Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I look at the government's woeful budget that it handed down last year, and I shake my head in sadness at the way in which the Liberal government has mismanaged this country's finances with successive budgets which have blown out debt. When this government was elected, government debt was at $184 billion. That figure has almost doubled now to $317 billion. You might be able to give the government some credit if they had managed to reduce the deficit even a little, but, of course, they have not because, ultimately, at the end of the day, they are not up to it. Since their first budget, the budget deficit for 2017-18 has blown out tenfold from $2.8 billion to $28.7 billion.

The midyear budget update confirmed the Prime Minister and the Treasurer's budget has continued this government's streak of letting the deficit get worse and letting our total debt get worse. I know that the coalition look to the past for inspiration, but if I could give both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer a single piece of advice it would be that it would be wise to let this tradition end. Deficits over the forward estimates have blown out by another $10 billion. The projected surplus in 2021 has shrivelled away in the cold light of the reality of what this government has become. The simple, scary fact is that all of this budget mismanagement leaves Australia's AAA credit rating at genuine risk.

Despite the growing deficit and the looming downgrade to our credit rating, the government still appears to remain determined to give a $50 billion tax handout to big business. What will this tax break do for big business, many of whom will simply deliver that tax break back to overseas owners? What will the tax break deliver for Australian householders facing static wages being eaten away by rising costs? The $50 billion of their money that the Prime Minister wants to give to big business will raise household income by 0.1 per cent by the mid-2030s—not 10 per cent, not one per cent but 0.1 per cent over a decade.

I was thinking about how to provide an analogy in making this speech to demonstrate how puny 0.1 per cent of income growth is. It is actually quite hard because it is so small that it is basically invisible. It is a single drop of milk in a litre carton over the next 20 years, and that is what we are getting for a $50 billion giveaway to big business of taxpayers' money. In the meantime, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer are busily smashing household budgets with their cuts to Medicare, cuts to schools and cuts to family payments. You would have thought that the government would have learnt their lesson when they tried to ram these measures down Australians' throats for the first time back in 2014. It appears they have not learnt that lesson, though. They thought they would bring them back for another go in 2015 and then the Prime Minister thought he would pick them up and include them in his first budget as well. Who knows what we will see come May. Here we are with the Prime Minister looking at doing this once again with the coalition government. I am not sure how many more times the Australian people will have to reject these cuts to families, pensioners, new mums, people with disability and young people before the government will learn their lesson, but keep rejecting these proposals we will. The thing is that the government do not understand. In fact, the very thing the government have never understood is that budgets are ultimately about priorities. They are about people and Labor understands that. Priorities and people were at the heart of every budget that we brought down in our last government. People and priorities will be at the heart of every budget which will be brought down by a future Shorten Labor government.

Labor last won government at a difficult economic time for the people of Geelong, but, despite that, the Labor government then fully funded the Geelong Investment and Innovation Fund which secured jobs at a perilous moment and managed to keep Ford manufacturing in Geelong back then. Indeed, when Ford ultimately made its decision to leave Geelong on the very day it did, a Labor government was able to find the money for what is now the Geelong Regional Innovation and Investment Fund. This was in stark contrast to how the then Abbott government approached Alcoa's leaving of Geelong, where no such transition money was provided for the community. Jobs went begging at that moment. In Geelong's moment of need, this government left Geelong behind.

By contrast, the former Labor government provided $37 million to Deakin University's carbon fibre research centre, which provides one of the best carbon fibre research furnaces in the world, and the consequences of that are spinning off companies which are growing jobs to this day. We delivered $3 billion for a regional rail link in Geelong; we delivered the Geelong Bypass; we delivered the Northern Community Hub in Norlane; we delivered, as I said, the Geelong Regional Innovation and Investment Fund. Good governments prioritise local community needs, and Labor knows how important investments in local community infrastructure are for local economies and for local communities to survive and thrive.

One commitment that we made, which was of particular pleasure for me, and it again stands in contrast to a failure by this government to similarly commit, was the previous Labor government's $14 million commitment to the upgrade of the facilities at Kardinia Park. Football and the Geelong Football Club lie very much at the heart of the Geelong community. The club and its players have been an important part of Geelong for more than 150 years. Since the Second World War, the home of the Geelong Football Club has been Kardinia Park, which is the site of that investment by the former Labor government. But, in the earlier part of the Geelong Football Club's history, it was based at Corio Oval, the site of which is now in Eastern Park. It is a site which is not easily found and it is only marked by a small plaque.

There is a sadness in this for me because Corio Oval holds a very significant place in the city of Geelong's history. Not only was it the site of the Geelong Football Club and the site of a trotting track; in fact, Geelong's first three VFL premierships, in 1925, 1931 and 1937, were won at the Corio Oval. But it was perhaps in the 1880s, when Mr Dave Hickinbotham captained the most famous Geelong team, that the Corio Oval might have been at its height. We won premierships back then in 1880, 1882, 1883 and 1884 and went through the entire 1886 season completely undefeated, including beating South Melbourne in what was described at the time as 'the game of the century' to take that premiership. Dave Hickinbotham was a fantastic footballer on his own terms. He was described as fast and strong, playing in the centre. One can only imagine the sight of Dave Hickinbotham running down the centre of Corio Oval surrounded by tens of thousands of spectators. Indeed, the record crowd at Corio Oval was 26,000 spectators in a game played, I think, in the 1920s against Collingwood. Dave went on to coach the Geelong VFL team in 1910 for two years and, curiously, he is one of the few players to have recorded a 100-yard placekick, which he did in 1888.

In 2014, I spoke about the significance of Corio Oval, the significance of that history, the significance of the Geelong Football Club and the significance of Dave Hickinbotham and how this ought to be more properly remembered than simply by a plaque in that place. I proposed then, as I have been proposing since that time, that an oval within sight of the old Corio Oval that is currently in Eastern Park and used mainly as a place for cricket but which does not have a name be renamed the Dave Hickinbotham Oval. It would give a fitting legacy and memorial to him but also serve as a reminder of the significance, just a few metres away, of Corio Oval and its place in Geelong's history. I wrote then to the City of Greater Geelong to seek to pursue this project and was told that I needed to get approval from Dave Hickinbotham's family in order to do that. I was assisted by Frank Costa, the patron of the Geelong Football Club, because it turns out that the Hickinbotham family are in fact deeply connected with the Geelong Football Club. Dave's grandson Alan played in the 1951 premiership team and his great-grandson Michael is a committed Cat fan to this day. Michael lives in Adelaide. I caught up with Michael a couple of weeks ago with the member for Kingston and it has been my pleasure to get to know Michael in the context of this campaign. Michael is, of course, very keen for his family's name to be linked to this oval and for Dave Hickinbotham's exploits and, indeed, the significance of the Corio Oval more generally to be remembered by the renaming of that oval.

