Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills. This budget is not an exercise in fairness; it is an extension of last year's ruthless budget and it continues to have the most negative impacts on those who deserve it least. Just like it did last year, this budget hurts families and working people and does little to address the inequality built into our tax and superannuation systems. Just like it did last year, this budget cuts vital funding from schools and hospitals, scraps family payments and makes young people wait for income support if they are out of work. Visits to the doctor and buying medicine will be more expensive because of this budget. The plan to deregulate universities, which could lead to $100,000 degrees, is still there. There are no plans to tackle the challenges of an ageing population and to work and engage in a digital age, nor to address climate change.

This is a political document from a government that loves to chase a headline. But here is the thing about headlines: they are always followed by the details. In this and in the details is the truth about this government and where their values lie. Who could forget the 'budget emergency'? Those opposite loved that headline. As opposition leader, Tony Abbott travelled the country holding 'budget emergency' press conferences, posing for 'budget emergency' photos and feigning solemnity in 'budget emergency' interviews. The Treasurer played his part too. He was the wingman, warning all who would listen of a 'budget blowout', a 'budget freefall' and a 'budget out of control'. 'We are onto a winning headline with this,' they thought—and they ran with it. The problem was of course the facts, and these are the facts: Australia was one of only 10 countries in the world with a AAA credit rating from all three agencies; we had a low debt to GDP ratio; the deficit was comparatively low; and spending was at its lowest in decades.

In government, we know that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer then embarked on a series of nifty accounting tricks. They doubled the deficit and they shocked the RBA with an $8.8 billion payment they had not asked for. Having manufactured a budget emergency and cooked the books to justify it, they marched into the 2014 budget confident that their dodgy figures and 'just blame Labor' strategy would see them fulfil their destiny as the great conservative rulers they were born to be. Unfortunately for the Liberals, last year's budget was seen for what it was: an assault on broad sections of the Australian community; a budget to destroy the egalitarian principles that our society is built upon. When John Howard has a go at you for being unfair you know you have overstepped the mark.

So this time around they are chasing a different headline—understandable, really. This time they want to be seen as responsible, measured and fair. You know that because it is written in the Treasurer's budget speech. This time they desperately want us to think that the budget is fair. They even created a booklet about it. They are so desperate for some good headlines this time about child care, about small business and about tax evasion. But they have forgotten that every headline must be followed by the facts, and the following are the facts. Unemployment is up and forecast to grow even further under this government. For every sweetener in this budget there is a range of cuts somewhere else. Child care is boosted but the family tax benefit is gutted. Small business gets an incentive to spend, but workers will pay more tax. Wealthy superannuants will continue to get a tax break, but part-pensioners will lose out. And here is the fine print: the 2015 budget contains all but two of the universally condemned unfair measures that were contained in last year's budget.

Let's examine one of the biggest headlines sought by this budget—the one which relates to child care. I know that this sector is under immense pressure. Our cities are growing and families now choose to have, or in many cases rely on, both parents working to make ends meet. We know that women are integral to our workforce and we need to get better at supporting them to work and to raise a family. We also know that the early years are the most critical in terms of a child's development and that early childhood education supports the work parents do to prepare their children for school. Nobody begrudges a screaming headline that $3½ billion will be injected into the childcare system, but let's look at the details. The coalition cut $1 billion from child care upon coming to government; they refused to address the chronic undervaluing of childcare workers as a result of pay rates in the sector; and their budget headline '$3½ billion for child care' will only proceed if cuts to the family tax benefit and paid parental leave go ahead.

Earlier this week The Sydney Morning Herald ran a front-page headline that is unlikely to be the kind the government wants. It said: 'NATSEM analysis shows federal budget to hit the poor hardest, while rich benefit'. This modelling found that families with children whose income is in the lowest 20 per cent of households will lose up to 7.1 per cent of their total disposable income over the next four years, while those in the top 20 per cent will see their disposable income increase slightly. In the worst-case scenario, some families would lose around $6,000 per year. This modelling was conducted by NATSEM—the modelling outfit endorsed by the Prime Minister when he was in opposition. Analysis by the Australian Council of Social Service paints a similar picture. They say a combined $15 billion cut from families and middle-income Australians over the next four years will have dire consequences. This budget resurrects the plan to kick families off family tax benefit B when the youngest child turns six and to freeze family tax benefit rates. There around 9,000 families in my electorate who receive family tax benefit B and still more who receive family tax benefit A. Every single one of these families will be impacted by these budget measures. It is this inequity, this skewing of the cuts against the poorest 20 per cent of those in our community, that is at the heart of this budget and at the heart of the extreme ideological approach of this government.

There is another unfortunate fact undermining the families package in this budget, and that is the proposed changes to parental leave payments. There have been a few headlines on this one! The Prime Minister chased the glory on his signature policy, his rolled-gold paid parental leave scheme, for a long time and in the strangest of circumstances, through dissent from his party room, through bemusement from parents and through unflattering analysis from economists and journalists who saw it for what it was: an outrageously generous idea at a time when outrageous generosity could be least defended. But now he is chasing a new headline: one that has words like 'double dippers', 'rorters' and 'fraudsters' in it. They even wrote it in the budget papers. But the facts are these: around 80,000 new parents will be worse off each year as a result of these changes; some will lose up to $11½ thousand. These are people who work hard and want to continue to do so while raising a family. They are not rorters and fraudsters. They are the beneficiaries of a modernised employment system that has seen conditions improve and adapt in line with the needs of workplaces. The government is trying to strip workers of an entitlement that has been decades in the making and has been hard-fought for. Many workers, both men and women, have forgone pay increases to secure this entitlement.

The government is also making it harder for employers who want their employees to have the best possible support when they have a baby, particularly small and medium-sized businesses whose people are their greatest assets. There are more than 22,000 women working in health care in the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie regions. Many of them are nurses who can access an employer-provided parental leave scheme. Are they rorters? There are more than 4,000 women working in the public sector in the region, such as ATO employees or emergency service workers, who could access employer-provided parental leave. Are they fraudsters? There are more than 11,000 women who work in retail, such as department stores and supermarkets, in the region who could access a modest employer-provided scheme. Are they double dippers? Every single new mum who works at the Woolworths at Cardiff near my electorate office will suffer if this scheme is implemented. Every single one of those people, if they have a baby, will lose the eight weeks paid parental leave, which they bargained for and sacrificed pay rises for, as a result of this scheme—and that is grossly inequitable. It demonstrates a hypocrisy that is at the heart of this government. The Prime Minister and this government spent years telling us that paid parental leave schemes that have been operating in Australia for the last five years were grossly inadequate. Now they are telling us that the paid parental leave scheme that has been operating for the last five years is far too extensive. Worse still, they are telling us that we cannot have a strong and adaptive childcare system unless families and new parents suffer to provide it. They are setting up a false binary choice.

The other headline from the budget is the proposed increase in the instant asset write-off threshold to $20,000. Those opposite probably hoped for headlines that read: 'We are the party of small business'—and they may believe themselves to be just that. But here are some pesky details. When Labor increased the threshold for accelerated depreciation to $6,500, the Liberals got rid of it. When Labor proposed to further increase the threshold to $10,000, the Liberals refused to do this. When Labor introduced the loss carry-back, which helped business trade through hard times or take a short-term hit to expand their business, the Liberals repealed it. When Labor proposed a tax cut to small business the Liberals opposed it. Small businesses are exactly that—small. They are made of people, sometimes teams, sometimes individuals. They work really hard and at all hours to get their job done. What is left at the end of the month, after all their overheads have been met and after everyone else is paid, is the income they survive on. Cash flow is paramount. So of course a major increase to the depreciation threshold is a good thing for small business. It reduces tax payments sooner rather than later, which frees up money for other things.

I spent some time last week speaking with small businesses in my electorate about the budget. They know that the instant asset write-off is good for businesses that are profitable and seeking to invest. But they also tell me there is a lot more work to be done on tax reform and to level the playing field between small businesses and their larger competitors. They welcome Labor's offer to work with the government to reduce the rate of company tax for small business to 25 per cent. But they also tell me that there is more to supporting small businesses than dollars and cents. Take the hairdressing salon that I went to last week. To the owner, Kim, the most important issue is apprentices. For her, skilled workers are what makes her business great. Conversely, training takes time and time is money. This government has cut more than $1 billion from skills and training and, combined with deregulation at a state level, the vocational education system is changing fast. This is having a real impact on small businesses in my electorate. If this government were truly committed to supporting the economy and, by virtue of doing so, supporting the businesses within it, they would be focused on ensuring we can adequately meet the workforce needs that are present both now and in the future.

Turning to superannuation, Labor recognises that the budget must be put on a sustainable basis. This budget makes no effort to tackle unfair and unsustainable superannuation tax concessions. It is an absolute no-brainer, if you are serious about fairness, that the 15 per cent tax rate currently applied to superannuation contributions is skewed to benefit those who have more ability to divert income into retirement savings. It is also a critical step towards restructuring the economy as we manage an ageing population. The budget shows that the accumulated cost of concessions for superannuation earnings and contributions will top $50.6 billion by 2018-19.

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

By contrast, the age pension will cost $50.4 billion. What is more concerning is that 40 per cent of the concessions go to the wealthiest 10 per cent of Australians. Members opposite, particularly the member for Bass, should answer this question. Why should someone with $2 million in superannuation enjoy all the income from those investments tax free when a retail worker starts paying tax after the first $18,000?

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

What the member for Bass and the entire coalition are arguing for is a tax break for those who have millions in superannuation while they slug ordinary workers.

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member is entitled to be heard in silence.

Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We should support retirement savings, but it has to be done in a fair way. Labor will do what this government is too frightened to do. We will introduce a concessional tax rate of 15 per cent on all income derived from super of over $75,000 and reduce the threshold at which the higher 30 per cent tax rate is applied to superannuation contributions from $300,000 to $250,000 a year. We will take our policy to the next election and we will explain to people why it is necessary and why it is fair. There are many who say we need to do this. The government's own financial systems inquiry points to this issue. Their tax discussion paper points to this issue. The Treasury secretary and leading economists all agree that these concessions are unsustainable and open to misuse.

There are some who say we do not go far enough or prefer to see this over changes, such as amendments to the part pension assets test. But those people are not on that side of the House.

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Bass is warned!

Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Those opposite argue that tax breaks on superannuation are untouchable. But the fact is: they have already touched super. That is the inconvenient truth that those on the other side forget. They cut the low-income superannuation contribution which was benefiting people who earn up to $37,000 a year. They scrapped the increase to the superannuation guarantee which would have seen every working person benefit in their retirement. We on this side believe that working people should be supported to save for their retirement but it should not be to the detriment of all taxpayers and it should not be structured in a way that benefits the wealthy. We say that is good and effective policy. More importantly, it is fair. Those on the other side support inequitable concessions to millionaire superannuation holders while slugging those on low incomes who need the low-income superannuation contribution.

It is two weeks on from budget night, and the good news is fading fast for the government. We are now seeing past the headlines and looking at the detail. There is no good news in that detail, because this is an inequitable budget. (Time expired)

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Wicks, can I start by saying that I believe this is the first time I have spoken while you have been in the chair. I congratulate you on your appointment to the speakers panel, and I am very confident that you will do an outstanding job.

I rise in support of Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills. At the outset, I want to make the point very clearly that this is a package of bills that in its entirety delivers the budget outcomes that we explained on budget night earlier this month. These outcomes include boosting small businesses, creating jobs, supporting working families, making our community safer and continuing to repair the budget—among many other positive announcements. It is about creating a dynamic, 'have-a-go' approach to keep our country heading in the right direction. But it is very much a complete package of reforms. I urge all members of the House, and especially all senators, to ensure they keep that in mind.

All households know that if you draw up a budget that is designed to achieve your goals, one that you know will keep you on the right path to steadily pay back debt and improve your position, then you cannot pick and choose which parts you decide to stick to. You cannot drop various aspects and still expect to achieve the same outcome. So this is my very clear message today: these budget measures are a package. They should not be cherry picked by Labor and the minor parties—as they are now doing. Labor has to recognise that you cannot just support spending measures; you have to go back to the savings measures to pay for them. That is basic household economics 101, and the Australian people actually understand that.

In fact, the community response to this budget has been overwhelmingly positive. I have spoken with local residents, and especially local business owners, in my electorate on the southern Gold Coast, and there is a real optimism and excitement that has been generated by this budget. That is perhaps not so surprising. There has always been a 'have-a-go' dynamic on the Gold Coast. Our rapid growth has been spurred by a spirit of advancement and an energy and vitality. It is exactly that sort of spirit that this budget is aimed at encouraging in every community across Australia. It really is centred on harnessing the talent and drive of our small business owners, mums, dads, young people and seniors. It is about encouraging initiative.

The budget, of course, is never delivered in isolation. It is as much a response to the challenges of the past year as a plan for the coming year. We all know there continue to be economic challenges, but the fact is, due to the management of the Abbott government, the Australian economic and budget position has improved. After years of going backwards, that is a significant achievement. Even with the largest fall in our terms of trade in half a century, due to falling commodity prices, our economic plan has helped Australia to have one of the fastest-growing economies in the developed world. As the Treasurer pointed out, nearly a quarter of a million new jobs have been created since the election. Retail sales are at record levels, and new dwelling approvals are at a record high.

Importantly, our timetable back to budget surplus is unchanged from last year. On this side of the House, we recognise that the burden of debt is a millstone around the neck of our nation, and we are doing something about it. Deficits over the forward estimates are reducing each and every year, from $35.1 billion in 2015-16 to $6.9 billion in 2018-19.

While we are heading in the right direction, as the Treasurer acknowledged on budget night we need to do more. This budget delivers jobs, growth and opportunity in a way that is responsible, measured and fair. The centrepieces of our budget are the $5.5 billion Jobs and Small Business package—the biggest small business package in our nation's history, and the $4.4 billion Families Package to give parents more choice and opportunity to work. I will say more about that shortly.

But there are a number of other positive measures that help deliver on our commitment to responsible government. These include: reforms that make our taxation, foreign investment, welfare and individual benefits systems fair and sustainable; $1.2 billion in new funding for national security and counter-terrorism measures, which builds on the $1 billion announced last year; and the continuation of the government's $50 billion infrastructure program.

There are also a number of reforms, that, while they have not received a significant level of media attention, help add to the overall balance of the budget. For example, funding for Tourism Australia has been maintained and there is new funding of $43.1 million over four years that will be provided to implement its Tourism Demand-Driver Infrastructure Grants Program. This is good news, particularly for my electorate, which relies on tourism as a major economic driver.

But, of course, the small business package is the big ticket item for the Gold Coast, as it is for so many communities around this country. Of all Australia's businesses, 96 per cent are small businesses, employing over 4.5 million people and producing over $330 billion of our nation's total economic output. In my electorate of McPherson there are around 15,000 registered businesses, and the Gold Coast, with around 57,000 small businesses, is known as the small business capital of Australia. So the Growing Jobs and Small Business Package is really positive news for our region. In fact, there are $3.25 billion in tax cuts for small business, and $1.75 billion in accelerated depreciation measures. Keep in mind that this is in addition to the benefits Australian small businesses are gaining from the abolition of the carbon tax.

For up to 780,000 incorporated businesses with annual turnover up to $2 million, we will cut the company tax rate by 1.5 percentage points, to 28.5 per cent. For unincorporated businesses with annual turnover of up to $2 million, we will provide a five per cent tax discount, capped at $1,000, through their end-of-year tax return. And, from budget night, small businesses with turnover below $2 million can claim an immediate tax deduction for every asset they buy up to $20,000. This is fantastic news for local Gold Coast businesses such as the brilliant Burleigh Bakery and beautiful Home Sweet Home Gifts, which I visited just last week.

The package also includes measures to reduce the red tape and regulatory impediments that hinder the growth of small businesses. It will encourage business start-ups and entrepreneurship, with start-ups being able to immediately deduct professional expenses incurred when they begin a business, such as legal expenses on establishing a company, trust or partnership, rather than writing them off over five years.

The package will also help employers to take on both inexperienced and mature workers. New measures will focus on making job seekers more employable, reducing the costs of taking on new staff, and bringing job seekers and job providers together. And that really is the social dividend that is the substantial part of economic growth—helping people to get a job, get ahead and create a better life. These measures will be of particular benefit to the Gold Coast, where I know youth unemployment continues to be of concern.

Our families package is also designed to assist families in getting ahead and provides more choice and flexibility when it comes to child care. Shift workers like police and nurses will have more support. Families on lower incomes will be better able to afford child care if they decide to take on more hours of work. The budget also contains measures to help the disadvantaged and ensure access to early childhood education for those children who need it most. I am also pleased we have provided certainty for seniors, with changes to the pensions asset test, ensuring it is properly targeted. This will mean more than 170,000 pensioners with modest assets will have their pensions increased by an average of $30 per fortnight and around 50,000 part pensioners will qualify for a full pension. We have also ensured that the pension continues to rise in line with average earnings. This will bring security to the 17,000 recipients of the age pension in McPherson. Also, we have announced that there will be no new taxes on superannuation, so as to provide certainty for retirees.

I could go on at length as there are certainly a lot of positives, but of course there is also belt-tightening, as there should be. Our foreign aid budget has been slightly reduced, we will tighten up further on welfare fraud, and we have ensured that paid parental leave is fairer by making sure that people access either their employer scheme or the government payment, but not both. We have also announced a crackdown on tax avoidance by multinational companies.

Overall, the feedback I have received as I talk with local residents is that this budget gets the balance right, and the clear indication that this package is right is the boost to consumer confidence. In the week following the budget, consumer confidence surged 3.6 per cent to its highest level since November. This came after a 1.7 per cent jump the previous week, according to the ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence index. As ANZ chief economist Warren Hogan said:

The initial positive reaction of Australians to last week's budget is great news for the economic outlook.

This suggests to us that Australians believe the government has got the mix of medium-term fiscal consolidation and short-term support for the economy about right.

So, it is bitterly disappointing that Labor has been so carpingly negative about the budget.

I want to take some time in this debate to briefly outline the very positive measures in this budget for science. The Abbott government are committed to putting science at the heart of industry policy. The ongoing funding for science, research and development across government is a testament to that commitment. This is something that often goes unnoticed, but we are spending: $9.2 billion this year alone in science, research and innovation across government; approximately $5.8 billion over the next four years for science and research in the industry and science portfolio; $3.l billion for the CSIRO over the next four years, with increases year on year over the forward estimates; $485 million for Geoscience Australia; nearly $800 million, including more than $49 million in new money for the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, ANSTO; almost $170 million for the Australian Institute of Marine Science; more than $580 million for the Cooperative Research Centres; and let's not forget $20.5 million next year to ensure the continued operation of the Australian Synchrotron. We are also spending $12 million to improve the focus on STEM subjects in primary and secondary education. This is a personal passion of mine and one that I will continue to advocate for very strongly.

Our government is taking realistic and practical steps to help promote STEM and to develop more research capacity in our universities, including $300 million for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. Overall, the commitment to science and research means that targeted and smart new investments in Australia's science and research capacity include almost $70 million in additional funding in the 2015-16 budget for the nation's leading scientific research organisations to build world-class infrastructure that will create stronger industry connections.

Our commitment to science does not start and end with the dollars. We have a passion and a vision for science which did not exist under the previous government. We have established the Commonwealth Science Council to advise on areas of national strength and priorities as well as current and future capability, and to suggest ways to improve connections. We will also have the National Science, Technology and Research Committee to provide operational perspective. The council has had its first of two annual meetings, and the committee meets regularly.

This year as part of our broader science agenda the government will develop a national science, technology, engineering and mathematics policy. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Australia's Chief Scientist for his work in this area. He certainly has done substantial work and very significant work, so congratulations and thank you to Professor Ian Chubb. We will implement new measures to boost commercial returns from Australia's research. We have announced national science and research priorities, and we will assess associated challenges and consider a new approach to the funding of national research infrastructure so that key facilities have a sustainable future.

The government is working very closely across the industry and the science community to get the fundamentals right. Now is the time to push the boundaries of knowledge, commercialise our bright ideas, nurture our scientists of the future and increase the capacity of our world-class science and research agencies. We will foster a 'have a go' approach in the science community, just as we have in the business community and in the broader community. That is fundamentally what this budget is all about. Labor and the minor parties should do the right thing and not stand in the way of this budget being passed in its entirety. It is the only responsible thing to do.

This budget delivers responsible government in the national interest, and this is what the Australian public expect and want from us. I commend the bills to the House.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on these appropriation bills and to declare at the outset that the budget is still unfair. It was unfair last year; it continues to be unfair this year. It is built on unfair cuts delivered in last year's budget. The $8 billion cuts from schools and hospitals remain intact; they have not changed. The one thing that has changed, though, is the rhetoric. Last year, the Liberal Party campaigned on the so-called budget emergency. Their first act on coming into office was to massively increase government debt with an unnecessary $9 billion loan to the Reserve Bank—one that the Reserve Bank did not request in any way, shape, size or form, and one that most of the markets are still shaking their heads over today.

This budget doubles the deficit again from $17.1 billion to $35.1 billion, and we hear that things are going well, that the economy is growing and doing well, and that the deficit is under control. No, it is not. It has been doubled, and it has been doubled by this government. This is not a fair budget. It is not even a reasonable budget, and it is one that needs to be scrutinised very carefully.

The budget does not present a credible path back to budget surpluses. It relies on an overly optimistic assumption and bracket creep. When are we finally going to deal with bracket creep? We are not, because people keep wanting to rely upon it as a short-term measure to resolve their economic problems. Who does bracket creep hurt? It hurts all working families. Bracket creep will impact mostly on middle- and low-income families, and it will increase heavily over time. The budget increases government debt by around $39 billion. Again: whatever has happened to the so-called budget emergency when you are prepared to increase your debt by $39 billion? The budget shows that the government will spend $9 billion more than it saves over the forward estimates, and there is no genuine attempt in this budget to address structural deficit. The great promise of fixing the budget was just another lie.

There is also nothing in this budget that will assist in job creation. The furphy and the froth and bubble around job creation coming from assisting small business is, again, something that is not sustainable. Whilst we all welcome assistance to small businesses—and many in my community run their own small businesses or run fairly successful medium and large sized businesses—I have not had one phone call from a small business operator in my electorate saying that the budget is great. I had lots of concerned phone calls from pensioners and self-funded retirees—actually many, many phone calls—concerned about issues in the budget, but not one small business operator has picked up the phone, sent me an email or been in touch. I think there are a whole lot of issues in the budget that they would see as being progressive but not really assisting them in the areas that they need the most. Those areas, of course, are science, technology, education and health. A small business relies upon them as much as they do on an instant asset write off.

The higher education space greatly impacts on my electorate, which is home to two very large universities where many within my constituency our employed. People are employed in many industries; a lot in my electorate are employed in higher education. Last year's budget proposed the deregulation of university fees and a 20 per cent cut to tertiary education funding. Fee deregulation will lead quickly to out-of-pocket fees of $100,000 or more. This step is still enshrined in this year's budget. Indeed, the budget papers point out that fee deregulation will be introduced next year. That is quite clearly stated in the budget paper. This deeply unfair measure is stalled in the Senate, and the minister offered to drop the 20 per cent cut to get it through.

This budget not only relies on full deregulation of university fees but also relies on the 20 per cent cut to higher education funding that the minister offered to drop. Again, the 20 per cent funding cut is still enshrined in this very unfair budget. The federal government cannot be trusted with higher education. It cannot be entrusted to ensure quality of access for all students.

We can talk about a wonderful thing called Commonwealth scholarships, but these scholarships are actually going to be funded by university students—so one student subsidising another. Where is the fairness in that? As I have often said before, in my electorate, where Monash University is in downtown Clayton, the likelihood of a child in Clayton getting a scholarship to go to the university across the road from their home is Buckley's and none. If we are talking about access and equity, we actually need to genuinely know what that means. A 20 per cent cut and deregulation will not ensure greater access and equity for all to higher education, which is what we need now if we are to build for jobs for the future.

But the biggest impact in this budget is on families. This budget continues to place the heaviest burden on those who can least afford it. Middle- and low-income families will be the hardest hit by more unfair cuts. NATSEM modelling has revealed that nine out of 10 of the lowest income families lose under the Abbott government's budget, while nine out of 10 of the wealthiest families benefit. A single parent family with two children, one in primary school and one in high school, with an income of $55,000 will lose $3,715 this financial year or $71.40 a week as a consequence of all of the 2015-16 budget changes. These losers will increase every year, losing $4,865 in 2016-17, $5,960 in 2016-17 and $6,108 in 2018-19—a total of $20,648 by the end of 2018-19. That is a staggering amount out of a family's budget.

This is compounded in electorates of mine, where housing prices are staggering. So they are already living in an area where they are under the weight of a massive mortgage. The majority of my electorate—over 65 per cent—choose to send their children to private secondary schools and they carry their private health insurance. So all these additional benefits that are taken away impact on families more substantially—and these families do not know how they will make ends meet. By contrast, a couple with two children, both in high school, with a dual income of $120,000 will lose just over half that amount—a smaller $11,575 over the next four years. How is this fair?

The government has kept the $15 billion of unfair cuts to families from last year's budget and is adding new cuts to child dental programs and community health programs. Again, people in my electorate rely upon this assistance to make ends meet. The budget freezes indexation on family tax benefit payments and also maintains the freeze on the Medicare rebate. This is just a GP co-payment by stealth. But it is not even the $7; this is an $8 GP tax by stealth. Family budgets will continue to be radically eroded by this budget.

The budget offers families a $3.5 billion childcare package. The Labor Party welcomes the government's willingness to address the shortfalls in childcare funding; however, this budget proposes immediate cuts to family budgets while the increase in childcare funding will slowly roll out over five years. So it is not even apples and oranges. So people will immediately lose money from their family tax benefits but the increase in funding for child care will not come straightaway. The budget sees single income families with children over six years old lose family tax benefit B. This means that families with a three- or four-year-old in child care will not receive any benefit from changes to childcare funding while there child is in care currently and in two years or so when their child commences school they will have their tax benefit slashed to pay for increased childcare funding. How is this fair? These parents will cop more now and lose more later. It is just not fair.

When the budget came down, UnitingCare put out a press release entitled—and I think this sums it up—'Jobs for families is a bitter sweet package'. The press release says:

UnitingCare Australia says the highly anticipated Families Package is bitter-sweet for Australian families.

'While greater investment in childcare is very welcome, elements of this particular package are badly targeted, and also risk limiting families’ choices in the long-term,' said Lin Hatfield Dodds, National Director of UnitingCare Australia.

She says:

More funding for quality childcare is something we welcome, but some of the detail of the package is disappointing. The Government has chosen to give big subsidies to very high income families. Families earning $300,000 a year will still be able to access $10,000 per child for childcare. This money could be more effectively spent in other areas to increase living standards and enable greater social mobility for the most vulnerable families.

The Productivity Commission last year recommended a much sharper taper rate at the top end for the childcare benefit than the one the Government has chosen. It is disappointing that the Government has decided to tip the scales more towards providing middle-class welfare—the very thing they are attempting to tighten through age pension changes.

So, again, it is sort of bittersweet—taking with one hand and giving with the other. You are saying to families, 'You've got a choice: you can get better childcare benefits, but to do it you've got to give up family tax benefits now.'

Meanwhile, the budget does nothing to address the long-term structural revenue issues which continue to hurt people on low and middle incomes. This budget does not sufficiently address the issue of multinational tax avoidance. Labor has proposed a measure that will amend the current thin capitalisation rules to reduce the amount of debt the multinational companies can claim deductions for in Australia, saving the budget $7 billion. Huge companies like Apple, Google, BHP and Rio Tinto cannot be allowed to spend billions of dollars offshore while middle- and low-income families are expected to pay even more tax. It is a pretty basic principle: you should pay tax on the money where you earn it. How can we keep having this situation where we are hitting families more and more but not asking multinationals to pay their fair share? I am not asking them to pay more than their fair share, but, if you earn the money in a country, you should pay the tax on the money you have earned. We know that BHP funnelled 42 per cent of its profits through its so-called marketing hub in Singapore, and we know that this is standard practice amongst our biggest multinationals.

Labor has also proposed reducing the excessive superannuation tax concession for very high income earners, saving $14 billion. The Australia Institute research shows that superannuation tax concessions will cost the budget $50.7 billion by 2016-17, outstripping the cost of the pension scheme, which is $39 billion. Again, we are giving to the top end of town and not looking at what we need to ensure fairness. The unfairness here is that low- and middle-income earners receive significantly less or no benefit from the huge tax concessions. We cannot allow a situation where our retirement system costs more than $70 billion but does not distribute the benefit evenly or fairly. The government's own financial system inquiry found that 10 per cent of Australians receive 38 per cent of Australia's super tax concessions, more than the combined benefit of 70 per cent of Australians. What this budget does is focus on the entitlement of part pensioners stuck in the middle and continue with the freeze on compulsory superannuation contributions, while ignoring the real issue for the budget bottom line.

