition saying that this policy is clearly heading in the wrong direction?

Labor's paid parental leave scheme was introduced after proper consideration and after a Productivity Commission report. The member for Jagajaga worked so hard on introducing the paid parental leave scheme—and we ought to paid tribute for her work in that. It was prudent, appropriate and fair, but this government want to replace that with a rolled gold Paid Parental Leave scheme at a massive cost to the taxpayer.

Those things were not enough to get the Prime Minister to retreat. The only thing that got this Prime Minister to retreat from his unpopular Paid Parental Leave scheme, from his unfair, unjust, inequitable Paid Parental Leave scheme that almost everyone in the country was united in opposing was his desire to save his own job. You can see it now. You can see him waiting and wondering what the numbers will be, and when the numbers were not what he thought they should be he blamed the whip. He sacked the Father of the House when the numbers did not turn out to be what he thought they should be, as if for some reason it is the Father of the House's obligation to shore up support for this Prime Minister, who cannot look after himself.

The reason the Prime Minister has lost so much support is that he is so short-sighted, he is so out of touch with the community. It does not take community opposition to get him to move on this paid parental leave scheme, it takes his desire to save his own skin. What about the member for Wentworth? What would he do to take the Prime Minister's job. Would he for example scrap his deeply held conviction on climate change, his rock-solid support for an ETS, a few days before a spill motion was due to occur in the party room? Of course he would. The member for Wentworth will do anything to become Prime Minister. Unfortunately for the current Prime Minister of Australia, there seems to be a growing view, perhaps an inevitable view, that the member for Wentworth will become Prime Minister. If he does, the Labor opposition will not let him forget that he sat around the cabinet table and supported every single unfair measure in last year's federal budget, which is yet to be passed in its entirety—the GP tax, the cuts to the indexation of pensions, the $100,000 degrees, the cuts to family support that will leave a family on $65,000 some $6,000 worse off. All of those were supported by the member for Wentworth and everyone around that table. The Foreign Minister supported those measures, the Minister for Social Security supported those measures and present ministers on the government side supported those measures.

It does not matter what pop culture reference you might want to talk about—whether it is Taylor Swift or TheX Factor. Perhaps I need to go to something further back in time for the Prime Minister to understand this. Perhaps we need to go to Leave it to Beaver, The Brady Bunch or something a little less contemporaneous. When you think about analogies for this government, it is pretty clear that the government is in a world of pain. We are seeing that with the leaking, chaos and dysfunction that this government continues to produce. This week we have seen leaks on so many different issues—such as the lack of support in the cabinet for pension indexation cuts. That is a very serious leak and, of course, there have been many others. Why are there so many leaks? Why is there so much chaos? Why is there so much dysfunction? It is because backbenchers—and apparently seven frontbenchers—know that this government, led by this Prime Minister, is so out of touch and is acting so wrongly that they are losing support all around the country for the things they have done.

One of the reasons I support the second reading amendment is that it is important, in the context of talking about these appropriation bills, to think about the events that have led to these appropriation bills. Of course, these appropriation bills come on the heels of the 2014-15 MYEFO, which showed a $44 billion blow-out in the budget deficit over the forward estimates compared to the government's own 2014-15 budget. Since the coalition came to government the deficit for 2014-15 has been revised and has blown out by $16.4 billion—from $24 billion in the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook to $40.4 billion in the 2014-15 MYEFO. Debt is higher in the most recent MYEFO than it was in the government's own 2014-15 budget, with gross debt over the forward estimates increasing by $100 billion and net debt increasing by $146.3 billion over the same period.

Looking to the broader economy, it is in very difficult shape at the moment, particularly when you think about what has happened with unemployment. Unemployment is at 6.4 per cent, a 13-year high unemployment rate unmatched in recent history since the current Prime Minister was the employment minister. What is this government doing about unemployment? Are they focusing on the 100,000 extra people on the unemployment lines? Are they worried about the fact that there are 795,000 Australians unemployed in this country at the moment? Or are their own jobs the only ones they really care about? The only jobs that this frontbench cares about are their own jobs. It is an absolute disgrace.

Since the 2014 budget we have seen a significant fall in confidence in this country. Consumer confidence is nine per cent lower now than it was at the time of the 2013 federal election and business confidence is still below the long-run averages. So we know the effect that the 2014 federal budget has had on our economy more broadly. We know that Australians are very concerned about their future. We know that, in an environment of high unemployment, people are very concerned about security. This is compounded by the fact that wages growth is at its lowest rate since the wage price index commenced being kept in the 1990s.

People are hurting and they are worried. Their concerns about the economy are feeding into the anxiety, stress and pressure on households. People are sitting around their kitchen table thinking about the bills they have got to pay. They are thinking about how they are going to fund the cost of their kids going to school. They are thinking about the cost of health care. They are thinking about the cost of utilities. People are worried about those real household pressures, the things people have to think about every single day. With these Liberal government led attacks on the federal budget and the consequential effects on our economy—the drop in confidence, the effect of which has been slower than expected GDP growth—people are anxious. They have real cost-of-living pressure. It is something that a lot of people on the frontbench of the Liberal government just do not understand. They do not get it because they are so out of touch with the real concerns facing people every day.

Despite the fact that before the 2014 budget the IMF warned this government against making too many cuts too deeply and too quickly, we are seeing yet more cuts. For example, we are seeing a further $3.7 billion cut in foreign aid in addition to the $7.6 billion cut in the 2014-15 budget. Aid is important not just as a matter of altruism but because Australians domestically have an interest in having less poverty in the world and having nations being able to stand on their own two feet. Similarly, a multinational tax evasion crackdown is important, not only for our domestic revenue situation but so that developing countries get their fair share of taxation as well. These are things that this government just does not seem to understand. But I digress.

Back to MYEFO: there is also a $250 million cut to the ABC and the SBS, despite the Prime Minister promising before the 2013 federal election that there would be no cuts to the ABC and the SBS. He said there would be no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no changes to the pension, no changes to the GST and no cuts to the ABC and the SBS. On the GST, watch this space, but every single one of those other promises has been broken. And of course we have seen this government continuing to push, just this week, with its higher education package—the $100,000 degree package—and the so-called reform of the GP tax.

The GP tax is a terrible policy. It is unsupported by evidence. It has been admitted by the department, during committee hearings, that no substantial research has gone into this policy measure. It was an ideologically driven policy measure that this government dreamed up before the 2014 federal budget on the back of the Commission of Audit report, which had heard from a submitter who, in his own submission about the proposal for a GP tax, admitted that research needed to be done to find out whether people were actually going to the doctor unnecessarily.

Of course, that is the point of the GP tax. It has been called several things. I hear they are now calling it a 'value signal', in a sort of Orwellian attempt to change the framing of what it is, but the fact is: it is a GP tax and its whole purpose is to dissuade people from going to the GP. What could be more reckless than trying to dissuade people from getting primary health care when they need it, not just for those individuals' health but for the pressure that it will inevitably put onto our public health system?

And let us not forget, on top of the higher education changes and the GP tax, the cuts to pension indexation, which are estimated to mean that pensioners face an $80 a week cut to their pension, and, as I said earlier, the family payment support changes that will leave a family on $65,000 a year $6,000 a year worse off. It is atrocious.

All of these things reveal the ideological nature of the government's first budget and of the government's recent MYEFO. The thing about these ideologically driven changes is that the coalition MPs are well aware of the problems with these policies and the fact that they are unsupported by evidence. For example, as I say, the department admitted, during a Senate Select Committee on Health hearing recently, that the GP tax is not backed by substantive research. The acting secretary said:

I am unaware of any authoritative research in Australia specifically about the impact of something like Medicare co-payments or a reduction in the rebate.

The AMA and the College of General Practitioners have both explained that they have not been consulted about these GP tax changes. There is so much research that demonstrates the utter ridiculousness of the claims of unsustainability when it comes to Medicare—like the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare research. If you look at the OECD comparators, if you look at the work that has been done to see what our spending is on health care, we are on the OECD average for spending on health care, as this government well knows. If there is to be real reform when it comes to Medicare, it ought to be considered based on an evidence and not a thought bubble that someone dreamed up before the federal budget to satisfy their ideological urgings.

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

It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2014-2015, Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2014-15 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 2014-15. During this time, I would like to set out a few concerns that I have—and I am sure many other Australians share—about the future of our nation. Firstly, I am concerned about what I call the debt and deficit deniers. We just saw a classic example of that in the speech of the member for Griffith—complete and utter denial about the debt and deficit problems that our nation faces. To stand up and complain, 'The government needs to cut this and needs to cut that,' and whinge and whine like she did is a classic example of the problems that this nation faces and how we must face up to the challenges that we have with our debt and deficit.

Members from the other side of the chamber often like to say: 'We don't have a problem. We're not as bad as Greece. It's okay; we can keep spending forever and ever.' We are currently spending over $100 million more, every single day of the year, than we are raising in taxation revenue. What that means is that we simply borrow that money, leaving the job of rid repaying it to our children and our grandchildren. Every time any member of this government stands up and talks about how we can reduce that gap—which we should have down to zero—we hear the members of the opposition whingeing and whining and carping in the most disgraceful the way possible, which threatens our future and threatens the future of our children and our grandchildren. One of the ways they do it is by making international comparisons with what they say is Australia's debt-to-GDP ratio. They say: 'We're not as bad as Greece, Spain or Portugal. Aren't we doing wonderfully? Keep spending.'

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Third lowest in the OECD!