I wrote that letter to council back in 2014. Some might say that is long enough to make a decision like this, but I would say that the wheel that grinds slow grinds fine. I understand the decision is on the verge of being made. I am sure that decision will appreciate the contribution of Dave Hickinbotham to our city and our football club, and I am hopeful we will see a fitting memorial to that contribution named in our city soon. I really look forward to being able to celebrate that moment with his great-grandson Michael.

That speaks to the significance of community in the context of the way in which budgets prepared in this place are applied. I want to speak of another community project which, back when Labor were in power, we funded through the federal budget—a $3.1 million upgrade to the Geelong Eastern Beach precinct. In 2003, Australia consolidated a range of heritage lists to come up with Australia's National Heritage List, which was adopted in 2003. This has on it the really significant and iconic sites within our country, and they are the famous sites that we know, but it also includes a number of other sites such as the Cascades Female Factory Yard 4 North, the Moree Baths and Swimming Pool, the Mount William Stone Hatchet Quarry and the Echuca Wharf. All of these are important local places which mark out Australia's national heritage, but there is one disgraceful omission from our National Heritage List, and that is that there is not a single thing from Geelong on it. That is something that needs to be rectified.

Geelong is a significant city in the context of our nation's history. As every local in Geelong knows, it was destined to become Victoria's capital, but some 19th century Melbourne shysters—and I know I am standing next to the member for Bruce, who is no doubt a descendant of one of them—doctored a map back in the mid-19th century to show that Melbourne was closer to Ballarat than was Geelong, which, of course, it is not. On the basis of that map, funding was produced by financiers in London to build the port of Melbourne ahead of the port of Geelong, which then led to Melbourne—

An honourable member: We all know Melbourne is part of Geelong.

It is our north-eastern suburbs—which then led to Melbourne becoming the capital of Victoria. There are some who think that Geelong should get over this, but we still remember. During the period when Australia rode on the sheep's back, Geelong was very much the wool capital of our nation, and Cunningham Pier was the centre of the wool trade. Customs House in Geelong was one of the oldest customs houses in Australia.

It is right that there ought to be a representative from Geelong on the Australian National Heritage List, and I think that Eastern Beach is the perfect place to be put on the list. There has been continuous use of the Eastern Beach site since the 1840s, and it was first proposed that a precinct be built there in 1914. Works commenced in 1927, and in 1939 the current shark-proof enclosure in Corio Bay was opened. This is a wonderful Art Deco construction by the architect Harry Hare. The boardwalk and the kids pool are similar to those that were found all around greater Port Phillip Bay, but today it is about the only one surviving. It also speaks to Australia's connection with the water. It is one of the great pools of our nation, along with the Bondi swimming pool, the North Sydney swimming pool and the wonderful Cairns swimming pool. The Bondi swimming pool is on the National Heritage List.

This is a place where people in Geelong now engage in a whole lot of forms of recreation. Significant triathlon events, cycling events and running events all happen here. Geelong enjoys Eastern Beach now as it has for 150 years. Tonight I reiterate the call I have been making for some time: Eastern Beach and its precinct ought to be placed on the National Heritage List. It is time for Geelong to be represented on the National Heritage List, and I will be calling on the council to do that. It is an example of how important funding from this place is in the building of local communities.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2016-17 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2016-17 appropriate an additional $2.2 billion this financial year. That is in addition to the amounts appropriated in the annual supply and appropriation act last year. Labor will not block supply. We are good like that. Sustainable budget repair, though, is a significant challenge for this parliament, and I say at the outset that we are prepared to work with those opposite to support the bills we can, to temper the worst excesses of the bills we cannot negotiate workable compromises on and to oppose firmly those which pick on the poor and the vulnerable.

Serious structural reform of the government's budget is required because the government's budget is now in worse shape than it was three years ago when there was a supposed budget emergency. You might remember that. They have tripled the deficit. Net debt has risen by over $100 billion since the 2013 election. We could spend the entire week talking about the ridiculous cuts and critiquing the government's budget measures. Suffice to say that when you look at the zombie budget measures, such as the cuts to poor welfare recipients, the cuts to Medicare and the cuts to school funding, and contrast them with the ongoing desire to give away a tax cut to big business and to cut the top marginal tax rate—I think for every $1 million you earn you get a $16,000 tax cut—it is pretty clear where the government's priorities lie. Serious structural reform, which would address the threats to the AAA credit rating, could be dealt with through adopting Labor's negative-gearing capital gains tax policies and abandoning the $50 billion tax cuts.

Nevertheless, I want to turn to other matters. Nine months or so in as a new member of this House, taking stock and reflecting on the various agencies and portfolios of government, I would have to say an early contender for the worst performing department and minister would have to be the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and its minister. I do not say that lightly, of course, because there is a lot of competition. I am forming that view based on what I see in my electorate, what comes in the door every day, what I have seen already in my work as deputy chair of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, and it is also apparent when you see the complete failure of this minister in relation to the core services of the department and the policy failure on the overall migration program. It is fair to say the core administrative functions of this department are failing. Citizenships delays, I have spoken about at length in this chamber and the other place, and endless audit reports from the Auditor-General outline the failings in procurement and service delivery. The latest gambit of the department—I think this is the minister and his secretary plotting the Department of Homeland Security—where they are proposing to spend a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayers' money on a new headquarters. That went down well with the Public Works Committee, where I think even the government chair, Scottie Buchholz—I cannot remember which seat he is for, you will excuse me—

An honourable member: Seat of Wright.

Seat of Wright, excellent, got it. Where even he said the secretary of the department was an uncooperative witness. Every budget, we see fees go up for immigration, fees go up for visas yet the service standards go down. We now have, on the policy front, over one million people in Australia on temporary visas—working holiday-makers, international students, 457s and regional visas—with various forms of work rights. There is no reliable longitudinal data. There are endless accounts of exploitation which are not addressed, and the impact on the Australian labour market is not considered in a cumulative fashion—that is a topic for another day.

I want to turn the focus of my remarks to a very serious matter and that relates to the administration by the department of 457 visas and the sustained pattern of rorts, the refusal to reform the practices that we are seeing by the minister, and the department continuing to issue visas. The hypocrisy of the government in turning a blind eye to what is going on in the 457 racket at the moment makes them actively complicit. I quote from a letter from the minister, and this outlines at the outset the stated policy aim of the 457 program:

The policy intent of the subclass 457 visa program is that Australians have priority and that overseas workers are a supplement to, and not a substitute for, Australian workers.