As I said, I have been approached by many part pensioners in my electorate—and there are many—and I have a couple of emails here that I would like to read from:

Dear Anna,

I have recently read of suggestions that the tax treatment to defined benefit pensions be reduced from the 40 to 50 per cent range to 10 per cent. This would have a direct effect on my wife and myself by preventing us from receiving the "full pension card" when … I reach 65 in October 2015. We do not want any more than $1 each of age pension. We do want the side benefits associated with the card. I am happy to outline our specific circumstances if that is helpful. Needless to say our circumstances are not dire nor straight forward. Suffice it to say, I would be interested in your views and how you see this playing out. Thank you for your years of service. You are and have been a credit to the electorate, the Labour Party and Parliament.

That was from Douglas. So the concern is: what does it mean and how is it going to work? David writes:

Tony Abbott says that you cannot penalise people for saving for their retirement—he is so two-faced his brain appears to be fazzled.

He is obviously only talking about the super wealthy when he makes that statement—people with millions of dollars in their superannuation funds. Those people were obviously able to take advantage of the tax system to avoid paying over 15% on the higher end of their comes.

That is good for them but us lesser mortals who do not have high incomes and struggled to put extra money into the superannuation and to save money and who purchased shares are to be penalised for going without to ensure that we could have a reasonable retirement.

…   …   …

A wealthy retired person will be other to improve their lifestyle every year under Tony Abbotts plan.

This cannot be remotely considered fair. But I suppose being fair is not in the Liberal Party's DNA.

Again we see this concern about what it actually means and how it is unfair.

One of the issues that have been raised with me—again from a constituent—is about the changes to the funding for suffers from PKU. Again, it seems like a small amount, but it is the direct consequences on these people's lives and their ability to ensure that they do not die of brain injury. It is a situation where we actually test everybody at birth for this condition to ensure that we are not giving them high protein substances. Again I read from Deborah:

I urge the government to reconsider their decision. My daughter relies on her special medical foods to function successfully. The consequences of ceasing the payments will be devastating and cause more drain on the public health system.

This budget is unfair. (Time expired)

Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would say to the member for Chisholm that if she wants to talk to small businesses that are very appreciative of the measures in the budget, particularly the small business measures, come to Launceston. Come to Launceston and have a chat to Tas Americanos who runs Ellie May's, the best hot potato in Launceston. Come to Launceston and talk to fisherman Karl Krause, or the proprietor of Hullaballoo Balloons, or John Hutton from Glasgow Engineering, or Ian Lee from Cycology and you will get a sense that small businesses have embraced the measures in the budget, predominantly the small business measure that the member for Chisholm mentioned in her speech.

The morning after the Treasurer delivered the 2015 budget I did a live cross to a very well attended breakfast in Launceston run by KPMG, and I was able to highlight key aspects in the budget for Tasmania. I was able to report to the hundreds of people at that breakfast and a significant number of year 11 and 12 young people a couple of hours later that the 2015 budget strengthens Australia's economic future and is great news for our home state of Tasmania.

There are a complementary range of new measures that are all about families, small business and jobs—enhancing our productivity and growth and leveraging the government's record spending on infrastructure. The three key themes in the 2015 budget build on the strong foundations that we have established since the 2013 election. We are focusing on exactly those things that people asked us to focus on—jobs, families and fiscal responsibility. I will deal with each of those in turn.

On the issue of jobs, this is undoubtedly a jobs-focused budget. It has been warmly welcomed in Tasmania. I have had both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer in Launceston. We have walked the streets of Launceston and we have got that reception from people about how warmly welcomed it has been. This budget builds on the impressive jobs achievements of this government in the last 18 months. Importantly, there is no longer an '8' in front of Tasmania's unemployment rate. There is a '6' in front of it. That is still too high, but we are finally heading in the right direction after too many years of Labor and Labor-Green government in Hobart and Canberra.

It is worth noting that 13,000 jobs were created in Tasmania in 2014, compared to the loss of 5,000 jobs in 2013 under Labor-Green governments in Hobart and Canberra. This budget works to create even more jobs by incentivising small business with a turnover of up to $2 million, who will get their lowest tax rate in nearly 50 years, with a 1.5 per cent company tax cut or a five per cent cut on their tax payable up to $1,000 if they are unincorporated.

We have dealt already with the accelerated depreciation allowance which increases from its threshold of $1,000 to $20,000, enabling small business to get an immediate tax deduction for purchases of everything from a motor vehicle to cooking equipment. When the Prime Minister and Treasurer came to Launceston, we went from business to business and that reception was wonderful indeed. Even my barber, Spike the Barber, thought this was a great thing. He got himself a picture with Treasurer Joe Hockey and told him how warmly he welcomed the measures in this budget.

Consider for a moment why that is the case, Madam Deputy Speaker. Let us just look at the numbers relating to this small business measure. In northern Tasmania, in Braddon, there are 6,483 small businesses with a turnover under $2 million. There are 7,050 small businesses in Lyons and 7,587 small businesses in my electorate of Bass. So it is little wonder, with that many small businesses, the engine room of the Australian economy, that the measures in the budget have been so warmly welcomed.

There is also a substantial jobs package addressing the needs of both younger and mature-age workers, a new youth employment strategy targeting young people who are currently disengaged from employment or education and a new work experience program to incentivise employers to take on job seekers for 25 hours a week for four weeks. The jobs package will also support older Australians, with employers given an accelerated payment of up to $10,000 for taking on workers over the age of 50 who have been on income support. From 13 May, from the budget, as part of the growing jobs and small business package, a higher subsidy payment of up to $6,500, up from $3,250, will be available under the Tasmanian jobs program and includes a payment of $3,250 for part-time places. As you can see, the Abbott government is clearly committed to continuing employment growth in my state.

I will talk briefly about some of the mendacious claims from those opposite about the unemployment rate being too high at the moment at 6.2 per cent. I would agree that we need to do everything to bring that rate down. But I refer them to the charter of budget honesty. I refer them to the pre-election fiscal outlook released by the former Treasurer, Wayne Swan, on 13 August 2013, where he said:

The unemployment rate is expected to increase from 5.6 per cent in the June quarter 2013 to 6¼ per cent in the June quarter 2014, and stabilise at that rate through to the June quarter 2015.

So their own prediction was unemployment would go to 6.25 per cent. It is currently at 6.2 per cent, below Mr Swan's forecast, and somehow that is a disaster. That was their own forecast before the 2013 election. So let's stop the hypocrisy about unemployment, particularly as it relates to my home state of Tasmania, where we are off the bottom of the national unemployment list finally, after 16 years of state Labor government and six years of Labor-Greens government in Canberra, and moving in the right direction.

This budget also includes funding for a range of projects in my electorate that are so important to our future prosperity. There is a relatively small project that was announced in the budget: $1.47 million to fund 50 per cent of the exciting north-east rail trail project, which will support the construction of 70 kilometres of rail between Launceston and Scottsdale using the old railway infrastructure. I congratulate Dorset Council for the work they are doing to progress this exciting project, which will create jobs in the construction phase and create another boost to tourism in northern Tasmania. It will add further lustre to north-east Tasmania's reputation as a preferred cycling destination encompassing world-class mountain bike trails and road cycling routes.

Consider, for example, the benefits of the federal government's investment of $2.5 million in the Blue Derby mountain bike trails that I opened last year. These benefits are already evident: hundreds of cyclists each weekend; shops opening in Derby, this tiny agricultural town in north-east Tasmania; new accommodation being planned; and a prediction that an additional 10,000 to 15,000 visitors will come to Tasmania annually to ride these mountain bike trails in the future. If you are looking for a corollary, there is a little town in Colorado called Fruita. It is a little agricultural town that was not going anywhere very quickly in the past but is now the centre for mountain bike tourism in the United States. We hope that the north-east mountain bike trails in Scottsdale will have the same effect for north-east Tasmania.

Other projects that will make a real difference to my community include $6 million for the Northbank redevelopment, $5.2 million to improve the Bell Bay intermodal terminal, completing the $3 million Tamar River recovery plan and almost $3 million in innovation and investment fund assistance to local businesses. In fact, around 400 new jobs will be created as a direct result of innovation and investment fund assistance to 41 Tasmanian small businesses.

On the infrastructure front I talked about a record level of infrastructure investment in last year's budget—$50 billion, of which $1 billion is coming to Tasmania. $786 million of that will be spent during the period 2013-14 to 2018-19, including $34 million for north-east freight roads in my electorate of Bass. We also see in the budget the continued funding for the $35 million hospice@HOME program and for additional elective surgery.

Two big announcements which are game changers for Tasmania are the increased funding for the Tasmanian freight equalisation scheme and $60 million for tranche 2 irrigation projects. Funding for the Tasmanian freight equalisation scheme is $203 million over the forward estimates, an extra $50 million every year, and $60 million for tranche 2 irrigation projects, including the Scottsdale scheme in my electorate of Bass, will provide 95 per cent water certainty in these areas. It will enable the conversion of marginal land, pretty much not usable for other purposes, into something that is far more productive. It will mean increased agricultural products tapping into the trifecta of free trade agreements that this government concluded in 2014, and it will be a boon for my electorate of Bass and broader Tasmania.

The local benefits are certainly being seen, as I said, from an infrastructure perspective. The Kings Meadows Connector is completed. That means that traffic is no longer backing up onto the Midland Highway. We have the Kings Meadows Connector done. The Prospect Vale black spot is fixed. The Invermay Park redevelopment, where Ricky Ponting first started his career with the Mowbray Cricket Club, is about to be completed. New work is starting every day, revitalising north-east Tasmania. I am determined to deliver on the promises that the government made to the people of Bass, and this budget continues to fulfil those promises.

There is a significant families theme in the budget, which has been well illuminated by my colleagues. The clear focus of our child care package is getting more parents into work and helping them stay in work, and that is one reason why the activity test is being tightened so that government childcare support actually requires the parents to be working.

Fiscal responsibility is a third key theme in the budget. It is about fixing the fiscal inheritance that we received from the Labor Greens government and enhancing the integrity of our tax system. Importantly, all new spending in this budget is offset by savings, and new measures help ensure that our tax and welfare systems are fair. There are anti-avoidance rules for multinationals, greater penalties for tax avoidance and companies must submit more information about their global transfer pricing arrangements under the country by country reporting standards. We are better resourcing the ATO to enhance GST compliance, and companies without a domestic taxable presence who sell services into the Australian market, like Netflix, will now be subject to the GST.

By way of comparison, having talked at length—and I could talk for many hours more about the good things that are happening in Tasmania as a result of this budget—let me just spend a couple of minutes on the contrast, that reckless, confused and directionless alternative offered by the Labor Party. The Leader of the Opposition's budget reply shows that nothing has changed. There is still no idea of what his plan is and how he is going to pay for it. Now, Tony Burke will not even confirm that the Leader of the Opposition's thought bubble of a five per cent small business tax cut will even last until the next election. It is the same level of muddled thinking, the same lack of direction and purpose, the same lack of commitment to the best interests of Australia that delivered us Labor's debt and deficit disaster with the six biggest deficits in Australia's history.

As a former senior public servant, I see very clearly the flaws in Labor's response to this budget. The Leader of the Opposition went through rhetorical gymnastics in one radio interview to deny his culpability in the debt and deficit legacy of the government that he was a key player in. Having so badly damaged our economic freedom of action, Labor in 2014-15 has made the problem worse by standing in the way of us fixing the problem that they created. Consider that during just six years of Labor and Labor Greens government, government spending increased by 50 per cent. That is one reason why today we borrow $100 million more every day than the revenue we bring in. That is why the job in the last budget and the continuing job in this budget and future budgets is so necessary to ensure the economic sustainability of our country and to ensure that we recapture our economic freedom of action so if there is another international crisis we can better respond to it.

My state, our country, is seeing real progress—our economic plan is working, growth is up and jobs are up. Labor's projected debt and deficit have already been cut in half, and this year's budget delivers a credible path to surplus. As I said, our aspiration is to regain our economic freedom of action and help Australians get ahead to provide them with greater capacity to make their own decisions about their future. That is why this budget is good for families, it is good for small business and it is good for Australia.

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

I rise today to talk about four-year-olds and their families in the electorate of Lalor—to talk about families and the 2015 budget that builds on the unfairness of the 2014 budget. The budget that, after last year's horror budget, was going to be good for families according to our Prime Minister—the same Prime Minister who promised no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no changes to pensions.

My area is home to lots of families drawn by an affordable lifestyle and a great sense of community. With 70 to 80 new babies born locally each week we have lots of young families. There are Josephs, Josies, Josephines, Joannes, Joeys, Johannas, Joachims and Joes living throughout the electorate, lots of them four years of age.

Our community, where families look for an affordable lifestyle, is a great place to live but most local families are on modest incomes trying to get ahead by buying an affordable home or paying affordable rent. Most local families work hard for their modest incomes. The best example of this measure of our community being affordable and people being on modest incomes is the fact that almost 18,000 families in the electorate of Lalor receive family tax benefit part B—the means-tested family support program designed to ensure all children have the support they need. That is 18,000 families who will lose up to $6,000 a year from their modest incomes. I would like to repeat that: 18,000 families—that is the highest number of any electorate in Australia. Take a minute to let that sink in: 18,000 families working hard and raising their children.

There are other electorates that have high numbers of family tax benefit families across Australia—Blaxland and Holt have 16,000 families, Gorton and Fowler have 15,000 families—but Lalor has almost 18,000 families. Let us assume that on the NATSEM modelling this impact is on average $4,000 per family—that is a huge $72 million less in the local economy. Again, let that sink in for a moment: $72 million less in the local economy. But of course across the chamber the impact will be far less—Warringah and North Sydney have around 3,500 families; Higgins and Kooyong around 3,000 families in receipt of the FTB. No wonder those opposite thought cutting the family tax benefit could be a saving, as the impact on their communities will be minimal in comparison.

I want to talk about the four-year-olds in those families in my electorate, so let's have a look at those. We will call the first notional four-year-old Joseph. He is a four-year-old in a young family with a two-year-old and another on the way. When the budget came down, Joseph's family were keen to know more about the increases to childcare benefits and how that might help the family only to find that, as this measure is not to be introduced for two years, young Joseph and his family will not benefit. His family will, however, like all families with school-age children, lose the schoolkids bonus next July.

In another family, another four-year-old lives—let's call him Jose. Jose is son to a newly-arrived family trying hard to resettle in Australia. They are benefiting from 15 hours of kindergarten, an absolute game changer for children where English is a second language. However, his younger sibling, aged two, will not be so lucky as funding for 15 hours is not guaranteed beyond 2017. His parents, like me, might ask the local council—who run our kindergartens—what the change will mean for them. No doubt, they will get the same frustrated response I did: 'We don't know. There is no certainty. It is a two-year funding line. It is very difficult to plan with, and we have spent money on infrastructure to ensure space, for all four-year-olds, for 15 hours. We might have to pass the cost onto families.'

Across the road, there is a four-year-old we will call Joanna. Joanna has had an unsettled start to life. Her parents had some mental-health issues and moved around a lot. One parent has passed away. The other, due to ill-health, is unable to care for her full-time. Joanna now lives with her grandmother, who is trying to ensure she gets on the right track. But Joanna will not get a starting-school health check or the benefit of the child-dental service or the schoolkids bonus making sure she is ready for school. It may not be until Joanna is eight that it might be discovered she has poor eyesight. It will not have been picked up early, as is the case now.

In a nearby suburb there is another four-year-old. Let us call him Joey. Joey was born before the federal government's PPL program existed, and the private company his mother worked for did not have one either. So when Joey was born the family received no paid parental leave. At great cost, she took months off. This hit the family hard, financially, but now they are planning for their second child. Joey's mum now works in retail and paid parental leave is part of her EBA. She is earning around $40,000 a year, she is planning to take maternity leave at half pay and, along with the government's scheme, this could give her six months, in total, with her new baby. This could have made her life much easier. Joey's parents will be unimpressed that the government is changing the rules. They will be more unimpressed that parents like them have been demonised in the budget papers as 'double dippers'. They just wanted the best start for their new baby.

Another notional four-year-old is Josephine, the youngest in her family. Josephine's parents are concerned about her oldest brother. He is completing year 12 and making plans for when he leaves school. He is a hardworking student and has made the most of his educational opportunities. He works part-time and has seen older mates lose shifts once they turn 18. He has no illusions about work and what a tertiary education could mean for his future.

In an area that has very high youth unemployment, thinking about the future is a daunting task for young people in my electorate. He might like to go to university—but with the uncertainty about costs and repayments, his parents may not be keen. He could have seen the education minister say that he will pursue the legislation that will lead to $100,000 degrees. He would be torn about his future. He might be checking out apprenticeships, but with so many cuts to apprenticeship support programs and so few apprenticeships being advertised he will have to be lucky. If he cannot find work he faces a lower Centrelink payment for a longer period of time—and must somehow be thankful he only has to wait four weeks before payments.

At a time when he and his mates should be hitting the books and looking forward to the many and varied jobs they might undertake in the future, they are bogged down and anxious about their futures. Let us say this family struggles financially. Dad has casual work that leaves them vulnerable, working pay slip to pay slip. They have had to rely on emergency relief programs. In my electorate, last year, that was two vouchers for the year per family. This year it will be one—one $60 voucher.

Another notional family has a four-year-old, Joe, whose Dad is a landscaper—made famous recently in the federal parliament, landscapers. He has heard the chat around the table of the so-called small business bonus and so dad, Joe Senior, is looking to borrow money to take advantage of the asset write-off tax concession available to small business. He might buy a new welder or compressor. What Joe Senior cannot do is predict the future. By borrowing to purchase an asset he puts his business under pressure, and the loan will still have to be paid. It might not be the wisest decision he makes. It might turn out okay.

His partner is not in the paid workforce. She does the business books and runs around after the kids. She, too, has heard things about the budget. She knows that her family will lose income if the FTB changes go through the Senate, so she has turned her mind to some paid work. The thing is, though, that there are very few local jobs.

Before the move to Wyndham, before they bought the house and had the kids, she could have had a good job—perhaps a great job—in Carlton. We know lots of those. But she cannot imagine sitting in traffic for an hour and a half each way. Yes, that is what locals who travel into the city often experience. She would have to leave young Joe in long day care and the others in after-school care. She would be worried about not making the 6.00 pm deadline because of traffic congestion and getting charged by the minute for being late. Perhaps it would not happen if Melbourne had better public transport or improved road infrastructure, but this budget has short-changed this family there. Victoria has been dudded on infrastructure, and there is no relief in sight. So this family, the small business family, could be worried that there are no plans for jobs and no plans for infrastructure to assist them in communities like mine.

So the Josephs, Joses, Josephines, Joannas, Joeys and Joachims live in families that will not understand why they are so unfairly targeted by the current government. These four-year-olds will never benefit from the proposed increases to the childcare benefits. They will lose the schoolkids bonus after only one payment. They were born prior to the introduction of Labor's paid parental leave scheme. They will not have a four-year-old Healthy Kids Check before starting school and will not receive any dental treatment from the child dental benefits scheme. They will miss out on the family tax benefit once they turn six. If they have a disability, they will not be assured they will get the support they need at school They started kindergarten with uncertainty around the 15 hours of universal access and, if they get sick, their families will pay more for a visit to the doctor as the Medicare rebates are frozen.

All of these four-year-olds are planning to start school next year. When this group of children were toddlers, there was a plan—most here will remember it: the Gonski plan for equitable school funding. This group of four-year-olds was set to benefit. The schools in Lalor benefited from the Smarter Schools National Partnerships with additional money flowing for extra literacy and numeracy support; for additional resources to allow schools locally to employ more specialist teachers to support students with English as a second language; and for low-SES students to be supported.

The schoolkids bonus was also helping so many families with the cost of books, excursions and school equipment. Now we find these four-year-olds will not benefit from the full Gonski funding model, with no commitment to years 5 and 6 and with $30 billion ripped out from education funding more generally in last year's budget.

For a government that says it is all about jobs and families, my local families are finding those words very hollow. Surely, education is the pathway to employment, but the rhetoric on jobs is not supported by a strong commitment to education—not in last year's budget, not in this year's budget. In fact the term 'early education' has disappeared from the childcare debate. It has disappeared. This government has made it clear that childcare is about babysitting and work participation—not about education and getting our kids ready for the jobs of the future, not about making sure all four-year-olds are ready for school.

The need to ensure a healthy workforce is not supported by the many cuts to health programs, particularly preventative health programs. This budget sees another $2 billion on top of last year's $50 billion gone from the health sector—last year from our hospitals, this year from preventative health programs again.

This budget still supports the introduction of $100,000 degrees for students, and many in my community will suffer from that. This budget outlines no support for Toyota, Ford and GMH workers who are losing their jobs in my electorate and no support for the growing number of young unemployed, other than to limit their access to youth allowance and cuts to support programs.

This budget has no support for local jobs in my area, and the state we live in has been dudded in the infrastructure spend. Remember the 18,000 families about to lose their FTB, ripping millions from the local economy, putting pressure on our small businesses, potentially leading to more job losses. This government says its budget is about families and jobs—hollow, hollow words.

The priority of this budget is not the families of Australia. It is the job of our Prime Minister. I implore this government to find a fairer way. I ask the Treasurer to think about his namesakes, the four-year-old Joes in Lalor, and to have a go at giving them a go.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise to contribute to the appropriation bill debate on an outstanding budget that was laid down on Tuesday night, 12 May. This is a plan, a very clear plan, to bring about the economic fortunes of this nation that were deserted by the previous Labor government. This is a plan to restore confidence, to rebuild our economy, to reduce our dealt and our deficit.

As enunciated by our Assistant Treasurer quite clearly, we have a plan; Labor has no plan. The old story of, if you do not know where you are going, then any road will get you there, is true. The Labor Party have, even in the past, opposed their own saving measures. They have opposed their own plan, so they do not know where they are going; whereas the coalition are very clear in what we want to achieve for this nation.

We want to engage with and take people on the journey so they can understand their individual contribution for this nation to again achieve greatness. Our very future as a nation depends on the measures that we take today to deliver a better and brighter future for everyone in this nation. We cannot put it back to future generations.

Steps and measures need to be taken today. They were introduced last year in the budget but, because we have a largely recalcitrant Senate and a Labor Party that does not even include supporting its own measures that are put forward, we have had to reshape our budget. We have reshaped it in a way that allows this government to build our nation for everyone to have the ability to contribute to the future direction of this nation. It does not just discard its role, its responsibility, to generations to come. Our Prime Minister in the past has said he wants to be known as the 'infrastructure Prime Minister. In my electorate of Paterson, that infrastructure is being rolled out.

The first thing I would like to talk about is the $1.5 billion announced for the new air combat capability facilities to be built across Australia and nowhere more important than the premier RAAF base in Australia, RAAF Base Williamtown. Of this $1.5 billion, $950 million will be spent at the RAAF Base Williamtown across the road from my electorate. It will support the instruction, operation and deployment of the F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, commonly known as the JSF.

Australia has committed to the acquisition of some 72 of these Joint Strike Fighters, which will provide our air crew, our outstanding young men and women of this nation who defend our nation, the latest state-of-the-art, fifth-generation aircraft. We will be at the forefront of air combat technology, and that is something I am proud of. Yes, there will be a cost—a cost to our nation. But the advantage of being at the very forefront of leading-edge technology is something that we should be proud of.

Over the next seven years, the project will provide a much welcome investment into my local communities, both directly and indirectly. There will be potential for job growth development through the works that will be carried out not only at the RAAF base but as people see the opportunity for private investment and support infrastructure in lands in and around the RAAF base. It means that all of a sudden we will have growth, opportunity and we will address one of the key issues that I have been talking about for years—that is, underemployment. We will have so many highly trained people with extensive expertise employed at the RAAF base who then exit the RAAF base and look for work. If their skills are not taken up, all of that training will have been wasted. Our RAAF base at Williamtown employs around 3½ thousand people directly, including a support staff of 300 and a contract staff of 765. It generates $280 million in salaries for individuals and families in my region. It is a very welcome contributor. There are around 2,000 RAAF families living in my community. We see great social and economic benefits of this latest financial injection.

As I said, not only do we support our Defence Force and our Defence families and the outstanding work they do but, as part of this infrastructure rollout, there is more. Our infrastructure Prime Minister was given a very clear mandate at the 2013 election—and that was to invest heavily in road infrastructure. I am pleased that last month, through the government's Black Spot Program alone, we were awarded some $13,195,000 for the region to address 36 of the most dangerous black spots in Hunter roads. Of that, some $4,895,000 was allocated to the Paterson electorate for roadworks on the New England Highway, on Dungog Road around Wallaringa Road, around Butterwick Road, on Shoal Bay Road, on Woodberry Road, on Victoria Parade, on Tocal Road at Paterson, on Lemon Tree Passage Road at Mallabula, on Dungog Road just south of Clarence Town Road, on Port Stephens Drive at Taylors Beach, on Macintosh Street at Forster, on the Pacific Highway at Nerong, on McFarlanes Road at Berry Park, on Gresford Road at Vacy, on Soldiers Point Road at Salamander, on Irrawang Street at Raymond Terrace, and on Dowling Street. All of these roads are receiving black spot money. The criteria for black spot money is that there has to have been a series of accidents or, sadly, fatalities—and these black spots are being addressed. I congratulate the government for making sure that the Black Spot Program continues. I look forward to my councils submitting further applications so we can address this issue.

I am very pleased that the Paterson electorate has benefited from the Australian government's Roads to Recovery Program. That funding has been doubled in 2015-16 to some $4.6 million in my electorate alone. It is very welcome. This means that councils can determine their priorities in roadworks to address their needs. The one thing that I want to make abundantly clear to my constituents at this point is that the black spot road funding and the Roads to Recovery funding are not the funding that will be applied to councils to address the damage that has occurred to our local roads from the recent storm event. That recent storm event affected roads in Port Stephens, in Dungog, in Great Lakes, through Maitland. All of these will be separately funded. Dungog shire will receive some $800,000, Great Lakes Council in excess of $1.5 million, Maitland council nearly $1.2 million, and Port Stephens Council will receive $1.1 million. That road funding package under the Roads to Recovery Program will mean that those councils can determine where to best spend this money to deliver the maximum advantage for our community.

Not only that but our Deputy Prime Minister made an announcement under the National Stronger Regions Fund. Madam Deputy Speaker Henderson, you would be aware in your own capacity that, going into the last election, our Deputy Prime Minister announced that $1 billion would be spent over five years on developing stronger regions. Unlike the former Labor government, who had a regional package but spent most of the money in the capital cities, our government understands the need for infrastructure investment in regional communities. I was quite happy to see $9.6 million of round 1 being spent at Nabiac for the Inland Dune Aquifer Supply System. This is being supported by 50 per cent of the project being put forward by MidCoast Water. This provides certainty of potable water for those communities in and around Nabiac and around the Great Lakes area. Without security of supply of water, particularly potable water, communities cannot grow. This will enhance both economic growth and sustain my region well into the future.

I now turn to one of the greatest infrastructure needs in my electorate—that is, digital television. I have made many speeches in this parliament. I have met with ministers. I have met with community groups. Sadly, the digital television rollout that occurred under the former Labor government did not address the needs of the constituents in my electorate.

As a result of negotiations with the now minister, Malcolm Turnbull—who, unlike the former Labor minister, Stephen Conroy, at least sits down and meets with people—contracts will very shortly be signed with a regional broadcaster in my electorate. Negotiations have been settled and we will see the rollout of improved digital television services through the Port Stephens, Dungog and Bulahdelah areas, as well as other areas in my electorate. More work needs to be done. This will not 100 per cent address the situation, but Minister Turnbull has taken on board the concerns of the people in my electorate and negotiated very strongly to deliver an outcome.

Health is always an issue, not only for my constituents but for all Australians. The health of our nation is critical. I welcome the changes this government has made to achieve a better for bang for the buck—for each and every health dollar. As is typical, the Labor Party have launched massive scare campaigns about these changes, about the recent events with after-hours GP services in particular. They have had a lot to say but have done very little. I know about after-hours GP services because I actually drove the pilot program for it in Australia back in 1997 with the Hunter Rural Division of General Practice. This program was designed to relieve the need for doctors to be on call seven days and nights a week in country and rural areas in order to give them some quality of life. It meant they could roster on at a central point to provide after-hours GP services. The health minister then was Michael Wooldridge. The program received funding and all of a sudden quality of life was restored to our GPs and an improved health service was delivered. Times have moved on and processes of evaluation have occurred, so a refocus of the dollars to ensure they address current needs was critical. A tender round was held and the winning tenderer has recently been announced for the Hunter, New England and Central Coast Primary Health Care Network. A key aspect of their tender was a commitment to continue to deliver after-hours GP services.