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

That ideology is very flawed, and I hope that the member for Griffith will listen and learn as I speak. For what they fail to consider is, firstly, state government debt. The state government debt is currently about $250 billion and, on its current trajectory, in 15 years state government debt will actually be higher than Commonwealth government debt. If you include state government debt with Commonwealth government debt, our debt-to-GDP ratios do not look anywhere near as impressive as they otherwise would. What you also need to include is our current unfunded superannuation liabilities for public servants, which the previous Howard government set up the Future Fund to cover. Of course, since the Howard government left office in 2007, not one single cent has been put into that Future Fund from governments to pay for those growing unfunded superannuation liabilities. So we need to add that onto our debt to get an overall picture. Previously we did cover that in our debt, until that was changed by the Whitlam government in 1974.

The other thing we need to consider is our growing pension requirements as our population ages. We do not, as other countries do, put aside money and have pension funds. Our pensions are paid from concurrent revenue, so the pensions we pay to people this year are from the revenue that we raised this year. The problem we have is that, as we have an ageing population, our pension liabilities that we pay in future years will be greater and greater. When we weigh all these things up, we are facing a very difficult and dangerous future.

When we look at what the future will be it is important to consider not only the debt but also the interest rate that we pay on the debt. That is something that often gets forgotten about because, in Australia, our government pays one of the highest interest rates amongst all OECD countries on the money that we borrow. Most of the debt that the previous Labor government ran up was financed at rates between about three and four per cent. So on that debt today, this year's interest bill to the Australian public is $13.5 billion. That works out to about $562 for every man, woman and child in the country. When the previous government came to office that amount was zero. In fact, it was better than zero. The Commonwealth Treasury was actually receiving a billion dollars in interest every year on the money that the Howard-Costello governments had saved. Now we have $13.5 billion going out.

The real question will be: if we do not pay back in 10 years time the debt that Labor governments ran up over the last six years and address the trajectory we are on, what interest rate will we face in 10 years time? Will we be able to refinance that debt at the low rates of around three or four per cent—or even 2.5 per cent, as it is now? That brings me to a few comments made by the Governor of the Reserve Bank Governor when he warned about this at recent hearings of the economics committee. He was talking about the bond rates, on which we pay no interest. He said:

Somehow, at some point, I cannot help but feel that these very long rates that are literally as low as they have ever been recorded, ever, must someday be higher.

He continued:

Someday they have to be higher, especially given the amount of public debt which is on issue in so many countries around the world. But I cannot predict for you quite how that will come to pass, or when. My five-year horizon: surely they have to be higher.

Members of the opposition want to play a game of Russian roulette with our children's future by saying we can continue to spend this money, continue to run up this debt, spending $100 million-plus every single day and borrowing money from overseas—only for our children to have to pay an unknown interest rate in a decade's time.

What happens if bond yields go back to where the historic averages are, around seven per cent, and we keep increasing the debt? It will not be a cost of $560 per person. In a decade's time it could be $2,000 or more for every man, woman and child in this country—just to pay the interest on the debt. This is why we have urgency in bringing the budget back to at least a balance. And then we have got to run surpluses to pay that deficit down; otherwise we are stealing money from our children's future. We are condemning future generations of this nation to a lower standard of living if we do not act. Sadly, that is what members of the opposition are doing at the moment. That is what the Senate is doing as they continue to block bill after bill as we go about cleaning up Labor's mess. This is perhaps one of the greatest threats to our nation's future.

In the time remaining to me, I would like to speak about the other threat to our nation's future: the threat of Islamic State and the Islamic extremists. We need to recognise and to admit the true nature of the enemy we face. This is a group that is committed to the destruction of our freedom. It is committed to the destruction of the opportunities and rights—that have been fought for and won over the last century—that we give to women, and it is committed to the destruction of our prosperity.

We have seen recently, over the last week or fortnight—in fact, in the last 24 hours—the mass kidnapping of perhaps over 100 Christians in Syria. We saw the burning alive of a Jordanian pilot—a fellow Muslim. We have seen the mass murder of 21 Coptic men on a beach in Libya. This is a monstrous evil that I do not think any of us thought that we would see in our lifetime. Simply, we have a group of psychopaths that have declared war against the world. The question we need to ask ourselves as parliamentarians is: what should our response be to this growing threat? In considering what our response should be, we should perhaps reflect on a quote attributed to Martin Luther King, perhaps one of the greatest pacifists of all time. He is quoted as saying, 'If your enemy has a conscience, then follow Gandhi. But if your enemy has no conscience, like Hitler, then follow Bonhoeffer.' That is, of course, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German clergyman who participated in a plot to kill Hitler. We have today a group, in ISIS, just as evil and just as barbarous as the Nazis were.

We need to use every resource at our disposal to fight this group. We cannot think that we can win this war that we are in through passivism and debating skills and sitting down and trying to have some kind of appeasement. Our history has shown that that has never worked. In thinking about the approach that we should take, I would like to quote a passage from The Wealth of Nations, a book by Adam Smith—perhaps one of the greatest books ever written. Smith wrote:

In modern war, the great expense of firearms gives an evident advantage to the nation which can best afford that expense; and, consequently, to an opulent and civilized, over a poor and barbarous nation. In ancient times, the opulent and civilized found it difficult to defend themselves against the poor and barbarous nations. In modern times, the poor and barbarous find it difficult to defend themselves against the opulent and civilized. The invention of fire-arms, an invention which at first sight appears to be so pernicious, is certainly favourable, both to the permanency and to the extension of civilization.

If we are going to fight and defeat ISIS, we need to use every resource at our disposal. We need to realise that the danger to us is not from the arrogance of Western power but from our unpreparedness or our unwillingness to use the military resources at our disposal to defeat this group. To quote retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, 'Retreat, retrenchment, and disarmament are historically a recipe for disaster.

In the last few minutes I would like to add some comments about the issues here in our Australian society. We cannot allow, under the guise of multiculturalism, groups in Australia that currently enjoy all the benefits of our free and open society and what they have delivered but at the very same time seek to undermine and reject our free and open society. The price of admission to our nation is to accept our values, as it is said in our citizenship ceremony—which our Prime Minister has often quoted:

I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

We have seen people who are not willing to uphold our laws and are not willing to respect the rights and liberties of this country. We have seen that in the shameful issue of child marriage—a complete abuse of human rights. It is a practice that threatens young girls' lives, their health and their future prospects and robs them of their childhood.

Last week we heard the most shocking story about a 12-year-old girl who was forced into a child marriage and who became pregnant and miscarried in a hospital in Western Sydney—a most shocking case. We heard another case only yesterday of a 15-year-old girl who was forced into a child marriage. We need to crack down on this. We need to make it crystal clear that child marriage in Australia is completely unacceptable. (Time expired)

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When a government comes to the parliament seeking funding for the forthcoming year, it is appropriate that we consider that government's performance in the year that has just passed. Today I want to address my comments on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2014-15 and related bills to the Abbott government's performance in the critical area of infrastructure delivery. This is of course critical to drive economic productivity and drive jobs growth, but the Abbott government is getting it wrong. It is getting it wrong because it has abandoned proper processes that we established through Infrastructure Australia.

That can be illustrated in the fact that, when the infrastructure coordinator left his position on 7 February 2014, one could have anticipated that that position would have been filled just a month or two later. We are now more than a year on and no-one has been appointed to be in charge of Infrastructure Australia. That compares with our performance in government. The parliament first sat in February 2008. Within four months we had passed the Infrastructure Australia legislation, created the body, appointed the advisory council, appointed the infrastructure coordinator and established an office. By the end of that year they had done a national audit of infrastructure and produced infrastructure priority lists on the basis of receiving and conducting proper cost-benefit analysis.

In a year, this government has abandoned proper processes and there is nowhere that that is illustrated more than in Victoria's East West Link project. In the last budget, the government allocated $3 billion for this project. They took funding from projects that had had proper assessments and cost-benefit analysis and had been recommended by Infrastructure Australia, including the Melbourne Metro project, where $3 billion had been allocated—an essential project for dealing with congestion on the rail network in the growing city of Melbourne. They took money from the upgrade of the M80 project in Melbourne and they took money from Managed Motorways program.

When we look at the cost-benefit analysis—which we can now do, because it has been published by the Victorian Andrews government—we know that the cost-benefit analysis is that there is 45c benefit for every dollar invested, with a BCR of 0.45. That is absolutely pathetic and a fact that shows that the project is simply a dud. And yet money taken from projects, including the Managed Motorways project, had a BCR above $5—or more than $5 for every dollar that was invested was a return in terms of productivity. That shows perhaps more than any other how this government has simply got it wrong, and it is no wonder that the Australian National Office of Audit is investigating the East West Link debacle.

In a letter to me dated February 5, the Auditor-General, Ian McPhee, wrote that the probe would examine what advice the government received on the East West Link and whether it had put in place sound governance arrangements in relation to the funding. In his letter, Mr McPhee wrote that scheduling the audit would require adjustment to its existing audit program. He said:

I have done this in view of the considerable commitment of Commonwealth Government funding made towards the project and the importance of the processes established at Commonwealth level to assess the merits of nationally significant infrastructure investments.

The coalition came to government with two commitments on infrastructure: firstly, there would be proper published cost-benefit analysis of all projects above a value of $100 million—they abandoned that; the second commitment was that they would make payments based upon milestones, on actual construction, and they have abandoned that as well.

A billion and a half dollars are sitting in the Victorian government's bank account paid last financial year for a project for which a hole has not been dug. Similarly, half a billion dollars are sitting in the New South Wales government's bank account from last year, 2013-14, for which a hole has not been dug on the WestConnex project, and $2 billion for the WestConnex project was made available in the form of a concessional loan to the state government. Again, this is before a proper analysis has been done of the project, before the project has begun, and this is a project that has been criticised by the New South Wales auditor in a damning report that was published recently.