That is what the minister says. In fact, anyone in Australia who writes him a letter gets this little gem of a standard paragraph back. It seems clear; who could argue?

I will also say at the outset, as someone who used to run various aspects of migration as a public servant, that I believe we will always need some capacity for temporary skilled labour, whether that is due to capacity constraints or skill gaps in the Australian economy, and that there is a legitimate need for legitimate businesses to procure these skills in a globalised world. The numbers should scale up and down according to the economy, but the key thing is that the system has to be administered with integrity and fairness to the Australians who may be missing out on work, whether they are unemployed or underemployed, and fairness to those who come in on visas who are then open to incredible exploitation which this government does nothing to address—7-Eleven, anyone?

We have heard numerous reports of labour market testing laws being ineffective or gamed. I picked this up doorknocking thousands of houses through the campaign, particularly from IT workers. But I want to raise a specific matter of current concern relating to residents in my electorate. These are serious allegations and concerns relating to the use 457s for shipping engineers. Shipping engineers are one of the hundreds and hundreds of occupations on what is called the CSOL, the Consolidated Skilled Occupation List. That is the list that you have to have an occupation on if you are to be eligible to apply, or nominate someone, for a 457 work visa. Shipping engineers, though, have a special status in that if you read the legislation they are one of only two professions, engineers and nurses, which are protected from exemptions from labour market testing by the act. The minister, no matter how much he hates it, cannot exempt shipping engineers from labour market testing requirements. They are a highly skilled and specialist occupation. There are at least 250 unemployed shipping engineers in Australia—I know this because the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers, AIMPE, have shown me this data and many of these people live in my electorate. So I am deeply concerned to hear of current issues in relation to the company CSL and its recruitment activities. These issues have been raised directly in March in the last two weeks with DIBP and the minister but with no satisfactory response. The facts are that in January, CSL advertised a range of jobs including for shipping engineers. The jobs—positions for seafarers—were advertised again for one week on seek.com on 8 March, closing on 15 March. I am aware of at least 61 applicants, because I have seen the list, who are prima facie qualified—some, again, from my electorate. I am now in possession of correspondence from the AIMPE to the minister and to CSL, which was settled by a QC on 15 and 16 March, that raises concerns that CSL may choose to fill the positions using 457 visa holders rather than Australian citizens or permanent residents.

AIMPE are raising these concerns because they are worried for Australians as this has happened before in this industry. In fact, AIMPE advised the minister that Inco Ships, now CSL, did not adequately comply with labour market testing as required under the Migration Act. In December 2015 they provided employment to foreign engineers who had previously been engaged to work on CSL owned ships, and these 457 visas were granted by the minister. AIMPE believes that none of the Australian applicants were even interviewed, let alone employed—and I would be very happy to be corrected on that front.

The act requires the minister, before issuing 457 visas, to be satisfied that no Australian citizen or permanent resident is qualified, experienced and available to fill the vacancy. What we see here is a single ad for seven days on seek.com. I do not believe that is adequate. Nevertheless, we could live in hope that these 61 applicants—there were at least 61—will receive fair consideration. But, given their concerns, AIMPE sent the list of applicants to the department. Mysteriously, one applicant was told by email on 21 March by the Chandler Macleod recruitment firm in relation to their application in January that, 'The position has been withdrawn.' Yet on 23 March CSL replied to AIMPE's letter saying they had a large number of applications for the jobs advertised in March. They are undertaking to assess applications, yet claim they have no obligation to interview every applicant—or, indeed, any applicants—and they refused to provide any undertakings requested by AIMPE to not hire more 457 workers.

I call on the minister to make a clear commitment to actually back fairness in this system, to back Australian workers who are qualified for these jobs and to not keep saying one thing and doing another. Minister, say you will not issue more 457 visas for shipping engineers, at least without being properly satisfied that serious labour market testing has occurred and fair consideration has been given. DIBP, the minister's department, replied to this email on 20 March, acknowledging the list of applicants for the jobs advertised on seek.com and saying they would 'consider this new information in consultation with the minister's office.' We await their response, and we seek the minister's assurance.

More broadly, the question that arises, of course, is why shipping engineers are still on the consolidated skills shortage list. It is clear that there are many qualified unemployed or underemployed shipping engineers in Australia, and this was admitted by the government's department in Senate estimates just a few weeks ago by the department of transport and infrastructure. But, despite this admission, we see—or think—that 457 visas are still being issued. We had 180 of them in 2013-14, we had 174 of them in 2014-15 and in 2015-16 we had 100. The minister is still issuing them but, mysteriously, on 30 September last year the department stopped publishing the statistics, so no-one has any clue anymore as to how many 457 visas the minister has issued since 30 September. The Parliamentary Library says, 'We don't know anymore, because they took the data down.'

Labor's response, in our plan to put local workers first, is sitting there in a bill on the Notice Paper that was introduced by the Leader of the Opposition and which could be voted on now. The Leader of the Opposition's speech made it very clear that skills from overseas will always be a necessary part of a modern, open economy. There is no argument about that. But this bill sets more rigorous evidence requirements for labour market testing for 457s. They are not onerous. The bill says, 'Put a job ad up for four weeks.' That seems pretty reasonable. It says, 'Make sure that, if you are applying for a visa, you have done your labour market testing within the last four months.' That seems pretty reasonable. It says, 'Ban ads that target only overseas workers.' That should not be hard. And it says, 'Crack down on job ads that set false, unreliable requirements just so employers can put an ad up and shove it into the department to get a foreign worker.'

When the Leader of the Opposition was the minister he introduced labour market testing, and those opposite opposed it. They voted against it. It is really quite simple: where employers need a 457 visa holder, they should have to provide evidence to prove it. My personal view is that labour market testing may not go far enough and that, in some sectors—in some cases—we may also need to explore price signals to reality test employers. When you have got a choice—and say: 'There's a bit of a shortage here, but with a few thousand dollars I could train a local worker to fill that job. They've got years of experience; they just need a skill'—maybe do not do a fake job ad and then go overseas. Maybe the government says: 'You really think you need that? Then, instead of training a local worker, you pay a higher fee.'