What I saw from my Labor counterparts was much lobbying in the media, much talk and much scaremongering—but no delivery. I constantly met with Sussan Ley, our health minister. I put forward the concerns of my community. Right from day one, I was assured that across the nation there would be an additional $98.5 million to deliver after-hours GP access, improving the health of our community. I believed that Sussan Ley was doing the right thing.

There is a difference between lobbying the media and lobbying the minister. If you lobby ministers, you can deliver real outcomes for your community. If you lobby the media, you might make yourself feel great for five minutes, but you deliver absolutely nothing for your constituents. I am glad to announce that the contracts have been signed and that the after-hours health care will be continued. These services will be provided because I took the correct approach: I presented the case, I lobbied the minister and I have delivered an outcome. I could have taken the grandiose position of beating my hairy chest in the media and made myself feel good, but, at the end of the day, as each and every member in this House should be aware, we need to make sure that ministers are aware of the problem, that we address that problem with facts and that we work towards solutions. We, the coalition, have done that in our region.

Healthcare provision is critically important and I am also excited by the announcement of the GP Rural Incentives Program. My large rural electorate has a shortage of GPs. It is not as though people can go from one town to another in order to access a GP; they need GPs in their own town. What we are going to see, particularly in some of the smaller towns in my electorate—towns such as Hawks Nest and Bulahdelah where there is a need for more GP services—is increases in the incentive payments for general practitioners to attract them to the region and to encourage them to stay in the region to deliver those much needed healthcare services.

I will just point out to people that many towns in my electorate are set to directly benefit from these changes. They include: Anna Bay, Shoal Bay, Fingal Bay, Boat Harbour, Nelson Bay, Corlette, Salamander Bay, Soldiers Point, Dungog, Bulahdelah, Hawks Nest, Forster-Tuncurry, Karuah, Lemon Tree Passage, Tanilba Bay and Tea Gardens.

Money will be taken away from areas where there are plenty of doctors and enough critical mass and will provide support into attracting doctors, retaining doctors, in those much-needed small communities throughout our electorates.

I want to finish up where I started. We, the coalition, have a clear plan, outlined in the budget, to take our nation on the journey with us so that we can contribute to the benefit of this nation for generations to come, not deferring to future generations to fix the problems created by the former Labor government.

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

Thank you, Acting Speaker.

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not Acting Speaker.

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

I beg your pardon. You are not really going to try that, are you?

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sorry?

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

What was that?

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not an Acting Speaker; I am a Deputy Speaker. So it is Madam Deputy Speaker.

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

It is the time of the year when we come in here and discuss these appropriation bills, Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and cognate bills. Speaker after speaker on the government side stands up to sprout their key lines without commitment, without passion and without any knowledge. And this gets followed up by speakers from the opposition who speak about their concerns and their communities. Today it has been no different. Australians have learnt quickly that, under this government, vision and plans extend no further than the next opinion poll or the next press conference, and this year's budget was no exception.

For two years the government have constantly wailed about Australia's budget emergency, citing it as their feeble reasoning behind last year's ideologically driven, cruel and unfair budget which attacked the elderly, the young and the families of our communities. But this year suddenly that budget emergency disappeared. It disappeared like Australian jobs under this government. It disappeared like the spending on health. It disappeared like the investment in education and it disappeared like every one of this untrustworthy government's promises of lower taxes and surpluses.

Despite the wails, the Abbott government has delivered a budget where spending is up, tax is up, deficits are up and unemployment is up. The government has broken its promise to save as much as it spends. Spending initiatives are greater than actual savings and the Treasurer has doubled the deficit in one year, from $17 billion to $35 billion. We all know that, at its heart, this budget is for the Liberal Party base that is threatening to walk away from the Prime Minister, or the member for Curtin, or the member for Cook, or even the member for Wentworth—if they could stomach his environmental opinions. Even former Liberal Party Prime Minister John Howard stated:

It has certainly been framed by the government with an eye to political sensitivities.

That is why the government have removed the impacts on families modelling from the budget, because they know that thousands of Australian families in the bottom half of the income scale will feel the brunt, whilst the top end of the scale feel the greatest benefit.

The fundamental unfairness of last year's budget disaster remains: the $80 billion slashed from schools and hospitals, the GP tax, the cuts to Medicare rebates, the $100,000 university degrees and the massive cuts to family payments. The Prime Minister promised no new taxes, yet this budget contains 17 new taxes.

We have a Prime Minister who promised a surplus but, in fact, has doubled the deficit and failed to pass a budget. The Prime Minister promised more jobs. However, unemployment has risen to the highest level in 10 years and will remain high for a lot longer. The Prime Minister promised no cuts to health, but he has ripped another $2 billion out this year from health, in addition to the $57 billion that he ripped out last year.

The new analysis from NATSEM shows that a family with a single income of $65,000 and two children will be $6,164 a year worse off. A single mother with an income of $55,000, with two children, will be $6,107 a year worse off. In McEwen we have some 6,800 single parent families that this will affect. A family with a dual income of $60,000, with two children, will be $3,843 a year worse off. These amounts might not seem much to the Prime Minister or the triple dipper Treasurer, but for struggling families this could mean the difference between paying the bills and putting food on the table. The budget clearly articulated that the government has no interest in building industry or manufacturing in this country. In fact, it says it has 'liberated' thousands of workers—to the jobs scrap heap. It has said to employers, 'Here's free labour; try before you buy.' If the Australian public had that option, the Prime Minister and this government would be on the scrap heap today.

The government knows that it mishandled the economy so badly that what they have done with this budget is to inject a stimulus package in the hope that it will generate some positive feedback. We welcome the instant asset write-off. Why? Because we introduced it when we were in government, but this government claimed it was a rort and scrapped it in their first budget. Twelve months later a light bulb goes off in the PM's head and he realises that Labor's program actually delivers benefits for small business.

In my electorate, we are a community of hardworking families. The Abbott government is ripping their future away. Last year in this House I spoke about a constituent of mine, Stuart Edwards. Stuart is a single father of four who drives an hour each way to work to provide for his children and also studies at university part-time. When we asked the Treasurer about the impacts of the budget, the Treasurer's response was: 'This man needs to get a job,' even though he is already working full-time. After last year's budget, Stuart lost the family tax benefit, and his expenses increased due to the petrol tax stealthily introduced as a 'levy', or, as the finance minister called it, an 'indexation adjustment'. With this budget, Stuart will be even worse off because of the measures the government has put forward. So you have to ask: in how many more ways can you punish people trying to improve their future?

McEwen has the highest population of zero-to-five-year-olds in the country. We have thousands of young families, with parents trying their hardest to raise the future of our country. However, the Abbott government is ensuring parents caring for their children will be punished. The government is stripping stay-at-home parents—in most cases, mothers—of their childcare rebates. Families who have an annual income of $65,000 per year and over will have their childcare rebates ripped away. Families will be booted off family tax benefit B when their youngest child turns six. The Abbott government wants to freeze all the rates of family tax benefits. Yet taxpayers will be required to foot half the childcare costs of couples earning $170,000 a year.

Less than six months ago, the Prime Minister was still spruiking his 'signature' PPL plan. Those on the top end of incomes would get $75,000, at the expense of those at the bottom. It was their 'fair dinkum' policy that the Prime Minister said he 'passionately' believed in. The Prime Minister argued that this was giving women a level of support, and that it was not a welfare measure; it was a 'workplace entitlement' just like other non-negotiables, like holiday pay and sick pay. Now, in a complete 180, the Prime Minister has cut $967 million from the government's existing Paid Parental Leave scheme. This measure, along with last year's heartless cuts to family payments, will leave around 80,000 mothers up to $11,000 a year worse off.

The government's ministers have been in the media over the last month calling these mothers 'double dippers', and the Treasurer even called them 'rorters'. Yet it emerged that the government's own senior ministers had done the very thing they were decrying as a rort.

In 2010, the Prime Minister, then the Minister for Health, stated: '26 weeks, as everyone knows, is the minimum that should be spent at home by mothers with newborns.' Yet the Prime Minister recently said about new mums who receive more than 18 weeks paid parental leave: 'It is not right, it should not happen and it will not happen under this government.' We all remember the Prime Minister saying that he had 'been on a journey' with his new-found love for paid parental leave. But what this budget shows is that that journey was a return trip.

Another blow to families in McEwen is his incomprehensible cutting of the Seatbelts on Regional School Buses program. This program was introduced by the former Labor government to ensure the safety of our schoolchildren when travelling to and from school in regional areas. Yet the Abbott government is scrapping this program. For those of us in rural areas, transport options for students are few and far between at the best of times, and we rely on school buses to transport our kids. Regional school buses in Victoria often travel at speeds of 100 kilometres an hour, on rough road surfaces, and this can cause injuries if there is a crash. In 2009 a six-year-old girl was injured when a bus braked sharply near Alexandria. In south-west Victoria, a 10-year-old student suffered brain damage when a school bus crashed. It costs $30,000 to retrofit a bus with seatbelts, but this government would rather spend $250,000 on a flagpole in New South Wales. You could not make this stuff up, seriously!

Our elderly and our seniors are again being attacked by this government. On top of the almost $57 billion in cuts to health in the last two budgets, the Abbott government is slashing $20 million from the Dementia and Aged Care Services Fund. These are members of our community who are unable to look after themselves, and they need and deserve the highest level of care. However, the Abbott government is callously ripping out this much-needed funding, while it is willing to pay almost $25 million to explain to businesses what a free trade agreement is.

In addition to last year's $1.3 billion cuts to pensioner and senior concessions, the Abbott government is continuing to impose harsh cuts on McEwen's 13,669 pensioners. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer have announced that they will adjust the threshold for the assets test for the pension, meaning that some 2,600 pensioners across our communities will no longer be eligible to receive the pension. In Sunbury, in my electorate, Beth and Bob, both self-funded retirees, after hearing what this disastrous budget as going to do to them, contacted my office and said:

We are by no means wealthy and continued working several years longer than we intended, to put us in a position to fund our retirement. The proposal to reduce the assets test simply pulls the rug from under our feet at a point life when we are no longer in a position to do anything about it.

Seniors still face cuts of $900 per year as a result of the Abbott government's plan to abolish the senior supplement, not to mention forcing seniors to work until they are 70—giving Australia the oldest retirement age in the developed world. No matter how they try to package it, the government are punishing seniors and pensioners across McEwen.

Unemployment has risen dramatically since they came to office and continues to rise. And we still do not have the effects of this government walking away and scrapping the automotive industry here in Australia. Many thousands of jobs in my local community will be gone because of this government's inaction. The latest nail in the coffin for job creation in this country is the overt snubbing of the state of Victoria when it comes to infrastructure funding. Victoria counts for 25 per cent of Australia's population; yet only some 13 per cent of infrastructure investment is being awarded to the state. Victorian coalition MPs should hang their heads in shame. Less investment in infrastructure means fewer jobs for Victoria. As I have said before, with the bulk of this heartless budget, it is low- and middle-income earners who will be the hardest hit. It is not fair, it is not right and Australians will not stand for it.

Mal Brough (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related appropriation bills gives us an opportunity to put on the record a range of issues that may be of interest to individual members, and I wish to canvas a few today. The first thing I wish to do is congratulate the government on its announcement of the Federation white paper. This is a time for us to be bold. This is a time for us to reach across the political divide. It is a time for us to say to the states, to local government, to community leaders and to academics that, over the next 10 years, we need to work together for a new and better Federation. Whilst we may stand here today and debate the tos and fros and the rights and wrongs of a budget and whether someone claims a particular sector is better off or worse off—that is the day-to-day grind of politics—the reality is that what set us up over 110 years ago is not going to set us up well into the future.

We have incredible complexity, which reflects itself in an enormous amount of red tape for business, for argument's sake, and that all costs at a local, state and federal government level.

We also have enormous duplication. I am sure that I am not the first person in this place to stand and say why is it that we have some 6,000 bureaucrats in the federal Department of Health, yet we do not provide one doctor or one nurse. I am not suggesting that they do not have some important work to do. What I am saying is: is this the best way, the most cost-effective way, the most efficient way, to deliver services to 22 million Australians? Instead of us looking in a partisan fashion or in a self-interested fashion, whether you are a state politician, a union representative, a federal politician—whatever you may be; whatever your particular grouping is that you seek to support or you seek support from—surely our interest must be the national interest. Like any company, you need to reinvest in your systems, in your governance, in your approach, and if you do not then you end up becoming lazy or you become an irrelevance.

I have just spoken in the other chamber about a mistake made by the Labor Party in 2009 with the employee share ownership scheme. The implications of that are far reaching because the world is moving so fast. I put on the record here today that I am for bold change. I commend the Prime Minister for the Federation white paper. He is going to have this retreat with state leaders. But this needs to be the start of a conversation. We need the journalists to buy into this and to stop this ridiculous notion of ruling things out. Let us be mature enough as a population to have the debate, to acknowledge that what we have had has worked well, but it is not the best fit going forward. It will be hard. It was hard getting a Federation and it took a long time. Western Australia nearly did not play, but they did. Ultimately, if we come together as one, recognising that it is in our nation's interests and every individual's interests, then I think that this sets us up well for the future.

I turn to a related issue, and that is how we fund infrastructure. Again, the government released a paper last week on infrastructure—where to, a plan and what we hope to achieve. We always see the argy-bargy. I heard the member for Grayndler on Brisbane radio the other day. It was amazing; he was quite plausible until, of course, the full story was told. He was saying that he had offered the Queensland LNP government a 50-50 split on a particular bridge. You go, 'Why didn't they take that up?' But then the former minister got on and he said, 'Well, there was a bit of catch.' Traditionally, the federal government spends 80 per cent on Highway 1—in our case the Bruce Highway—and the state 20 per cent and they wanted to make it 50-50. So unless you have all the facts about who is paying, states can be worse off or better off. I only use that to highlight the fact that all the debate is about how much more money we are going to need without looking at what innovation can do to help us change the debate. Let me put on the record that obviously we are going to have to continue to invest more in infrastructure—rail, ports, roads, in particular, but also telecommunications.

In the last two years people have heard more and more about Uber. I just want to put this as an example on the table of how we should be looking at this debate from a different perspective. They operate their share riding scheme in four major cities around the world. They are not the only one. There is another company—Lyft—operating in San Francisco. They have found that in some suburbs they are now getting a 90 per cent uplift of share rides. In every ride coming out of those suburbs someone else is sharing with them. Just think about that for a moment, rather than thinking about taxis versus Uber or someone else. Think about the implications of better utilising the number of cars that we have on the road. How many of our motor vehicles going into Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth every morning have one occupant? If we are able to do something which does not cost the taxpayer anything to ensure that there are two or three people in those cars going to the same destination, what do we do? We reduce congestion, we reduce pollution and it does not cost anybody anything. So we are saying, not instead of but in concert with, let us open our mind to what technology is providing in real-time today. As I said, it is an extraordinary statistic. In some suburbs up to 90 per cent of all rides are share rides. They are operating in Paris, San Francisco and LA. I put that on the table as a way for policy makers to think outside the circle. It is more than just roads, rail and ports; it is about other alternatives.

While on all things digital—obviously, without the internet you do not have Uber or Lyft—I want to put a policy position forward to the government. Right now, Australia has an enviable reputation for people coming here to study. Today, as I said, with bipartisan support we are going to implement positive changes to the employee share ownership scheme. That will enable more of our start-up companies to keep our innovators here. We have people who come to Australia to learn computer software. They are engineers and coders. They finish their courses and leave the country. What we could be doing is using their skill set here in Australia. They could be starting their own business or working with another start-up. Instead of time limiting it—where always in the backs of the minds of the owners and entrepreneurs is, 'I invest in this person, give them the skill sets I need and immerse them in my business, but in six months, 12 months or two years they've got to go'—why don't we make sure that we use this intellect that we have helped develop through our education system and say, 'You can stay here as long as you are investing and working in a start-up of either your own or someone else's'? If we do that, we will be creating the innovative pull that the world wants. Israel, France and the US all want it. These people are here now; we have trained them. A very easy and simple policy shift would allow these people to stay and contribute to our economy and to grow our innovation sector. That is another policy that we can put on the table.

This budget was unabashedly aimed directly at the core of Australia's small business community. I am sure that many of the speakers before me have outlined the positive nature of those investments and the impact they will have in their electorates. I see this as an important step forward, in fact a momentous change in the way in which we look at small business. We all talk about it—both sides of the chamber talk about it—but we actually have to deliver. By now identifying through the tax system businesses earning under $2 million and seeing them in a different light, we have put some meat on the bone. They are different to large businesses. They do not have HR departments; they do not have marketing departments; all is generally done by mum and dad and one or two others. We are burdening them with all of the regulatory costs, the labour costs and the costs of raising capital—because quite often they pay a premium to the banks for being small businesses—but we can do something about that. What I propose here today is that the nexus has been broken. We have recognised and rewarded, once and for all, the significance in employment terms and in energy and innovation that comes out of the small business sector, whether they are rural companies or start-ups or in the medical field or a coffee shop. Now what we can do is build on that. Why don't we be brave enough to look at removing some of the really big, burdensome compliance costs such as fringe benefits tax for any company of under $2 million income? It is not going to cost the budget a lot, but, I tell you what: it will give people another reason to say, 'I should be involved.' Under the Howard government, we made businesses of under 15 employees, rather than businesses earning under $2 million, exempt from unfair dismissal. Why don't we again look at the wages that they pay in giving young people jobs and build on the initiatives that we have put into this budget? We are allowing an unemployed person to get real-life experience. Why don't we start investing some more of what the Commonwealth already contributes to businesses under $2 million? We want them to grow beyond that, but this gets their foot in the door. This gets them established. This gets them to say to the world, 'This place actually wants people to get started and wants to contribute,' so all of those regional towns and outer suburbs can become hubs of innovation and energy.

These are just some of the things that I think we should all be looking at across the chamber. Sadly, in the debate in the main chamber on employee share ownership it actually came back to an ideology. The shadow Assistant Treasurer is an economist and professor in his own right, but the reason he gave for the Labor Party in 2009 instigating this negative policy—which they now acknowledge—was that it would be unfair to lower-paid workers. When are we going to get over this cringe and say, 'We want everyone to be uplifted; we want to give everyone the opportunity to participate'? The way to do that is not by degrading or denying someone because they have an intellect or a spark. We all contribute according to our own abilities. Take that out of their language, take that out of their thinking and ask, 'What's good for Australia?'

Coming back to this budget, it is a good down payment on the future, but the real future is going to be how we do these big things: how we reform our federation, how we put aside our state-based biases, our political affiliations and look at the sort of Australia that we want our grandchildren to have—to have that long-term future. I believe there are people on both sides of this chamber who are capable of that. I think there are state leaders who are capable of that. But they have to remain true to the course. They now have the option because that document is out there. We have the tools with which to commence the debate. Let us not allow it to flounder on the rocks of negativity or fear—fear that someone will be worse off, someone may be disadvantaged. There is always going to be a rocky road on the way to a better future. It was not easy getting the GST implemented. Do you hear anyone from the other side of politics today saying we should get rid of the GST? No, not at all. Far from it. They have recognised, however begrudgingly, that it served a purpose.

We need to have all of these things—whether it be taxation, regulation or duplication—on the table, without the journalists coming up and sticking a microphone under someone's nose and asking, 'Will you rule it out?' and therefore dumbing down the debate. Let us rise above it. Let us give people the sort of government they want and the sort of politics that they want, and let this generation of politicians be seen to have built on what our forefathers established with the federation and make this moment in time an opportunity to grow the federation in a way that serves our children and grandchildren well.

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to contribute to this debate on the appropriation bills. I start by saying: this is not a budget that is beneficial for families of the North Coast. In fact, it is a budget that will hurt the people of my electorate. The families, the seniors and the young people are all going to be negatively impacted by this budget. The Abbott government's cruel cuts, dishonesty and incompetence continue to hurt people in my electorate of Richmond as they hurt people in rural and regional areas. In fact, in those rural and regional areas it is the National Party that will be held responsible for all of these unfair measures that are really severely hurting people in country areas.

This year's budget contains many of the ongoing savage and cruel cuts from last year's budget and some new cuts as well. The fact is that the attacks on health, education, age pensioners and families continue with this budget. The Prime Minister and the Liberal-National Party broke their election commitment when they said there would be no cuts but, in fact, that is exactly what happened. Some of the unfair measures include the $100,000 university degrees, the $80 billion in cuts to our schools and hospitals, the cuts to family payments, the $2 billion worth of hidden cuts to health and aged care and the fact that our pensioners will have to pay more for transport, gas, electricity and council rates.

This government has unfairness at its very core and its very heart. On top of all of that, there is nothing in this budget about Australia's future. We needed a budget for the next decade. We did not get that; we got a budget of continuing unfairness. The budget is particularly unfair to families, most of whom will be worse off. In fact, new analysis recently released by the Australian Council of Social Services, ACOSS, shows that this year's budget is just as unfair as last year's, with families set to lose $15 billion over the next four years.

New independent analysis from NATSEM has found that this year's budget contains a hidden hit on Australian families. Nine out of 10 of the lowest income families lose under the Abbott government's budget. It also shows that families will be slugged thousands of dollars even when the government's new childcare measures, which start in 2017, are factored in. This is why it is important to look at some of the statistics. A family with a single income of $65,000 and two children will be $6,164 a year worse off by 2018-19. A single mother with an income of $55,000 and two children will be $6,107 worse off a year by 2018-19. A family with a dual income of $60,000 and two children will be $3,843 dollars a year worse off by 2018-19. That is a major impact on those families.

Of course, the budget also includes a new cut to paid parental leave which will see as many as 80,000 women lose as much as $11,500 a year. What is particularly disturbing in relation to the paid parental leave is some of the language from the government around this initiative. It does show how out of touch they are with the concerns that many people in our community have. Labelling women as 'rorters' or 'fraudsters', or employers who want to support their staff as 'scammers' is, quite frankly, insulting. Calling women who access their agreed workplace conditions from their employers 'double dippers' is rude and insulting and, quite frankly, it is unacceptable to be using such language. It does go to the heart of the fact that the government are out of touch. It seems that the Abbott government's only approach to any sort of reform is just to demonise particular groups and then take something away or have a particular cut that impacts them. We saw it last year with those on the disability support pension, with the young job seekers, and with the pensioners.

This year it seems to be families. The government seem to be making sure these are cruel cuts, and then they turn around and demonise them. The fact is that families should not have to be choosing between quality child care, paid parental leave and support with the costs of raising their children through family payments. They should not be in that position of having to choose. Nor should they be subjected to very harsh and cruel, what I think is really hurtful, language from this government. They should stop the divisive language and they should drop these cuts immediately because they are impacting families. They are severely impacting families more so in regional areas like mine.

Also in the budget we saw the government continue their attack upon pensioners. In fact, the Treasurer continues to deceive pensioners when it comes to concessions. In his budget speech the Treasurer said:

… anyone who currently has a pensioner concession card will continue to receive a concession card that provides the same benefits, such as subsidised utilities …

Yet, the government have not provided a cent of extra money for the expansion of these concessions. In fact, they have actually stuck by the $1.3 billion cut to pension concessions contained in last year's budget, which really impacts our seniors. An analysis by the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia suggests that pensioners could lose some $1,500 in concessions, including their discounts on car registration, council rates, gas and electricity—a huge amount for a pensioner. Of course, this is all on top of abolishing the Seniors Supplement. These cuts all have huge impacts in my electorate where I have over 20,000 seniors on the age pension. They will be severely impacted by the Abbott government's cuts.

We have certainly seen some very cruel cuts from the government in relation to health, particularly with their many versions of the GP tax. I think we are up to about version 4 by now, and no doubt it will come up again. One of the nastiest health cuts in this budget that we have seen is the cut to the IEM grants, which are in the broad area of metabolism program grants. This funding provides financial support for special low-protein foods for those with metabolic protein disorders. These individuals are unable to properly metabolise one of the amino acids in protein.

I would like to speak now about a young man in my electorate. He is a local teenager from Bexhill and his name is Jayden Driussi. He suffers from such an illness. Jayden is now 13 and at just nine months old he was diagnosed with this rare disease. He is treated with a very restricted low-protein diet using specially medically modified foods and a prescribed medical dietary supplement, which is designed to replace protein and nutrients that most people get from food. As well, he has prescribed medication. The fact is, his diet is also severely restricted.

The federal government had assisted families with a monthly food grant, the IEM grant, to help cover the cost of sustaining the complex and quite expensive diet that includes specialised low-protein foods. Until recently, individuals with these conditions were entitled to a modest but extremely helpful government grant of around $250 a month to help with these costs. That is around $3,000 a year. But that was cut in this budget. As a result of the budget cuts this funding has just been totally slashed. It brings a saving of just $3 million a year to cut what is really important funding for families, like the family of Jayden. Jayden's family has been calling on the federal government to urgently reconsider their decision. I join with them in asking the Abbott government to please reconsider these cuts to the IEM grants.

I was very disappointed yesterday in question time when the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister specifically about these grants and the Prime Minister ruled out bringing these grants back in. In fact, I found it quite insulting when the Prime Minister said, 'Well, the cost of some of these foods has gone down.' That is completely untrue. These foods are very expensive due to the complex nature of what is required to be purchased for people who suffer from these illnesses. It was very disappointing to hear those words from the Prime Minister.

As I recently told the local newspaper, the Northern Star, the slashing of the IEM grant is a pathetic and cruel funding cut. It is that, and I implore the government to rethink this. It is important to those families that they have access to this funding to be able to provide for children like Jayden, who have these very complex conditions.

So we continue to see many cuts from the government that do impact regional areas. Some of the other cuts are those to the Financial Assistance Grant program to our local councils. In last year's budget we saw a cut of around $1 billion. This year's budget showed the government's decision to freeze the indexation of these payments will continue to hit councils very hard over the next two years. The cuts include $680 million out of councils in regional areas, more than twice the impost being placed upon metropolitan councils. I can tell you that for councils in my electorate of Richmond this is a very severe cut. It makes it very difficult for them to provide services to those of us in rural and regional areas. Forcing those rural and regional ratepayers to carry the larger share of that almost $1 billion cut will only put our struggling communities even further behind, because those financial assistance grants provide very important funding to provide services to our communities.

Another cruel measure we continue to see from this government is the continued attack upon young people and the services they require, particularly some of those programs that they cut last year in the budget: Youth Connections, Partnership Brokers and National Career Development programs. These programs were delivering excellent results. I particularly want to speak about the Youth Connections program, because in my electorate we have a wonderful service called the Byron Youth Service. It provides great support, mentoring, and guidance to younger people within the regions. The fact that valuable funding was cut through Youth Connections means that the Byron Youth Service is now potentially at risk of closure. Cuts like this mean that those young people just will not be able to access those important services. There is no funding program to replace Youth Connections, and it had a truly impressive success rate in finding alternative ways to help people finish year 12, with over 80 per cent of participants in work or study 18 months after completing this very specific program. So I would implore the government to reinstate programs like that. We cannot see services like the Byron Youth Service close. Younger people have to be able to access an important support.

When it comes to harsh cuts that impact younger people, one of the major ones is the $100,000 university degrees, which potentially could be a reality under this government. I think it was one of the most ruthless cuts in the first budget. It was part of the government's agenda to Americanise our higher education system. This remains firmly in place and the government is committed to it. The deregulation of university fees, and the proposed 20 per cent cut in funding of undergraduate places means that we will end up with $100,000 university degrees. Locals in my electorate totally oppose this move, because it means that children from rural and regional areas will not be able to access universities. We see this sentiment reflected in so many of the polls right across the country, which shows an overwhelming majority of Australians opposing this position. They do not want to see this Americanisation of our universities put in place. They want to make sure that people can access universities.

There are a couple of other points I want to mention about the government's cuts, particularly their cuts to Pacific Highway funding. Investment in the Pacific Highway in New South Wales has continued to decline under the Abbott government. In Labor's last year in office, $1 billion was invested as part of our $7.6 billion commitment. This was reduced by 65 per cent in the current financial year to just $357 million—a huge decrease. In my electorate of Richmond, the Labor government committed, funded and delivered on major Pacific Highway upgrades, including, particularly, the Banora Point upgrade—about $350 million for that—and also the funding for the Tintenbar to Ewingsdale section of the Pacific Highway. Over $550 million was allocated for that, which is the single biggest ever infrastructure project on the north coast of New South Wales. I was very proud, as the local MP and as part of the then Labor government, to have delivered that important funding for our area. It was the federal Labor government that delivered in those incredibly important areas.

