Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the bill be read a second time. I would ask the House to be seated, and give the call to the honourable Leader of the Opposition.

Honourable members: Hear, hear!

Those in the gallery applauding—

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's a bit early!

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And we will have some order! I will make it quite clear. I made it clear earlier in the day that we will have respectful silence in the House—that includes the galleries—so that the Leader of the Opposition can be heard and that the same courtesies that applied to the Treasurer on his budget speech will apply to the Leader of the Opposition. That includes the members in the gallery. I give the call to the honourable Leader of the Opposition.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

My fellow Australians, a budget should match the priorities of the nation, and the priority of our nation should be a plan for the future, a plan for the decades to come, a plan to build beyond the mining boom, a plan for confidence. Our people and our nation are interesting, imaginative, caring, productive and adaptive. But the 2015 budget has neither the qualities nor the priorities of the Australian people. Australians awaited this budget in fear, anticipation and hope—fear that the unfairness and cruelty of last year's budget would be repeated; anticipation that it might not; hope that the government would at last, after 613 days, get the economy right. But once again, in every way, this government let Australia down.

The test for this budget was to plan for the future, to lift productivity, to create jobs, to boost investment, to turbocharge confidence for the years and decades ahead, to restore hope, but this budget fails every test. It is a hoax, a mirage, a smokescreen. To the extent that the Treasurer pretends that this budget is in any way remedial to the Australian economy, it is a hoax. Does it return Australia to trend growth this year or in future years? No. Does it smooth the transition in our economy? No. Does it deal with the challenges of the digital age and the new skills and jobs that we need? No. Does it deepen our engagement with Asia? Does it help older Australians live in comfort? Does it advance the equal treatment of women? Does it tackle climate change? No, no, no and no. It is nothing but a cosmetic job by a very desperate make-up artist.

And this budget has also missed the main game: the challenge that defines life in the 2020s. Let me unpack this for you. In 2012, eight per cent of our GDP was investment. It is now slumping to as low as two per cent. This is a fourfold contraction. In a $1.6 trillion economy, it is a $96 billion contraction, the biggest that Australia has witnessed. This is the reason we are living in a low-growth economy: the massive step change, the step-down in investment.

But what does this budget do about it? A giveaway to start a fire sale at a second-hand-car yard and Harvey Norman? That is good as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. The sum total of this government's stimulus is a $5.1 billion deposit against a $96 billion withdrawal. Is the Treasurer seriously asking Australians to believe that this is the best he can do in response to a $96 billion withdrawal? Even the government knows that this is a short-term fix. They must. They have only booked the measure for the next two years.

The truth is that the 2015 budget is silent on the big picture, the next decade, the long run. The budget records the government's lack of vision and the price that our economy is paying for it. This budget drops the ball on reform, change and fiscal sense. It is a sorry rollcall: 17 new taxes; tax at its highest level in a decade; the deficit doubled, up from $17 billion to $35 billion since the Treasurer's last budget; spending outweighing revenue every year; over 800,000 Australians unemployed; and no plan to tackle the structural deficit.

The only polite description for the forecasts in this budget is that they are an experiment in hope over experience. This budget is built upon improving forecasts preceded by worsening results. According to the Treasurer, nominal GDP is forecast to jump by a whopping four percentage points in two years. This year it came in at half of what he forecast 12 months ago. Tuesday's budget banked wages growth at 2½ per cent. Wednesday's figures put it at 2.3 per cent, and experts predict it will stay low.

The truth is that there is a trifecta of indecencies underpinning this budget: (1) the repackaging of last year's unfairness, cuts to schools, hospitals, universities and family support; (2) relying on bracket creep to increase taxation by stealth; and (3) their unconscionable attack on the states. Yes, Madam Speaker, it is a bad budget. In every respect, this budget is a hoax. It is an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of Australians. Where it counts, this is last year's budget, rebranded, reheated and repackaged for an opinion poll; the same broken promises; the same unfair, extreme ideology wrapped in trickery.

Last year's budget cut $6,000 from families working hard to make ends meet. Those cuts are still in this budget, and Labor will never support them. Last year's budget cut university funding by 20 per cent and ambushed students with higher fees and bigger debt. This unfairness is still in the budget, and I can promise you this, Christopher Pyne: Labor will vote against $100,000 degrees every time you bring them to this parliament.

Those in the gallery applauding—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There will be order, thank you. I repeat: we will have order from the galleries.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whether it is for one month or six, Labor will never support leaving young people looking for work to survive on nothing. We will never sign off on the Prime Minister's plan to push young people into poverty and worse.