I think that in the minister's campaign for his leadership, he was polishing his head and trying to think: 'Where might I be a bit exposed? Better cover up my weaknesses, if I am going to run for leader, while I count my numbers.' He came out a few weeks ago with this fig leaf, this little sham of a fix on 457s—he got a bit of telly on it. He said, 'We're going to ban temporary foreign workers from taking jobs at fast-food stores.' That sounds all right! What he did not say is that people on 457s are not flipping burgers. This great, big announcement—this great, big crackdown on 457s—applies to a couple hundred people in management and supervisory roles. It is about time the minister actually took his responsibilities seriously, stopped playing politics and stopped trying to undermine the Prime Minister. Then again—given the Liberal Party's record on promotions—the Prime Minister stuffed up the NBN, blew tens of billions of dollars for a dud product, and they promoted him. History would say that the minister is in with a good chance.

In the last brief moment, I will restate my concerns. I cannot overstate my concern strongly enough about the delays in citizenship applications. The human cruelty of these delays for over 10,000 people—who have been waiting one year, two years or three years with no processing by the department for hundreds of people in my electorate and over 10,000 across the country—is unconscionable. The minister should address that. I will read into the Hansard some quotes from a recent audit report on the performance of the minister's department on the procurement of garrison and welfare services for Nauru and Papua New Guinea. The Auditor-General said they had 'fallen well short of effective procurement practice' and he:

… identified serious and persistent deficiencies in the three phases of procurement activity undertaken since 2012 to: … consolidate contracts; and achieve savings through an open tender process.

… Of most concern is the department’s management of processes for contract consolidation and the open tender … The department used approaches which reduced competitive pressure and significantly increased the price of the services without Government authority to do so.

If time permitted, we could detail the tripling in application fees to apply for visas or citizenship. I think this budget significantly increased the fee for an Australian citizen to come in and say, 'I've lost my citizenship certificate. I kind of need it for a passport,' or it is urgent. So, we tripled the fee—or raised the fee, I would have to check the figure—and then the waiting times blew out, so you pay more for a decreased service. There is a pattern here with this department and it is about time the minister took his job seriously and addressed the serious, systemic and growing failings in his department's administration.

Cathy McGowan (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would particularly like to welcome into parliament three of my constituents and say how good it is to have you here, Eliza, BJ and Pauline from Glenrowan. Welcome and thanks for turning up, because the topic I am going to be talking about is our money bill, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2016-2017. I note that the cognate bill, Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2016-2017, provides for an appropriation of just over $905 million. Of this account, there is $81 million in equity funding to the Australian Rail Track Corporation for the delivery of network upgrades. This particular part of the appropriation bill is of real interest to people in my community. In my speech today, I would like to focus on the role of the Australian Rail Track Corporation. I would like to outline some of the problems we have with the Australian Rail Track Corporation and our railway line between Melbourne and Albury-Wodonga. My call for action is for the Victorian and Commonwealth governments to get together with industry and communities to resolve this particular problem, which has been going on for too long. Pauline, if I could say, I reckon you of all people here understand the problem with the railway line.

The truth is I support the Australian government's financial contribution to the ARTC. They have significant responsibilities. Across five states, they manage and maintain 8,500 kilometres of rail network, and each day they manage the transit of hundreds of freight and passenger trains across the network. Mostly, it is a well-maintained network that meets the needs of its customers.

However, in north-east Victoria the ARTC customers are both passenger and freight, and the needs of the passenger customers are not being met. For more than eight years regional communities in north-east Victoria have been frustrated by significant engineer failings on the Wodonga to Melbourne railway line. The north-east rail line suffers really poor service; it is one of the worst in Victoria, in fact. Currently, there are 23 speed restrictions along the line due to the lack of track work, and trains are constantly replaced by buses, often at the last minute and without appropriate communication to passengers. The issue was brought to a head with the ARTC scheduling track work on the long weekend in Victoria, leading to significant disruption to passengers. Some on the XPT were woken at 3 am on the sleeper carts to be herded onto buses. And what did we hear? We heard the blame game: 'It's not us. It's them' and 'It's not them. It's somebody else. Go and talk to them. We made the decision ages ago. Don't get cross with us.' But what we must do now is ensure safe, reliable services for the communities of north-east Victoria. We have to end the blame game and we must work together. Truly, it is the absolute responsibility of the Australian government—that is, us—to ensure the infrastructure that supports all rail services is maintained at a level that allows services to run an optimal level.

We have heard from the government and the ARTC that they are meeting their contractual obligations, but when this results in the train now taking half an hour longer to get from Southern Cross Station to Albury than it did 10 years ago, there is clearly a problem. My constituents tell me that the train is running slower now than it did in Ned Kelly's time. I believe them! The ARTC has spent over $134 million on remediation works on this line and they advised that, while the projects were due to be completed in December 2016, the majority of the work was completed in March 2016. They also advised that on completion of these works the north-east line would be of the standard of the rest of the network. But let me share some statistics with you. In February 2017, last month, while 95.8 per cent of services were being delivered, only 61.7 per cent of them ran on time. Can you imagine waiting at the Wodonga Railway Station for the train that does not come, and it is certainly late? And, if it does not turn up, it actually becomes a bus.

I do not think you could even begin to understand the frustration of my community—people with disabilities, parents with babies, people with wheelchairs and people with luggage. You are ready to go on the train, which you love, and then you cannot go on the train; it has become a bus. You have to lug up the steps and you have to walk along the narrow passageway, and if you have children or if you are looking after an older person it is incredibly difficult. But, anyhow, I will not go into the problems so much at this stage. I just want to stress that the standard must be wrong if ARTC constantly tells us that they are meeting their contractual obligations.

Let's turn to the role of the community in trying to sort this out. The city councils of Wodonga, Albury, Benalla and Wangaratta got together and formed the Hume rail corridor group. They worked with our local community activist group, the Border Rail Action Group. They prepared a report to show that $100 million in missed economic benefit is being caused due to the poor standard of our railway line. They also found out that, if the line were improved, almost 60 per cent of existing and 72 per cent of potential passengers would convert their non-rail trips to trains, so they would be off the road, they would not be using petrol and they would be on the fantastic road service that we would have.

The north-east line ensures that communities in my electorate can connect to Melbourne for business, education, events, health and other professional services as well as for domestic and international travel. It is really important in rural and regional Australia to have public transport, but it has to work. The north-east line is not working. It was reported in November 2016 that only 55.2 per cent of services ran on time, and that made it the least reliable of all Victorian services.

What I really want to talk about now is that the community has a resigned acceptance that our train does not work. They say: 'Oh, I'm going to go in a car. I can't go on the train; it will arrive late, or I need to go down the day before and pay an extra night's accommodation.' Young people coming home for the long weekend say, 'I can't get on the train.' So then they do the sometimes dangerous work of getting lifts with people or hitching, because they cannot rely on the train. So we have really got to do something.