When it comes to matters surrounding transport, I too have concerns that the budget scrapped the Seatbelts on Regional School Buses program, which was created by the former Labor government to improve safety for regional students who travel long distances to and from school. Yet this government decided to cut that really important program, which I feel does endanger the lives of those students in our regional areas. We have to make sure that we have that program in place and that there is enough funding for those seatbelts on regional school buses programs. It shows again how out of touch the government are when it comes to the needs of regional Australia when they cut programs like that.

What we see from this government in this budget is a continuation of the cuts from last year's budget. We see the attack on families. We see the attack on younger people. We see the attack on our seniors, our pensioners. We see the attack particularly on regional and rural Australia. The harsh cuts continue to impact, particularly in areas of health and education. I know many locals in my electorate are just as concerned, angry and disappointed as they were with the last budget, because they were told that there would be no cuts to any of those areas; yet we see from last year's budget and this year's budget that the cuts and the attacks continue. Many in my electorate reject the government's harsh cuts. The cuts are impacting severely, particularly on our families, our pensioners and our younger people. All of those in rural and regional Australia are worse off because of the National Party's cuts. That is the reality.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Budgets are always marker points and a time when governments have a chance to report what they have or have not achieved and to set targets for the future, and so it is with this budget. The Abbott government was presented with arguably the worst set of books ever handed over to an incoming government in Australia—around $170 billion in net debt and a projected debt peak of $667 billion. The big sting was in the tail: the hypothetical spin beyond the forward estimates. The vague—and sometimes not so vague—extrapolations of ever, and speedily, increasing government expenditure across almost every portfolio, with a few notable exceptions like Defence. The NBN was one example. The Rudd and Gillard governments had broadcast to the nation that Australia had more than enough money for everything. The trouble was, and is, that we do not. We do not have more than enough money for everything. We have to live within our means and work out what is most important to this nation so we can spend it in those areas. The myth that Australia could have everything was built on borrowings. That has led us to the place that we are today.

There are those, like the member for Fairfax, that say that Australia's borrowings are low by world standards and that we have nothing to worry about—that other nations' debts are 100 per cent of GDP and, in some cases, even higher. Who says that those nations can ever master that debt? Who says that they could ever shake it off? Why is it that those nations around the world that we have traditionally looked to for leadership of the world economy are unable to shake off the effects of the GFC and get their economies back on a path of reasonable growth which can absorb the extra numbers of workers coming into their workforces?

The fairly obvious answer to that is that they are struggling with their debt levels—because if you owe 100 per cent of your GDP, you will be borrowing approximately five per cent of your GDP each year just to keep up the interest payments.

Last year, the Abbott government attempted to set in place reforms that would bring the budget back to surplus by 2018-19. This year, as had already been telegraphed in December's MYEFO, it is now expected to be a year later. Now I must say that is disappointing—it is disappointing to me. But it is not for lack of trying. The government has lost a considerable amount of paint, if you like, over the last 12 months: trying to get those savings through the Senate, and trying to set a path for Australia's prosperity; not just for today but for the future. But the Senate has chosen to block a number of measures and, while we can and should debate issues such as the Medicare co-payments, the Labor Party continues to block more than $5 billion of its own savings. It is unbelievable, really. And so we are left to deal with what we are left to deal with, and we have to move on. Some of the measures from last year's budget have been abandoned; many in my party are quite happy that they have been abandoned, let me say, because they were not popular measures. But we have to do what we can. It is no good to keep just banging our heads against the brick wall and hoping that we are going to burst through. And the economy is a large beast—we cannot turn the Queen Mary on a 20c coin; it takes time. We cannot turn the economy that quickly. We cannot pull the handbrake on too hard. If we come to a stop in a car—at least in a manual car—the motor stops. The motor stalls. And if we stall the motor of the economy, then we are in deep trouble: in fact, there is a very big chance of rolling back down the hill. So we need to return to surplus with purpose, and not just smash our heads against the dashboard, as it were.

Despite having suffered enormous revenue write-downs, largely associated with the resources industry—$51 billion over the forward estimates—so over the next four years that amount will go missing from the federal budget; that is $51 billion which was anticipated 12 months ago. Given those two parameters—the refusal of savings in the Senate, and the dramatic fall in revenue—the projections that the Treasury and the Treasurer have come up with for this budget are really quite remarkable. And returning to the surplus is a challenge, but it is simply the end of the first phase. It is now projected that we will return to surplus in 2019-20—and that is not the end of the challenge; it is the end of the first phase. The time when we can actually pay off the debt—it is projected that debt will peak in 2020 at $283 million; that is, 283 thousand million dollars. No wonder most of the general Australian population do not really understand the issues we are dealing with. That is when we can begin to pay down that 283 thousand million dollars. And—for those who do not think that is an issue—that would need us to run a $20 billion surplus for over 14 years. That will affect everything that Australian governments do over the next 14 years. Sure; it will probably lead, at some stage, to higher taxes—higher taxes than we would have paid—but it will certainly lead to lower levels of services than we might have otherwise expected.

So this budget is about balance. We need Australian businesses to grow and flourish—to grow the economy, to grow employment, and to have confidence in their future. Because if we can do those things, if Australia businesses can grow beyond the expectations that are projected in the budget at the moment, that means we can shrink those projections ahead of time—and that will be so important to our children and our grandchildren.

I come now to the small business package that has been announced in the budget. I point out that part of my electorate; a significant part—the Upper Spencer Gulf, at the moment; this is what used to be called the Iron Triangle cities, but we do not use that term any more—that is, Whyalla, Port Pirie, and Port Augusta, are now approaching unemployment levels across the region of 11 per cent. That is a very big concern to me because we know that the most important part of people's welfare is having a job. Governments cannot simply fill up those gaps.

So this government, if you like, has put its money, or the taxpayers' money, on the best horse in the race—the best chance of turning Australia's economy around—and that is small business. Small business is the backbone of our economy. It is the single biggest sector if you divide the economy up in that manner. Ninety six per cent of all Australian businesses are small businesses and they employ almost five million people. In the end, of course, the greatest way for Australians to get ahead is to get a job, and let me tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker—I am sure you know this already—governments do not make jobs. Governments do not create jobs; all governments do is shift jobs within an economy, because, if they create a job for someone and use taxpayers' money to pay them, they have taken that job away from somebody else. But what governments can do is try to assist the people who do provide jobs in the economy to grow faster, in this case small business. Just imagine—of course, this will not happen—if every small business in Australia took on one extra employee. We would be searching for people to fill the jobs. We would not have enough people to fill those jobs.

One of the main packages in the budget is the 1½ per cent cut in taxation from 30 to 28½ per cent for small businesses with under $2 million turnover. It is very substantial. I would love to see that go further, of course. I would like to see a lower taxation rate—we all would because we know that in other parts of the world taxation rates are lower, and we are in a competitive world environment—but, given the parameters of what the government faced, which I have been through, it is as far as we can go today. This is not just for registered businesses, because many are not, but for those single-entity businesses and for partnerships. It is not exactly the same mechanism but pretty much the same result. There is the $20,000 immediate tax write-off. As I have been travelling around the electorate, this measure is being very warmly welcomed by various businesses. Let me tell you about a young couple who came into my Port Pirie office, only last week, in fact. They were starting up a private ambulance service. Of course, I do not think they will be able to buy their ambulance for $20,000, but certainly most of the equipment that will go within it they will be able to buy for $20,000. For someone trying to get a new business off the ground, this is a godsend. Companies like hairdressers will be able to buy new machines. Restaurants will be able to buy new tables. Sparkies will perhaps get a new ute or some tools. Clothing retailers might put in some new tills or computer programs. Engineering workshops could get new welders. All of these things proliferate throughout my electorate. Computer programs, solar panels, sound systems, lawnmowers, air conditioners—you name it, it is in the crosshairs of this policy.

At the moment, for small businesses—and this is another reason the government has great confidence in our small business sector—money is the cheapest that it has ever been in living memory. So it is a great time to get a boost out of this sector of the economy. They will build confidence and they will spend money, and that in turn will lead to other small businesses and large businesses benefiting from that turnover in the economy.

Of course, I was a farmer before I entered this place and still have an interest in that area. I remember saying many years ago to my brother-in-law, who contributed to the computer design systems for the Collins class submarines at one stage, 'Agriculture is a sunrise industry.' He looked at me a bit strangely, because most people had been describing agriculture as a mature industry. I said, 'The opportunities of the future for Australia will be in agriculture.' It was probably three or four years later that he came back to me and said, 'I know what you mean now,' because by that time he was working for a bulk grain handler in South Australia called Viterra and he understood more about the system. And so it is. Some people say Australia will become the grain bowl of Asia. That is patently not true, but increasingly the world, and that part of the world, is looking to Australia for food quality and for assurance that the food is safe. The investment—if you like, the incentives—that the government has offered into this industry provides the ability to write off water systems and fencing in 12 months, and to bring fodder and grain storage in from 30 years. I have silos on my property which are still depreciating on this never-ending schedule—30 years, for crying out loud! They will be able to do that in three years. Because the grain handling system in Australia is changing daily, it will lead to a change of emphasis on the way that we handle our national crop. It will lead to us being able to enter new markets with new products, such as hay and whatever into China and Japan, and deliver them through new mechanisms. That is all very good.

Regarding other things that are happening closer to home, in my electorate, I am very pleased that we appear now to have a solution to the RET. There is an engineering company in Whyalla, E&A, which put off 100 workers, because they had been building wind towers. I expect that to start again. That will be a very important start-up. There is a large defence spend going on at Cultana near Port Augusta, at Whyalla and up at Woomera. There is a lot of work beginning to happen in the electorate now with the NBN. This will all lead to more employment and more jobs for people.

The doubling of the Roads to Recovery is welcome and a boost to councils. Green Army projects are gathering speed and proliferating. The news in the budget that in fact private enterprise will be able to access work for the dole programs is a huge boost, because there are only so many jobs you can do that are community based jobs, and it is very important that people in the work for the dole programs actually have a little bit of experience and firsthand contact with an actual real business that is making a profit and headway in the world. The changes to the qualification period before youth can go onto Newstart will be welcome. The changes to the youth allowance qualification is particularly welcome—as someone who has spoken many times in this place about the inequities between country and city education. The fact that now, for all intents and purposes, small businesses and farms will be exempt from the asset test for qualification for youth allowance is a huge boost for country students. I would like to see it go further, but this is a great improvement. It actually delivers on something that many of us from rural and regional areas have been on about for some time.

On balance, I think the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, has got it about right. We are doing what we can, as fast as we can, to fix the deficit and start paying down Australia's debts. We are putting our chips in small business as the driving factor to get Australia out of the fix that we are in.

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

I listened carefully to the member for Grey's speech. As he was speaking, I was thinking, yes, I would agree with that if only he was talking about the budget that was actually delivered last week. It seems so many people in this House have an imaginary budget in their minds that is nothing like the one that was actually delivered. What we are hearing about, in many ways, is spin—pre-election spin.

I could really give last year's budget speech tonight and much of it would be absolutely as relevant today as it was a year ago. This is a budget of fraud. The unfairness is still there. Families that were worse off under last year's budget will be as worse off under this one. The lack of direction and vision for the future, which was apparent in last year's budget, is here again. There is nothing in this budget that talks about where our country goes or where our prosperity will come from.

The debt, which doubled last year, has doubled again. This is not a budget which even attempts budget repair. In fact, it doubles the deficit yet again. But most of all, just as before the last election when we heard lie after lie from what was then the opposition—any lie they needed to tell to convince people to vote for them—we see that again now. This is a pre-election budget, and the lies are beginning now in preparation for the next election. You cannot believe a word of what they say about this budget. This is an election budget designed to take them to the election. They are lying about the effect the budget has on families. They are lying about the state of the economy. They are telling people what they think they want to hear. It is not a budget for the future, or for families or for jobs. In fact, the figures in the budget demonstrate that it is quite the contrary.

They say they are fixing the economy. We all remember the budget emergency, the emergency before the election, and how they were going to deliver a surplus ever year and then they were going to deliver a surplus within their first term. Now there is no surplus in sight, and yet they are still talking about budget repair—no, now they are talking about beginning the process of budget repair some time down the track, because every year this government has been in they have doubled their deficit. They have not made it less. They have not reduced it. They have not put us on a path to surplus; they have made the situation worse.

When the member for Grey and other members of parliament get up here and talk about how they inherited a terrible situation—if they believe that—they should have a look at their own budget papers and see what the situation is now, now that they have been in charge for two years. It is quadruple what it was in PEFO and double what it was in the last budget. It is twice as bad from their figures last year and four times as bad from the last time we had an independent analysis when the head of Treasury and Finance got together during the election campaign and put out the pre-election forecast. It is not a budget to repair anything except their election prospects.

Debt and spending are up again, but now it seems that debt is a good thing. They are encouraging people to go out and borrow. They are encouraging family debt. They are encouraging apprentice tradie debt. They are encouraging small business debt. They are encouraging student debt. According to this government, debt is really good for everybody else. They claim they are reducing the debt. They are not; they are quadrupling the debt based on the PEFO figures, doubling it from last year within government and encouraging extraordinary levels of debt elsewhere. If this budget is about anything, it is about protecting the electoral prospects of the government.

If you look at the figures in other areas: unemployment is up as well. Unemployment is up every year, year after year, according to their figures. Spending is up as a percentage of GDP every year, according to their own figures. Tax is up. Tax as a percentage of GDP is up. This is a big-spending, big-taxing government that pretends it is doing something for the economy. The reality—and you only have to look at the budget papers—is quite the opposite. So every time they spread that spiel, be aware: you are listening to a pre-election lie. All you have to do to catch them out is look at their very own figures.

They are the biggest-taxing government in 20 years. They are the biggest-spending government in 20 years except for the one year of the global financial crisis where the difference between the two governments was 0.5 per cent of GDP—a very small difference, I would have to say. Apart from that one year, they are the biggest-spending government in 20 years and the biggest-taxing government outright in 20 years—a government that has doubled the deficit two times in a row.

The government says this budget is about jobs. When you look at the detail, it is actually about punishing people back into work. They clearly believe that, if you take a person who is unemployed, a young person, for example, and you insist that they do not get any unemployment benefits for four weeks—in other words, they cannot afford to eat for four weeks—that that will somehow punish them into going back to work.

If they actually believe that works, then I would expect to see some movement in the unemployment figures. I would expect to see that, if they actually believe that you can punish people back into work—that you can take a family with two children on $60,000 a year and rip $6,000 away from them in family benefits or you can make a young person wait for four weeks to get the dole—somehow that punishes that family and incentivises them to go back do work. Yet the unemployment figures show that unemployment is rising every year. So how can these two things be true? How can you punish people back into work, if the jobs are not there and, under your government, you expect there to be more and more and more unemployed people? How can both these things be true?

This is not a budget about jobs. The unemployment rate goes up every year by their own figures so, if that is their strategy, they do not even expect it to work. They have abolished incredibly good programs for youth unemployment. In my electorate, we lost Youth Connections—an incredibly effective program that was abolished at the end of last year. They are now funding a new program. So now there are the fixes. The abolished something that worked. They made it worse and now they expect credit for putting something in its place. You see that right across this budget.

It is the same with small business. It is great to see small business get an instant tax write-off. We thought that when we were in government, which is why we introduced one—$6 billion in tax concessions for small businesses with a turnover of less than $2 million was in the last Labor government budget; $6 billion in tax incentives, all abolished by this government last year when they finally got some of it through the Senate. They abolished $6 billion in tax concessions that had been introduced by the Labor government in the last year of its term. Now they are giving back $5.5 billion. It is a smaller package, it is reshaped, it provides a $20,000 instant tax write-off relative to the $6,500 that Labor proposed, so the amount is bigger—but, strangely enough, the budget is less. The government's scheme is going to cost less, even although it is a larger amount. By my calculations and the calculations of a couple of accountants, going by the budget papers they have only budgeted for 100,000 businesses taking up the instant tax write-off concession in each year. It is hard to believe that that is accurate—we can expect a large blow-out in those figures. But, again, I guess it makes their bottom line look good look good and gives them something to spin.

Families will be worse off under this budget. This is not a budget for families. This is a government that says on the one hand 'We will not improve our bottom line at the expense of families' and then continues to have a go at families in the next breath. And they are—the cuts to families are still there. The NATSEM modelling shows that a family with a single income of $65,000 and two children will be just over $6,000 a year worse off by 2018. A single mother with an income of $55,000 and two children will be $6,107 a year worse off by 2018. These are people on relatively modest incomes who will lose 10 per cent of their income within just a few years—and this is a government that claims it is for families? It is amazing. If the government gets its way, these cuts will take place now. The paid parental leave cuts that will see 80,000 women losing part of their current paid parental leave entitlements and losing substantial amounts of money begin in July 2016, but the childcare package—which this government has outlined in vague form; there is still a lot of detail to come and we know there will be winners and losers—does not cut in until July 2017. This government, that claims it is for families but is cutting in one area in order to force people back to work and pay more money for child care, is cutting now and in July 2016 and is not handing back anything for two years. Families will be worse off. Parents who get paid parental leave, for those opposite who do not know this, are not just public servants—not that there is such a thing as 'just public servants' by the way; they fulfil an extraordinary role—

A government member: Ah, that's what you said.

That is fine, I did—and now I am clarifying it: there is no such thing as 'just a public servant'. But this government seems to think that as long as they are attacking public servants they are on safe ground. They are not with me and they are not with large parts of the community. Public servants are not the only ones who currently get paid parental leave from their employers. Bank employees get it, McDonald's employees get it, Coles employees get it. Men and women on $40,000 a year get paid parental leave of sometimes between eight and 24 weeks a year from their employer—they will lose it.

These are not highly paid people who can afford to have a substantial part of their family income cut by this government, and yet they will—and they will have it cut a year earlier than any childcare benefits that flow through. Again, we do not know who those benefits are flowing to. We do know that they will flow to women in the early years of their child's life, from 0 to 2—unless you are one of those women who gives birth the year before, when the paid parental leave cuts out and the childcare benefits have not cut in; then you miss out in the first year of your child's life, but they are taking from families who have children six and over in order to give to that group and they are taking the money a year early. This is sleight of hand—it is quite extraordinary.

The sweeteners in this budget in most cases cut in after 2017, and most of the cuts cut in now. One could be forgiven for thinking that they are trying to push the budgetary implications off until after the next election. You could be forgiven for thinking that, but, heaven forbid, that could not be right, could it?

Two of the dreadful measures from the last budget are gone. Two—that is all. All the others are still hanging around. The two that are gone are, firstly, that dreadful plan they had to reduce the real value of pensions over time. It has disappeared for the moment. They tried many times. Clearly it is in their DNA. But that for the moment has gone. Although, the cuts to concessions that the states and councils pass on through concessions on rates and transport are still there, that is still gone. But they have moved now from attacking the lowest paid retirees to attacking the next band of retirees. They are now moving into the people who get part pensions. Again, we are still looking for the detail of that. But they are now targeting that interesting band of people, probably a lot of people who started collecting their superannuation maybe in their 40s, because they are retiring now. For people of my generation superannuation did not really start in a compulsory way until we were in our 30s. So it was very low to start with. There are a lot of people who would be approaching retirement age now or in the next 10 years whose superannuation is not actually at a completely liveable level, particularly on current interest rates. So they are attacking them. They are leaving alone people whose retirement savings are enormous. They have moved from the band of people with the least retirement savings to the people with the greatest. But they have moved away from the very end because they could not get away with it. They have moved up one step to the next vulnerable lot. It is really interesting to see where this government targets. They target the most vulnerable people they can get away with. The targeting of people on part pension is an absolute example of it.

We have seen the GP tax go—versions 1 to 6 have now gone. Version 7 could be called the stealth version. It freezes scheduled fees to GPs so that within a few years they will be forced to put up their fees in order to cover costs. So if you cannot do it through the front door in versions 1 to 6, do it through the back door with the stealth version. That is what they are doing. But, overwhelmingly, the thing for me in this budget, as it was in the last budget, is the lack of any vision for the country, for any vision of where this country gets its growth or any vision whatsoever of what Australia will be in 2050 in terms of where we work and how we generate our prosperity.

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

I love reading Ross Gittins on the day when we are speaking on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills. Only 10 minutes ago I was actually reading Ross Gittins's piece in the Canberra Times, but it could be out of any paper right across the nation. He is talking about something that was of key importance to me that I wanted to speak about today. He talks about the views of Dr Mike Keating, 'a retired super-senior econocrat, whose contributions to the public debate are often greatly enlightening, especially relative to the official obfuscation.' Gittins says:

The Other Keating makes two important points. His first is that there's a lot more to be gained from paid employment than just money. 'Being employed creates many of the social contacts and sense of self-esteem that are vital to our individual wellbeing,' he says.

Gittins further quotes Keating:

'Increasing employment participation is most important if governments want to improve living standards, individual wellbeing and equality.'

Gittins, still referring to Keating, then says:

His second point is that, contrary to what some argue, the weak point in our participation isn't married women. Our overall rate of 'employment participation' as he calls it—the proportion of the working-age population with a paid job—is just under 61 per cent, which breaks down into averages of 67 per cent for men and 55 per cent for women.

Surprisingly, this overall 61 per cent is the same as it was 50 years ago. But its composition has changed markedly. Male employment participation is as much as 18 percentage points lower than it was in 1966, whereas the female rate is 15 percentage points higher. The decline for men is explained mainly by the decline in blue-collar jobs, as computerisation has eliminated many unskilled jobs. The rise for women reflects changing social attitudes and women's greater suitability for filling jobs in the ever-growing services sector.

Here's the point—

says Keating, as written by Ross Gittins—

Almost all the long-term decline in employment participation by men aged 25 to 55 was accounted for by those who didn't complete secondary school and have no further qualifications.

What's more, in that age range, employment participation is much lower for those who didn't complete year12 and have no further qualifications—71 per cent for men and 60 per cent for women—than it is for those who did complete schooling and have further qualifications: almost 18 percentage points higher for men and 22 percentage points for women.

Keating notes that the overall rate of employment participation for Australian women is only a little lower than for women in can comparable countries, and for women with tertiary qualifications there's virtually no difference.

Then he says:

Get it? It's not women who are causing our employment participation to be lower than we'd like, it's the less skilled.

He says:

"It is people whose educational qualifications are poor and who lack skills who have most scope to increase their employment participation."

People with skills do not have the scope to increase their employment participation:

So "the focus should be on policies to improve the job prospects of low-skilled and disadvantaged people."

It comes to my point today. Between the postcode of 3810 and the border—Pakenham to the border in Victoria—there are two electorates: Gippsland and McMillan. We rely extremely heavily on two main employers: Australian Paper, and the electricity industry or the coal industry or whatever you might like to call it. Although Australian Paper is not in my electorate, there are those in my electorate who are employed at Australian Paper. It is owned now by Nippon Paper. Previously, while I was there, it was owned by a former company. Nippon is one of the largest copy paper manufacturers in the world. Australian Paper has over 900 employees. It is the largest private employer in the Latrobe Valley. I will repeat that: it is the largest private employer in the Latrobe Valley. Australian Paper have already announced, sadly, that manufacturing operations at its only other mill in Australia, at Shoalhaven in New South Wales, will cease and close in 2015. Australian Paper is Australia's only manufacturer of white, uncoated cut sheet paper. It supplies nearly 50 per cent of Australia's requirements domestically in addition to supplying a similar amount to the export market. The remaining 50 per cent of the domestic market is supplied by imports from a variety of countries, primarily in Asia. Many employees who work at the Maryvale plant live in Warragul or Moe et cetera—for example, Tristan Branson, an engineer, who worked his way up at the Maryvale Mill and is now part of the management team at Australian Paper based at Ferntree Gully. He lives in Warragul in my electorate.

Australian Paper commissioned the Western Research Institute to study the local benefits of AP in the community. It found that Australian Paper's contribution to Australia's GDP is $754 million, $458.5 million to household income. It found that Australian Paper supports 5,928 jobs Australia-wide and generates $432 million or $1.81 per ream of paper in government revenue. AP's waste paper recycling project at Maryvale will contribute $110 million from construction to Australia's GDP, $51 million ongoing to Australia's GDP, $57 million to household income from construction, $19 million ongoing to household income, 967 jobs in the construction phase, which is now complete, and 246 ongoing jobs. Are we getting the importance of this one company to my area?

Availability and price of energy is a major challenge facing this country. Australian paper is an energy-intensive, trade-exposed business. Currently, Australian Paper have not been able to secure a gas contract beyond the life of their current contact, which will expire over the next couple of years. Therefore, the moratorium on gas exploration in Victoria is having a direct impact on the energy security of this company that is so important to Australia.

Darren Chester, the member for Gippsland, the CFMEU—which I have had a long and close association with in my electorate, especially the forestry branch and especially Michael O'Connor, who I consider a friend and who in the past I have put at the table beside the Prime Minister of the day—and the Committee for Gippsland have been running a campaign, along with myself, to encourage the federal government, as our responsibility, to procure Australian made copy paper. Only one minister so far has agreed, Minister Barnaby Joyce, and he has recently announced that his department would switch to procuring Australian made copy paper. There are still many other departments that do not, and this is unacceptable. We will be running a campaign and writing to every minister asking them to consider that the paper that they use in their departments is Australian paper.

This has been a long-running issue facing Australian Paper. As the member for McMillan from 1996 to 1998—and then thrown out again—I was very much a part of the process of holding that plant in place. Their complaint to the Australian Anti-Dumping Commission, and the commission's subsequent investigation, is ongoing and not seeming to get anywhere. The price of cut sheet paper imported from China has been steadily declining from 2009, and in early 2011 volumes from China began to rapidly escalate all of a sudden, tripling from pre-2011 levels and reducing the volume and market share of not only Australian Paper's product but also products imported from other countries.

In addition to suffering a loss of market share and sales volume, Australian Paper has been forced to reduce its prices and, as a result, take cost containment measures, which include reducing employment in both paper production and sales distribution. This has had a direct impact on the Gippsland region, in the context of not only the Maryvale mill but also its employees, who have been made redundant, and other local businesses and contractors who provide services to Australian Paper.

In the Anti-Dumping Commission's investigation, while Australian Paper was the most significantly impacted Australian party, it was not the only one. The Australian Forest Products Association noted that there had been a surge of cheap Chinese paper being sold in Australia over the past 18 months, and the impact that had on the local paper production market was considerable. The issue is not about trade protection. We have never been on about that. As Australian Forest Products Association's Ross Hampton said:

The industry has no beef with importers. We have to compete on our own two feet and on our own merit … But what the World Trade Organisation recognises, and what Australian law recognises, is that it's not a level playing field if a country over produces a commodity and then simply tries to get rid of it in another market at below its sale price in its own country. That's called dumping and that's the allegation here.'

In the few minutes that I have left I need to talk about the energy sector in the other big part of my electorate and, as Ross Gittins was talking about, jobs for people and jobs for the future.

What legacy do we—Darren Chester and I—want to leave? Whether I leave in 10 years' time or Darren leaves in 20 years' time, I do not know, but we would like to leave the legacy of better education, better roads, better opportunities for young people to get jobs in the sectors in their local communities, better hospitals, new hospitals, better health care, better aged care—and I can go on. We have below us this amazing opportunity that we call brown coal—and there are ways to use it outside of the uses that we have for it today. I have spoken with people about coal to fertiliser, coal to diesel, coal to gas and coal to oil. We have thousands of years of supply of this precious resource. Can you imagine if one of the legacies that Darren and I left from our time in this place as the members for McMillan and Gippsland was that we left a resource in the ground that could have been turned into diesel and would have meant that we as a nation would become self-sufficient in diesel just out of the Latrobe Valley?

Can you imagine that? We could be self-sufficient in diesel just out of the brown coal from the Latrobe Valley. That will then employ all the people that Ross Gittins and Dr Keating were talking about. It would make my 900 at AP look like a small group. Hundreds of people in the electricity industry in the Latrobe Valley supply us that precious resource which then turns the lights on across Australia. We could be getting our electricity from renewable sources, from solar power, or from whatever it may be in the future, but at the same time we could have our own diesel, which we own, in Australia. If we put the energy and the resources into having a vision for the future of the Latrobe Valley, that is greater than digging it out and burning it.

We have that opportunity now, to focus on into the next five, 10, 20 or 30 years, for a future that opens up employment for all sorts of people. We can then carry on and provide people with a greater education, greater opportunity and have more employment participation. There lies the future for us. It is not an old-fashioned 'dig it out of the ground'; it is an old-fashioned 'can we turn this into diesel'. Yes, we can. Can we turn it into oil? Yes, we can. Can we turn it into fertiliser? Yes, we can.