The fact is that the promises that the government made on infrastructure have been treated like plates at a Greek wedding—smashed—just like all of their promises about education and health and that there would be no cuts to the ABC and no cuts to pension. It is no wonder that 39 of the Prime Minister's colleagues voted for an empty chair rather than him during the last sitting week. As the member for Longman can attest: anyone who points out the gap between the promises and reality cops a mouthful of Prime Ministerial scorn.

The Prime Minister is rapidly transforming himself into the political equivalent of a Monty Python skit. Deceit is bad enough, but Australians must be also tiring of this government's pitiful attempts to hide its deceit by pretending it is delivering new infrastructure. Day after day, week after week, we see the minister for infrastructure and his junior offsider, the member for Mayo, donning hard hats and announcing what they pretend are new initiatives in an attempt to create the impression of activity.

The problem is that almost all of those projects were funded by the previous Labor government. When we took office in 2007, Australia was 20th among OECD nations in terms of investment in infrastructure. When we left office, we were first. We doubled the roads budget and built or upgraded 7,500 kilometres of road; and we rebuilt a third of the national rail freight network—4,000 kilometres of it.

We had a comprehensive, properly analysed infrastructure program that addressed the infrastructure spending deficit of the former Howard government. When we left office, work was underway right around this country. What they have done is embark on a magical infrastructure re-announcement tour, going around the country sometimes pretending that projects are new such as the Majura Parkway, which has been underway for many years.

Sometimes they announce a new name for an old project and therefore pretending that it is new, so the F3 to M2 link became NorthConnex; and the Swan Valley Bypass became NorthLink. A new name does not make it a new project—funding was underway for those projects.

I think it is worthwhile going through just some of the projects that have been re-announced: NorthConnex in Sydney, included in the 2013 budget and with an intergovernmental agreement for $405 million from each level of government signed by me and the New South Wales minister in June 2013, and re-announced by the government with a new name, pretending that the project is new; the Northern Sydney Freight Corridor upgrade, $840 million, announced on 7 December 2011 at Hornsby train station with the then New South Wales Premier, Barry O'Farrell—we were there for the beginning of that project, which has been underway for years—and re-announced by the government in November 2013, and re-announced again earlier this month; the Port Botany rail upgrade, of which the first stage was completed and the second stage commenced in 2012, re-announced on several occasions in 2013 and 2014; the M80 project in Melbourne, commenced early in 2009 and re-announced by this government, which did not make a big announcement about the cut to funding for that project, on 16 October 2013; the Western Highway duplication between Ballarat and Stawell, announced in 2009, funded in the 2013 budget and re-announced by this government on 29 September 2014; the Clyde Road duplication, funded in the 2013 budget and re-announced on 21 February 2014; the Princes Highway East duplication, funded in the 2013 budget and re-announced by this government on 22 January 2015; the Princes Highway West duplication, funded in the 2013 budget and re-announced on 15 December 2014; the Ballarat freight hub, funded in the 2013 budget and re-announced on 13 May 2014; in Queensland, the Gateway North upgrade, the second stage of which was funded in the 2013 budget and re-announced on 30 January 2014; the Warrego Highway upgrade, funded in the 2013 budget and re-announced on 9 October 2014; the Pacific Motorway, funded in the 2010 budget, re-announced on 31 October 2013 and re-announced again on 7 March 2014; Legacy Way, just about completed, construction having commenced in 2011, but re-announced as if it were new in January 2014 and re-announced again in April; Townsville Ring Road, funded in the 2012 budget and re-announced on 22 December last year; the Cape York infrastructure package, funded in the 2013 budget and re-announced on 17 January 2014; Perth City Link, announced in 2009, commenced in 2011, just about completed, but re-announced by this government in December 2013; the Great Northern Highway, funded in the 2013 budget and re-announced on 13 December 2013; the North West Coastal Highway, funded in 2013 and re-announced on 16 December 2013; the Swan Valley Bypass, renamed by the government and re-announced on 29 January 2014, even though it was funded in the 2013 budget; the Tonkin Highway and Leach Highway upgrades, funded in 2013 and re-announced on 6 February 2014; the Esperance Port Access Corridor project, for which WA Minister Troy Buswell and I turned the first sod and began construction in May 2012, re-announced in February 2014; the Midland Highway, for which $500 million was included in the 2013 budget, re-announced by the government on 23 October 2013 but with $100 million less; in Tasmania, the North-South rail line, the North East road package, the Freight Rail Revitalisation, the Brooker Highway, the Huon Highway and the Tasman Highway, all funded in the 2013 budget, all re-announced as if they were new on 3 February 2014 and then re-announced again on 22 May 2014; in the Northern Territory, Tiger Brennan Drive, Central Arnhem Road and the Regional Roads Productivity Package, all announced in the 2012 and 2013 budgets and re-announced by the government; and, of course, the Torrens to Torrens project on South Road in South Australia, funded in the 2013 budget and re-announced by this government, along with APY Lands upgrades, the Goodwood to Torrens project and the Dukes Highway in South Australia. This is a fraud committed by the government, who do not have any projects or infrastructure agenda of their own and therefore seek to mislead the Australian public about their construction schedule on infrastructure. (Time expired)

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

I too rise today to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2014-2015 and cognate bills. Before I start, I would like to express my frustration at the fact that delays in passing legislation and the negotiations with the Senate have cost the budget more than $10½ billion over the forward estimates. That is a shame, because the outlook is quite positive for our economy, with historically low interest rates. Particularly for the people in my part of the world, the depreciation of the Australian dollar and lower energy costs due to the removal of the carbon tax have made conditions much more conducive for business. The other things that have given the businesses in the Parkes electorate reason for optimism are the free trade agreements that have been signed with China, Japan and Korea and the opportunities that those markets will mean for primary producers and the miners in my part of the world.

But there are some issues in this appropriation bill that are particularly relevant to the area that I represent. One of the announcements is the GABSI, the Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative. This has been a very successful program, and the funding was dropped off by the previous Labor government in their last year. I am pleased to say that, through lobbying and meetings with me and the member for Maranoa, we were able to restore the funding for the Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative.

For those of you who might not be aware of the significance of this program, it is the scheme that is known as the piping and capping. Many of the artesian bores in the Great Artesian Basin were put down close to 100 years ago and have been continuously running, forced to the surface by pressure and flowing like that for 100 years. The continuation of this GABSI program has meant that more of these bores will be capped and piped, and the savings for capping and piping on a particular bore are higher than 95 per cent. So this is real protection of the Great Artesian Basin.

I get a little frustrated when the green influence in groups like Lock the Gate talks about the protection of the Great Artesian Basin when in actual fact the GABSI, which was originally funded by the Howard government, has done a wonderful job securing and protecting the resource that is the Great Artesian Basin. It will need to continue on because, as more bores are piped, the pressure increases and bores that were not running freely will be.

One of the issues in the north-western area of my electorate—basically an area around Coonamble, Pilliga, Brewarrina, Walgett and Lightning Ridge—is drought. We now have producers who are staring down the barrel of their third year without production. Indeed, some of these areas have had less than 14 inches of rain over the last three years. The last worthwhile rain that was had in this area was the flood in 2012. While it can be expected that farmers should be able to prepare for a drought that will possibly last a year or even two, I do not believe it is possible for anyone to be prepared to financially manage a drought that goes over three years.

Following on from a visit by the Prime Minister with the assistance of the Minister for Agriculture early last year, the drought assistance program that has gone out into this area has been worthwhile. I will not say that it has alleviated the suffering, because nothing will alleviate the suffering that people face when they are battling a drought constantly, but at last count I think there are over 4½ thousand farm households now receiving household support, which gives some dignity back to those homes by helping people purchase the basic necessities of life. Quite a few hundred farmers have accessed the low-interest loans, of which there are two different sorts, some over five years, some over 10, and those have helped. But I am flagging here today that we may need to look at what else we can do in that area that is defined by the one-in-100-year drought.

Quite recently the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, the Hon. Warren Truss, was able to announce some funding under a couple of programs that were very beneficial for the Parkes electorate. The Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program was most welcome when it was announced last week. I know from personal experience that funding like $573,000 of Commonwealth funds to go towards the $1.146 million upgrade of the Maskuta Creek Road and the Gil Gil Creek Road in the Gwydir Shire will be very useful for the productivity and safety in that area. The large quarry that uses the roads basically sources the material for the Gwydir, Moree and part of Narrabri shires as well as up into Queensland will now have a safer road for road train access to remove the road material from this quarry. That is a contribution with the federal government, the Gwydir Shire and the local quarry owner.

There is $300,000 for a new rest area. That will be half the funding for a rest area on the Mitchell Highway at Trangie, which will do much to help the safety of many of the trucks that use that road. There is $700,000 towards a $1.6 million widening and resealing of the Croppa Creek Road at Moree, which will make that highly productive area much safer with the large amount of truck traffic that uses. It. There is also $532,000 which will go towards a $1.296 million project for the widening of the Dandaloo Road at Albert in the Central West with the Lachlan Shire, which also will be much appreciated. There is $210,000 for improving signage and safety on various far north-west highways, for a total project of $420,000 with the New South Wales RMS, and $23.795 million for a raft of measures on the Golden Highway from Muswellbrook to Dunedoo. The Golden Highway is a critical transport link into the Central West as B-double access is not allowed down the Great Western Highway into Western Sydney. The Golden Highway now linking to the Hunter Expressway is a major freight corridor into Sydney from the Central West.