In this particular instance I would like to say that I believe the Australian government, and in particular the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, have an opportunity to show leadership and commitment to regional Australia by ensuring that passenger services and the transport needs of regional communities are considered core business by the ARTC. There is a very strong message from my community that the ARTC currently does core business around freight. They think, 'They know passenger services are important but they do not make the money that they need.' So my work has been to say, 'You have to do an "and"—this is not a case of either-or.'

In 2016 I met with the federal transport minister, Darren Chester, to fill him in on all our issues. I am really pleased to hear that Minister Chester has committed to travel the North East line—we hope in early April—to see the situation firsthand, and I look forward to welcoming him. But I have to remind him that it will not be enough just to come and look and see. He must do, and he must make a commitment for action. I also supported Senator Hinch and Senator Rice from Victoria two weeks ago during additional estimates, when they asked questions of the ARTC boss, John Fullerton. I welcome the fact that as a result of their questions ARTC has released details of their contract with the Victorian government.

Recently I introduced a private member's bill to parliament that would require Infrastructure Australia to take into account the social benefits of proposed infrastructure investments for rural and regional Australia. We need to know not only that the economic benefit is going to be achieved, and maybe the environmental benefit, but also that social good will be achieved. Last week, I introduced the National Land Transport Amendment (Best Practice Rail Investment) Bill 2017 into parliament. This bill requires new rail projects under the National Land Transport Act 2014 to maximise benefits for communities along the railway, including passenger rail. What it means for Pauline's community is that if the ARTC or the government is going to improve or upgrade railway lines, as we know they are going to do with the inland freight route, they actually have to pay attention to passengers as well as freight. That is a private member's bill, so it does not mean that the government is going to accept it for debate, but it actually puts it on the agenda that, for my community, passenger and freight need to go together and you cannot sell one out for the other.

The government is upgrading the inland railway line and building, in some places, new rail to take freight from Melbourne to Brisbane. This is a fantastic initiative and totally has my support. However, the problem is that the new freight line is going to work on our old faulty railway line. We have been hearing about double-decker containers and we have been hearing about the need to renew the line and up bridges, get rid of railway crossings and make the railway line—our faulty railway line—fit for extra freight. I can tell you that sends shivers through my community. If we cannot even get the passenger trains to run on time and we have to have speed restrictions because of mud holes and faulty engineering—oh, my word!—what is going to happen when we have more trains and freight?

So the call-out is now. We have this small window of opportunity: as we improve the line to take account of the inland freight route, let's make sure that any improvements we make actually give us improved passenger service. Interestingly, it is not automatically assured. Here I would just like to remind the minister and the ARTC—and you, Pauline, and your communities—that one of the problems that we discovered when we were trying to understand what was going on here and we met with the ARTC people and said, 'Well, you're fulfilling your contractual obligations, but clearly it's not working and we have a problem, and the problem's been there for a long time, and people know about the problem; can you tell us what the problem is,' was that the head of ARTC said, 'Well, it's not a premium service you're getting there.' We looked at him and said: 'Well, what do you mean it's not a premium service? I mean, we know it's not, but why are you telling us that?' He said, 'If you want a premium service, you have to pay for a premium service.' and I said, 'What do you mean "pay for a premium service"'?' and he said, 'Well, Melbourne to Ballarat and Melbourne to Bendigo have a premium service.' The penny dropped. I realised that in North East Victoria we have a crappy train line on a second-rate contract. I said 'Who would have signed the contract to give us a second-class service?' If you dig a little bit deeper, you find that it is a 50-year contract—oh, my Lord!—signed five years ago.

Those of you who know Victoria could think: who in Victoria would have signed a 50-year contract five years ago, committing us to 45 years of below-standard service? It is a big problem. We now have to work with the Victorian government to say: 'You've signed this contract. It's going to go for another 45 years. It's below standard. We've been treated really badly. You didn't do this to Ballarat or Bendigo, so why do it to North East Victoria? What are we going to do about it?' What I am going to do is meet with the Victorian Minister for Public Transport, Jacinta Allan, in Bendigo in early April and talk this through with her and tell her that we have a serious problem.

But the answer is to not blame each other. The answer is not to say the Victorian government was at fault or the ARTC was at fault. We have been doing that for a good 10 years. The way forward is for us to work together. As we do the budget—the appropriation—and as we agree to pass this legislation and give this money to the ARTC to improve and increase the efficiency of its network of railway lines, my call-out to the Victorian government and the Commonwealth government and their ministers and to the ARTC is to come together on this with our communities, because we all want to solve it. We all want much better public transport. We want public transport that is going to be a legacy for all our communities for 50, 60 or 100 years. The train is so important to us. We love it and want to use it, but we want it to work at a premium level.

In bringing my comments to a close, my call-out to the government is to come together with us as a community. Bring industry with you. Bring the Victorian government with us. Bring the unions with us. Bring V/Line with us. Bring PTV Victoria with us. Let's all sit around the table and talk about what we actually have to do and how much we need to do it. Then, between us all, let's talk about how we can get the funding and commitment to actually do what we need to do now, not in the future. Let's do it in 2017-18. Let the Victorian government have the allocation in its budget, and in our next budget let's have the Commonwealth make the allocation, so that together we can resolve this problem that has been hanging around far too long. Thank you very much for the opportunity to present my comments today. I would like to acknowledge my community. Thank you for turning up. I look forward to supporting this legislation.

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

The 2016-17 budget was an opportunity for the Prime Minister and his Treasurer to put their personal stamp on the administration of this nation. After the chaos, conflict and disappointment of the Abbott prime ministership, banished by his own party members, here was a chance to turn the page. In my own area of infrastructure it was a chance for the coalition to bridge the huge gap between its soaring rhetoric on infrastructure and the everyday reality of cuts, delays and nondelivery.

In particular, I think people had a great deal of hope that the prime ministership of Malcolm Turnbull would lead to a reversal of the Abbott government's attitude towards urban policy and public transport. It was hoped that the member for Wentworth, who enjoyed taking selfies on trains and trams, might actually fund them. But of course that has not happened. The budget's opening bid was a $1 billion cut to infrastructure investment allocated in previous budgets—no new money for public transport or roads and nothing for cities policies. Indeed, there was a cut of $18 million of funding that was intended to build infrastructure in order to fund a television propaganda campaign that falsely claimed ahead of last year's election campaign that the government was increasing infrastructure investment.