The meanness of spirit in the last budget lives on in this one, the same spitefulness in all things great and small—$2 billion in cuts to health and aged care hidden in the fine print; $100 million cut from Indigenous housing; $70 million cut from the dental care for veterans; $130 million from the dental care for children; and a $1 million cut from a program that put seatbelts in school buses in the regions.

The coalition has an impeccable eye for detail and this government's second budget has one more thing in common with its first: it creates divisions and fault lines in our community. Remember the 2014 lifters versus the leaners? They are at it again, this government—cutting family support to pay for child care; pitting mums and dads of three-and four-year-olds against mums and dads of six-and seven-year-olds; and forcing nurses, retail workers and police to choose between more time at home with their baby or a cut to their pay.

In just one year, this Prime Minister has gone from being the staunchest defender of paid parental leave, his signature scheme, to vilifying tens of thousands of women who rely upon it; from praising women of calibre to demonising rorters and frauds—that is how quickly this Prime Minister reverts to type about women in the workplace. It confirms what we have always known: no employee, no employer, no family can ever trust this Prime Minister with their rights at work.

Nowhere on Tuesday night did the Treasurer utter the words 'bracket creep'. He should have, because bracket creep is the biggest driver of revenue in his budget. The Treasurer should have told Australians that, for every dollar that the government keeps in spending cuts, $2 will be collected through higher taxes. In a lazy budget, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey are getting inflation to do their dirty work. Eighty cents in every dollar and the rise in revenue comes from bracket creep—the invisible hand in the pocket of every Australian worker.

Along with rehashing the manifest unfairness of last year's measures and the abuse of bracket creep, the third cardinal sin of this budget is the government's unconscionable attacks upon the states of Australia and the people who depend upon the services they provide. There is no atonement—not even a trademark insincere mea culpa from the Prime Minister nor a tear from his Treasurer about the cuts to the states. Like the last budget, this budget cuts $80 billion from Australia's school and hospitals. This breaks an old and a new Abbott promise: not just no cuts to health and no cuts to education but a breach of his promise before this budget not to hurt families.

Prime Minister, let me tell you something on behalf of the families of Australia: when you cut $30 billion from our schools, you hurt families. When you cut $50 billion from our hospitals, Prime Minister, you hurt families. When you close hospital beds, rob our kids of the resources they need and when you put nurses and teachers under more pressure, you hurt families.

Right now, we need to work with the states more than ever. We need a new approach. For a decade, capital investment in mining has been running at eight per cent—four times the long-run rate. Now it is reverting to the long-term average of around two per cent of GDP, and there has been a 17.3 per cent fall in spending on public sector infrastructure in the last year.

The Commonwealth must use its fiscal horsepower to work with the states and private investors to provide more affordable housing, to develop our cities and towns. Labor will bring certitude and direction. We will bring confidence—that is what we intend to do. We believe in confidence for new rail and roads; ports and bridges; better social housing; smart energy grids; efficient irrigation projects; and of course the best digital infrastructure.

New infrastructure projects boost demand in the short-term and they lift supply over the long term, creating jobs and generating national momentum. But this budget does nothing to address the funding cut from the important public transport projects like the Melbourne Metro or Brisbane's Cross River Rail. It continues to overlook higher-return productivity-enhancing improvements like Managed Motorways, a series of overdue improvements to Melbourne's south-east.

This is the first budget in living memory with not one significant infrastructure project funded. In government, Labor funded all 15 projects on the priority list: the Pacific Highway in New South Wales, the Regional Rail Link in Victoria; and the Gold Coast Light Rail.

This government has not funded a single priority project; in fact, they have abolished the funding for three and have ripped away half of Infrastructure Australia's budget. Inaction undermines confidence and hurts state budgets, and we all pay a price.

More of us spend more time stuck in a car on our way to work. We need a circuit-breaker for investment and a commitment to put the nation's interest at the heart of nation building. Just as the Reserve Bank of Australia is the independent voice at the centre of monetary policy, we will put Infrastructure Australia at the centre of capital investment. This will bring greater rigour, transparency and authority to give investors greater confidence.

Infrastructure Australia will drive projects that deliver benefits to our economy and our community; commercial viability; and the capacity to enhance national productivity. I want the experts at Infrastructure Australia to play a more active role in getting projects properly financed, to act as a broker, to bring together construction companies, long-term investors like super funds, and, most importantly, state governments to get projects underway. Infrastructure Australia priority projects will receive first funding.