We can have a dream too. It is not an old cliche to have a dream about where a community might be into the future. As the Salvation Army has said, there are lower socioeconomic families that try to live on $17.80 a day, which is all that is left over after their household expenses. I would find that absolutely impossible to do. We, as a government, can open up a brighter economic future for those lower socioeconomic families. And, for the Latrobe Valley, it will make us an icon to the world. We could turn our assets into the future health, wellbeing and security of the people of the Latrobe Valley and the whole of Gippsland. We can be a world leader again. That is the dream I put before you, and there is opportunity. Let's enter into the research of where we are going to be with this amazing resource in the years ahead.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 12:58 to 16:00

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

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills. Every year on the second Tuesday in May the government of the day delivers its budget for the next 12 months. The aim of the budget is for the government to share its vision for our nation, set its goals and its priorities and then document how this will be achieved. Australia's budget needs to be a document that will guide the nation by setting a clear and defined direction for the future and by setting clear and obtainable goals. The government determines the type of nation it wants Australia to be into the future by allocations to a variety of areas and programs and, as such, shapes societal values which determine the type of society and democracy we are now and into the future.

Australia is a nation that has a reputation for being a strong democracy, and it is vitally important that this democracy is protected and nurtured. Furthermore, our democracy must represent the values and views of all Australians while at the same time ensuring that not one group is marginalised at the expense of another group. It is the role of a government in a democratic Australia to follow the democratic principles and govern for all Australians. Recently I was reading an article by Mitzi Bolton. She is doing a fellowship at the Crawford School at the ANU. In this article she said:

True democracy isn’t a sausage sizzle and a ballot box. It’s not a #QandA retweet or a Facebook ‘like’ of memes of the PM. It’s debating our future, and that of our children. It’s reflecting on our values and showing that we do have views and we want them to be considered. It’s taking action to ensure that the reality we want is brought to life.

That is the way I see a budget. It should encompass that view of democracy and those values and should meet the expectation of Australians that our government will take our democracy seriously and show vision and leadership.

There is an expectation that the government will share its vision with Australians, but on this occasion it was impossible to find a vision in the budget. There was no plan for the future—only political rhetoric. I was really disappointed with that. I could have accepted a vision. I could have accepted a plan that was different to mine, because the government has very different views to mine. But what I am so devastated about is that it has left Australia swimming like a headless fish, without any direction or any plan of where it is going. I believe that we in Australia deserve better. I believe the people of Australia deserve better. I think we as politicians need to show some leadership and make the point that, when it comes to the delivery of a budget, the budget is going to map out and deliver a real plan of what the people of Australia can expect.

The other thing that I am particularly upset about with this budget is that it does nothing to address the inequities and unfairness of the 2014 budget—in fact, it has actually built on that unfairness—and, as I said, there is no vision, no plan for the future and no attempt to restore fairness. It is a budget that delivers winners and losers. I am very supportive of small businesses. They play a very important role in Australia. I hope that the government's predictions of the small business sector providing more jobs comes to fruition. But the budget also targeted a number of people, and they became losers—families with young children. It entrenched the fact that the family tax benefit B would be taken from those families who can least afford it. It creates a situation where there are in-groups in our society that the government is prepared to work with and support, and out-groups that it is not prepared to support. The miners and the big end of town are the in-groups. The out-groups are those people who rely on government more than other people. They are people who are more marginal, who rely on welfare and who, on most occasions, would like to be employed.

Before coming into parliament, I spent a lifetime working with people who, for one reason or another, were unemployed. I even worked with people with disabilities who were unemployed. I know how hard it is. I have been out there with them trying to organise work. It is not because they do not want to work. What I find so upsetting is that this budget really stigmatises those people. It is not about the fact that we are taking away support for people that really rely on it; it is that the government is saying it is about getting people into work. My question for the government, and it is a very strong question, is: where are those jobs? Unemployment has increased. The government made a prediction that it would create one million more jobs. No way will it make that target! In addition to that, there have been so many jobs that have disappeared. It is really important that a government is honest with the Australian people. For the record, I would say that the only jobs that this budget is about are that the jobs of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer.

What about debt and deficit? Debt is at $39 billion. The deficit has doubled. The government has been borrowing money to pay for this. It is borrowing money. The debt is increasing. The deficit is increasing. The icing on the cake is when I hear every minister in the government standing downstairs and saying they are increasing spending on every item in the budget. How can the budget be showing savings, whilst on the other hand every minister is increasing spending? I will leave that question in the air and turn to couple of areas that I am particularly concerned about.

The cuts to schools and hospitals are unforgiveable. The rhetoric, and the doubletalk, that is used in this place to cover up for that is shameful. Our schools need to be funded properly. Our hospitals need to be funded properly. The fact that so many schools are struggling at the moment and so many families are struggling—and I will touch on families in a minute—is despicable. Added to that is that funding for skills and training has been cut in this budget. There is no money for apprentices, no money for upskilling workers and no funding for group training organisations. That is very sad, because this is all about skills; this is all about training; this is all about jobs.

I promised I would talk a little about families. The Treasurer was on Q&Aon Monday night as I am sure most people in this House are aware. I was on my way home from parliament and I got a phone call saying, 'Joe Hockey is going to take $20,000 away from me over four years. I can't afford that. My wife can't go to work. I do not know how I'm going to be able to afford that. I'm in that category where $65,000 a year is what my salary is. I work weekends to even get that sort of level of salary.' I think it is absolutely despicable. I urge the government to go out and talk to real people.

The NATSEM modelling that the government has ridiculed this week is real. Nine out of 10 of the poorest families are going to be worse off; nine out of 10 of the wealthiest families are going to be better off. Those nine out of 10 families fit into the category of that phone call I got from that person on Monday who does not have the opportunity. The person I was speaking to works very, very long hours and his wife is unable to work.

I think that the government really needs to take stock of what it has done, what it is doing, to families and Australians in this budget. It is not fair. It is creating groups of winners and losers—in groups, out groups. Those people are going to find it harder and harder to survive.

This budget has not created a vision for the future. I suspect the only vision revolves around winning the next election. We are better than that. We are much better than that. As a country, we should be looking at our future, trying to make it a strong country.

The Leader of the Opposition in his response highlighted a couple of areas: jobs for the new economy, coding in schools. Once again, the Prime Minister showed he did not really understand the issue, unlike the member for Wentworth who knows and understands that you must start learning those skills when you are actually in primary school.

I was talking to a young man at a surf club presentation on Saturday night, and he told me he wanted to be a computer programmer. I talked to him about coding, and he educated me to a degree. It is about being prepared to open your mind, look to the future, look to new ideas and to where the jobs are going to be in the future. I do not think we are doing that at the moment.

The Leader of the Opposition also highlighted how our future prosperity depends on entrepreneurship and developing new global markets for Australia. If we do not do that in the future, we are in danger of becoming a much smaller economy and a much poorer society where our people would live much more frugally.

Finally, the infrastructure for the future that was announced by the Leader of the Opposition is part of our plan—taking the politics out of infrastructure and putting the national interest at the heart of nation building. It should not be about putting money into marginal seats; it should be about a plan that is developed objectively and that is in the interests of Australia, not in the interest of being re-elected.

Probably the most complaints about the budget I received in my office were from seniors. I am sure that that was pretty common throughout Australia. It did not relate to superannuation; it related to the changes to the part pension. Pensioner after pensioner contacted me saying that they had made their decisions based on what was happening at the time. I do not think the government fully understands the implications of the changes that they have made. These are not people who are wealthy, but these are people who stand to lose 20 per cent or more of their income. The paid parental leave and the failure to invest in a domestic violence strategy are disappointments.

I would like to finish where I started, by saying: vision; plan. That is what this country needs—a vision for the future and a plan for the future so that jobs that we cannot even think of will be created for all Australians. We need a government that can show real leadership. We need a government that is there for all Australians. We need a government that is not going to favour one sector over another. We need a government that delivers budgets that deliver for each and every Australian.

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

I too rise to endorse the cognate debate on the appropriation bills before the House, which will ensure that every Australian has the opportunity to access services and support which will generate growth in their own prosperity and the prosperity of this nation as a whole. It is a budget that builds on the coalition's long-term standing as, one, the party which knows how to balance the budget books and protect Australia's economic future, two, the party which protects its citizens and residents both on a domestic level and from threats abroad and, three, the party which supports small business, which, as members know, in turn builds both business and consumer confidence and generates employment opportunities throughout Australia. Whether it is health, education, industry, innovation, infrastructure or welfare, the appropriation bills before the House are the building blocks of Australia's future in infrastructure, regional development and domestic trade and as an internationally competitive exporter in a range of service areas.

The development of northern Australia is just one example of this government and the 2015-16 budget's focus on creating long-term growth—I know you hold the development of the north of Australia dear to your heart, Madam Deputy Speaker Griggs, and it is a very important part of the coalition's strategy—rather than the implementation of policies that are nothing more than short-term fixes, as we saw under the six long years that those opposite were in government. I am thankful to say those six long years are now behind us, but the impact is still being felt in every Australian's hip pocket because of Labor's mismanaged, cash-splashing policies.

We have seen some of those on the opposite side come here and talk about our budget and then talk about their budgets, none of which ever delivered a surplus, as though they were the Holy Grail. Yesterday, the member for Lingiari came in and spoke about the tax cuts that we are giving to small business. What amazed me was that the member for Lingiari said that we copied their idea. He said they introduced a one per cent tax deduction for small business five years ago and then he blamed the coalition for blocking it, but what he forgets is that they were in power—they were in government. They had the numbers in the lower house to get that through, but, because they were getting no money from the mining tax, they had to drop it and they blamed the coalition for it. I just cannot believe how the member for Lingiari could stand up there like that and absolutely misrepresent the truth and blame it on the coalition. That is what they have done; they have held up their previous budgets as the Holy Grail. There was not one surplus in any of them. In fact, given the Labor Party's history of economic mismanagement, I highly recommend that it be listed as their new national platform. They could even have a new slogan to go with it. I am not trying to channel the Prime Minister, but it could be: 'Vote waste, vote Labor, vote for welfare'—as we heard the Prime Minister say, it is the welfare party.

Unlike those opposite, the coalition is a government which is focused on rebuilding the economy and developing new trade agreements that will benefit consumers domestically and our exporters, who are competing on a global scale. We are focused on creating new jobs and encouraging new and established businesses to take advantage of the concessions and subsidies this government is offering. But, to achieve this, policies must be implemented and legislation such as the appropriation bills before the House must be passed in this place and in the other place. They are policies that, if passed, will put Australia back on a sustainable growth towards surplus, which, as members know, is something that those opposite systematically stripped from this country during those long six years. They are six long years that we will never forget because never before has one government managed to put this country so far into debt. And never before had a government managed to introduce policies that had the potential to destroy one of our biggest export industries through a fiscally unstable and competition-destroying mining tax. Fixing this mess will take time, but I am pleased to be part of this government as we can hold our heads high and say that we are absolutely focused on, and on our way to, achieving just that. This is not just on a national level but also on a local level.

In my electorate of Swan, you cannot get into your motor vehicle without witnessing how this government is investing in every resident's future. The billion-dollar Gateway WA project is just one example of a project which is generating business growth and new jobs, particularly within the construction industry. This project, I am pleased to inform the House, is now more than 60 per cent complete, ahead of time and below budget, and has enabled us to increase the amount of roadworks it has been doing. And, I might say, it does not rely on the mining tax to fund it. This project alone has employed more than 600 Western Australian businesses and created about 1,300 construction jobs. Also in my electorate of Swan is the Kewdale-Welshpool industrial hub. It, in particular, will significantly capitalise from this investment through key local road modifications in Kewdale to accommodate the Leach Highway upgrade.

But it is not just through road infrastructure and new jobs that Swan is benefiting. This project has also significantly boosted a local family-owned business which is based in the Kewdale area, as they were awarded the contract for all of that steel used to construct the new interchanges. This Swan based organisation, called the Fero Group, is a national steel manufacturing and anticorrosion service company and a leading provider of products and services to the oil and gas, mining, civil marine, commercial industrial and residential industries. They are based in Queensland as well. They are a true family-owned business which has worked hard to implement good business strategies that have ensured that they remain domestically and internationally competitive within the manufacturing industry. But this is far from the only initiative supporting Swan residents and businesses.

There is also the coalition government's new $45 million commitment over two years to fund small capital projects in local communities under the Stronger Communities Program. Under this initiative, all federal electorates will receive funding of $150,000 per year over two years to assist organisations to implement projects that will deliver social benefits.

Is that the opposition I hear saying, 'Thank you for that money,' which they all got for their own electorates as well, which they can use to benefit their own local organisations? I have not heard one member of the opposite side say anything good about that $150,000; so, obviously, they do not want it.

It is an initiative that I know the local government authorities in my electorate of Swan will welcome, as will the local organisations like the Belmont Toy Library which I visited on Saturday which needs some extra funding to put in some playground equipment and a barbecue for their toy library and the local childcare group. So I am hoping that we can channel some of that money down to that local toy group.

This will also work hand-in-hand with the more than $1.6 billion in vital infrastructure projects that are already being rolled out in Swan or are soon to commence, including: $2.7 million to fix seven dangerous black spots across the Swan electorate, including Spencer Road in Langford and Shepperton Road in Victoria Park, which have long been identified as dangerous roads for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians; up to $5 million in Roads to Recovery funding in the next financial year to assist Swan's local government authorities to maintain and upgrade their local roads; and $45,000 in funding under the Community Development Grants Program for the City of South Perth to undertake an aquatic centre feasibility study which I am looking forward to seeing and reviewing the results of very soon.

In this year's federal budget, there is, however, one project in particular that I would like to highlight in this place, as it involves funding for an initiative which one of the local government authorities in my electorate of Swan has been planning and trying to gain funding contributions toward for the past 11 years. After this wait, I was pleased to see that once again this coalition government has recognised the value of investing in job-generating projects and projects that will boost local economic growth by committing $6 million toward the much-needed upgrade of the Belmont business park's transport infrastructure area. This project was put forward for funding by the City of Belmont under the coalition's National Stronger Regions Fund which is contributing $212 million in funding toward 51 priority infrastructure projects across Australia under round 1 alone. I was very pleased that, as the city's federal representative, I was able to not only inform the city about this initiative and lend my support to the project but also deliver the funding they need to get the works underway.

This $6 million will fund 50 per cent of the $12 million project which overall includes upgrading Belmont Avenue cycle and pedestrian paths and streetscapes, the creation of an additional 800 parking bays within the Belmont business park, undergrounding the power on Belmont Avenue and the upgrade and addition of bus stops with improved shelter provision. This will help resolve traffic problems and allow for more sustainable public transport and create a more functional main thoroughfare within the business park area to ensure the region is able to continue developing as a vibrant hub for business to invest in and operate. It will also complement the work of the other government investments in the area, including the Gateway WA project, the Perth Freight Link project, and the Great Eastern Highway upgrade, which was completed a few years ago.

I previously mentioned the Fero Group, a local manufacturing business in my electorate of Swan, which has been very successful through the booms and downturns of the Australian economy and that of the global market. Even though the local manufacturers gain vital business from infrastructure projects such as the Gateway WA, they definitely are not resting on their laurels and waiting for business to come to them, and they are not asking for bailouts or handouts. In fact, I would encourage any members in this place who claim that manufacturing is finished in Western Australia to come to my electorate of Swan and visit this business.

The only reason a state such as Victoria, which used to be known as the manufacturing state of Australia, is rapidly declining is because of the union groups over there that are constantly in the way and strangling growth and potential. I remember working for a national company that had a manufacturing base in Cheltenham in Victoria that had to shut down the manufacturing plant due to the pressures and work practices that were put upon them by the metalworkers union. They closed their family business down after 40 years.

Perhaps being family owned is the answer, because, comparatively, Fero Group is working hard to build their business so that they continue to grow in the long term. I am pleased to inform the House that the coalition government is helping them to achieve that outside of contract agreements, as well. Just last week I had the pleasure of visiting the Fero Group's Kewdale facility and meeting its founder, Mario, who immigrated to Australia over 45 years ago, his sons, Michael and Robert Franco, and the organisation's chief financial officer, Len Troncone, and gave this family business the news that the government had committed $4.9 million under the Manufacturing Transition Program to advance their manufacturing capability. They are working to build their own business so that they are not just relying on the government support to see them through. In fact, overall this is a $23.95 million project that the organisation is investing in, which will ensure that it remains a competitive and sustainable business, both domestically and on a global scale, and continues to employ local people in my electorate of Swan. This funding investment will specifically contribute towards the organisation's plans to design and build a new state-of-the-art highly automated galvanising plant that will result in an expanded range and size of superior galvanised products for local and export markets. By securing this Commonwealth grant funding, the timing of the project has been sped up, which will lead to a more competitive business, greater exports and more employment a lot quicker.

This funding is not just benefiting the manufacturing sector in Swan. Overall, this program is a $250 million investment by the government into the future of Australia's manufacturing capabilities, with $200 million being invested by the Australian manufacturers, and $50 million by the government, to boost the capabilities of 19 businesses across Australia.

The benefits of the 2015-16 budget also do not end with infrastructure and manufacturing in Swan. The coalition government is also working to design and implement initiatives in other policy areas, such as education and health, that will ensure our students are best placed to compete globally in the future marketplace. Earlier this month I welcomed the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education, Senator Scott Ryan, to Swan to officially launch the Early Learning Languages Australia trial, which aims to explore new ways to help children learn languages other than English, through language-specific apps. Redcliffe Primary School in my electorate of Swan was one of the pre-schools chosen for this trial, with students now learning Mandarin. With China being Australia's largest export market, it is programs such as this that will set up our students for future success.

Lastly I would like to highlight an initiative I have for the last five years been lobbying my federal and state government colleagues to fund and support. I have done this along with Senator Eggleston, who has now left the parliament, both in opposition and now in government, and I am very pleased to say that just last week it has come to fruition. Thanks to the coalition government, $20 million will be invested in a new Curtin University medical school to address the health workforce needs of Western Australia, which are currently well behind every other state, as well as the national average. For those members who are not aware of it, Western Australia continues to struggle with a shortage of about 1,000 medical practitioners, when compared with the national average, and has an over-reliance on overseas trained doctors, with 38.2 per cent of registrations, compared with the national average of 26 per cent.

We need more locally trained doctors in Western Australia, particularly in the state's rural and regional areas, which is exactly what the new medical school will achieve. This is because the key difference between Curtin University's medical school degrees and other medical degrees is the focus on addressing areas of health care that medical professionals are currently lacking. The five-year undergraduate degree will, therefore, specifically focus on such areas as mental health, primary care, chronic disease and ageing, which are in vital need of service support. I know the member for Shortland is aware that we are just kicking off a chronic disease management and prevention inquiry through the health committee.

I am sure many members of this place are aware of the Australian Medical Association's—shall we say—politely aggressive criticisms of this initiative in the media, particularly in regard to traineeship placements. If the AMA bothered to actually read what the initiative included, then they would know that their criticisms are completely baseless, thanks to the trilateral partnership between the Commonwealth, the WA state government and Curtin University with new clinical training internships and specialist training places that will be established for all students at the new school.

I recommend and commend the bills to the House.

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

The budget handed down last week by the Treasurer Hockey puts the political interests of the Liberal Party ahead of the national economic interest. The best that can be said of this budget is that, after spending five years undermining confidence and weakening economic growth through irresponsible rhetoric of a budget emergency, the coalition have finally realised how much damage they have done to the Australian economy. Sadly, this budget provides no lasting, sustainable policies to bring down unemployment or to boost economic growth. It most certainly does not wipe away the stench of unfairness that came from last year's budget.

Last year's budget was classic, trickle-down economics. It was a declaration of class and intergenerational war against low- and middle-income earners. This budget continues that war against low- and middle-income earners with continued cuts to family payments to low- and middle-income earners as well as $80 billion worth of cuts to the services they need when it comes to hospitals and schools. These measures, and the continuation of these measures alone, hit confidence further at a time when the government says that it is seeking to stimulate confidence.

This is a budget which is a big-spending budget; it is a big-taxing budget. Indeed, if this had been a budget delivered by the Labor Party, it would have provoked cries of fiscal vandalism from the coalition. Instead, what do we have? The coalition say that they have a 'have-a-go' budget which attempts to restore confidence to an economy that has already had its confidence smashed. Before the budget, consumer confidence was down 13 per cent while business confidence was down a whopping 23 per cent since the election. With confidence so low economic growth has slowed, and over the forward estimates in this budget growth is predicted at around 2.5 per cent in 2014-15 and 2015-16. This growth rate is not enough to stop unemployment from rising, let alone lower unemployment, which, for the first time in a decade, has a '6' in front of it. By comparison Labor kept unemployment with a '5' in front of it. Labor created one million new jobs, even as the global economy experienced the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Over that same period, while virtually every other developed economy in the world went backwards, Australia experienced cumulative growth of 15 per cent.

By getting the big economic calls right during the GFC, and putting in place long-term productivity enhancing reforms in the wake of the GFC, Labor primed Australia for the transition from mining sources of growth to non-mining sources of growth. This transition, or the failure to make this transition successfully, is of course the central economic challenge that our country faces and one which the coalition has comprehensively bungled through two budgets and two MYEFOs.

The first test that this budget fails is the jobs test. In the most benign global economic conditions for eight years Mr Hockey's budget forecast six per cent unemployment across the forecast period. This means 750,000 unemployed Australians. It means that is the new norm, and it leaves us at risk of any small sized economic shock pushing that level up to around one million people.

The second test the budget fails is what I call the fairness test. It is a test they failed comprehensively in the last budget. In the weeks since the budget was handed down we have had both ACOSS and NATSEM show us just how fair and how harsh this budget is on low- and middle-income earners. It is as harsh as it was in the first budget. ACOSS estimates that the 2015 budget will cut $15 billion over four years from basic services which support vulnerable groups. NATSEM modelling shows that nine out of 10 of the lowest income families lose out under the Abbott budget, while nine out of 10 of the wealthiest families benefit. Above all, what NATSEM modelling shows is that Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey do have their sights set well and truly on low- and middle-income families. Under this budget, a family with a single income of $65,000 and two children will be $6,165 a year worse off by 2018-19. A family with a dual income of $120,000 and two children will be $3,272 a year worse off by 2018-19.

Mr Hockey and Mr Abbott used to say that surpluses were in their DNA. They certainly do not say that anymore, and they do not say it for obvious reasons. But when a budget designed to be less fair than last year's manages to produce these kinds of terrible effects, we know there is something else which is truly there in their DNA, and that is the inability to practise fairness in any budget or in any economic statement.

The third test this budget fails is the credibility test. Just four of the assumptions in this budget are quite heroic and they fundamentally challenge the credibility of the budget. First is the assumption that wages will grow faster than inflation, paving the way for sturdy personal income tax collections. Over the past year to March 2015, there was almost no growth in real wages. That does not add up. Even though there has been no growth in real wages, the budget forecasts strong increases in household consumption. How is weak wage growth with strong consumption a logical assumption? And the forecast that nominal GDP growth will rise from 1.5 per cent in 2014-15 to 5.5 per cent by 2016-17 is optimistic—admittedly, not unheard of, but very optimistic. This would imply a return to solid real GDP growth typical of the early 2000s and an unlikely prospect with the coalition's current policy settings.

The final assumption is that non-mining business investment will shrug off the pessimism which saw business confidence plummet 23 per cent before the budget and that investment will grow at a pace not seen since before the GFC. This assumption is undermined by the fact that capital expenditure has consistently come in below market expectations. So really what we have at the moment is a budget which is a house of cards, with key assumptions that look like they have been manipulated by Frank Underwood.

The fourth test this budget fails is the coalition's own debt and deficit test. When the coalition came to office they had spent five years claiming there was a debt and deficit disaster that was causing a budget and economic emergency. The deficits across the 2014, 2015 and 2016 financial years are four times what they were under the independently prepared and verified pre-election fiscal outlook. I will say that again. Deficits for 2014, 2015 and 2016 are an astonishing four times larger than the budget that they inherited. Mr Hockey and Mr Abbott style themselves as some sort of modern-day fiscal fire brigade. You call these guys, the house is supposedly on fire, and when they have been there for two hours the whole neighbourhood has gone up in flames. That is the logic of their own analogies.

There has also been a great deal of debate about the structural deficit in the budget. It is clear that Australia does need a clear pathway back to surplus, consistent with trend growth and accompanying fiscal consolidation. But when it comes to this pathway it requires action on both the spending and the revenue fronts.

Independently prepared PBO papers confirms the structural deficit is a hangover from the coalition's last term in office, when Peter Costello cracked open the rum crates and the vault at Treasury and managed to spend 94 per cent of the revenue write-ups. He managed to spend $314 billion of $334 billion worth of revenue write-ups from the mining boom. In fact, the PBO papers indicate that two-thirds of the five percentage point decline in revenue can be attributed to the tax cuts undertaken by Peter Costello. Indeed, Mr Hockey must be getting spending tips from Peter Costello, because in every year of the forward estimates the budget has a higher spend as a proportion of GDP than Labor except for one year—the year when we initiated the stimulus package that saved Australia from recession.

That deals with the claims of being a low spending government. What about low taxing? We hear a lot about that as well. The coalition is increasing the tax take as a proportion of GDP every year across the forward estimates. In fact, taxation revenue as a share of GDP is forecast to rise between 0.3 and 0.5 percentage points every year for the next five years. This means the tax take in every year across the forward estimates will be higher under Mr Hockey than it was under the last Labor government. And it is not just higher taxing that weighs so heavily on working Australians; it is who is paying that tax. By allowing multinational corporations to profit shift, the coalition is effectively placing more of the tax burden on working Australians and killing off any hope of relief from bracket creep.

The final aspect of this fiscal fairy tale is that the coalition is supposedly the party of low debt. When the coalition came to government, they used their shamefully political 2013 MYEFO to blame Labor for supposedly taking Australia to $667 billion gross debt within a decade. This is complete fiction. On the ABC the other night in an interview with Mathias Cormann after the budget, he used that figure again. He claimed $667 billion gross debt. The interviewer had this to say—and she was absolutely correct:

They were your figures. With respect, that is a nonsense figure that you continue to trot out that you made up yourselves.

In the PEFO, which is the relevant comparison, the one that should have been referred to by the government, the figure is $370 billion—an enormous difference. But the government with no shame simply makes these figures up and peddles them around the country. The shame for the country is that that has produced a lack of confidence, which has led to lower levels of economic growth. It has been essential to the government's deficit and debt fiscal fear campaign and it has blown up in their face.

The fifth test this budget fails is the productivity test. The only way to boost growth in both the short term and the long term is to invest and to expand the productive capacity of the economy. In particular, for Australia, what this means in the first instance is quality investments in infrastructure and in education. We know the Prime Minister has dubbed himself the 'infrastructure Prime Minister', but I think, as Alan Kohler described it, his efforts on infrastructure 'have been pathetic'. They have been worse than pathetic. Since the Prime Minister came to office not a single infrastructure project has begun. Infrastructure investment has plummeted to levels not seen since the Howard government. The government's own budget papers—forget Alan Kohler and forget independent analysts—confirm that there will be a real decline in infrastructure investment of 11.2 per cent between 2014-15 and 2018-19. You can pick up any report from any reputable market economist in the country and you will see the analysis of how public investment has fallen off a cliff and we have not seen the return of non-mining sector investment because they have lost confidence in the economy. We do need more investment in first-class infrastructure, because that, along with investment in education, are the great enablers of growth and opportunity.

By outlining a program which invests in education, Labor has shown our ongoing commitment to improving social mobility and driving economic growth through investment in human capital.

Real long-term structural reform is preparing the next generation of Australians for the jobs of tomorrow. That is what the Leader of the Opposition spoke about in his budget reply. To see the Prime Minister today pretending he understood what coding in schools was about was truly pathetic and a joke. On top of this, Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey are pushing forward with $80 billion worth of cuts to schools and hospitals. This is not structural reform. It is just shifting essential productivity enhancing spending onto the states and leaving it unfunded. That is fiscal vandalism. These cuts in health and education will hit working families who want the peace of mind to know they will get access to health and their kids can get a good education.

The sixth and final test this budget fails is the growth test. Right now what the Australian economy needs is a series of well-targeted economic policies. We need a boost to investment and infrastructure across the board, because this budget—as the government has even admitted—is mildly contractionary. I find it impossible to see how a worthy measure like the instant asset write-off can do the job that is required to boost the growth that we need to create the jobs for our kids and for the future. We need a sustained boost to investment which leads to nation building. (Time expired)

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

I remind the member for Lilley that he is to use the proper names of members in this place. I did not want to interrupt his contribution, but if he could remember that in future.