Actually, what we know is that under the first two years of the coalition government, infrastructure investment fell by 20 per cent. The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that quarterly public-sector investment in infrastructure under this government has been lower in all of their 12 quarters since they gained office than any single quarter under the previous Labor government's first budget after 2008. Each one of their 12 quarters has been lower than the 21 quarters in which Labor was in office. Let us look at the context of that. Firstly, you had the resources sector moving from the investment phase to the production phase, which means that you had a drop-off in private sector infrastructure investment. Secondly, you have the economic circumstances of record low interest rates and a Reserve Bank that, because of those low interest rates, has identified a risk in that those low interest rates have led to increased speculation in the housing market. The Reserve Bank of Australia, no less—both the current governor, Philip Lowe, and his predecessor, Glenn Stevens—as well as, of course, former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry and others, have all called for increases in infrastructure investment, and yet the government has stubbornly ignored this advice. We were promised cranes in the sky and bulldozers on the ground by the Abbott government, which we have not seen. We have not seen bulldozers, just clouds of bulldust in terms of the rhetoric of the Abbott government and now the Turnbull government. The only hole that this government has dug has been the one in which they buried the prime ministership of the member for Warringah.

Indeed, we hear, endlessly, this government proclaim that it has a $50 billion infrastructure program. But, of course, that is not true. The Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development noted at Senate estimates that the program is worth $34 billion over the first five years and then $8 billion at some unspecified time in the future. It is not just that; it is that they are not actually even spending the money that has been allocated—last year, $1 billion less than the funding that was actually in the previous government—and they have underspent, which means a slowdown in the rollout of projects like the Pacific Highway and the Bruce Highway. What we have seen from this government is cuts to projects, delays to projects and deferrals of projects. Cuts to all public transport projects that were ready to go, like the Melbourne Metro and the Cross River Rail project. Delays to the commencement of projects, like Adelaide's upgrade of the South Road and the M80 project in Melbourne. Quite often what we have seen is an extraordinary propensity to rename projects and then pretend that they are new, whether it be the F3 to M2 in Sydney, renamed as NorthConnex, or the Swan Valley Bypass, renamed as NorthLink, a new name does not make it a new project. We have seen a government running around the country not investing in the infrastructure that is needed.

This is the sort of appropriation where you should have seen investment in projects that are ready to go that would boost productivity. One example is the Port Botany rail link. Port Botany has had an upgrade through the Southern Sydney Freight Line, but it stops at Mascot. The bit between Mascot and Port Botany has to be completed. At the moment, you can have only one train in and one train out. If a train is going out from Port Botany, then the train bringing in freight to the port has to wait until that train has gone through the system—an absurdity in 2017. When we were in office, the more than $1 billion we invested in the Southern Sydney Freight Line was aimed at upgrading the capacity of the port and upgrading the rail network. The Moorebank Intermodal Terminal, which will begin actual construction in the next fortnight, is a vital project to get trucks off Sydney's roads and to increase the productive capacity of Sydney, New South Wales and the nation. And yet this government has failed to complete that project—an absolute no-brainer. The Cross River Rail project in Brisbane was approved by Infrastructure Australia in 2012, funded by federal Labor in 2013 and cancelled by the incoming coalition government, and four years later the government still says, 'We need more information,' even though it went through a very rigorous process of Infrastructure Australia's assessment.

You would think that, if there is a project the National Party could support, it is inland rail. If only we had a sleeper laid every time they mentioned inland rail, the project would be up and running now. Warren Truss, the former transport minister, said on 28 August 2013 that construction would start 'within three years'. It is now into the fourth year and still we have not seen any construction. Indeed, the new minister, Darren Chester, Mr Truss's replacement, said to the Australian Logistics Council on 8 March 2017:

… my challenge in this term of government is to build momentum on this project and make its development inevitable.

So they have gone from, 'Construction is going to commence in 2016,' to saying in 2017 that they just want it to be inevitable down the track. This is a government that simply cannot do it properly.

It is not just rail. Look at their dud toll roads. We had the East West Link delivering 45c return for every dollar invested. An advance payment of $1½ billion was made and was criticised by the Australian National Audit Office. The government committed exactly the same mistake and received exactly the same criticism from the Australian National Audit Office over the WestConnex project, where, again, advance payments were made. Milestones were changed to suit payments after the milestone had already been reached. The project was supposed to reach a milestone in order to receive a payment. When it did not reach that, the New South Wales government said, 'We'll just change what the milestone is to something that has already been achieved and, therefore, justify the payment being made.' The proposal for the Sydney Secondary College at Leichhardt, in my electorate, to be turned into a construction dive site still remains. The school's one oval, which serves 1,000 students at Leichhardt and is right next to the tram sheds, is to be turned into a major construction site. This is an absurd proposal which would damage the educational capacity of that school. The government would never think about doing it at one of the wealthier private schools in my electorate, but Leichhardt high school is fair game. There has been no consultation with parents or the school community. Indeed, a letter delivered to the suburbs of Leichhardt and Lilyfield was how residents first found out about it—and, indeed, how I, as the federal member, was first informed about that. I have had productive meetings with the minister, Stuart Ayres, about making sure that that proposal goes off the table. But at this stage it is still there, which is similar to the lack of proper consultation and the concern that parents have had at St Peters Public School, at Haberfield Public School, and at a range of schools, institutions and community groups around the inner west.

But, in terms of funding, the most extraordinary thing is that the letter to the suburbs of Leichhardt and Lilyfield indicated that the government would consult about the final route of the project. That might not seem unusual, except for the fact that they have started building the tunnel. They have literally started building a tunnel without knowing where it is coming up and without knowing what the route of the tunnel will be. You could not make this up. This is a $16.7 billion project that has blown out—the original costing was $10 billion—by $6.7 billion, and they do not know where it is going.

Then we have in Perth the Perth Freight Link, a project rejected by the people of Western Australia just a couple of weeks ago. It was a project that was supposed to take freight to the port, except that it did not go to the port; it stopped three kilometres short of the port. The route goes through the Beeliar Wetlands. It is a project that simply does not stack up and one where the government's response has been to threaten the $1.2 billion of funding for the people of Western Australia to have proper infrastructure in terms of roads and, of course, the vital Metronet project to expand public transport.

When it comes to cities, in spite of the fact that there was a change of prime ministership and allegedly a change of policy, we have no replacement for the Major Cities Unit, no return to the producing of State of Australian cities reports, a City Deals process that is just matching commitments to previous commitments made by Labor to build the new stadium in Townsville and in Tasmania around the University of Tasmania, and, in Western Sydney, a vague commitment of a small amount of money without any proper engagement with the local community.