There were various bridges announced across the Parkes electorate under the Bridges Renewal Program, but a program that has a great deal of expectation attached to it is the National Stronger Regions Fund. That is $1 billion over the next five years, and that will help boost projects that will increase productivity in regional Australia, particularly parts of the Parkes electorate. The $100 million black spot program for mobile coverage is rolling out, and there is a great deal of expectation as to where those towers will be announced. I have to say this really only needs to be a start. It is a timely reminder that in 2008 in this very place the then Labor government removed the $2½ billion that was the Regional Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund. It rolled into the overall package for the global financial crisis. Since that time, there has been no government money going into improving telecommunications and mobile phone coverage in regional Australia.

The NBN rollout is also starting to get back on track after Minister Turnbull has taken control of this project, and that will also make a difference. But mobile phone coverage is unacceptable and we need to be doing more. When many of the farm machinery that is used now is monitored remotely and when technicians need to have Next G coverage to do an analysis of a breakdown with a tractor or a grain harvester it is important that we have that mobile coverage. I am sure that people in other parts of the country would not put up with having no mobile coverage at all.

The other thing that this government is doing is mutual obligation for welfare recipients to receive Newstart. There is also the Green Army project. It has been very well received in the Parkes electorate. I spoke in this place yesterday about the Green Army project that is up and running in the Macquarie Valley and one that is about to start up on the border regions at Boggabilla and Toomelah with the Kamilaroi people in that area.

Communities are saying to me that they want their young people to have a reason to get out of bed in the morning, that they want their young people to have a purpose in their lives and that they want their young people to have a proper job. For too long we have been paying people to sit down. That has been soul destroying for those people, it has been bad for the country and it has been bad for the communities in which they live. I am pleased to say that we are well on the way to implementing those programs to get all Australians to put their shoulders to the wheel and to have an opportunity that many of us take for granted.

One of the great programs that is preparing young people in western New South Wales for the workforce is the Clontarf Foundation. They are doing a great job in the western towns. There are also academies at many of the schools—the Girls Academy at Coonamble High School is preparing those young ladies for future life with programs in that town of Coonamble and in other towns. There is much more that we need to be doing.

I would like to welcome the change of focus by the National Drug and Alcohol Council and the new committee chaired by Kay Hull, the former member for Riverina—now with a focus on ice and amphetamine use in our communities. Quite frankly, it disturbs me greatly that beneath the calm and pleasant surface in most of my towns—probably all the towns in my electorate—there is an epidemic that is ripping my communities apart, and that is ice. We really need to focus on this issue. It is particularly difficult; a lot of the people who are dealing in this insidious substance are embedded in the community. They target the most disadvantaged people in the communities and, quite frankly, in many cases there is no way back from ice addiction.

As a parliament and as a society, if we do not address this drug that is tearing our communities apart we will be paying for the consequences for decades to come. We do need to deal with this issue.

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

I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2014-2015; Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2014-2015; and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 2014-2015. These three bills will bring a total of $1.7 billion in additional funding to be appropriated, and these appropriations reflect the Abbott government's decisions which were incorporated into the 2014-2015 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, as well as several machinery-of-government changes.

The bills before the House represent the priorities of the Abbott government. They also represent the ugly tip of an ugly iceberg that we saw last May when the Treasurer delivered his budget. This ugly iceberg has hit the most vulnerable Australian households, it has hit university students and it is attacking pensioners and families—many of whom have already been struggling with rising cost-of-living pressures.

The Labor Party has a long, proud tradition of protecting living standards and raising them. We are a party that is all about supporting jobs and creating jobs, and making sure that this nation has a secure economic future. These are the very tenets of the Labor Party. As Ben Chifley said we are:

… a movement bringing something better to the people, better standards of living, greater happiness to the mass of the people. We have a great objective – the light on the hill – which we aim to reach by working the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand. If it were not for that, the Labour movement would not be worth fighting for.

That famous speech that so many in the Labor movement have gone back to.

We are the party of protecting living standards, supporting jobs and securing our economic future. One would think—any sensible person, anyone who believes in common sense, would think—that all Australian political parties should be about those things. However, this stinking, dead cat of a budget handed down by the Treasurer last year is a failure on all three of these fronts. This budget attacks the living standards of many Australians, especially our most vulnerable people. It does not create a lot of heartache for the top end of town but the people who are most vulnerable are asked to do the heavy lifting.

The Treasurer and the Prime Minister made it their priority to have the poorest quartile do most of the heavy lifting, rather than the wealthiest. The last time we saw that sort of tactic imposed in Australia, Ralph Darling was the governor of New South Wales.

Unemployment has risen under Prime Minister Abbott and is now at 6.4 per cent. When we left, it was at 5.7 per cent. We always hear the weasel words, the spin coming from the employment minister, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister who say, 'We have created more jobs.' Well, Australia is a growing economy and that is why the number of jobs being created is growing. So do not stand up and say, 'The pie is growing, if the percentage of people who have no pie at all is actually increasing. Do not try and use those little weasel words. The Australian public understands the unemployment rate. It has always been the factor that we look at in whether the government is doing the right thing.

The rabble opposite have betrayed our economic future in many ways on a variety of fronts, not just because they have sabotaged the economy but because they have failed to invest in education. Despite the promises before the election, despite the fake Gonski embracing and the stickers saying 'we support Gonski', when shadow minister Pyne got into government he broke that promise. Our schools and universities are suffering and will suffer even more in the future yet these are the very economic entities that will enhance productivity and create the jobs and opportunities that my grandchildren will need.

Those opposite have again made a basic error when it comes to the economy by failing to address dangerous climate change. Despite the Prime Minister saying in Battlelines that we basically need a price signal attached to dangerous pollution, despite him recognising that and putting it in words—

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Really?

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

In Battlelines he makes it very clear, the member for Wakefield.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He could put a price signal on doctors instead.

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

That is right. But he recognised that this will be a big economic challenge, a great social challenge as well as an environmental challenge. But by not pricing pollution and by the political opportunism to win a ballot by one vote—where one person was absent and there was one spoilt ballot—it shows how hollow a man this Prime Minister is. He is a Prime Minister who will do anything.

Mr Whiteley interjecting—

I am sure the gang of 39 opposite are making the noise.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He must have been 61.

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

He surely is not that silly—although. By not addressing dangerous climate change, this government is going to sabotage our economy in the future.

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So you want a carbon tax.

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

Of course we need a price on pollution. Every sensible economist, every sensible scientist knows it; only the hollow opportunistic politicians recognise that it is not the right thing to do. We need to address dangerous climate change.

The other place where the government has let—

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

Are you seeking a point of order?

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Would the member be prepared to take an intervention?

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

No.

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

The member for Moreton will continue and there will be silence.

Mr Whiteley interjecting—

Interject once more and you will be the first one out. I would not be answering back to the chair, mate.

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

The major problem with those opposite is that they do not realise where they sit in the Asian Century nor the opportunities that are there. And that was a great misunderstanding.

They are banging the old beat-up-the-foreigner drum loudly at the moment, which goes down like a bucket of cold sick amongst our trading neighbours around us. It is unbelievable. To sabotage the job opportunities that will come by us embracing Asia, they take the VIP off for a 20 minute conference to Sydney to say Asians are stealing our houses, Asians are stealing our land, they are towing it back to China, towing it back to wherever. It was xenophobia writ large, shameful. It belongs to the first parliament of Australia that was debating the White Australia policy rather than the 44th Parliament that should be embracing the Asian century. It was disgraceful.

Labor believes in a strong economy that delivers opportunity for all Australians and does not leave people behind. We saw how flawed the Prime Minister is. There are 39 backbenchers and a line-up of ministers that are disappointed and prepared to change. But it does not matter who they choose, whether it be the communications minister or the foreign affairs minister. It does not matter who the Labor Party is up against because we know what they stand for. We saw their Real Solutions for all Australians

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

Props are disorderly, member for Moreton. Put the prop down.

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

Sorry, Deputy Speaker Broadbent. I will put down that work of fiction. It does not matter who they choose because we saw after the election what they really stand for. They do not believe in Medicare; instead, they have embraced a GP tax. They do not believe in accessible higher education for all; instead, they want $100,000 degrees—this dumb but rich policy. They are embracing ball-and-chain degrees that will not give opportunity but instead will cramp Australia's opportunities. We believe in affordable quality child care, not prohibitive fees and cuts to family payments.

We always need to contrast how the situation was when they come into power. We had not just sold Telstra off and had an extra $70 billion in the bank. Let's look at the world when they came to power back in September 2013. The Australian stock exchange was trading at a five-year high—we came through the financial crisis; GDP was running at 2.6 per cent; unemployment was at 5.7 per cent; inflation is not a significant problem at the moment obviously but it was at 2.4 per cent. We had a AAA credit rating provided by all three ratings agencies. We had had 22 years of continuous economic growth largely due to the tough economic decisions made by the Hawke and Keating government, not that Mr Costello made any difficult decisions—he just said 'spend everything that we make from selling hard earned, publicly owned assets'. We had created one million jobs. We were rated by the OECD as one of the best and happiest countries in the world. We had the highest median wealth in the world, at $193,563. We had low interest rates, also not a problem at the moment. And gross government debt, when you compare it to all of the other OECD nations, was well and truly under control.

Here at the beginning of 2015, we are not going to spend a lot of time highlighting the problems and inadequacies of the Abbott government. Obviously that task has been outsourced to the leakers and the 39 backbenchers and the gathering gang of cabinet ministers. They will be talking about how bad the government is. They will be the ones talking about how the Prime Minister is not up to the job and Treasurer Hockey is definitely not up to the job. I think everyone recognises that the Prime Minister's 18-month-long audition for season 6 of The Walking Dead is finally coming to an end.