Mr Swan interjecting—

I beg your pardon?

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

I said it would be good if the government did too.

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

Thank you very much, member for Lilley. I now call the Father of the House, the member for Berowra.

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to follow the member for Lilley in this debate. I am sorry he is leaving, because he may have been able to get some assistance in understanding how you manage an economy, how you produce growth and how you can leave others who follow with a budget situation that is, in fact, manageable. I must say I am very much aware of the way in which the Labor Party looks at these matters. It came through in the comments of the member for Lilley that we have just heard. The Labor Party seems to have a view that governing enables you to simply dole out money. The fact is they are experts at that. My late father used to say, as an economist, that the coalition are experts at growing the cake, building a bigger economy, and the Labor Party's expertise is only in how you cut up the cake. And I am not even sure they are expert in that.

Labor came into office back in 2007. When they came into office there was a very significant surplus. The government had been running an economy which was growing, creating jobs. The government was able to pay a dividend to taxpayers and there were programs that the Labor Party now criticise and say we should not have had, but which we could afford. Labor came into office and told us, 'It was terrible. We faced a global financial crisis'— not of our making; it was all being done in Europe—'but what we have to do is spend to make sure we don't get into trouble.' We were not in trouble, but they said we had to spend. I must say that the coalition took the view that some spending might have been appropriate, but they not only spent; they spent and spent and spent well more than was necessary to address the issue. I think they had largely forgotten that we continued to have high levels of exports, particularly in the minerals area. We were still receiving income. The idea that we had to cut in the way in which we did I think was flawed, but they went down this route and we are now left with a very significant debt as a consequence. I might say I am not even sure that the spending was altogether appropriate. If you come to my electorate and look at the spending in some of the private schools and what they were able to do with the amount of money that was made available, we got very positive outcomes. When I look at some of my public schools, the way in which they were implemented to a particular model, you had even situations that schools with halls got another one.

Opposition Member:

An opposition member interjecting—

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know what they did, and it was very, very poorly managed. What I was fascinated about was that the member for Lilley had some comments to make about infrastructure. I must say, I would have thought that the best spending to deal with the global financial crisis may have been to spend on infrastructure, but what major projects were started by Labor to improve infrastructure around Australia? There were none. The reason there were none was that, if you went to a state like mine, which had had Labor governments for so long, they had been so good at making announcements about new plans, they had nothing that was shovel ready; nothing that you could actually do.

We are now in a situation—I marvel at the fact that we are told there is no infrastructure occurring at the moment—where we are seeing infrastructure in my electorate that we have never seen contemplated before. We are getting the North West Rail Link. You can come along and you can see the stations that have been started at Castle Hill and at Cherrybrook. You can see the tunnels that are being built. They have a project that is in fact progressing and was shovel ready. It has been put in place by a Liberal government in New South Wales after a very short period in office. We had plenty of announceables for decades but very little that was achieved.

I wanted to make my comments today about infrastructure in this debate, because my electorate is now starting to benefit from the fact that we are getting infrastructure spending. One of the things about my electorate is that I think, when Labor governments were in office, they never wanted to spend any money—and I think sometimes even Liberals thought: 'It's one of ours and we don't need to spend it either.' But when the problems emerge in the Labor electorates a little north of mine, they suddenly find that maybe there was a problem in the electorate of Berowra after all.

I want to talk about that, because we have recently had an infrastructure audit released. For those members who have heard me speak about these matters before, they will know I have focused on a road called—don't say they can't tell me? Pennant Hills Road. Pennant Hills Road is remarkable. We have B-doubles careering down it mixed with parents taking their kids to school and people wanting to get from the Central Coast through the city of Sydney. We have roads that cross Sydney—four major highways: the M7, the Cumberland Highway, Villawood Road and Silverwater Road—and they all finish on Pennant Hills Road to link with the M1 out of Sydney that takes the traffic to Newcastle and Brisbane. That road is absolutely clogged all the time. It has been found in the infrastructure audit to be the worst corridor in the country.

I have stood up on this issue for years. I have made the point over a long period of time that something is necessary, and we now have a situation in which this issue is being addressed. I have been able to stand on sites with the minister who assists in relation to infrastructure, Mr Briggs. We have been able to turn the first shovel for the tunnelling that is going to occur on this route.

This is a $3 billion NorthConnex project. It is one that is committed to by the Commonwealth and the state of New South Wales. It has taken a long time but it is absolutely essential not just for my electorate but for the electorates of Reid, Parramatta and the Central Coast seats that have all been affected by this horrible situation. I have always agonised that we may see a major accident with deaths involving these huge trucks that just should not be mixed with suburban traffic. I have spoken on it year after year and I am delighted that we are now seeing this project come to fruition.

The big thing about this budget is that it is going to enable other projects to be addressed, particularly in our state of New South Wales. We have in New South Wales a state government that is now going to reinvest the proceeds of the state's electricity privatisation to help with both road and rail projects. They are investing $15 billion in infrastructure for the 21st century in New South Wales. I think these projects will be of enormous benefit to the people of Sydney and the people of New South Wales, who have been neglected for so long. This budget will enable those projects to be addressed.

For too long, parents across the country have been denied important childcare choices due to the complex, inflexible and unaffordable system that has existed. I am looking forward to the benefits that families in my electorate will obtain as a result of our new childcare package. It will provide greater choice; it is going to help more than 1.2 million families; it will deliver a simpler, more affordable and more flexible scheme; and it is a part of the budget that I think is going to be extraordinarily important to my electorate, given its nature.

My electorate has many small businesses. One of the things that has impressed me about this budget is the strategic approach that has been taken to dealing with a very significant deficit issue. We know that the opposition, the minority parties and others in the Senate will continue to attempt to deny us the opportunity to put in place measures that would enable us to address the expenditure side of the budget, but I was astonished at the way the former Treasurer would not take responsibility for the fact that Labor in government were always advocating increased spending on health, education and disabilities. They never put their proposed extra spending into the forward estimates. In other words, they never told anyone how they were going to pay for it all. Now, when we argue that you can fund these areas out of growth—growth arising out of initiatives that have been put in place for small business—they suggest that we are in fact a high-tax party.

I was astonished to hear the member for Lilley arguing that he was concerned that, through incremental creep, there may be an additional tax take. I have not heard the opposition outline any substantial program for containing growth in expenditure. It troubles me enormously that they continue to live in a cocoon—they do not understand the reality of budgeting. We have to deal with that and I think this budget is particularly imaginative, because it has identified that by giving some incentives to small business you can create new opportunities for growth in employment. When you get growth in employment, you get increased taxation revenue. If businesses become more productive through the measures we have in place, there will be growth in the economy.

Something I have always been distressed about is that the real priorities that ought to be recognised by governments—and that is protecting Australia and Australians—are often neglected. We have not only had to deal with the budget deficit situation and the demands for increased expenditure in many areas of social policy; we have had to find additional resources to address our security. This budget has boosted counterterrorism funding for law enforcement, intelligence and security agencies by $1.1 billion. That is a particularly heavy demand on the budget. Despite their neglect in this area, it is something that Labor will tell us now that they support. Finding the resources to do it—to combat terrorism at home and to deter people from being involved in terrorist acts—has been difficult, but resourcing of those organisations was absolutely essential. We have been able, in a budget which is tremendously constrained, to do just that.

There are other measures that I think are important that we will be resourcing. I believe very strongly in the need to ensure that our organisations are not compromised by not having the capacity to investigate matters. I know not everybody always agreed that metadata issues were important, but the funding for that, which is now included in the budget, will be essential in ensuring that we are able to undertake effective counter-terrorism investigations, as well as detecting and prosecuting other crimes.

This budget is one that achieves enormously for the Australian community in a constrained environment where we were left with very significant deficits. We have been given no assistance in relation to dealing with those matters. This budget is particularly imaginative in the way in which it has identified that there are other ways to produce growth that will enable us to address the budget deficit over time. The government ought to be congratulated on the way in which it has approached these issues in such an imaginative way.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to start by referring to some of the comments of the previous speaker, the member for Berowra. I have some respect for the Father of the House, the honourable member, but I have to disagree with his analysis of the way in which the previous government went about dealing with the global financial crisis. I also disagree with his analysis about the sort of infrastructure that was required to ensure that we maintained at least 200,000 jobs through that time. Our view at the time, as advised by Treasury and others, was that we had to invest in the economy because of the massive contraction of private capital. As a result, we believe we maintained relatively low unemployment. Our economy grew by well in excess of 10 per cent—higher than any other developed nation at that time.

At the end of the last parliamentary term, at the G20 as the minister for employment, all countries around the table at the employment ministers meeting agreed that Australia's response to the global financial crisis was second to none. The honourable member quibbled about some of the ways in which the infrastructure was delivered. I had some, but very few, complaints. I attended 90 per cent of the investments in schools in my electorate, and the overwhelming majority of schools were entirely pleased. Everyone was pleased to get such an investment. It also meant that not only did we invest in our schools—much-needed infrastructure in many schools; certainly schools in my electorate—but also we maintained and created employment for those small businesses that were so important for dealing with the economic challenges that we confronted. I have to disagree with the previous speaker's analysis in relation to our response.

The previous speaker finished on national security. As a former minister for home affairs and justice and immigration, I agree with him. National security is a very serious issue. The government has had cooperation from the opposition. We do want to work with the government. We do believe that national security is the most significant matter that any national government must deal with. We would hope that we can agree with the government on these matters when they are presented to us. We only ask that matters are provided to us, that we are briefed fully, and we will be able to work with the government in dealing with such a challenge.

It is a significant issue and one on which I do agree with the honourable member. I imagine that the investment that has been made in the government agencies dealing with such challenges was appropriate. Some of the changes—for example, to the budget of the Australian Federal Police—have not all been increases. I am mindful of the fact that when we were in government we increased the AFP numbers by 500. But you are always under pressure to maintain resources in every agency of government, so I should not be too critical there.

However, my fundamental concern with the budget is that it has doubled the deficit. It has forecast increased unemployment in the next financial year to 6.5 per cent. That is an increase that is equal to the highest unemployment rate in 14 years. That would mean that there will be more people lining the unemployment queues in Australia. If the government's own forecast is right, we will see thousands more Australians lining up in unemployment queues. Since the election, we have seen 80,000 more Australians in the unemployment queues than was the case at the time of the last election, and that is forecast to go up. That should be a major concern for the government. But we do not see, in this budget, sufficient plans to deal with this rising unemployment rate. We do not see that there has been sufficient investment, or sufficient industry or employment plans, to ensure that we can mitigate against the rising unemployment. That is a real shame.

It is for that reason that we say the government is not focused on jobs for unemployed Australians. As a result, we are going to see rising unemployment. In particular, we are going to see rising youth unemployment. Youth unemployment is now reaching almost 14 per cent; for those young people between the ages of 15 and 24, it is almost 14 per cent, and in some parts of Australia—Northern Queensland, Northern Adelaide, Northern Tasmania, and parts of Melbourne and Sydney—we are seeing unemployment amongst young people in excess of 20 per cent. That is one in five young Australians in some parts of this country who are not earning or learning. It is a great problem because, as we all know, if you do not enter the labour market and you are not at school, and if you continue to be in a position where you are falling between those two options, then your chances of having a productive life, having a life that is fulfilling and that you can be proud of, becomes increasingly more difficult. It is increasingly more difficult to find work if you have been unemployed for a long period, or if you have not entered the labour market. We believe that there needs to be more effort made in relation to unemployment, and youth unemployment in particular. We do not accept that the measures that been included in the budget are sufficient, although we would say that the announcement by Labor prior to the budget—and indeed, this is something that was followed up on by the government in relation to youth transitions—is the right approach. We believe you need to mentor young people. You need to find ways to connect them to the labour market, because they do not have the experience. Therefore, at least to that extent, we would support the measure in the budget. But there is too little—and, we would argue, too late—from the government.

We had a budget last year that really killed confidence. It scared the Australian people; the rhetoric scared the Australian people. It deterred businesses from hiring, it deterred consumers from spending—and that is why we saw the confidence in the economy flatlining. We only hope that some of those measures which we do support in this budget will lead to some improvements.

It should come as no surprise that we support the instant asset tax write-off because, when I was the small business minister, we introduced the instant asset tax write-off to $6½ thousand. We also had an immediate depreciation on vehicles. We accept the principle that small businesses need mechanisms like these to provide opportunities for them to get cash flow and to maintain their business, and they also reduce red tape—real reductions of real red tape—and so that was another benefit. That is why we opposed the abolition of the instant asset tax write-off in last year's budget. We have a government that came into office arguing that it was the party of small business. It abolished the instant asset tax write-off. It abolished the loss carry-back—which it has not reintroduced—and now it claims that it is doing the right thing. We will support them on the instant asset tax write-off, Deputy Speaker. We do ask what happened to the loss carry-back for incorporated small and medium enterprises. We would have thought it was an opportunity for that Labor initiative to be reintroduced, given the error of their ways with respect to the instant asset tax write-off. We thought it might be fitting for them to reintroduce the loss carry-back initiative, which was so useful for incorporated businesses, along with the instant asset tax write-off which, of course, provides support for incorporated and unincorporated businesses. Unfortunately, we have not seen that happen. So there is some more room for the government to consider.

We also support the reduction in the tax rate for small business, mindful of the fact—as history would show—that the current government joined with the Greens to oppose that measure. We were seeking to find a way to cut the small business rate and it did not occur, so we support that measure. The Leader of the Opposition made it very clear that we would work with the government in a bipartisan way to see if we can reduce that further. We do accept that small business is an absolutely vital part of our economy, of our society. Small business men and women employ between 4.5 and 5 million Australians in up to two million businesses. They are absolutely the engine room of our economy and they do deserve support. I think it would be incumbent on the Prime Minister to work with the opposition leader to see if we can go further in relation to those efforts.

It should not be forgotten that this budget still contains most of the unfair measures of last year's budget. The Labor opposition made a submission to the Fair Work panel—which determines the minimum wage—prior to the budget and then we felt the obligation to make a supplementary submission, which is entirely proper pursuant to the protocols of the Fair Work Commission. We made a further supplementary submission to argue that the commission, when considering the minimum wage, should take into account the very unfair measures in the second budget of this government. We believe that the impact, as NATSEM made very clear, falls most heavily upon low- and middle-income earners. Of the bottom 20 per cent of our society in terms of income, nine out of 10 are worse off, according to that modelling; and, in terms of the top 20 per cent, nine out of 10 are better off. We would say that that is an inequitable situation. We do not want to see people miss out, but we do think that you have to provide support to those most in need. For that reason, we have asked the Fair Work Commission to take into account the adverse impact the budget will have on families who will lose dental care and family tax benefits, and who will be impacted upon because of the abolition of the schoolkids bonus and by the $80 billion that will be taken out of state budgets for schools and hospitals. These impacts will be real, they will be felt and they should be something that the Fair Work Commission considers. We say that they should consider them, but they should do so in a responsible way. We have had a relatively high minimum wage in this country, and that is a very good thing. We believe that we should be a high wage, high skill economy. We do not want to see a million or more workers working below the poverty line. We do not want to see what you see in the United States, where tens of million of people work full time and are still below the poverty line. We do not believe in a working poor and, for that reason, we do not want to see the minimum wage fall over time as a proportion of the median wage. We believe that that should be sustained.

It is important for the Fair Work panel and indeed the commission to do that in a responsible way and it may require doing it over time. It should take into account decisions by government that have hurt low-paid workers and low- and middle-income families. I think that is only proper. For that reason, we made a decision to make that submission to the Fair Work panel so that when they make a determination they can take into account Labor's views on such matters.

I want to finish on the concerns I have with wages growth—something that has not really been touched upon much publicly. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, wages rose by just 0.5 per cent in the March quarter, with an annual rate of increase of 2.3 per cent. Wages growth is the slowest on record, with budget pain to come. We would argue that these unfair measures in the budget are compounded because of the very low wage growth that is occurring in all sectors of our economy. So you have got bracket creep, which is really hurting low- and middle-income earners, and very low wages. It really is a testament to the problems that we have in the economy when you see wages at such a rate and not growing as fast as they have over the last 25 years. It is something the government should take heed of when it decides to impose such unfair measures, including this year's budget. (Time expired)

George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do respect the previous speaker, the member Gorton, who is probably one of the more capable frontbenchers in the Labor Party. It is not a high bar, I have to say, but he is one of the more capable members of the frontbench. But what we just heard was all praise for the spending that is in this budget and all criticism on the savings. That is so typical of the Labor approach—spending is good and savings is bad; completing neglecting the fact that the budget, even as it is right now, is unsustainable if we keep on having deficits.

We have restored a path to surplus, a path that just was not there under the previous Treasurer, the member for Lilley and the previous Treasurer, the member for McMahon. We have a restored a path to surplus, and that is most important in this budget. Either you believe that ongoing debt is a problem for this nation, or you do not. I have to say that most households around this nation understand that if every year your expenses are more than your income, if every year you are putting the extra spending that you are doing on the credit card, at some point in time there is going to come a day of reckoning and you are going to have to pare back some of the spending and you are going to have to do away with things that you may have become accustomed to that may have been necessary. We do not want to reach that point, which is why the savings measures in our budget are vitally important—the savings measures that we just heard criticism on.

I am pleased to hear that Labor Party are going to support our small business measures. This has been the best budget for small business probably ever, and we have heard that the Labor Party are going to support that. Well, there is a first for everything! What I am surprised about—but I probably should not be so surprised—is that, on the one hand, Labor giveth some support and on the other hand they are going over to the Fair Work body and saying to them, 'Ping small business more by putting up the minimum wage,' at a time, right now, when they cannot afford it. Small business, like most other businesses in this nation, are in transition, and they need to have costs kept low. Sure, people deserve a fair wage, but I get alarmed when I hear that they are going over to the Fair Work body and saying to them, 'Jack up the minimum wage.' The Labor Party say that they support small business but we hear today something every different.

I do have to give a lot of plaudits to the Treasurer. If I could have dreamt up a budget that would have been ideal for my budget, I probably could not have come up with something better than what we saw a week or so ago.

The two big things for the electorate of Dawson that I see in the budget is the Northern Australia concessional loan facility—and I will talk about that in a moment—and, most importantly, the small business and jobs package. The electorate of Dawson is made up of the communities of Mackay, the Whitsundays, Bowen, the Burdekin and some of the Townsville area—these communities, like so many others, are communities and economies that are in transition.

We have had a resources boom. The construction phase of that boom, the investment phase, has tailed off. We have had a slowdown in global commodity prices—coal prices—and, as a result, we are seeing a fall-off in employment in the resources sector. We are seeing that filter through to the resource servicing sector. We need assistance from the government to transition, and this small business package will enable so many small businesses in all these other fields of the economy rather than resources to actually go out and have a go as the Prime Minister and the Treasurer said.

It was good to have the Prime Minister in Mackay last week. We went and had a look at Steve Geiger's cabinet making, and Steve is one of those many people who have been dubbed 'Tony's tradies.' He is one of those many tradesmen around the nation having a go, wanting to expand their business. He was telling us about how he wants to move into a bigger shed, a better shed—a place where he can expand. He wants to be able to purchase new equipment to replace some of the tired equipment that he has. He is wanting to do this and he sees the small business package, particularly, the instant asset write-off that we have brought forward, as a way of doing that. He will grow his business, I am sure, and there will be so many other small businesses across the Mackay region that will do exactly that right throughout the Dawson electorate.

Cane-farming families are also small businesses, so they get the benefits of this small business package as well with items that they want to purchase and will be able to write them off in a single year. I am sure there is a lot of investment happening out there now. The Prime Minister told me one of the ads he saw up in Townsville was all these utes and vehicles that had dropped to $19,999. I wonder why that is the case? Good on them. That is going to be money flowing through the economy that was previously tucked away in an account, because people were probably a little reticent to spend. Now they are going to be out there, and that money is going to be flowing through the economy, churning through, and ultimately somewhere it will be creating a job. That is what we want. That is what we need.

I am so pleased with this small business package. The returns that it is going to provide to my electorate will be immense as we are one of those economies that is in transition. As I said, for the farmers—this applies to them as well—and, more importantly, we have also got a range of measures such as fencing. There is not too much fencing on cane farms but, on some of the cattle properties, that will apply. Water infrastructure—there is the ability to accelerate the depreciation on water infrastructure on farms. I am sure there are going to be a few of the cockies thinking about putting in a turkey nest dam or some other type of water infrastructure to prepare ahead. That is what we want them to do, because we could essentially have a lot of farms self drought-proofed, if we get this water infrastructure onto farms. They can do that with assistance through accelerated depreciation. I think there are a lot of opportunities that are going to flow through to job creation, and job creation is pivotal in my community.

Perhaps the biggest and best thing that I saw in this budget—the thing that is really visionary, that inspires a lot of hope in Northern Australia—is the Northern Australia concessional loan facility of $5 billion. I wonder whether the Treasurer was reading my mind, because in the weeks leading up to the budget, I was actually out there saying to people that we needed some serious coin on the table for this Northern Australia plan. I was on the parliamentary committee that went around Northern Australia talking to people and I could see this level of disbelief of 'Here we go again,' because they had heard it before.

Many governments have talked the talk when it comes to developing northern Australia. No government has done this: chucked $5 billion on the table and said, 'Here you go; go and have a go. Do these big projects that you need to do to develop northern Australia.' I can tell you, one straight off the bat is going to be the Urannah Dam. I talked about it earlier in the chamber today. Urannah Dam is going to be a major job-creating project. More importantly, it is going to open up 30,000 hectares of new land to cropping. That is unbelievable. That will create a whole new agricultural district to the west of Bowen, where they already have the runs on the board. Right now, every tomato you buy in Coles or Woolworths comes from Bowen. They supply just about the entirety of Australia's winter tomato crop, and also capsicums, lettuce, beans—it goes on and on. We are going to expand on that if we can get the Urannah Dam up, and I am sure that with this $5 billion loan facility we will be able to do that.

In the flow-on from that, jobs will be created from new agricultural industry. There will be the possibility of bulk cargo shipping through the Mackay port to other domestic ports. Coastal shipping will develop. We do not have bulk cargo out of Mackay at the moment; we will have if we can get a bigger agricultural sector in the fruit and vegetable area, and we could probably even look at doing direct exports out of the Whitsunday Coast airport perhaps, or through the port of Mackay or the port of Townsville, and maybe even, eventually, through Abbott Point if there is a bulk cargo facility placed there. Further opportunities spring to mind—as I outlined earlier, perhaps a distribution centre for local supermarkets within the region and, again, the jobs that would flow from that. The potential that this budget unlocks in northern Australia is absolutely immense.

I will talk about some of the local infrastructure projects for a minute or two. I particularly want to refer to the Mackay Ring Road. It is a project I am determined to see through to completion—the biggest infrastructure project in the Mackay region at over half a billion dollars. It is a road that is a bypass of the Mackay city area, taking the heavy vehicles that go from our port out to the mines or to the mining service area in Paget. It takes them around the outskirts of the city, and there will be something like 14 bridges constructed, including a massive one over the Pioneer River. On top of providing the benefit to the city of getting the trucks out of town, it will enable that extra crossing of the Pioneer River to alleviate some of the traffic congestion we have at peak hours.

I am very pleased that an extra $34.8 million has been allocated to that project in this financial year. As we move into future financial years, the construction of the project starts. Right now, they are doing the detailed design work. I am disappointed that we have not got further than this, but the reality is that in Labor's last year in office they did not fund one extra cent towards this project. Effectively, they delayed it by a year. Right now, if it was not for that fact, we probably could have been out there in the coming financial year building the thing. Instead, we are still designing it because of a lack of funding under the leadership—or lack of leadership, I should say—of the then Treasurer, the member for Lilley, and the then infrastructure minister, the member for Grayndler.

But we are getting on with the job, and we are doing it. Over the coming years, $448 million will be allocated for the Mackay Ring Road. There are many other projects that we do have currently underway. There is $30 million being allocated to the Peak Downs Highway safety works, which involves a total project cost of $166 million over the next few years. Sandy Gully Bridge, an area which floods fairly regularly, cutting off the Bruce Highway—our national highway—is going to be fixed. We have $5 million allocated this coming financial year for a total project cost of $46 million. Yellow Gin Creek, another area which floods fairly regularly, on the National Highway, will be fixed this year, with $25 million allocated in the 2015-16 financial year. We have some road widening up near Ayr, with $5 million allocated there for a total project cost of $66.4 million.

Other ongoing projects that are being funded in the budget include a Bruce Highway safety package, with $20 million being allocated in the next financial year. Overtaking lanes will receive $22.1 million. Road widening between St Lawrence and Bowen will receive an extra $3 million this coming financial year. The Burdekin Bridge upgrade will receive $25 million in total. Sarina to Cairns black spots have $19.7 million allocated in the coming financial year. Four bridges on the Peak Downs Highway will begin being built, at a cost of $35 million. There are many other local infrastructure projects: the Milton Street-Shakespeare Street upgrade, Old Clare Road near Ayr, Roads to Recovery funding to the Mackay Regional Council of nearly $2.9 million, the junior soccer grounds relocation and the civic centre public realm improvement project—all job-creating projects. That is what the budget is all about. (Time expired)

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to have an opportunity to respond to appropriation bills and talk about a range of things that are important to the economy in this country and to ordinary people. Probably nothing would be more important right now than what is contained in the budget and what is not contained in the budget and to remind people very clearly of the type of government that we have in Canberra right now. Make no mistake, this is a spend, spend, spend government. This is a government that is spending taxpayers' dollars. It is spending ordinary Australians' hard-earned money—but it does not have any money; it is borrowing the money. This is a government that is spending, spending and spending, but to spend it is borrowing money and borrowing money like never before. There will be a few National Party and Liberal Party members with a bit of a smirk on their faces and laughing, but, unfortunately, their own budget papers detail the reality of how much they are spending and how much they are borrowing.

If, in the first Liberal budget—we have had two now from Joe Hockey—$17 billion of deficit was an absolute tragedy, was bad enough and was the end of the world, how would you be if, 12 months later, the same Treasurer doubled it and delivered a $35 billion deficit? How would you be assessed? You would have to answer the question: how are you paying for your programs? How are the government paying for their programs? On top of the debt that was already there, they have just borrowed a further $17½ billion. We are further into debt. The deficit is bigger and the debt is bigger. The deficit has blown out; it has doubled, not since the election but just since the last Liberal budget. In two Liberal budgets we have seen the deficit double from $17½ billion to over $35 billion now.

If that were not bad enough—if you needed more evidence—we have seen debt. Do you remember the debt? That was that really big thing: debt-deficit, debt-deficit. What has happened to debt? Has it come down? Is the trajectory tending down? Is there a little less spending? No, the debt has gone up. In fact, it has gone up massively, not since the election but since the last budget. In only 12 months of Joe Hockey managing the economy, he has managed to blow out debt by a further $39 billion. If, under Labor, $13 billion of deficit was the end of the world—that was it; there was nothing that could possibly be measured as worse than that; it was a crisis and an emergency—what do you call $35 billion? That is the question that the government has to answer.

We have seen a situation where there was some debt and there was some deficit, and we will take responsibility for those things, but Joe Hockey came in on the promise, as did Tony Abbott, that there would be a surplus every single budget. That was the promise. The promise was: every single budget there will be a surplus—'In the first 12 months, I will deliver a surplus, and in every single budget after that.' Joe Hockey said it and he said it more than once, but he has done the exact opposite. I know Liberal members will be confused because they do not want to look at the facts—they just want to look at what they tell each other rather than the facts.

Let us have a look at other measures, the real ones, the ones that are measured not by the parliament or the Labor Party or the Liberal Party but, perhaps, by Westpac consumer sentiment, which is long running. Let us say it is credible, because as soon as you say anything against this government that does not go their way suddenly it is not credible anymore. In September 2013 consumer confidence was hovering around 110 points. There was a slight bounce at or on or after the election, in 2013, and from there it went downhill at a rapid rate of knots and it kept going down. Why would that have been? In fact, it got to some of the lowest levels seen since they have been recording consumer-confidence levels.

It was not just consumers but also small business who thought this was really terrible. It was bad enough during the global financial crisis, when Labor actually stood up for small business, actually delivered some significant funding programs—direct assistance. I know the Liberals and Nationals will be really surprised when I use these words, but the programs were called 'instant asset write-off'. It sounds familiar. It sounds like what has just been reintroduced in this budget! It is just amazing. I have always had the view that there is nothing left to invent when it comes to government, because government reinvents itself every single day. When we see the Liberal Party introducing budgets, they have just reinvented it. It is as though it is the first time we have ever heard of an instant asset write-off. So they reintroduce a good Labor policy and, of course, Labor will be supporting it.