Could I say in conclusion that this record stands in stark contrast to when we were in office, when we doubled the roads budget, we increased the rail budget by more than 10 times, we built or rebuilt 7,500 kilometres of roads and 4,000 kilometres of railways, we delivered the nation's first aviation white paper, we created Infrastructure Australia, and we delivered— (Time expired)

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2016-2017 and Appropriation Bill (No.4) 2016-2017. These bills made me think about what budgets need to do. Along with giving businesses the confidence to employ people, supporting infrastructure, funding healthcare and schools, and giving communities the opportunity to address particular issues they face at a local level, the budget should also be looking to provide the services that people need when they are at their lowest, and yet again this government has failed. It has failed time and time again.

I want to talk about the funding of one service that steps up when women in particular are at their lowest. Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia have been internationally recognised as the best practice service delivery for women, men and children who have experienced sexual assault and family violence, and they currently provide counselling through the 1800RESPECT hotline. In fact, their service is of such a quality that the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse relies on their expertise and on this service.

Victims of domestic violence and sexual assault who call 1800RESPECT are calling because they need professional and often urgent help. This is the only specialised sexual assault and domestic violence service in Australia. The 1800RESPECT service has a model where trained counsellors answer the phone; they do not just park you in a queue or pass you to the next available operator. They talk to you, find out what is going on and identify the best way forward.

In early 2016, RDVSA asked for an additional $2 million in funding to cope with the dramatic increase in calls. Instead of providing the funding, the federal government paid Medibank Health Solutions, part of the Medibank Private health insurance group, to provide a triage service at a cost of $3.5 million. This is the call centre approach. It drives us crazy when we are calling our local phone provider, a bank or an insurance company, so you have to wonder why anyone would think it was the right model for victims of rape or domestic violence.

The minister seems to think that just because a phone call gets picked up it is automatically a better service. He clearly does not have a clue about what is involved in trauma counselling. Unfortunately, last month RDVSA was given four days to submit their expression of interest to continue their contract to run 1800RESPECT—four days to prepare a lengthy submission, a time-consuming application that in the end will determine whether or not this vital service remains a specialist counselling service or becomes a call centre.

One of the claims to the ABC's 7.30 by Medibank Health Solutions last week was that they have only received 64 complaints about the service. The minister tells us that the number is actually 62 and that there is no inconsistency between that and the number revealed at the Senate estimates hearings recently of 33 complaints. However, it would be good to confirm that every one of those complaints has been conveyed to the Department of Social Services. What the minister has not explained is the discrepancy between these numbers and the more than 200 complaints about the new service logged directly from distressed women who are unable to get through to a trauma counsellor.

While the people who phone this number might not, at the time, always recognise their own needs for counselling and specialist advice, they are giving a cry for help; they are turning to a service. We have a responsibility to recognise the fragility of these situations and to have adequate resources at the ready for each and every person who manages to reach out. The minister needs to explain how the $9 million in funding allocated in 2015-16 was spent. What proportion of that money stayed with MHS? What proportion went to RDVSA? How much of that $9 million went to KPMG?

Most importantly, Minister Porter should reassure the people of Australia that the current tender process for 1800RESPECT will not result in any loss of quality, loss of expertise or loss of service to people who need help. Rather than vilifying ASU secretary Natalie Lang, who is in parliament today with her frontline members—people who work every day with victims of sexual assault and domestic violence—the minister should be working to ensure their expertise is acknowledged and valued, and he should learn from it. He says that their campaign is disgusting. But what I think is disgusting is when you have a minister who allows a for-profit company to profit from women and children who have been raped or are victims of sexual and family violence.

Of all the measures in the 2016 budget, the other areas I want to talk about are homelessness and housing affordability. These are issues that in some ways were not really looked at in that budget. Housing affordability is an issue this government has failed to address consistently. It claims it will deal with it in the coming budget, but without dealing with negative gearing and capital gains tax you cannot have much hope of a comprehensive approach.

I was disappointed last week to hear, at a breakfast hosted by the Australian Institute of Architects, the Assistant Minister to the Treasurer again rule out dealing with negative gearing. These are people who have given some thought to the housing situation in Australia. At that breakfast the president of the institute, Professor Ken Maher, joined the very long list of experts saying that the way property is taxed, including negative gearing, is in need of reform.

Let's keep in mind that the government has done nothing in its budget to assist home building or home renting. It was this government that closed down the National Rental Affordability Scheme, which was one of the best schemes delivering good housing at reasonable cost. Thanks to that program, across the country there were 30,000 new affordable units constructed, and it was on track to achieve 50,000. That is a pretty big improvement for rentals. In my community, in 2010 we saw the first 18 new units in Springwood, which then Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek and the then member for Macquarie, Bob Debus, opened. This was all about making housing accessible for seniors, and I take pride in that building that I walk past in Springwood, operated by Uniting, in the heart of our community. Sadly, the program funding was not continued.

This government also scrapped the first home saver account, which was helping people save for their first home. It does not even have a minister for housing and homelessness, as our shadow minister in the other place, Senator Cameron, is good at reminding us. As recently as last week, the Prime Minister delivered a cruel blow to Australian first home buyers who might have been hoping that, even though the previous budget did not take action, the coming budget would. When asked to show some leadership on housing affordability, he declined. He said it was overwhelmingly a state responsibility because the states control planning. Well, that is only one part of the equation. The supply side, the demand side and the tax side are all going to fit together. So, in spite of promises hinted at by a variety of government ministers, I do not hold much hope that we will see a comprehensive approach to this issue.

Let's look at the other side of the issue, again barely addressed in the previous budget: homelessness. We have really well-intentioned groups across the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury who receive some funding—sometimes not very much government funding and sometimes none—to provide meals and support to homeless people, and they provide support in so many ways. But the good people who run these services really should not even have half the job that they have to do. We should not be in a situation where people cannot access a roof over their head. As beautiful as our mountains and riverbanks are, people should not be sleeping there because they have nowhere else to go.

A report by the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute has found that, for every dollar spent on helping people avoid homelessness, $2.70 will flow to the community over 20 years. In fact, they show that, by providing one last-resort bed, you get a net benefit of $10,800 a year. So you would have to wonder why the coalition has cut $44 million a year in capital and development funding for emergency and crisis accommodation, starting in the disastrous 2014-15 budget and remaining in place in subsequent budgets. This has led to a shortfall of $132 million for homelessness support.