Instead, while those opposite, the rabble opposite, implode and take those rusted-on mugs the Nationals with them, we the Labor Party will be consulting with the community, working on our policy ideas and consulting with the economic experts, the academics, the health experts, the scientific experts. 'Scientists'—there is a word that does not get heard often by those opposite, but we believe in scientists, especially when it comes to addressing climate change.

Those opposite promised that they would run a stable and united government, but all we have seen is chaos. We have seen disunity. We have seen Australian families suffer. We have seen the Australian economy suffer. We have seen small businesses—their safe space in any economy—suffering most of all. And all of Australia is paying the price because of this.

I know what happens when a government says one thing before an election and then does something different after it. I come from Queensland. We saw what happened there, where a Premier said one thing before the election and then did the opposite. The people of Queensland are waiting. They have their baseball bats cleaned up, nice and shiny. They are waiting. I know that the rest of Australia will have an opportunity also to say, 'This is what we think of a government that says one thing before an election and then does something different after.'

I think one of the great travesties that we have not shone a light on because there is so much dysfunction and chaos opposite is how manufacturing has suffered under this government. I know that the member for Wakefield has been very passionate about that. The Treasurer had an opportunity to look after production in terms of cars. The Prime Minister and the former Minister for Defence made a commitment to manufacturing in terms of submarines, but then it turned out to be hollow words, deception. He was prepared to ramp it up just to get a couple of extra votes in the ballot, but when it came to delivering on his commitment he was shown to be a completely hollow man.

Look at the other drums they are beating in the corners that they can find: penalty rates and driving down wages, even though real wage growth is, I think, the lowest it has ever been. But still the Minister for Employment is saying wage explosions are a problem. This is the guy paid to be the minister, and he contradicts the information given to him.

We saw in Queensland that people do care about governments. We will hold them to account. We always have. The people have always held governments to account in all democracies, going back 2,000 or 3,000 years.

We need those opposite, the Liberal Party, to change this budget, especially as they come up to preparing the next budget, which is not too far away. Obviously we are focused on policies that support living standards, support jobs and help families, but you need to do that in the context of a growing economy. Sadly, they have missed a great opportunity to boost productivity. Instead, they put a handbrake on the economy.

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

Where is the self-worth and self-esteem of the Labor Party after what you left us with after your years of government? You left this nation with massive debt and continuing growth in debt. The member for Moreton talked about rising unemployment. Who signalled rising unemployment but the former Treasurer, Wayne Swan? He signalled rising unemployment in each budget that they put forward, didn't he? There is a lag in those figures that always comes 18 months afterwards. What did you leave us with? Where did you point the direction of the economy?

It is a disgrace that you can stand there in this day and age and pretend, even with the cuts that you were prepared to make in previous budgets—that you can stand there now and say, 'But we're not supporting those cuts anymore.' What intended hypocrisy! How can the Labor Party that I knew—and that I know some of my people in the seat of McMillan actually vote for—sit there and oppose every balanced part of the budget that this nation needs to make, the cuts that need to be made, the cuts that you as a Labor Party signalled? You signalled that these are the things that have to be done in this nation to get the budget in order so our families will be better off and so small businesses can grow, yet you come in with these speeches that are laden with hypocrisy and duplicity. I cannot believe that you would try to mislead this nation in such a way.

Yes, unemployment figures are growing, and they are the legacy of what the Labor government left us after they were defeated at the last election. When this government came in and began to put our nation's economic wellbeing in order, what did the Labor Party say? It said: 'We'll join with the crossbenchers in the Senate to stop everything. Nothing will go through. No cut, no change—nothing of any substance will go through for the next 18 months until there is an election, which we believe we can win.' That is what it is all about. That is exactly what it is all about. The way you have treated this parliament with contempt is a disgrace and you are continuing to do it with every speech that comes forward—especially that of the member for Moreton. I would have expected more from him.

I made a mistake the other day—

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Did you say the member for Moreton?

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

The member for Moreton, just to make it clear. The member for Moreton was in that government. He knows the mistakes they made. He knows they were a profligate, spendthrift government. They had no concern for what they were spending; they spent and spent. When the income of this nation took a downturn they did not stop spending. They were actually told by the head of Treasury, 'You can't keep spending like this. We can't afford new programs into the future; we just can't afford it.' He said, 'The money's not there to pay for it.' What did the Labor Party say? 'We don't care.' This is all about politics. It has nothing to do with the best interests of the Australian people or the health and wellbeing of this nation and its economy.

I made a mistake the other day, which I will admit to. I walked out in the middle of a speech by the Leader of the Opposition because I was so disappointed that he made a partisan statement when this parliament and the nation were trying to send a message on closing the gap. It is a bipartisan statement of this parliament that we want that gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people closed in every state, community, city and country. I should not have done that; I should not have walked out. But I was so disappointed with the Leader of the Opposition because I expected more from him on that day. So if there is anybody out there I need to apologise to, I apologise to them now; but I do not apologise for being absolutely disappointed with the Leader of the Opposition.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. Apology accepted!

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

The two members at the table can laugh; but the smiles will be on the other side of your faces if the reigns are ever handed back to the Labor Party and we go on another spendthrift dream ride: 'We can do what we like because eventually we'll go out of office'—and the Liberal-National coalition will come in again and try to clean up the mess. They say, 'We don't care.' I say to the people of Macmillan and to the people of Australia generally: this is unacceptable at this time because the future of our children, and their children, is now on the line. The further we put off the changes that have to be made to our economy, and the cuts that have to be made, the harder the crunch is going to be. That is the situation we find ourselves in today.

We can no longer, as a country, continue spending billions of dollars more than we are receiving. You cannot do it in a family. Coming out of a small business, as I do, you cannot do it in a business—because if you do, you eventually cannot pay your bills and the bank says, 'You're finished.' That is exactly what happens. You cannot do it on a dairy farm. You cannot do it on a beef property. You cannot do it anywhere within the magnificent contribution that my electorate makes to this country in agriculture. You cannot do it there. You cannot have loans that are crushing the future ability of your family to receive a benefit for the work you are putting in today. Eventually you have to stop and turn around.

That means there will be cuts in this budget and the next budget and the next budget. At the same time, we have to make sure the benefit goes to those who are most vulnerable in our community. The member for Moreton talked about what the Labor Party stands for and what he believes. I think what this parliament should stand for is that first obligation we have to the Australian people: to make sure those most vulnerable are cared for. It happens in a family. If you have one child who is struggling in a family, who gets the most attention from mum and dad? The child that is struggling. The other children are told, 'Get on with it. Fend for yourselves; do the best you can.' The vulnerable child gets the support.

This nation has grown on that egalitarianism. This nation is known for the way it spreads its wealth through the community. But it cannot be laissez-faire. Everybody has to accept that there will be changes. There will be cuts. You have to think about how we are going to afford this and whether it is fair.

Fairness is important in this nation. It goes to the heart of the way we think, it goes to the heart of the way we talk and it goes to the heart of the way we make decisions. If it is seen to be unfair, that is when we respond. If it is unfair in a family, or it is unfair in a business, or it is unfair in the workplace, we will respond as a nation because that is who Australians are. But we cannot stand here and say, 'Let's all go over the debt cliff together.' The time has come for us to change where we are headed in this nation.

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Time to show some responsibility.

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

It does take some responsibility. It also takes some energy and effort to make sure we take the Australian people with us in the decisions we take.

I need infrastructure in my rural and outer-urban electorate, whether it be the baseball club or the cricket club, the tennis club or the football club. We are in a massively growing area. I have had more than 20,000 new residents come into my area over the last 18 months. Their children all need facilities, be it for soccer—which is one of the great growing sports in my community—baseball, or other sports we have not heard of like indoor slide ball. There are all sorts of things. Some 1,800 people a day go through our sports and aquatics centre, mostly for basketball. All of them could do with extended facilities.

There are bridges in my electorate that need rebuilding, either after fires or because of the fact we now have B-double trucks travelling over bridges that were never designed for that. I have one of the strongest agricultural areas in the nation—the great provider of much of the milk, beef and lamb you consume; the great provider of the wool that is exported and of the manufacturing across Gippsland. We contribute the power out of the Latrobe Valley that runs the nation—and I have fantastic workers there—but we do understand as a people that we cannot live beyond our means.

Politicians in this House and Senate collectively are letting you down because they are not telling you the truth about the nation's finances and where we are headed, what we need to pay for and the infrastructure we need to grow this country. I am not talking about just those listing to this broadcast today; I am talking about their children and their children. We need to have politicians in this nation prepared to project 30 years and see where we are going to be. We need to have politicians in this nation not making promises that we cannot afford and not making promises about what they are going to deliver but never delivering.

We have to be reasonable with our statements and honest with the Australian people and say: 'Today is a time when we have to pull back.' Our national income has been diminished. You did not do it, I did not do it, the Labor Party did not do it and the coalition did not do it. There is a downturn in our earnings. If there was a downturn in the earnings in my businesses I had to stop the spending I was doing throughout the household. We never had to lay off people, which was fantastic. There were people who left, but we did not have to lay anybody off. We went without. This nation at this time has to change the way it is interacting with the Australian people. We need a new conversation to explain exactly the situation we are in and how we need to address it. I expect in the May budget that that will be the case.