Government Member:

A government member interjecting—

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you do not think it is a good policy, say so. Just because it was a Labor policy. Now it is your policy. I am prepared to say it is a good policy regardless of who is in government.

A government member interjecting—

There is a funny thing about this place. If you just add one word to the best policy in the world, to the Liberal Party—it does not matter what policy it is—it is either the best policy or the worst policy in the world. It is whether it has 'Labor' attached to it. It does not matter what it does for the economy. It does not matter how good it is for the economy. It does not matter how good it is for small business. It does not matter how good it is for ordinary Australians. Even their own policy, if you just attach the word Labor to it they denounce it as being the worst thing that has ever happened.

Interestingly, I have been listening to government ministers—which is interesting in itself. They all claim to be spending more. All of them claim to be spending the most we have ever spent. This is the most we have ever spent in X. This is the most we have ever spent in Y. In fact, the Prime Minister said today that this was the best budget ever. If this is the best budget ever, the last one must have been the worst budget ever. If you have the audacity to claim that a budget could be the best budget ever, I would dare to say that the previous Liberal government budget—the one from Joe Hockey, of course—was possibly the worst budget ever. I would not have thought that but since the Prime Minister thinks one way, it must be true for the other way as well.

It just goes on and on and on. Spend, spend, spend. It would be great if we could spend all this money. The Liberals are leaving our children's grandchildren's great-grandchildren a debt for life. Burdened for life. The Liberals are burdening my children's children with a debt for life. If it was a debt when we were in government, what do you call it when you are in government and you have blown it out 2½ times? Is it no longer a debt? Unfortunately, your own budget papers call it a debt.

If Labor's instant asset tax right-off was unfunded, what is it under the Liberal Party? It is doubly unfunded. But where are they borrowing the money from? Perhaps they can explain that. Where is the money coming from? If it was unfunded then, where is it being funded from today? From borrowings. That is the simple answer. This is not too difficult or erroneous to work out. Just have a look at the budget papers. They detail it year by year: forward estimates, previous year and previous budget. They detail exactly what I am talking about.

What does this sound like to ordinary people? They are probably thinking the government is being a little hypocritical. They are right. Not only did Labor introduce the instant asset write-off—which was widely used by small business—but also we did it for four years. We believe that over the forward estimates if you are going to introduce good programs you should do that. The government is being a little sneaky with theirs. They are only going to introduce it for the next two years. That means they are giving small business a substantially smaller amount of assistance over a shorter period. It sounds bigger because it is a larger number up-front. In real terms it is not as much, because it is for half the period to start with.

There is this sort of short-term thinking, groupthink, of the government, this boom-bust approach to governing the economy, where they try to provide a boom just in this year and then let somebody else worry about the bust in future years, again leaving the debt, of course, to our children's children and their children. Let's go further: everybody's children's children's children, as was so famously said repeatedly when the Liberals and Nationals were in opposition.

A respected chief economist for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Saul Eslake, points out that almost 63 per cent of small companies will derive no benefit at all from the heralded 1.5 per cent company tax cut. 1.5 per cent is better than nothing, but seriously, I have been talking to small business in a company structure and they say, 'We'll take it, but it's not really exciting.' What Saul Eslake says is that 63 per cent of those companies are neither profitable nor taxable. The government has built itself in a little bit of margin to make itself look good and sound good and is not handing out really much assistance. Anyway, 1.5 per cent is better than nothing. Let us see when it hits the ground what it does for consumer confidence and sentiment, and for business as well.

Interestingly, as I said before, the instant asset write-off, which the government had capped at $20,000, will be about $2 billion over the forward estimates. When Labor introduced our almost identical plan—or should I say that the government copied ours—it was only $6½ thousand capped and we had a policy to lift that to $10,000, which I thought was a reasonable number. But it was actually worth substantially more—$3.55 billion over the forward estimates. We figured that the way small business operates you have to give them certainty just beyond an election cycle. They actually want to see something beyond the boom and bust policies of the Liberal government.

An even more interesting aspect of what is missing in this budget and what is missing from this government—apart from being sustainable, having a plan and actually doing something that is real—is a credible plan to lower the deficit and spend less; spend it in the right areas. One thing that really does upset a lot of Australians is this: if you are going to take the money from anybody, why take it from the poorest? Why take it from the lowest income earners? Why take it from the pensioners? This government takes, in huge grab bags full, from ordinary people.

On superannuation, the government now says it will never change, ever. I am not sure how long ever is, but I think it is a long time. Tony Abbott says 'Ever, ever. That's it. There are no more changes to super ever.' Of course, that is interesting because super is on an unsustainable growth path in terms of tax concessions, particularly for high income earners. Those high income earners are enjoying a tax concession. Everyone understands what that is. Over the forward estimates those tax concessions are valued at something around $94 billion and growing—growing at a rate so fast that they will overtake the totality of the aged pension in just four years time. This is an unsustainable path that everybody agrees with. I think even the Liberal Party agrees. I think even the National Party agrees. I do not think anyone would disagree that this is unsustainable over the long term.

At some point in time a government, be it Liberal or be it Labor, will have to take this problem head-on. It takes a little bit of courage in looking just beyond the next election cycle. Labor has already put its hand up, by the way. Labor has said, 'This is a tough issue. We are prepared to start.' If we are going to be on a sustainable path when it comes to tax concessions on superannuation, let us start at least at the very top end—those who have more than $10 million in their accounts, more than $5 million in their accounts. There is actually a path where we can work this and do it reasonably. It affects thousands of people, but a small number of thousands of people, compared to what Tony Abbott did to low income earners.

The first thing they did when coming into government, promising never to touch super—and now 'ever, ever'—was take away the low income superannuation contribution, just $500 for some of the lowest paid workers earning less than $37,000 a year. Why hit them so hard? Never, ever changing anything to super, but it is okay to hit up asset means tests for pensioners over a certain threshold. So it is okay to hit the pensioners, it is okay to hit low income workers, it is okay to hit mostly low income working women, but it is not okay—let us just be honest—for very wealthy people who honestly do not need that sort of assistance. Once you have got that sort of money you have lots of choices when it comes to investing for your retirement. You are not just bound to the superannuation system. It was never really designed for people of that capability and means when you are into the millions. It was really designed for ordinary people.

Lots of people enjoy the benefits of our super system. It just recently ticked over $2 trillion in value. It is a fantastic national savings program—thanks to Labor of course. We were fought tooth and nail by the Liberal Party all the way. They were dragged along kicking and screaming. They have always hated superannuation—not for everybody, just for ordinary Australians. They do not like superannuation for ordinary Australians. For the wealthy it is fine. The bit I do not get is that wealthy people have plenty of choices. They can invest in a whole range of ways to look after themselves in retirement.

Labor does have a plan. It is a sustainable plan and a fair plan. It is about making sure that ordinary Australians, people on low incomes, get a little bit of a hand up, a little bit of assistance, just where it is necessary—just so they can keep pace. It is about helping them keep pace with inflation, with what is happening in our economy and with what is happening globally with the cost of living. You do not hear too much about the cost of living from the Liberals anymore. They have given up on that. 'Cost of living' sounds like a three-word slogan to me, but it was just something they used to talk about in opposition. Now it has gone out the door.

Labor actually has a plan to look after people and to ensure the sustainability of our economy and sustainability across the forward estimates, a plan to get on the road back to a surplus in a reasonable amount of time—not the Joe Hockey promise, which was going to be in the first 12 months and every single year after that. That is just one example from their litany of lies, which also included the promise that there would be a million new jobs created in five years. You are a long way short of that. Shame on you. (Time expired)

Peter Hendy (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The 2015-16 budget has been well received across the Australian community and in my electorate of Eden-Monaro. As a former chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, I know that one way to judge a budget is to look at the consumer confidence statistics in the weeks following its announcement. Across Australia, I note that consumer confidence has risen in a meaningful way. Confidence is on the rise again. As the Treasurer has noted, the latest Westpac-Melbourne Institute index of consumer sentiment jumped by 6.4 per cent in the month of May. The index is now in positive territory, with more optimists than pessimists, and at its highest level since January 2014.

Westpac's chief economist, Bill Evans, said:

This is a very strong result … It is the highest level of the index since January last year.

He went on to say:

Clearly, the two driving forces behind this boost have been the federal budget and the interest rate cut which the Reserve Bank delivered in the first week in May.

He added:

Whilst undoubtedly positive, the impact of the rate cut is likely to have been dominated by the response to the budget.

Further, he said:

The surge in the index this year represents the first time we have had a strong result in May since 2007.

The Westpac chief economist concluded:

The 6.4 per cent lift in the index is comparable with the boost to confidence from the generous budgets of the Howard-Costello era, where the index surged by 7.5 per cent (2007); 8.1 per cent (2005) and 5.3 per cent (2001).

Similarly, the ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence index jumped 3.6 per cent in the week after the budget, putting the index above its long-run average level and at the highest level in around six months—since early November 2014. Confidence was up a cumulative 5.4 per cent over the previous fortnight. The ANZ chief economist, Warren Hogan said:

The initial positive reaction of Australians to last week’s budget is great news for the economic outlook … consumer sentiment has risen in both the lead-up to and the immediate period after budget night. The 3.6 per cent weekly rise … indicates to us that the budget impact has been strongly positive. This suggests to us that Australians believe the government has got the mix of medium-term fiscal consolidation and short-term support for the economy about right. We tend to agree …

I know that this is being reflected across my electorate of Eden-Monaro. Since the budget, I have been crisscrossing the 29,000 square kilometres of my electorate—that is equivalent in size to the European country of Belgium—to find out what they think. In the week since budget day I have had listening posts or other engagements in Queanbeyan, Bredbo, Bega, Moruya, Bingie, Merimbula, Jerangle, Tathra, Narooma, Dalmeny and Frogs Hollow. That is a good cross-section of the electorate and I have met hundreds of people. What I have found is a good reaction to the soundness of the budget. There is a recognition that it is a pragmatic way to proceed given the enormous constraints and roadblocks caused by the unthinking Senate led by the ALP and the Greens. There is a general recognition that, while in last year's budget we may have tried to bite off more than we could chew, this budget is taking the path to fiscal improvement—admittedly, more slowly—in a constructive way that gets us measured progress.

In a macro-economic sense what I can note is this: we inherited a deficit of $48 billion; the deficit for the budget year is now estimated to be $35 billion and is forecast to reduce each and every year to below $7 billion over the next four years. Over four years this means that we will have reduced the $123 billion of deficits inherited from Labor by over $40 billion to $82 billion over four years. Because of our efforts, the deficit reduces each and every year on average by about a half a percentage point of GDP.

For those of my constituents who are concerned that we may be dropping the ball on fixing the budget, can I say that you should not believe everything you read in newspapers and hear on radio and television. In fact, the budget explicitly contains a credible path back to surplus. I understand that the Prime Minister and Treasurer are reluctant to give the firm commitment of getting back to surplus in five years time, in 2019-20, with surpluses projected over the remainder of the medium terms, as it actually says on page 1-8 of Budget Paper No. 1.

The debacle of the Gillard-Rudd years and the member for Lilley, former Treasurer Swan, claiming on hundreds of occasions that they were getting back to surplus—or had in fact actually delivered a surplus—when in fact they were just blowing out the deficit by evermore billions of dollars is not something we as a government want to repeat. The Prime Minister and Treasurer are obviously wary of the curse of Lilley. However, as a mere backbencher, I feel I can point to the budget papers and say that, on the basis of all that is known today, the Treasury experts are predicting a surplus in 2019-20, five years from now. With such a surplus we can actually start paying down some of Labor's debt.

Turning to other aspects of the budget, I know that there is particular enthusiasm in my electorate for the small business and jobs package. Small businesses provide 4.5 million Australians with their jobs. They provide four in 10 jobs in the private sector, six in 10 in construction and eight in 10 in agriculture, and they provide a large number of the jobs in rural electorates such as mine. The budget cuts the small business company tax rate to the lowest in almost 50 years, since 1967, and for two years we are giving all small businesses an immediate tax deduction on any asset they could buy costing up to $20,000. This will benefit more than 95 per cent of all Australian businesses.

As our economy changes, the role of our small businesses will be even more important. That is why the $5.5 billion Growing Jobs and Small Business package will provide major incentives for businesses to invest, hire and grow. In addition, the package includes $375 million aimed particularly at improving opportunities for Australians to get a job and reaching out to disengaged youth. In detail: from 1 July 2015, all small businesses, whether they are incorporated or not, will receive a tax cut. From 1 July 2015, the government will cut the company tax rate for incorporated businesses with annual turnover of up to $2 million by 1.5 percentage points to 28.5 per cent. From 1 July 2015, the government will also provide a five per cent tax discount to unincorporated businesses with annual turnover of up to $2 million. From budget night until 30 June 2017, small businesses will also be able to immediately deduct every asset they acquire that is valued up to $20,000 for tax purposes; currently, the threshold sits at $1,000. These are measures that should help the more than 11,600 small businesses in my electorate and the people who work for them.

The childcare package has also been commented on favourably in my electorate. Its principal component is the $4.4 billion Jobs for Families package which will deliver a childcare system that is simpler, more affordable, more flexible and more accessible. Our objective is to help parents who want to work and parents who want to work more. This package will provide parents with greater choice when it comes to balancing work and family. Families on incomes of between $65,000 and $170,000 using child care in 2017 will be around $30 a week better off.

There is also direct program spending in Eden-Monaro from the 2015 budget. Some $300 million is to be spent in my electorate over the next few years. That includes $161 million for the South East Regional Hospital in Bega and $95 million to $100 million on the NBN rollout that is occurring right now across the electorate. In addition, there is at least another $46 million in funding for explicit projects like the Port of Eden redevelopment and moneys for road expenditures like those for the Princes Highway on the Far South Coast and $25 million for the Queanbeyan bypass. There is also money for repairing bridges in Bombala and Broulee.

Further, there is $5 million for the nationally famous Bega Cheese Factory. This is part of the $50 million Manufacturing Transition Program. The Commonwealth government's contribution to the program is accompanied by over $200 million in investment by Australian manufacturers. In all, 19 businesses will receive between $1 million and $5 million to improve their competitiveness by investing in new capital equipment and plant improvements. The program seeks to encourage Australian manufacturers to invest in more sophisticated and knowledge-intensive manufacturing. This will create high-value jobs in areas where the greatest economic opportunities exist. The $50 million Manufacturing Transition Program fulfils an election commitment to ensure a secure future for manufacturing in Australia by focusing on areas of competitive strength. It provides the structural and strategic support necessary to give manufacturers the confidence to back themselves and to carve out their place in a changing global environment.

The $5 million for the Bega Cheese Factory is to assist the company to expand its plant in Bega to include a state-of-the-art lactoferrin production facility. Overall, this is a $21 million project that will increase jobs in the Bega district. It will enhance export opportunities in Asia, particularly China and Japan. Lactoferrin is a milk by-product that enhances the nutritional value of infant formula and other medically prescribed food. It is also used in pharmaceuticals. It is a great project for Bega and Eden-Monaro.

I cannot end this speech without directly referring to the Leader of the Opposition's address-in-reply to the budget. So what are the alternatives? Let me tell you about Labor's budget black hole. Labor have a budget black hole of more than $58 billion. Before the Leader of the Opposition's budget-in-reply speech Labor faced a $52 billion budget black hole. By 8 pm that Thursday night, that hole had grown to $58.6 billion. Labor are blocking $17.2 billion worth of government savings and revenue measures, including more than $5 billion of their own savings. Labor are also calling on the government to restore $31 billion in savings that have already been banked, including spending an additional $18 billion in foreign aid.

Labor would deliver higher debt and higher deficit. They have no constructive plan for Australia and, if they were ever elected to government, there will be a very high price to pay for Australian families. For example, Labor have returned to their failed carbon tax policy. Labor say that it will bring back their failed carbon tax—a tax which belted up household costs by some $600 a year without cleaning up the environment. Labor want their tax on electricity and they will not give up on the past.

So you have got a very clear contrast between a coalition government which wants to help business and jobs and Labor, who want to hurt business and jobs by increasing tax. The coalition government got rid of the failed carbon tax and, in its place, our Direct Action is set to achieve and exceed the bipartisan cuts to emissions. Labor will bring back the carbon tax; they will reopen the people-smugglers' opportunities, threatening lives and billions of dollars in uncontrolled expenditure on detention centres; and, at the first sign of rising mineral commodity prices, you can bet they will raise the proposition of a new mining tax, despite their denials.

One of the other things you can count on with Labor, by their own admission, is that they will raid your super if you give them half a chance. Their latest thought bubble is a big new tax on superannuation and retirees. The shadow Treasurer has confirmed that Labor will fix the superannuation system with a big new tax. Before the 2007 election, Kevin Rudd said that there would be no change to super—'not one jot, not one tittle'—and he broke his word. In fact, Labor increased superannuation taxation by various raids on thresholds by just short of $9 billion over that six-year period. And now they are at it again. Labor will always revert to form with big new taxes, because it has no idea about how to manage taxpayers' money.

Under the coalition government, your superannuation savings are safe. Under Labor, your superannuation savings will be treated as a piggy bank to be raided. They are also talking about attacking negative gearing. Self-funded retirees should be very fearful.

On 24 April this year, I received an email from the ALP national secretary, George Wright, which said that I was randomly selected to help the ALP in its year of ideas. What an embarrassment for Labor. This is what he said:

Friend—

2015 is the year that Labor puts forward our ideas to the Australian community … I hope you take this chance to let us know what you think our policies and priorities should be.

George Wright, Labor National Secretary.

I will tell you what you should do: you should pass this budget in full because it is a plan for Australia and it is a plan for Australian jobs.

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A year ago, in almost Churchillian rhetoric, as though it was the Dunkirk situation, the Treasurer commented:

There are no choices here. This is about the sustainability of our quality of life. It is about what we want to be in five, 10, 20 years' time.

In another outburst in June 2013, he noted:

It will be my number one imperative to safeguard the economy against a significant downturn and to turbo charge economic growth and jobs.

A year later, he is a very much reduced man—very few cigars in sight. Part of the problem of last year's budget was summarised very well by Richard Farmer in The Saturday Paper in April 2014. He said:

Before Hockey, treasurers had economic advisers more sceptical of pleading from business – much more so than could now be expected from those who have made their way wheeling and dealing for the rent seekers.

Further, he said:

When Hockey delivered Re:thinkBetter tax, better Australia, he employed the Coalition’s preferred method of delivering policy: eschew details in favour of three-word slogans.

With the politicisation of Treasury and calling in people who have come from the corporate sector, is it any wonder that he very quickly dismisses the concept of doing anything about corporate tax evasion by overseas corporations and comes up with the brilliant idea that we should lower taxes so that we have less evasion? As I say, he is a very reduced figure.

It is interesting to note, in the politicisation of this whole process, that one of the organisations that very much commended this budget was the Business Council of Australia. They commended this budget but they also commended last year's budget, which was diametrically different. Last year they said:

The 2014–15 federal budget is a solid start to putting the fiscal strategy back on track, but there is much more work to do to support growth and deliver a sustainable budget position for the long term …

They talked about 'improving the effectiveness of the social services delivered by the government'. So last year we had the Business Council commending a draconian budget which attempted—and the government is still trying to do these things—to cut $5.5 billion from family tax benefits; to have Australians work until they are 70; to make pensioners to pay more for transport, gas, electricity and council rates; and to cause seniors to be $900 a year worse off by abolishing the seniors supplement.

The Business Council, in typical political fashion as an apologist for the government, last year said that these attacks were very valuable and this year, when the government tries to run a political agenda, that they are now soft and cuddly and more considerate, and are still trying to enhance the government's position. But he is not only undermined by the obvious way in which he has politicised the Intergenerational report but criticised by all sides of the political spectrum as this budget has been described by all and sundry as very much about politics rather than the economy.

The arguments that were there last year are still there, and what we have seen is a total U-turn. Adele Ferguson in The Sydney Morning Heraldsaid:

It is hard to believe this is the same government that authored last year's "budget emergency" that split the population into "lifters" and "leaners" and called an end to "the age of entitlement".

Ross Gittins commented:

This is the budget of a badly rattled government that has put self-preservation ahead of economic responsibility. It will do much to restore Tony Abbott's political fortunes, but next to nothing to return the budget to surplus or hasten the economy's return to strong growth.

So commentators have clearly seen that this rhetoric, which is comparable to the attempt to terrify the Australian population on security and terrorism, was to terrorise them last year by this urgent crisis that dictated attacking pensioners' indexation, forcing young people to have no means of support for six months in unemployment, and others to go onto youth allowance because of their age—all those things were justified last year on the basis of a crisis that allegedly does not have to be dealt with this year.

However, the figures are not at all comforting in any way for this government. Unemployment is now 6.5 per cent—I admit that it is up there with John Howard; it is not novel necessarily under a conservative government and it has happened before. We have a deficit that is doubling from 17.1 to 35.1 billion and a situation where spending is 29 per cent and government is increasing it by 1.8 per cent a year compared to 1.3 per cent under Labor, which had to deal with the global financial crisis and spent money to make sure that the Centrelink payments were not going to go up throughout the country through trainees being forced out of their jobs, apprentices thrown on the roadside, businesses closing down and consumers not being able to purchase. The government then had to do something about the crisis, and those opposite had no consideration, no integrity and no honesty about the crisis that the government faced.

Yet now, we see the Treasurer trying to excuse himself and his performance solely on the situation in China and the collapse of the raw materials sector. Obviously, it has had a very deep impact on tax revenue for this country—the fact that that has happened; the fact that the building sector in China has declined. We did not have the same attempt a few years ago to look at this rationally and see the actual economic realities internationally. We did not attempt to say: 'This is all squandering by the previous government, inept spending et cetera.' There has got to be also some doubts about projections by this government with regard to mining investment: they say it will fall to 25.2 per cent by the end of the financial year and 30.5 per cent by 2016-17.

Their solution to that is the rather dubious claim that non-mining investment will zoom past its long-term average annual growth of 6.7 per cent and be 7.5 per cent by 2016-17. They are trying to convince people that that growth of non-mining investment will go to historically unprecedented levels, and yet it is at two per cent today. We have a situation where they talk about wage growth, which has been widely criticised. Wage growth is just matching inflation, and yet their expectation is that over this period of time there will be a significant growth there. This is a country whose administration is trying to basically ensure the unions are shackled, that they are restricted in their activity around the place and yet they are hoping for—

Government Member:

A government member interjecting—

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are hoping for a very big growth with regard to wages over the next few years. You should look at your budget papers and actually see what you are saying. If you shackle the unions, there is not going to be much wage growth over the next few years, quite frankly. You might find there is another way.

I want to turn to a specific aspect of Australian society at the moment which must be seen in the context of the recent survey by NCOSS of people who live on welfare. In this inquiry, NCOSS uncovered the following fact:

One in five respondents receiving the Newstart or Youth Allowance reported not having enough money for basic essentials like housing, food and electricity.

Furthermore, they noted:

73% of respondents receiving the Disability Support Pension and 63% of those receiving the Newstart Allowance reported that their income had fallen behind the cost of living in the last two years.

In that survey, they also noted:

The top five most common items that respondents had gone without in the last 12 months due to lack of finances were: 1. Buying Christmas presents—

Well, perhaps the government said: 'Bad luck!'—

… Dental appointments—

We had some comments on that in question time today—

… Car Service … Buying presents for a loved one's birthday … Medical appointments or procedures.

Finally, they noted:

Nearly one third of respondents (32%) receiving a Disability Support Pension reported that they had gone without meals in the last 12 months in an effort to save money.

This government is trying to sell a subterranean, nuanced message to the Australian people—we are with you, we are there with the hardworking people of this country; we are not with those people who are bludging, freeloading et cetera. But these are the economic realities of those people. Today the Salvation Army also went on the record with similar findings. I will quote one example from an individual from this NCOSS study:

$240 a week is not even enough to pay for housing let alone gas, water, electricity, fuel, rates, insurances, let alone food. I want to be able to survive on my own without begging for food, it's shattering to know that I can only eat what charities give me, I have no control over my own life.

A further comment from another respondent was:

Almost all of my payment is used up with rent alone. I have $25 a week to spare, so I have to really budget other things and work as much as possible.

The reason I raise this survey and the dire circumstances of these people is not only to make the point that the government wants to marginalise and discriminate against these people. I want to comment on something that was confirmed this week by the Australian National Audit Office—something that I have noticed in my electorate that is unprecedented in the last 2½ decades. I did not see this under the Howard government; I did not see this under Labor governments. It is the deplorable situation in Centrelink at the moment, where people's claims are rejected and they are told to go onto a call line. We have a situation where the National Audit Office has revealed that 13.7 million calls were unable to enter the network—that is, the calls were blocked and the callers heard the 'busy signal'. Around 30 per cent of people abandoned their calls to this centre. There were told by Centrelink: 'Get lost! We are not going to deal with you further. Go on the call line!' And 30 per cent of them had to abandon their calls.

People on very low incomes, as I indicated a few minutes ago, are asked to hang on the lines for 35, 40, 50 and 60 minutes and use up valuable money on mobiles. Public phones are not available these days to a lot of people. It is also noted in ANAO's analysis of Centrelink's performance:

… average speed of answer does not clearly indicate what service standard customers can expect, due to distribution of actual wait times.

There is no KPI on that. Furthermore, the ANAO commented:

… in the short to medium term the telephone remains a key access channel for Centrelink services …

The government can talk all they want about how people can get on the internet and go digital. But the reality, as the ANAO says, is that for many years people will still depend on phones.

I have seen this in my electorate office—and that is why I am raising it. There is the situation where a woman with breast cancer is waiting four to five months for an answer about her entitlement. There is another situation where a young person, who was working for many months, is now seeking to study and to utilise a form of Centrelink payment along the way. Her father said that not once, within the last 4 months did Centrelink, give either himself or his daughter the courtesy of any communication that she required 70 weeks of payslips. Not once were they advised that three years of group certificates was insufficient. This is a situation where for more than 70 days there was no assessment of her situation. This is a pattern around the country.

There is understaffing of the department and inadequacy in the call system. This is a government that takes pride in sacking 17,000 public servants. It is a lack of performance in regard to service delivery leading to very real suffering for Centrelink recipients. These are people who are in dire circumstances, who have very little left after rent, and are basically being asked to get on the phone if they have a problem. It is a phone service that is an absolute basket case. It is a situation where they cannot get their issues rectified.

As I said, I hear this very frequently in my electoral office. It is about time that the government did a bit more than a diversionary and sudden urgent need to have an inquiry into whether people are defrauding Centrelink. The timing of this inquiry is very interesting as it is within days of the ANAO report being made public, which showed a debilitating, incompetent, mismanaged Centrelink. Senator Payne then suddenly decided that we needed to basically go towards left field to get away from the issue of service delivery and inquire into who is supposedly defrauding the system around the country.

We have a much reduced Treasurer. He is still trying to argue last year's case that there is an emergency and that we have to get the deficit down. But the Prime Minister has just left him on the beach. The Prime Minister's message is: 'This is a political crisis. We do not want to go down the road we did last year. We want to try to sell a very kindly message rather than talk about the deficit and rather than the "absolutely necessary" measures of last year. They are no longer important and we are abandoning them.' Bad luck, Mr Treasurer, for your credibility.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak in this debate on the appropriation bills. In the time available to me I would like to focus on three particular issues. Firstly, to highlight the fact that the budget contains a number of measures to boost small businesses and start-up businesses. Secondly, to highlight the importance of start-up businesses. Thirdly, I would like to draw a distinction between the coalition's approach to supporting start-up businesses and that of the Labor Party.

I turn first, then, to the measures to support start-up businesses in this budget. These are of great importance because in any country with a successful technology sector the role of start-up companies is critical. If we can lift our level of start-up activity in Australia the economic benefits will be significant. This budget contains a number of measures to stimulate the start-up community and entrepreneurship. We have committed to streamlining business registration processes to make it quicker and simpler to set up a new business. Starting a new business is not easy but governments can do a lot to make the path easier for Australians who are prepared to have a go. The government are going to develop a single, online registration site for business registration including company registration. We will allow start-up companies to immediately deduct professional expenses incurred when they begin a business, such as legal expenses on establishing a company trust or partnership, rather than the present situation in which you write them off over five years. This, again, will provide immediate cash flow benefits.