Prime Minister, in government I will do what you have proved to be incapable of: we will consult with the opposition of the day on every appointment to the Infrastructure Australia board, to put the national interest first. Prime Minister, Australians are sick of the petty partisanship around appointments. We can and will do better.

Infrastructure must be at the centre of any plan for Australia's future. It is too important to be held hostage to short-term politicking or squabbling. Good infrastructure makes our cities more liveable, our regions more accessible and our economy more productive. It is essential to the jobs and the economy of the future, to where we will live and to the lives that our families will enjoy. There is a role for the Commonwealth in the future of our cities. By 2025, an extra 4½ million people will be living in our cities, and making our cities more productive, more sustainable and more liveable is a key responsibility of the government.

Prime Minister, when it comes to small business, I will offer you another thing you never extended to your opponents: cooperation. There are measures in this budget that Labor will support in the national interest. We will cooperate on national security. We will cooperate on overdue drought relief for our farmers and we will cooperate on small business. But when Labor proposed a tax cut for small business, you opposed it. When Labor implemented an instant asset write-off, you abolished it. When Labor introduced loss carry-back, you unwound it. But I am not like you; I want to create jobs and grow the economy.

Those in the gallery applauding—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have asked the gallery for some order.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A 1½ per cent cut for small businesses might be enough to generate a headline but it is not enough to generate the long-term confidence and growth our economy needs. Tonight I say: let's go further—let's give small businesses the sustainable boost to confidence that they deserve, the confidence to create jobs. I invite you to work with me on a fair and fiscally responsible plan to reduce the tax rate for Australian small business from 30 to 25 per cent—not a 1½ per cent cut; a five per cent cut. That is the future. That is confidence.

I understand that this will not be easy, and it may take longer than the life of one parliament. That is why it must be bipartisan and it has to be fair. That is why it must be part of a more comprehensive approach to address the key pressures on our taxation system not only for small business but, as I mentioned before, for bracket creep and tax rates for ordinary working Australians. All of these things and more need to be addressed together in a fair and fiscally responsible way—this parliament, you and me, working together to create more jobs, working together to build a stronger economy and a better country.

And you are welcome to work with Labor on our clear and fair plans to improve the budget bottom line by more than $21 billion in the decade ahead. These include making foreign multinationals pay their fair share of tax—making them pay over $7 billion to help the budget bottom line—and improving the budget bottom line by an additional $14 billion by tightening unsustainably generous superannuation tax concessions subsidised by Australian taxpayers to those who already have millions of dollars in their accounts.

Labor created an improved superannuation for the same reason we champion a fair pension: we believe in dignity and security in retirement as the birthright of all Australians. We will take responsibility for making sure that superannuation is sustainable and fair—a national retirement savings system for the many, not just a tax haven for the few. Prime Minister, your stubborn defence of these unfair loopholes will only cause millions of other Australians to pay even more tax and our deficit to rise.

Labor will back small business to support jobs today, and we have a plan for jobs tomorrow. We have a plan to build a new engine for prosperity and to turbocharge our science, skills, infrastructure and education.

Like so many of my Labor team, I have spent my adult life standing up for fairness in the workplace, in the community and in this parliament. In 20 years of representing working people, I have been there in good times and hard times. When economic change starts to bite, Australians do not reach for a handout and they do not want charity, but they do expect hope and a sense of confidence. Above all, Australians want to know where the new jobs are coming from. What will their kids be doing for a living? What are the jobs of the next generation going to be? Nothing matters more to Labor than securing the jobs of the future, jobs that help Australians aim high, raise families and lift their standard of living.

The new jobs of the future require new skills—designing skills and coding skills—building, refining, adapting and servicing the machines in the supply chains of the new age. Three out of every four of the fastest-growing occupations in Australia will require skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics—not just researchers and programmers but technicians, electricians, plumbers and machine mechanics. Yet right now in our schools, TAFE and universities, there are not enough people acquiring these skills. Australia must get smarter or we will get poorer.

I believe Australia can be the science start-up and technology capital of our region, attracting the best minds, supporting great institutions and encouraging home our great expats. We should aspire together—universities and industry, the people and the parliament—to devote three per cent of our GDP to research and development by the end of the next decade.

I want more Australians making breakthroughs and adapting technology here in Australia and more Australian businesses sharing in the benefits of that technology in our warehouses, in our factories, in our farms and in our design firms.

Together let us harness the power of science, technology, engineering and mathematics to prepare for the future—a future of knowledge and service industries and advanced manufacturing, a nation of ideas and a country that makes things here.