It does no good for the Labor Party to stand there speech after speech denying the past completely and denying their hand in the state of the economy today. They are completely denying their hand and saying: 'It is nothing to do with us. The election was the cut-off date. It is a new day today. All the things we said we would cut we are no longer cutting. We do not believe that any more. Anyway, it was the other executive who cut it. We are the new opposition.' To this point I say to the Australian people: not one plan has been put forward by the Labor Party as to how they would address the economic ills of this nation. They have only said, 'We do not like the way you are doing it.' They have the right to say that but they do not have the right to stay completely silent on what plan they would have for the nation.

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unfunded empathy.

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

'Unfunded empathy,' says my friend. It is wrong in this nation at this time to say that the whole fault for what has happened to this nation lies with the government. They should be ashamed of themselves because of the way they have performed since they have come into opposition, and they know that. The great opportunity for the Labor Party today and for politicians of this country is to be honest with the constituents and tell them exactly the situation we are in in this country and how we got here. We need to look to the future to make sure that whatever we as a government want to do we are able to fund and deliver and we are able to look after our most vulnerable—we are able to look after our pensioners and those who are disabled. That should be the No. 1 priority for any government living in this time and this place. We need to do the best we can on behalf of our people.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this collection of appropriation bills. The appropriation bills are largely to do with the running of the government, the departmental costs and the like, but they do afford us the opportunity to talk more broadly, as the member for McMillan and the member for Moreton have, about the budget settings in this country and the way we move forward. It is a privilege to follow the member for Moreton in particular. I thought he raised some very intelligent points about the state of the budget and the state of the government. It was a characteristically good contribution from the member for Moreton.

It is tempting to say that we want to talk about the budget strategy of the government, but in reality the government does not really have a budget strategy. It is confused and chaotic. One day you have the Treasurer saying that there will be more belt tightening in May and the next day the Prime Minister says there will not be. You have a minister saying something about the budget and on the same day another minister saying the opposite.

You have leaks in all directions. It is hard to open a newspaper in this country at the moment without one member of the ERC leaking on another or one member of the cabinet leaking on another. Even the other day in question time—I think it might have been Tuesday—the Treasurer answered one question and said that Australia is like Greece and headed for ruin and then about three or four questions later he said that Australia has a rosy outlook. Not even the Treasurer can come into this place with any sort of clarity in his own mind and talk about the budget strategy.

The government is at war over the personnel. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer are under pressure. The sharks are circling. They are under a lot of pressure. You can see it in question time when they all pretend to read while the Prime Minister speaks. They are at war over the means when it comes to the budget but not the ends. It is tempting to say that the biggest problem with this government is their disunity, the things they disagree on, but really the biggest problem with this government is the things they do agree on. They all agree on some of the worst aspects of this budget. They all agree on the GP tax. They all agree on $100,000 degrees. They all agree on pension cuts and the hike in the cost of petrol. They all agree on the hike in the cost of medicines. So really the biggest problem is not all this disagreement, disunity and confusion; the biggest problem is the things that are fundamental to the Liberal Party and the Abbott government, which are making life harder for people on middle- and low-incomes and asking the most vulnerable people in our community to carry the heaviest load when it comes to budget repair.

Every single member of cabinet—including the member for Wentworth and the member for Curtin—can pretend that they had nothing to do with this budget. But they did; they sat around the same cabinet table and agreed on the very worst elements of this budget. This budget is stapled to every single one of them. The Prime Minister can pretend that, all of a sudden, the days of good government are here, that there is some sort of reset. But when we look at their policy agenda—not what they say but what they actually want to inflict on the Australian community—we know that absolutely nothing has changed. Were it not such a serious matter, it would have been funny to see the Leader of the Government in the Senate in estimates earlier this week when he was asked what has changed with the Prime Minister since he promised that he would change. He had to take that question on notice! That was really an indication that the Prime Minister has not changed at all, the policy agenda is the same, and every member of cabinet has signed up to that policy agenda.

We need to look through the fog of chaos and confusion on the government side of the House. We need to look beyond the political difficulties of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, substantial though those difficulties are. We need to look beyond the polls and personalities. We need a proper evaluation of where we are at and where we are headed. I did not agree with a lot of what the member for McMillan said. But he did say that we do need an assessment of where we are at and where we are going—and we have very different ideas of where we should head. I think it is true that we should take stock of where we are at and also understand properly the costs to the real economy of the ineptitude and incompetence that has infected the Abbott cabinet.

As the member for Wakefield, who is here in the chamber, would recall very well, those opposite promised they would make the budget better. We know that in the 18 months that they have been in government—and this is a fact, not an opinion—that the budget position has deteriorated. In the context of the bills we are discussing today, there is something like a $44 billion deterioration between the midyear update from two Decembers ago and the midyear update last December. That is a fairly substantial deterioration and it is nothing to do with Labor. It compares two numbers from midyear updates both handed down by Treasurer Hockey. They promised to make the budget better but they have made it worse.

That is not the only example we have of where there has been a promise to make something better and it has become worse. They said that, if elected, there would be an instantaneous adrenaline charge. The Prime Minister went to CEDA in Sydney and said that, on the election of a coalition government, there would be an adrenaline charge in the economy, that things would improve. While I was listening to the member for McMillan, something popped up on my email which is interesting in the context of the conversation we are having right now. I want to read that into the record. I got an email just before, which is the NAB quarterly ASX 300 business survey for the fourth quarter 2014. I quote:

Big business in Australia is losing confidence affecting medium-term growth and capital expenditure plans. Overall confidence among larger firms has now fallen below its long-term average and is weaker than for smaller companies and the broader economy.

That was from the National Australia Bank. It is not much of an adrenaline charge when you think about the stats that are coming through about confidence in the economy. I am privileged to be on the Economics Committee with my colleague over there, the member for Wright. Very recently the Governor of the Reserve Bank appeared before the committee. One of my colleagues—it might even have been the member for Wright—asked him what his biggest fear about the Australian economy was and he said it was the lack of confidence. So, far from the adrenaline charge that the Prime Minister promised, there has been a real problem with confidence in our economy.

The Australian Institute of Company Directors did a survey of directors. Almost 50 per cent of those directors said the performance of the government was having a negative impact on their investment decisions. Taking the politics out of it, that is a very, very worrying aspect of company and business culture in Australia at the moment. I will not quote all the other confidence numbers, but confidence is very weak in the economy at the moment.

We have also had the government promise to make the cost of living better for ordinary Australians. Instead, we have got things like the proposals to jack up the prices of medicine, petrol, visiting a doctor and university degrees. These are all the components of the cost of living, all the things that really matter to the economics of daily life. The Prime Minister said he would make things easier. Instead, he has made things much, much harder.

The problem with all of these factors, particularly confidence, is the way they flow through to the real economy. When the economy does not have the confidence it needs, it flows through into the hard data about the real economy. Growth in our economy is soft. I do not say it with any relish, but growth is softer than we would all like. That has particular implications for unemployment. The unemployment rate is the highest it has been since 2002. That is not an opinion, it is a fact. Unemployment is higher today than it was during the depths of the global financial crisis. Let's think about that for a moment. Right now in Australia the unemployment rate is higher than it was in the sharpest synchronised downturn in the economy since the Great Depression. That is an extraordinary thing that we need to contemplate. That should be a wake-up call for anyone in this place and anyone who cares about the condition our economy is in and our community is in right around the country. That is a stunning stat. The unemployment rate is higher now than it was during the global financial crisis.

I do not want to spend my whole time responding to points that the member for McMillan made, but he showed an extraordinary lack of awareness when he said that, after 18 months of the coalition government, the unemployment rate is somehow Labor's fall. He said that there was a lag. But there is not an 18-month lag in these figures. That is just an extraordinary attempt to state that the unemployment rate, which is higher now than it was during the GFC, is something that Labor should be responsible for—after 18 months of government! You have got to wonder why these people wanted to be the government if they want to spend their whole time saying that every piece of economic data is somehow the fault of the previous government.

We are now approaching the second budget and there is no clarity on the first one. As I said, when you are getting to your second budget the time has long gone when you can blame other people for the fiscal settings in the budget or for the economic parameters in the budget. Unfortunately that culture of chaos, blame and confusion does not just infect the 2014-15 and the 2015-16 budget; it also impacts on a whole range of other aspects of the Treasurer's job. I am thinking here about the Intergenerational report. The Charter of Budget Honesty has covered four treasurers—Costello, Swan, Bowen and now Hockey. Of those four treasurers, the only one who has breached the law of the Charter of Budget Honesty when it comes to handing down the Intergenerational report on time is Treasurer Hockey.

We also know, from estimates, that one of the reasons for that delay is that the government are interfering with the migration numbers. They are trying to work out a way that they can paint the worst possible picture about debt and deficit. We know that the Treasury officials have gone to great lengths to point out that this is the Treasurer's document and it is not a Treasury document. They have gone to great lengths to point to the sort of interference that is happening with some of these figures. The Treasurer called this document a critical document last week. I agree with him. If it is such a critical document, it really beggars belief that he cannot hand his homework in on time.

In that speech about the Intergenerational report, which I read with interest, the Treasurer said that it needs to be about three things. Obviously he did not mention climate change or other intergenerational issues around sustainability. He did not mention inequality or immobility or any of those things that we should also care about, but he did mention three important things: productivity, participation and budget repair. It is amazing that he talks about productivity when they are cutting education and training and they are trying to build an NBN on last century's copper network. If you cared about productivity, you would not do that. They talk about participation at the same time as they take $1 billion out of the childcare system. If you cared about participation, you would not be doing that. And, if you really cared about budget repair, you would not be giving tax breaks to the 20,000 wealthiest people in the superannuation system and you would not be reopening tax loopholes for multinational corporations that let them shift their tax overseas and sell the Australian people short.