Employee share schemes are vital for start-up businesses. The previous Labor government, unfortunately, was hostile to employee share schemes. Its tax settings made such schemes unattractive to offer or to participate in. The coalition has a very different attitude. From 1 July there will be expanded tax concessions for employee share schemes to make it easier for small start-up companies to attract and retain the talent they need to grow. Start-up companies in the early stages of growth will face a lighter tax burden. For companies with an annual turnover of less than $2 million the company tax rate will be cut by 1.5 percentage points to 28.5 per cent. Start-ups will also benefit from an important stimulus measure for businesses with an annual turnover below $2 million. Between now and the end of 2016-17 any asset worth up to $20,000 purchased by a small business will be immediately deductible in full, again, giving a significant cash-flow boost.

The government have also announced that we will be removing obstacles to crowd sourced equity funding, that is to say, using the internet to raise equity for new projects or business ventures often involving relatively small amounts raised from large numbers of people. In other countries this is an increasingly important source of funding for start-up businesses, but presently there are regulatory restrictions that limit its availability in Australia.

We have also announced changes to the significant investor visa, with applicants for this visa now required to invest at least $500,000 in eligible Australian venture capital or private-equity funds—that is to say, funds which invest in start-up and small private companies. Clearly, this budget is a start-up budget to support our growing start-up sector. Let me turn to why start-up businesses are so important.

In the technology sector, around the world, start-up companies form a critically important part of the growth cycle. A start-up is a company formed from scratch, typically with the aim of commercialising some technology. It might be software, medical technology, biotechnology or renewable-energy technology. The most successful start-ups grow at extraordinary rates. Google, for example, was founded in 1998 and by 2014 it was the third-largest company in the world by market capitalisation.

Start-up companies have a hunger and dynamism that older and more bureaucratised corporates often lack. The companies that have built significant scale are the most visible. But there is vigorous activity among earlier-stage technology-sector companies in Australia. If, for example, you visit the tech-sector co-working space Fishburners, in Piermont, you feel a palpable sense of energy and dynamism. You notice the diversity of the people there and the many start-up businesses that are working to get off of the ground.

One such business is Wattcost. As founder David Soutar explained to me, their product will let you monitor your home-power usage on your mobile phone without needing complicated installation. Many similar co-working spaces to Fishburners are springing up around the country as an increasing number of Australians of all ages, but particularly young Australians, choose to start businesses rather than join an existing corporate.

One young Australian I met recently, Sam Crowther, has created a technology solution for easier and safer website login and user authentication. His technology, Kasada, eliminates the need for passwords. It allows a photo taken by the user to be turned into a unique key. At the age of 19 Sam is currently in Silicon Valley, signing off on an integration into a global networking company.

Other examples I have seen recently are numerous. I have been very impressed with the work of Chris Gilbert and Jonny Wilkinson, for example. They are the cofounders of Equitise Crowdfunding Australia. Chris is an ex-Deloitte consultant and Johnny is an ex-Citigroup analyst. Chris and Jonny left their corporate jobs to start Equitise, an Australian crowdfunding platform, which was officially launched in New Zealand late last year by Chris. The pair had initially intended to launch the platform in Australia but after the recent changes to New Zealand laws, legalising crowdfunding last April, Equitise went ahead with a New Zealand launch.

Current legislation in Australia means equity crowdfunding platforms do face some significant regulatory barriers but, as I mentioned earlier, the budget contained an announcement that the Abbott government intends to remove obstacles in Australia to crowdsourced equity funding. This means that people like Chris and Jonny will not need to set-up shop in New Zealand to run a crowdfunding platform serving Australian investors and clients.

Another strongly emerging trend is the significant support coming from big corporates working with start-ups. Last week I visited Telstra's accelerator, muru-D, based in Paddington, in Sydney, which is home to a diverse range of start-ups. Those businesses that secure a spot in muru-D join for six months. They receive tailored support from Telstra, including legal services and access to specialised skills within Telstra, such as their user-experience team. Telstra provides a cash contribution and, in return, takes an equity stake.

I had the opportunity to speak to the CEOs of a number of businesses at muru-D—for example, the founder of Freight Exchange. This is a digital marketplace that enables long-distance freight carriers to connect seamlessly with their customers to sell their excess capacity. There is Disrupt, a business that is selling custom-made surfboards using 3D modelling—all delivered through digital sales channels. Both of these CEOs spoke very positively about the benefits their businesses have enjoyed from participating in the muru-D accelerator program. This trend of large corporates supporting start-ups is very much to be encouraged.

A number of iconic Australian organisations are involved in similar innovation initiatives. For example, both the Commonwealth Bank and Qantas are working with TechBeach, a commercial accelerator based in Manly. I had the opportunity to visit TechBeach earlier this month to chat with its CEO and co-founder, Darren Younger.

Another trend that is very evident in the start-up space is an increasing focus on fintech—that is to say, the digital transformation in financial services. The new Sydney fintech hub Stone & Chalk is an illustration of this trend. This is an independent not-for-profit fintech hub, with the objective of helping to foster and accelerate the development of fintech start-ups.

Stone & Chalk has received seed funding from many of Australia's largest financial institutions, including ANZ, HSBC, Macquarie Group, Suncorp and Westpac. It is chaired by the former CEO of the AMP, Mr Craig Dunn, who, I am very pleased to say, is a constituent of mine in the electorate of Bradfield.

There is clearly significant activity in the start-up sector and, in my judgement, that activity level amongst Australian start-ups is increasing, which is to be welcomed.

How then does the approach that the coalition is taking in this space contrast with the approach of the Labor Party? In his budget reply speech two weeks ago, the opposition leader announced a plan for a $500 million smart investment fund. We all want to see more Australian tech sector start-up companies grow into large, successful employment-generating companies with a sustainable market position, much like SEEK, the company that the opposition leader cited in his budget reply speech, and other success stories such as, just to name a few, Cochlear, Atlassian and REA.

The opposition leader's proposal, I am sorry to say, was a little bit light on detail. To start with, he did not say where the money will come from. This measure was unfunded, as were the other measures he advocated in his speech which, in total, if implemented, will cost taxpayers many billions of dollars. Nor was there much detail about how the proposed smart investment fund would work, apart from the opposition leader saying that it would 'partner with venture capitalists and fund managers to invest in early-stage and high-potential companies'.

This sounds much like the Innovation Investment Fund, which ran from 1997 until new funding was withdrawn in last year's budget. But the opposition leader failed to tell us how he would overcome the difficulties that the Innovation Investment Fund experienced in its later years under the Labor government. Certainly, the Innovation Investment Fund—I need to be very clear, Madam Deputy Speaker—had some significant early successes after it was established earlier in the Howard government years. For example, in round 1, not only was there funding of SEEK, as the opposition leader noted, but there was also the funding of LookSmart, which was one of the early search engines. That proved to be a very successful financial investment.

But, over time, the financial performance of the IIF deteriorated very significantly—that is to say, the success rate on investments dropped very sharply. Then a really quite significant development occurred in 2013. In 2013 the then Labor government announced that there would be $100 million of public money invested through the IIF, in conjunction with three private sector managers. One was to get $40 million; the other two were to get $30 million each. They were then to go out into the private sector, raise matching private sector capital and then set up in operation new funds to invest venture capital.

Unfortunately, two of the three private sector managers failed to raise the matching private sector capital and, as a consequence, those funds did not go ahead. This reflects the reality that venture capital, as an investment class in Australia, has generated poor returns over the last decade or so, making many investors reluctant to put money in. I want to be very clear about what I am arguing here. I am certainly not arguing against venture capital as an investment class. On the contrary, I think most people who look at the technology sector and start-up sector in Australia believe that we need to increase the amount of venture capital in Australia. So I think we can all agree on the objective. If the particular policy measure that the opposition leader proposed—that is to say, putting in $500 million of government money—is to be taken seriously, we need to have an answer as to how it will overcome the difficulties which had been experienced with similar programs under Labor government control in the past.

It is certainly the case that some very successful technology nations—and I am thinking here particularly of Israel—have seen significant public sector investment into venture capital. The well-known book about the technology sector in Israel entitled Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle gives more detail on that. I am sure that the member for Gellibrand will have more to say on this topic in his forthcoming book. I look forward to reading it. I am sure it will be available in all good bookstores and I am sure it will sell even better than recent books about the IT and technology sectors in Australia.

Nevertheless, the obvious question that arises is whether a Shorten Labor government would do a good job of getting a good return on publicly invested venture capital. When you consider Labor's track record and approach in funding technology during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, we repeatedly saw poorly designed hastily conceived schemes to pump billions of dollars of taxpayers money into government owned behemoths such as the $43 billion National Broadband Network Co and the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Rather than stimulating the private sector, the policy objective seemed to be to drive the private sector off the field.

A key point here is that the Abbott government has the focus on stimulating private participants and attracting private capital into the technology sector. Some of the policy measures in this year's budget that I described earlier are very much designed to encourage further private sector activity. By contrast, the Leader of the Opposition is proposing yet another government administered fund, but he has failed to explain how it will help towards an objective of boosting the private venture capital market.

Let me conclude with the observation that Australia's start-up community is larger and more active than ever and needs very much to be encouraged. There is no disagreement that we want to boost the tech sector and start-up activity. We have a set of practical measures in this year's budget that are designed to achieve that objective. I commend those measures and the budget to the House.

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills today, because as we know the appropriation bills demonstrate the priorities of a government for the next year and into the future. The budget should match the priorities of the nation. Unfortunately, despite all its talk about making family violence a national priority, there is very little in this budget to match these words. The statistics about the incidence of family violence in our community are chilling and depressing. One in three women will experience physical violence during their lifetime. One if five women will experience violence from a current or former partner. This year, 38 women have already died as a result of family violence. That is close to two Australian women a week who are dying as a result of this scourge. However, instead of responding to the growing calls to action from the community on this issue, the government has given us a budget with no increased funding for the vast majority of vital frontline services that are required to fight this scourge.

We are told that there are further announcements to be made by the government on this front, but the parliament, service providers, advocates, the general public, and, most important of all, women at risk of violence are all in the dark about these measures. Last week on The Project Waleed Aly issued a demand that federal and state governments 'show me the money'. Unfortunately, his calls have largely been left unanswered. Fair Agenda's What it will take report clearly outlines the scale of the challenge of responding to this issue.

In 2014, the 1800RESPECT national 24/7 phone counselling service responded to over 50,000 requests for help—18,631 of these requests went unanswered due to lack of funding for staff. These are mainly vulnerable women who are reaching out to seek help but have been unable to receive an answer.

A post-budget announcement—not one made in the budget but in the days following it—of additional funding for this service means that more of these calls will be answered. This is good news to be sure, but a couple of million dollars for counselling services will not do nearly enough to address the huge growth in demand for these services. It is expected that demand for family violence crisis services will grow by 40 per cent in the 2015-16 financial year. As we know, demand for these services is already being unmet, and we know that things are only going to get worse for the sector. There has been an increase in the volume of calls being made to crisis services, as well as an increase in the severity of the abuse associated with these calls.

One of the invidious things about this issue is that, while we need to talk about it to change the community attitudes that enable it, the more that we do talk about it, the more women will come forward—and, sadly, the more women with precarious home situations will be pushed to crisis point. The more that we discuss this issue publicly, giving it the national attention that it does deserve, the more that men are retaliating in their homes—and the more violent men are becoming to reclaim power and control over women in their lives. A perpetrator may watch a news report or a current affairs story on family violence and turned to his wife and say, 'Don't you think that you're going to be able to leave.' I have heard these stories directly from many people in the sector.

Without increased funding for the services, he is right—a woman is stuck. The government may think that they are doing enough by putting family violence on the COAG agenda and prioritising it through that forum. But words are not enough. We need action in the budget and, as in the last budget, we have not seen the dollars to match the words.

It is not just family violence crisis services that need funding. That is just the beginning of what is needed to tackle this issue. We also need to fund specialist women's services that truly understand the complex nature of violence against women and that are able to provide a safe place for women and children to seek the support that they need. Victims of family violence need help to be able to remain safely at home instead of being forced to flee with no support.

These services work together with police and legal services to ensure that women and children are safe. Without these supports, many women are being forced to choose between a violent relationship and homelessness. The risk of homelessness is an important factor in why women stay in abusive relationships. Many women find it difficult to leave abusive relationships because of severe financial disadvantage and a lack of affordable housing in the community. They fear that leaving will mean that they will not have the money to provide for their children or be able to put a roof over their heads, and they stay because their only other option is homelessness.

Family violence is the single biggest cause of homelessness in Australia. In 2013-14, 33 per cent of all people requesting assistance from specialist homelessness agencies were escaping domestic or family violence. The vast majority of these people are women and children. Domestic and family violence is the No. 1 reason why people present to specialist homelessness agencies. Last year, every night, 423 people were turned away from homelessness agencies, including women's refuges designed to provide crisis support.

Yet the budget did not increase funding for homelessness services and it did nothing to address the lack of affordable and available social housing in Australia. The budget is forcing women and children to stay in abusive relationships. That is the reality. We can say all of the good words we want, and I do not doubt the goodwill of those opposite—I have said this many times—but the reality is that we need to match growing demand with increasing resources. It does not give me any pleasure to say this, but there is no way around that point.

We know that the point at which a victim decides to leave is often the most dangerous point for them. If the government will not adequately fund services to help victims, then they are leaving vulnerable women and children behind, trapped and alone. No increased funding for community legal centres and legal aid commissions that provide free legal assistance to vulnerable and disadvantaged members of our community further compounds this issue. The government have deferred making any cuts to funding for community legal centres, but this appears to be a short-term fix and future funding still remains uncertain.

Right now many, many vulnerable women are being forced to attend court alone and without legal accompaniment to seek protection from government and the judicial system. In 2013-14, more than 150,000 people seeking free legal advice from community legal centres were turned away due to lack of resources. More than one third of cases dealt with by community legal centres relate to family violence. That is 150,000 people who are being turned away. One third of them deal with family violence.

Labor believes that we have to put family violence at the centre of the national debate if we are going to change these depressing statistics that say that two women will die next week at the hands of a partner or former partner. Labor believes in the importance of empowering and supporting women in our society. We know that family violence disproportionately affects women when eight in 10 incidents of family violence involve a male perpetrator and a female victim.

Family violence is a crime of power and control, which men use to treat women as property and as objects to be threatened, assaulted, isolated and controlled. Family violence is not just about sudden physical attacks from people who lose their temper, who lose control, who lose it or who suffer from mental health problems or alcohol or drug abuse or who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Family violence does not discriminate on the basis of age, income or ethnicity. Family violence is about the systematic undermining of a woman's sense of safety and autonomy in order to control them. Family violence is caused by gender inequality, the attitude that women are worth less than men and an unequal society that enables this to occur.

Labor understands that there is no clearer symbol of continued gender inequality than violence against women. We know that the biggest risk factor for being a victim of family violence is being a woman. We have called on the Prime Minister to hold a national crisis summit on family violence so that we can bring advocates, academics, service providers and survivors to the table and coordinate a national response to this issue. If further measures are coming from the government on this issue, I welcome them, but at the moment the entire nation is in the dark. A national summit would enable people to discuss these issues openly and agree on a way forward together. We have offered the Prime Minister our support if he chooses to go down this path but if this offer is not adopted we have said that we will hold a national crisis summit within 100 days of the election of a Shorten government.

It is clear that the response to this issue has been too slow and too fragmented for some time. Women and children across Australia are currently being subjected to what the CEO of Domestic Violence Victoria, Fiona McCormack, calls the postcode lottery—a situation where women experience vastly different experiences of the legal system, of homelessness support services, of crisis services depending on where they live and whether they can access local support services or state or federal services. In the meantime, while we await a national summit, we have a responsibility to ensure that women can get the legal support that they need and that women always have somewhere safe to go. No woman should have to endure abuse because she been abandoned and left to fend for herself by society, community or the government.

Labor has recently announced a package of almost $50 million to invest in legal services, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, to ensure that women suffering from family violence have access to appropriate legal assistance and to ensure that no woman is forced to navigate the legal system alone. We have also announced $15 million in 'safe at home' grants to ensure that victims can remain safely in their own homes rather than being forced to flee because of a violent partner. It is a little-known fact that at the moment when a woman seeks crisis accommodation she is often required to move four times after leaving her home—once to go to crisis accommodation, another after a short period in crisis accommodation to temporary housing, again to establish a more permanent residence and then frequently again after that when that expires.

We need to start thinking about our response to family violence differently. It is one thing to keep pouring money into homelessness services, and as I said today in a crisis situation we are morally obliged to do this, but we need to start thinking about every woman who arrives at a crisis service, at a homelessness service, as a failure of government. We need to create an environment where women are able to stay at home safe from abusive partners. This will mean many different things in many different circumstances. There is a range of innovative programs being initiated in Victoria using technology to keep women safe at home—GPS locators on recidivist and high-risk male offenders, close-circuit television cameras in victim's homes to ensure that there is a documentary evidence trail to enable intervention orders to be enforced and panic buttons that women can carry with them that locate their location 24 hours a day and enable police to be sent directly to where they are. Seeing these panic buttons is one of the more depressing things that I have seen in my job. But talking to the women who hold them they tell me that it gives them a sense of agency and control over their life that has been lacking for some time. It is a depressing thing to have to exist, but their presence is important. A national safe at home strategy that ended the postcode lottery and enabled more women stay at home rather than forced to go to homelessness services is an important change in the paradigm of our response to this issue that we need to embrace.

Labor have also said that we need to invest $8 million to improve perpetrator accountability and tracking so that perpetrators will be diverted from a path that leads to violence. Unfortunately, the current situation is that a small number of men perpetrate against multiple women. Often a man is not only beating their current partner but also their former partner and sometimes the former partner before that. Unfortunately, however, in most states in Australia we are not able to track these patterns of behaviour and, as such, police struggle to intervene to prevent them.

Similarly, there is no national strategy for dealing with men's behaviour change therapies. I have personally attended men's behaviour change counselling services with groups of men who have been referred to these counselling sessions by the courts in Victoria. While the evidence is mixed about their effectiveness, I know that the men who are intrinsically motivated, the men who continue to go there beyond the court mandate, get a lot of out of it and that the families of the men who go there speak very highly of them. So I urge the Prime Minister and the government to work with Labor, to reach across the aisle, to develop a joint approach to responding to violence against women. This is not an issue that ought to be fought over in the culture wars; it ought to be a priority of this nation to empower women and enable them to be treated as equals.

We know the victims of family violence do not leave their abusers for a number of reasons. They may stay because they fear for their safety if they leave. They may lack the financial resources to leave. They may want to be able to properly care for their children and keep a roof over their heads. When women are making decisions about whether or not to leave violent relationships, they have to consider whether they have the financial capacity to do so. Tackling violence against women also means ensuring that women have the equality of opportunity to be financially secure. Two budget changes in particular—the changes to child care and paid parental leave—will increase the difficulty for women leaving violent situations.

Labor have said that we believe that paid parental leave is vital to ensuring that women remain in the workforce. That is why in government Labor put in place Australia's first ever fair and accessible national paid parental leave scheme. But the recent changes jeopardise this arrangement. By reducing government assistance to women with child-caring responsibilities, low-income women will find it more difficult to leave because of financial restraints. Empowering and supporting women to leave abusive relationships does not just mean increasing funding for family violence crisis services; it also means reducing the gender pay gap, increasing women's workforce participation and making child care more accessible and more affordable. Budgets are about priorities; however, regrettably, on the evidence available to date, this budget reveals that tackling family violence simply is not a priority for this government. (Time expired)

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When Treasurer Joe Hockey announced on budget night that there would be a $5 billion concessional loan program to bring projects from ideas to reality for Northern Australia, it was all I could do not to run from my seat and hug him—throw my arms around him in thanks. Let me bring this into context for you. We have been hearing stories about the government developing the north for so long, it has almost become fable. The brigadier of Townsville's 3rd Brigade, Roger Noble, recently sent me a photograph and speech from a collection at Lavarack Barracks. It was a photograph of the Prime Minister, Harold Holt, announcing the commissioning of Lavarack Barracks. It is a landmark day in Townsville's history. Prime Minister Holt's speech was beautifully typed and extolled his government's wish to finally get on with developing the north, our next frontier. That was nearly 50 years ago.

He was followed as Prime Minister by Jack McEwen, John Gordon, William McMahon, Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd again. They all did their best around the different parts of the north of the country, but none had a coordinated plan. To be charitable, the Asian economies were not the engine room of the world's economy during their time, but they all made noises about developing the north. Nearly 50 years on and after 50 years of chatter no wonder there are some who just do not believe that we will ever be taken seriously. I understand their mindset, but now we have reasons and I have available capital to state that things are different now.

Treasurer Joe Hockey came to Townsville last week. He gave a brilliant presentation on the budget and the motivations behind the different measures. He put up a slide, and it was the best slide I have seen in a long time. He said that there are now three time zones around the world. There is the European time zone, there is America's time zone and there is the Asian time zone. We are right here in the Asian time zone. They sit just above us, with their emerging economies and their people needing goods and services, and we are right there in that zone. Treasurer Hockey went on to state the fact that, while mining is a massive earner for exports, it only represents about 10 per cent of our economy. The largest portion of our economy is the services sector, contributing around 70 per cent of our overall economy. Yet this massive part of Australia represents only 17 per cent of our exports.

This the exact thing, making our services sector more export orientated, which will be required by our neighbours as their economies expand and their quality of life grows. Treasurer Hockey said that it is trade in these services which will see us continue to grow and become an even more outward-looking country. Northern Australia, and Townsville, from my perspective, will be right there. How big could this get? Andrew Robb spoke in Townville just before the 2013 election. He stated then that the tropical world, the world between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer, had about 600 million people who would be considered consumer or middle class. By 2035, that number of middle class people is expected to expand to 3.6 billion people. We do not have to have it all. What we have to do is provide goods, services and quality product to that niche market. The $5 billion concessional loan program will be the catalyst for our awakening in the nation's consciousness and delivery of the long talked about potential.

It is important to note that this facility will not take the place of the existing infrastructure and future infrastructure needs provided by government. This is on top of everything else. Our $6.5 billion commitment to the Bruce Highway, for example, still goes ahead over those 10 years. But we have to get going and identify the projects that will develop the North. This is why I was so pleased with the way the facility was announced. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer have purposefully been non-prescriptive in this facility's application process. We want to see what is out there. The days of Canberra telling the North what to do and what is good for us are past. This facility will allow us to put forward the things we believe in and the things we will deliver for all of Australia, and to structure the finance to make it happen.

This is not just good for Townsville and North Queensland or even Northern Australia. This is good for Australia—all of Australia. We must work with our councils, chambers of commerce and our economic drivers to ensure that we get the right mix. I feel for councillors in this process, and my mayor, Jenny Hill, has asked for more detail about how the fund will work. She is doing all the heavy lifting for my region's councils. It is a valid question and request, because it goes to the mindset that we must confront. Local governments have been subjected to more and massive cost-shifting by state governments of all political persuasions over the last 10 to 15 years. Madam Deputy Speaker Prentice, you will know all about that. This often happens without consultation and certainly without compensation. The end result is that the primary objective of local government is simply not to go broke. They cannot focus on 10 to 15 years into the future, or even to the end of their terms. They are focused so tightly on the here and the now that they need assistance in getting their heads around what is possible and achievable. We as a government must be prepared to go to our councils and assist them with the resources to reach out and raise their eyes to the horizon.

Minister Robb challenged my councillors, in this building, to look up and dream big. If we get the big projects the little ones will happen as a matter of course. That may be so, but when you have been belted by state government and the like, you tend to focus on the little things and not the visionary things. We need to understand this and work with them. They have the answers and the people in their communities who can do this. We need to support them.

My government released the intergenerational report and identified the small business sector as the primary driver of our employment and economic prosperity into the future. My wife said to our children over dinner recently that the jobs of the future have not even been thought of yet. Just think about that. It is not that they do not exist yet, it is just that the concept of what the jobs will be has not even been thought of.

We are on the cusp of delivering for our country into the future, and we have to grab it with both hands. It will be small business that will need the flexibility and innovation to progress. It will be small business that thinks about the hole in the market or the supply chain and goes for it—that has a go. What we have to do as a parliament and as federal, state and local governments is get out of the way and let small business have their head.

But what would be better is customers who value them. I will continue to advocate for changes to the tender system and process to allow government tenders and the money they bring to our communities to wash through our economy more than once. We must do all we can to show support for the local businesses that make up our regional communities. We must protect the taxpayer, but we must get a better mix in the approval process.

This is also where my government's decision to have a fair dinkum tax discussion and a good hard look at our Federation makes a great deal of sense to me. If you speak to small-business people, the notion of payroll tax and stamp duty is constantly raised. It is not really the fault of the state governments that they levy these taxes, but if we are to have a competitive taxation regime into the 21st century we must look at how taxes are raised, both state and federal, and at the errors of duplication across the Federation. These two white papers should be open and fearless in their discussion.

Everyone on this side of the House knows that government does not create wealth or jobs. What government does is set the scene for commercial engagement. We can make it onerous and restrictive or we can step back and support these people as they develop and grow. To that end, I have a couple of suggestions that my government can do to assist. If we are to develop the north we need to get water and energy sorted out from the beginning. Nothing happens without them.

With energy in my region, my mayor sees the opportunity for Townsville should the gas pipeline from Tennant Creek reach Mount Isa. I am constantly hearing from small and medium enterprises that we must engage again in secondary processing. The cost of iron ore has come down, the cost of coal has come down, and we must provide low cost energy and produce the goods here. Ideas like bringing the pipeline all the way to Townsville are worthy of consideration and support. To that end, I have asked Minister Macfarlane to come to Townsville to discuss our energy needs. When the Darling mine commences, they will investigate the possibility of using the overburden to produce coal-fired electricity for their mine. Can we increase the capacity of that power station and add to that the poles and wires and bring coal-fired base-load energy all the way to Townsville? It is surely worthy of consideration.

If you speak to people like Graham Pollock from SMEC Engineering, he says that we will get the best energy result, meaning the lowest possible competitive prices, by producing a mosaic of power options and suppliers. Can this $5 billion be used to bring hydro to Tully in the Burdekin, together with ethanol from Ingham and wind and solar from Richmond, to finally provide a consistent base-load energy to facilitate our emerging energy needs? Can the science we will run alongside these become an economic driver for our country as well? Can the MBD algae project be used via a direct action mechanism to lower emissions and produce quality fibre, food and fuel? We need to find out.

Science must be at the core of our northern development. Organisations such as the Australian Institute of Marine Science and CSIRO must be used not only to give our baseline economic and environmental exposures, but they can also be used as honest brokers to survey before, during and after monitoring of the effects of any development. I have always said that, no matter what we do, it impacts on our environment. It is how we manage these impacts which is the important part. We must back our scientists.

Townsville's James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine will drive research and discovery north into the tropics. By 2050, 70 per cent of the world's children will live in the tropical world and we will have the only Western university in the world with this brilliant facility aimed fairly and squarely at this tropical world in their time zone. This means that we will be tackling epidemic diseases such as drug resistant TB, malaria and dengue. We must also work hard on the lifestyle problems being faced in the tropical world. Diabetes type 2 has become a major killer of the people in the tropical world. My city and university are perfectly placed to deliver into this space.

Defence will always play a major role in my city and region. Lavarack Barracks has already featured in my speech so far. The thought that has gone into developing our redeployable capability over many governments is to be commended. Similarly, the work that has gone into readying 2RAR is second to none. The way our amphibious regiment will interact with the Navy's magnificent LSD ship is amazing. But we will need to ensure that the RAAF is a vital part of our interoperability. By deploying a squadron on the new C-27J aircraft, the RAAF will be able to fully participate in the training which will be so vital for our future defence. Getting the P-8s to Townsville so that our border security can be properly supported will be another string to the RAAF's capability redevelopment in Townsville.

I truly believe that the future of Army aviation lies in Townsville. The skies above the Darling Downs are becoming cluttered and a new home for the Army's helicopter fleet and training should move to Townsville. We have an airport and an airfield which can expand to housing. We have a city of Townsville which will welcome them. We have a private sector which will work with and support them and grow our businesses internationally. By backing Townsville, everyone wins.

I am hugely energised by our budget. The Treasurer, Joe Hockey, has delivered what Andrew Roberts put to the world. We are perfectly placed to capitalise on the work done by this government. I have done nearly 15 minutes on this speech and I could go for another hour and a half on what this budget has done for my community. We are perfectly placed to capitalise on the work done by this government. We must always remember that countries are made up of people and that social infrastructure is every bit as important as a port or a pipeline. But as the Treasurer and the Minister for Trade and Investment have said, if we lift our eyes and look to the bigger picture we will achieve a very bright future for ourselves and our children. It is our time to have a go. I thank the House.

Debate adjourned.

F ederation Chamber adjourned at 19 : 00