Our future prosperity depends upon harnessing Australian ideas and defining a new global market for world-leading products. I want ideas born here to grow up here and create jobs here. Twenty-five years ago, if you were looking for work, you purchased a newspaper. Today, all around the world, millions of people search online. The world's largest online job ads company, SEEK.com, was created in Australia with the support of the Australian government. A $2½ million investment in 1998 helped grow what is now a $5 billion company employing over 500 Australians.

Labor will create a new $500 million smart investment fund to back great Australian ideas like this. Our smart investment fund will partner with venture capitalists and fund managers to invest in early-stage and high-potential companies. Our model has a definite, proven record of success both here and abroad. Every global company begins as a local one. Every big business starts out as small. And Labor will work with the banks and finance industry to establish a partial guarantees scheme, Startup, to help more Australians convert their great ideas into good businesses. We will enable entrepreneurs to access the capital they need to start and grow their enterprises.

So many of our competitors for the jobs of the future already have a scheme of this kind in place: the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany—and Hong Kong is a leader in our region. We understand and Labor understands in the new economy it is these businesses that will drive growth and create jobs. It is our responsibility to support our next generation of designers, refiners, manufacturers and creators.

And productivity is the most important catalyst for our economy, and the most important catalyst for productivity is education. Resource booms come and, as we discovered, they go, but our future depends on investing in our best natural resource: the creativity and skills of the Australian people. Digital technologies, computer science and coding, the language of computers and technology, should be taught in every primary and every secondary school in Australia, and a Shorten Labor government will make this a national priority. We will work with the states and territories and the national curriculum authority to make this happen. Coding is the literacy of the 21st century, and under Labor every young Australian will have a chance to read, write and work with the global language of the digital age.

All of us who have had our children teach us how to download an app know how quickly that children adapt to new technology. But I just do not want our Australian children playing with technology; I want them to have a chance to understand it, to create it and to work with it. We cannot do this without great teachers—not now and not in the future. We all remember our great teachers. I was raised by one of the best. My mother lived the value of education. As a young teacher, a mature-age student and as a university lecturer she showed me the doors that education can open for Australians from every walk of life, yet today two out of every five science and maths teachers for years 7 to 10 do not have a degree in these subjects. Twenty thousand teachers in our science, maths and IT classes did not study these subjects at university.

We are asking too much of these teachers and not doing enough to support them or pay them properly, so Labor will boost the skills of 10,000 current primary and secondary teachers, we will train 25,000 new teachers who are science and technology graduates and we will write off the HECS debt of 100,00 science, technology, engineering and maths students—and we will encourage more women to study, teach and work in these fields.

We need to offer the most powerful incentive to Australians thinking about studying science and technology: a good job. A career in science does not just mean a lifetime in a lab coat; it means opening doors in every facet and field of our national commercial life. Innovation offers opportunities everywhere: smarter farming and safer food; more liveable cities and better transport; new ways of learning from each other, working and communicating with each other and caring for each other. It is the key to the jobs of the future—the jobs that a Labor government will deliver.

It is reported that the government have nicknamed this the 'have a go' budget, but it does not have a go at returning to trend growth. It does not have a go at smoothing the transition in our economy from mining to services in our cities. It does not have a go at getting us back to surplus. It does not have a go at reform. It does not have a go at delivering skills required in the digital age. It did not even have a go at apologising for the last budget!

But, to be fair, it does have a go at some things. It does have a go at pensioners and the states. It does have a go at working women and working families. It does have a go at the students, the veterans, the carers, the job seekers. It does have a go at the sick and the vulnerable. But, if this is an election budget, so be it, but be under no illusions: the failure of last year's budget was not inevitable. If Labor had not stood strong, if the government had had its wilful way, if Tony Abbott had controlled the Senate, last year's malignant budget would have passed with all its social vandalism. And if by chance he gets another chance by having this one confirmed he will by ricochet inflict last year's unfairness this year—unfairness which remains at the core of this political document.

This budget is not an economic piece of paper; it is just a political piece of paper. Tony Abbott has only changed his tactics. He has not changed his mind. Whatever this budget brings, we are ready. We are ready to offer remedies rather than reactions. We are ready to fight for equity and for what is reasonable. We are ready to fight for what is good and for what is true.

We see the future. We see the future as one defined by science, technology, education and innovation. We see a future for Australia with good jobs and thriving businesses, productive infrastructure and liveable cities. We see an Australia writ large where opportunity is shared by all. This is the future that Labor believes in. This is our vision for what we can achieve together as a people and as a nation: a smart, modern and fair Australia.

House adjourned at 20:01