You notice that, when the Treasurer gets up at the dispatch box, some of his colleagues sort of delight in his discomfort.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They drop off, don't they?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They drop off. You can just see the wry smile from some of the colleagues, who quite like the idea of Treasurer Hockey underperforming. But what I say to those colleagues is that you are all responsible for this budget. Everyone who sits on the front bench here and in the cabinet nodded eagerly when the Treasurer and the Prime Minister said they wanted a GP tax, $100,000 degrees and pension cuts. You all nodded your head. You all signed off on it. It is not just their names on it; it is all of your names on it. The member for Wentworth, the member for Curtin—all of the colleagues are responsible for this budget.

There could not be a worse time for this incompetence, division and chaos, when we do have very substantial challenges in our economy and in our society. The member for McMillan was right to say that revenue is down. There are holes in our tax system. It beggars belief that they would reopen one of them at the same time as they talk about holes in the revenue, but that is the truth. The revenue is down since Howard and Costello, and that is a challenge that we need to address. There is more than one way to skin a cat, though, I think we would say about that. The way they are going about it—asking the most vulnerable people in Australia to fix the budget, while everyone else gets tax breaks and gets off scot-free—is really not the way forward. For a country that cherishes the fair go, that is not the way you go about this really important task.

We will be guided, as we always are when it comes to the budget, by what is right for Australia, what is right for the broad mass of the Australian people—not one or two people in the economy, but the economy in the broadest sense. We want more people to participate in this remarkable quarter-century run of growth that we have had in Australia. Australia is in the midst of one of the most extraordinary periods of growth in the modern economic history of the planet, and we want more and more people hooked up to the opportunities that that brings. Our problem with the budget is that it says: 'We want two Australias. We want two tiers of Australia, with one group, the most vulnerable group, asked to do the heaviest lifting and another group that gets all the gains from economic growth in this country.' That is not what we want. We want a burden fairly shared. We cherish, like the Australian people, the fair go in this country. For as long as the fair go lives and breathes in this country, the Australian people will reject a budget like this. And, for as long as there is breath in the Australian Labor Party, we will stand up for the people who are under attack in this budget. We had a record of savings in the former government—$180 billion worth of savings. We have also ticked off on $20 billion of savings in the current budget. So we are up for a conversation about belt-tightening. So are the Australian people, but they will not cop a budget which is as fundamentally unfair as this one.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2014-2015, Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2014-2015 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 2014. It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Rankin, who sits on the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics with me. The member for Rankin made some very cordial points about the deterioration of the budget. The budget has deteriorated, without a doubt. Some of those factors are beyond our control. The member will know that our exports minus imports, which are our terms of trade, are probably as low as they have ever been. Coal prices some 18 months ago were near on double what they are. Iron ore prices were just on double. We have no control over the growth of our trading partners. We have no control over the pace at which these countries chase their future growth targets. We are the recipient of their demand. As a result, our terms of trade have softened, and I am sure the member on the other side is well aware of that.

The member for Rankin quoted that comment from the RBA governor, Mr Stevens, from when we last met. He forgot to mention that the governor was extremely concerned about the levels of debt that the country had inherited from a Labor government. In fact, the level of debt was probably front and centre. And the Reserve Bank governor is not alone in his commentary when he speaks about the concern about debt. He is flanked by the secretary of the Treasury and many other commentators who say that the debt is an issue and needs to be addressed, because, for every cent that we are spending on servicing interest, servicing a level of debt, there is an opportunity cost forgone somewhere in the community, whether it be building roads, building hospitals or building schools.

Some people in this place will say that debt is not a problem. They will come here and brazenly say that debt is not a problem. In my opening comments, I said that, as a country, we cannot all the time control our destiny and that we are subject to our trading partners' demand. But I ask you, as a brazen, throwaway line: what would happen if we were to go into another GFC? What would happen to us as a nation if we had another global economic shock? The simple answer is: as a nation we are best prepared for future shocks if we have less debt. That is not the only reason we should be addressing it. The member for Rankin spoke passionately about a fair go for the Australian worker and said that while there was breath in the Australian Labor Party they would continue to fight for a fair go. Can I say: you are not giving the Australian people a fair go when you shackle the next generation to years and years and generations of debt. That is not giving the next generation a fair go. There is a group, between the ages of 18 and 35, that potentially, unless we change the trajectory of expenditure in this country, may not have pensions into the future. That is not giving people a fair go. We are trying to fix that.

If we do not fix the Medicare payment system, there are people working today who will not have a system into the future where they can go to the doctor and seek medical attention on the back of Commonwealth support. That is not a fair go. I suggest that you do not come into this place and falsely claim to represent those hard workers here in Australia, because Labor's policies fundamentally hurt most the people they claim to represent. The member for Rankin spoke about unemployment. The unemployment rate we have at the moment was forecast some four years ago. So do not wake up and say, 'shock, surprise!' We have just come out of the largest capital expenditure program in Australia's history, in 150 years, and we are in a transition phase where we are transitioning from construction through to production. There will be those in this House who will say, 'That's rubbish. Construction will always be there.' We are transitioning from a construction phase to production and, in conjunction, the government is ramping up its massive infrastructure programs, spending in the state of Queensland something like $13.4 billion. In my electorate alone we have $1.8 billion for construction of the Toowoomba range bypass, and the efficiency dividends to businesses, farmers and transport operators will be immeasurable. With strong and fluent transport corridors come opportunities for the future.

This appropriation bill seeks to appropriate around $1.7 billion and passage of this bill will ensure continuity in delivering government essential services. I thought I would share with the House what some of those are. Part 3 of the bill provides an appropriation of around $1,385 million for major elements including: $558 million for the Defence portfolio, reflecting additional overseas operations. That is our operations in conflict zones and theatres. When we get engaged at the behest of the United Nations that comes at a cost, and these appropriation bills seek to identify that. There is $115 million for employment, primarily to pay providers for increased numbers of successful job placements and to implement the new employment services for 2015 contracts. If you have an employment provider out there and there are incentives that the government partners with employment providers to assist people to get back into the workforce, that part of the appropriation helps those businesses to provide the outcomes that communities are desperately looking for.

The government job reforms are full steam ahead. The government has invested $5.1 billion in a new model to operate from 1 July 2015 to better meet the needs of job seekers, employers and employment service providers. The government is committed to helping more job seekers to move from welfare to work and to start enjoying the privileges of being valuable members of the workforce.

The government's reforms improve the operating environment for providers and significantly reduce the level of red tape and prescription in the model so that the providers are able to focus on what they do best—namely, helping people to get a job, because that is what this government is focused on. And it seems to be working. The member for Rankin said that there was no adrenalin shot in the region. It would please the House to know that over 200,000 jobs were created last year. No-one on the other side mentioned that. In fact, there were 213,900. This equates to around 585 new jobs each day. But no, you will not hear that kind of statistical evidence from the other side. It means that a new job is being created virtually every half minute. In 2014, jobs growth was more than triple the rate of 2013. We are providing job opportunities at virtually triple the rate that the Labor government were.

The Dun and Bradstreet business expectations survey, released on 3 February 2015, found that the outlook on employment is the most positive that it has been in 10 years. The Dun and Bradstreet business expectations survey is not a document to be sneezed at. The most recent ABS labour force release revealed that 37,400 new jobs were created in the month of December, building on the 45,000 new jobs created in November. The unemployment rate at that stage was 6.1 per cent.

The bill also provides for an appropriation of around $240 million which includes major elements such as $40 million for DFAT for a temporary embassy in the Ukraine. In addition to that, there is $90 million to agriculture for concessional loans under the Drought Recovery Concessional Loans Scheme to support New South Wales and Queensland businesses facing drought or suffering the combined impact of the 2011 live cattle export debacle that Labor oversaw into Indonesia.

In recent weeks in this place we have been more than cognisant of the effects of the cyclones in Queensland, and local communities such as my home town of Rockhampton are now cleaning up. Can I remind the House that while that clean-up is happening, there are large pockets that missed out on that very valuable rain and are still in drought and experiencing hardship. It is difficult to fathom after that enormous deluge of rain that there are pockets that missed out on it. I speak of west of Emerald and into the Longreach and Winton area. My heart truly goes out to those people. I spoke to a grazier the other day who is halfway between Longreach and Winton. He informed me that his feed bill to keep his stock alive is in the vicinity of $20,000 a week. The mental strain on those people is difficult fathom. My heart and thoughts go to those who are still struggling.

We will do everything we can in this bill to try to assist through the Drought Concessional Loans Scheme to assist those where we can. These loans are vitally important for the bush. This is $90 million on top of the $280 million that the government pledged last year as part of its $320 drought package rolled out in the 2014-15 federal budget. These loans can assist farmers to get onto the road to recovery when the seasons turn. Farmers face two strategies when dealing with drought—and there is no right or wrong way in the business model. You either keep your stock and buy in feed and keep feeding them—and I just spoke about the level of expense that that can involve for a farmer—or destock early in the drought. Our national herd numbers normally sit around 35 million. At the moment they are around 26 million. When the drought breaks, the demand and supply pressures at the saleyard mean the buy-in cost to go and buy back the herd is greater. For example, if you have offloaded 3,000 head, for the same money you are probably going to pick up around 1,200 head. From a cashflow perspective, it takes many years for your breeding cycle to get back and be fully efficient again.

One of the criticisms of the drought package is that the loan period is too short, that it is four years. The Minister for Agriculture got the message that those terms needed to be lengthened. I know that area is being addressed at the moment.

In managing the drought the biggest demand for cash often comes in the recovery phase when farmers need to restock or when they need to replant. In addition to the government's support, the opening of six new live export markets and record live export volumes is seeing renewed confidence in saleyards across the country. I have spoken about the national herd numbers, but there is another thing which is pushing up prices at the moment.

There is a rule of thumb when selling cattle or sheep, that you do it for two reasons: one, you are out of money and you are looking to create cashflow—it is that simple; and, two, you are out of feed. At the moment in certain parts of the country where there has been good rain and where feed is abundant, when interest rates are low people can restructure their operational overdrafts on their farms so they are not so hard up against the wall when the seasons are not so kind.

In addition, $35 million will go to the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service for additional counterterrorism activities and to repurpose the Australian Defence Vessel Ocean Shield. Robust and rigorous counterterrorism activities have never been so important. This week the government released the review of the Australian counterterrorism machinery.

This government is doing all it can with the fiscal levers that are available to it to provide good government and good leadership to the nation. I remind the nation that if we return to a Labor government, the boats will start coming, the debts will increase and intergenerational debt will increase for those still to come into the system. There is only one option for good government in Australia—that is, a coalition government

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A return to a Labor government would be a return to the fair go and nothing proves that more than the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2014-2015, Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2014-2015 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 2014-2015, which is ultimately a debate on this government's budget, which has been a budget of broken promises. To those in the gallery or at home, go and look at the Liberal Party's election manifesto Real solutions for all Australians. It has a lovely photo on it of the Prime Minister and the now cabinet. This document is full of commitments—

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

Is David Johnston in that photo?

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, David Johnston is not there. He was airbrushed out before the government even began. This document is full of their election commitments, which they took to the Australian people. They gave solemn commitments and the Prime Minister in particular elevated trust in leadership, trust in his word and trust in his would-be government to some sort of almighty principle that could never be broken. Yet, what do we have in their first budget? I can tell you: a budget of broken promises.

Take the GP tax. First of all, it was $7 on everybody who walked into a GP's waiting room or had to have their blood tested or had to get a scan—$7 times $7 times $7. And for some people—asthmatics, diabetics or those with some other chronic illness—it was a compounding $7. So the more tests you got, the more scans you got, the more times you had to go back to the doctor, it was $7 times $7 times $7. We know what happened with the first iteration of that GP tax. It got axed and everybody thought, 'Phew, we've dodged that bullet.' What we did not know was that the Prime Minister's second effort was opposed by the then health minister, the member for Dickson, and the Treasurer, who advised the Prime Minister that the second iteration of the GP tax was even worse than the first—a flat $5 cut and a freeze on the rebates to patients and ultimately to GP surgeries. That was not just an assault on patients, not just an assault on the universality of Medicare; it was an assault on the fee-for-service model, which nearly every general practice in the country relies upon. Those general practices were supposed to put that program in by 19 January—an impossible time line to meet, if you know anything about the software requirements or the paperwork that would have to be put in place to do that. I spoke to one practice manager last week in Gawler who had a terrible Christmas rushing around, trying to get all of this organised, only for the government to then sue for peace and go back to the drawing board. Then we read that they are still committed to a price signal, which is a GP tax, on your GP visits. So there is still no certainty after all that time.

At 1.30 today I have to call Dr Bruce Groves, in Salisbury North, who runs a clinic that is committed to helping working-class Australians. I have to explain to him that the uncertainty that has been affecting his GP practice for the last six or seven months is going to continue because of this government's budget, because of this government's audacity in breaking their promises.

But it does not stop there. There are cuts to the states of $80 billion on schools and hospitals. We have not yet seen the effect of those cuts. The Senate select committee inquiring into this has received evidence and will continue to receive evidence of how that will affect emergency departments, how that will affect hospitals and how that will affect schools. There are cuts to pensioner concessions. Would you believe it? These are concessions on council rates, concessions for public transport, concessions that help pensioners every single day to cope with the cost of living.

At the last election, this government was constantly banging on about the cost of living. I remember those opposite in this parliament talking about the cost of living. They get into government and cut pensioner concessions—$30 million in my state alone. They do not even have the courage of their convictions out there in the community, pointing the finger at the councils and at the state governments, even though it is their federal cut that has disturbed arrangements that have been in place for decades. There are cuts to pension indexation. They get up in this parliament and say, 'You will still get your cost-of-living adjustment.' They neglect to mention they have changed the nature of that cost-of-living adjustment, reducing it over time—an attack on the ability of pensioners to deal with the cost of living. That is unbelievable for a party that went out there and elevated trust to this sacrosanct principle, that elevated their commitment to this almighty principle on the cost of living. Then they get in and bring down a budget of broken promises, a budget of austerity.

There are cuts to the SBS and ABC. Six grand has been cut from working families. There are cuts to the unemployed, with the government saying to young people under the age of 30 that, if they fall out of work, they will not get unemployment benefits for six months. The effect of that in my electorate will be to make some people homeless. It will leave some people in the most desperate of situations. They do not have the resources to fall back upon. They will end up couch-surfing, they will end up homeless, they will end up without income—a fundamentally un-Australian thing to do.

There are cuts to foreign aid. Some Australians will say, 'Well, you know, charity begins at home.' But, of course, when we see the instability in the world and we know that foreign aid is a measure to increase stability, to improve living standards around the world and to eradicate disease, those cuts will cut bitterly indeed, and we will end up paying the price in the longer term with instability in our region. One-hundred thousand dollar degrees are an assault on social mobility, an assault on the middle class of this country.

There is the proposed privatisation of Australian Hearing, which was formed by the Chifley government in 1947. It has survived the Menzies, Gorton, McMahon, Holt, Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Keating governments. It is a tremendous institution that has helped deaf Australians, and this government is thinking about privatising it. When they are doing the scoping study to privatise it, do they ask Health what their opinion is? No. Do they ask Deaf Australia with their opinion is? No, they defunded that organisation, so they cannot possibly hear what it will have to say about it. They just leave it to the bean counters in Finance to establish they get $200 million out of a national institution; they try and squeeze that out of a national institution that has been so important to generations of Australians. This institution was formed to look after veterans of World War II—men like my grandfather, who served in New Guinea—made deaf by cannon fire. It was formed in the wake of rubella outbreaks which made people deaf. It has been a world-leading institution in hearing, and they want to privatise it. You could not believe this stuff. They are hacking into the poorest and most vulnerable, and destroying important national institutions.

Then we look at what they are doing in defence. They talked a good game in defence, but they are cutting Defence Force pay. They attacked us in government for giving three per cent, and they are giving 1.9 per cent. This budget is a bitter austerity. The biggest problem is that it is ultimately self-defeating. The member for Rankin gave some figures in this chamber about consumer and business confidence going down the toilet—that is where it is going. This is confidence-sapping, security-robbing, terrible austerity. We have seen this being inflicted in Europe and it has been an absolute disaster.

In my state of South Australia, we have seen a decision on automotive manufacturing that has been a job destroyer. Up to 10,000 jobs will be gone by 2017, and there is a very poor, minuscule package to deal with that. They forced Holden to make a decision and chased them out of the country, which led to the decision that Toyota made. It has been a terrible collapse. We are yet to see the bitter cost of that collapse. The only benefit of government division in this place is that that miserable member for North Sydney is going to lose his job at roughly the same time or maybe a bit before. That is going to be the only consolation of the government's divisions, in my opinion.

We now see the submarines decision. I am glad that the member for Hindmarsh is here. He got a little award for being the best nodder. He was nodding behind the Prime Minister and then he was nodding behind Senator Edwards—nod, nod, nod. Then we found out that this arrangement that he has extracted from the Prime Minister is not worth hot wind, because we know the Prime Minister's processes are undermining confidence in Australian manufacturing and making the process of appropriating, purchasing and procuring submarines a very, very messy one. That is because they came up with a new language: competitive evaluation process.

We have seen this government being chaotic, divided, rabblers, obsessed with PR, obsessed with hoo-ha and obsessed with rah-rah and spin. They are obsessed with getting a new salesman, like the member for Wentworth, the member for Curtin or Mr Morrison—one or the other. They will get a new leader. We all know that the air is coming out of this Prime Minister. We all know exactly what is happening.

I would just point those opposite to the Council on Foreign Relations and what Joshua Kurlantzick had to say under a headline 'Tony Abbott has to go'. This is the way he begins the article:

Is Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott the most incompetent leader of any industrialized democracy?

That is the beginning of the article. It goes on:

Tony Abbott, however, is in charge of a regional power, a country that is the twelfth largest economy in the world and the only rich world nation to have survived the 2008-9 financial crisis unscathed. Yet in less than two years as prime minister, Abbott has proven shockingly incompetent, which is why other leaders within his ruling coalition, following a set of defeats in state elections, may now scheme to unseat him.

We know that is happening, don't we? I am not sure whether the members opposite are part of the 39 or part of the 61. Some of them have had the Prime Minister in the electorate. That is very brave. It is very brave to have the Prime Minister in your electorate. You would have to be crazy to have the Prime Minister in your electorate when he is the most incompetent leader of any industrialised democracy. Can you believe it?

Joshua Kurlantzick does not stop there, though. He says:

Abbott’s policies have been all over the map, and the lack of coherence has often made the prime minister seem ill-informed and incapable of understanding complex policy issues.

This is extraordinary. What an extraordinary indictment of this Prime Minister, but we should not be surprised. We should not be surprised, given this budget of broken promises. They all went out there with their lovely document. I do not know if the member for Menzies is here; he did not make the lovely PR shot on the front of it. They went to their electorates—Hindmarsh and other places—promising a lot of things, but the electors in those places got something different indeed.

This budget is a budget of broken promises and this Prime Minister will only serve a short period more. This government is terminal. It is terminal because it was built on broken promises and bad commitments. The Australian people will see them off.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.