A survey that was held in my electorate last year, overlapping into the electorate of Lindsay, showed the enormous cost of homelessness to the health system. Homelessness across Penrith, the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury cost the health system almost a quarter of a million dollars in just six months, according to the Heading Home—Ending Homelessness Here! project. The project, which was led by Wentworth Community Housing in partnership with Platform Youth Services and Mission Australia and supported by the Mercy Foundation, surveyed 78 individuals and families. It found that, of the 66 individuals surveyed, 63 had one or more interactions with emergency departments, ambulance transport and hospitalisation over that period. The survey showed not only the significant social and health challenges of homelessness but the economic cost to the community. The cost of $250,000 to the health system relates just to the people who were surveyed. If we take into account the people who were found but were not able to be surveyed, the cost is significantly greater.

Wentworth Community Housing suggests that a model of community collaboration on housing solutions and support for people experiencing homelessness to reduce this financial burden on the health system would be an effective way to end homelessness in our region. As research from the University of Queensland shows, the cost to government of homelessness is greater than the cost of providing permanent supportive housing. They also subscribe to a principle of housing first. It is pretty hard to deal with the physical, mental and social issues of homelessness without a bed to sleep in. I would hope that we will see some moves towards addressing these issues as we move into the next budget period.

I also want to talk specifically about youth homelessness. Some of the reasons young people experience homelessness are domestic and family violence and relationship or family breakdown. Youth unemployment does not help, nor does youth underemployment. We also know that those who first experience homelessness at a young age are more likely to experience persistent homelessness in adulthood, and the cost to the community, as I have said, increases the longer a person has been homeless. It blows out. According to Homelessness Australia, these young people are more likely to disengage with education and employment and be exposed to other factors which damage their health, such as drug use, poor nutrition, limited access to medical care and exposure to violence. If intervention happens early, there is enormous potential for young homeless people to succeed.

I know one young woman in the Blue Mountains who found herself couch surfing just before her 18th birthday. Thanks to supportive friends and a network of caring mountains people, she was able to live safely with a family while she finished her HSC and went on to not only complete her university honours degree but also find employment in the social policy area of the Public Service. She is a very good friend and I know she will use her experiences to ensure good policy is being developed to support individuals and families who find themselves in the most challenging circumstances. However, without a Centrelink system that provided support for her as she finished school and studied at university and HECS that allowed her to study without a $100,000 debt, it would not have been possible. Government safety nets have a key role to play here, but the circumstances for young people like this remain fragile for quite a period of time. I hate to think what the consequences would have been had she received a Centrelink robo-debt letter as she was tackling these challenges.

My point is that we should not be content with simply funding services that assist the homeless. We need to see programs that reduce homelessness. At the last census there were 105,000 people identified as homeless and over 5,000 people were sleeping rough every single night. That is a disgrace. That is a crisis. If those 5,000 people who sleep rough could be accommodated in safe places, the net benefit to the community, based on the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute's research would be $54 million a year. Their solution involves constructing new, permanent, last-resort accommodation stock, protecting existing accommodation. All levels of government must take a hand, including this one.

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

I welcome the opportunity to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2016-17 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2016-17 this evening, and I am honoured to follow the member for Macquarie, who so beautifully demonstrated exactly the difference between us on the Labor side of the parliament and those opposite. Our priorities on this side of the House are about ensuring equality in our society, looking after the most vulnerable in our communities and giving people a hand up, while those opposite are intent on making sure that the big end of town receives the largess that they seem to think they desperately need or desperately deserve. The member for Macquarie has given us a framework around homelessness and the priorities of this government as we think about their economic credentials and their economic record to date. The homelessness statistics reflected in my electorate of Lalor are similar to those in Macquarie. Those stories are what I think about before I fall asleep at night—the stories of what is happening to the most vulnerable in our suburbs across this country. That is also why I welcome the opportunity to speak on these bills.

Of course, Labor will support this package of bills in order to ensure the ordinary functions of government continue for the remainder of the 2016-17 financial year. We cannot, on this side, miss an opportunity to stand and ensure that everyone across this country understands the actual economic space that this country finds itself in now. It has been so few years since the global financial crisis, where we received that AAA credit rating—where we were hailed around the world as a country to look to for economic management—and, of course, it was a Labor government that led us through that crisis. Now, in 2017, we find ourselves having a 75-year high for inequality in this country.

It is an absolute indictment on this government that this is something that they refuse to acknowledge and refuse to address. This 75-year high in inequality is no surprise when you break those statistics down. We have wages growth at record lows and we have business profits at record highs. This government seems completely oblivious to those facts as it continues with its commitment to $50 billion worth of tax cuts to the largest companies. Much of those tax cuts would go to the big four banks or to offshore companies. This week, the government persisted with the suggestion that it will scrap the deficit levy that was imposed when the deficit was a third of what it is now. On 1 July, millionaires will find themselves $16,400 better off, while the most vulnerable in our communities will bear the brunt of the priorities that this government refuses to let go and continues to try to push through this parliament.

Labor always have been and always will be committed to budget repair that is, first and foremost, fair. We will support sensible measures and oppose measures that attack the most vulnerable, which this government keep dishing up. We also have a series of alternative saving measures that are clearly on the record and that we took to the last election. We encourage this government to consider them as they prepare for the 2017 budget. The Treasurer really needs to take some time out over the next six weeks to think about the priorities of this government and what their continuation of looking after the big end of town will actually mean down the track in suburbs like mine in the electorate of Lalor.

Some of the ideas that we took to the last election included measures that would address the housing affordability crisis that is happening across a lot of our country, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne. In Melbourne, young people in my electorate are now being locked out of the dream of owning their own home. We took a capital gains tax discount and our proposed reforms to negative gearing, which would result in an additional $32 billion in savings over the next 10 years and would go a long way to budget repair. But this government obstinately refuse to look at those options because they are somebody else's ideas. We are able to demonstrate the way we are prepared to work constructively to improve the budget by working with the government. We secured $6.3 billion in budget savings—more savings than the government initially put forward in its first omnibus bill. We were able to do so while protecting vulnerable people targeted by cuts and saving the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. In doing so, we demonstrated that there are ways to improve the budget bottom line without attacking the most vulnerable in our society.

While those opposite love to pretend that they have superior economic credentials, the reality is that their record is abysmal. If we take a quick look at some of the government's failed economic policies, the fact of the matter is that the budget is in a worse position than it was when the Liberals declared their budget emergency. We all remember that—most of us were here—and since then they have tripled the deficit. The 2013-14 budget predicted the deficit for 2016-17 to be at $10.6 billion. Now, they say that it will rise to $36.5 billion this year. Net debt is up over $100 billion since the 2013 election. The 2013 Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook confirmed the net debt was $184 billion. The MYEFO for 2016 shows it has now blown out to $317 billion this year, and this, of course, puts the AAA credit rating at risk. We need to look at that through the frame of the fact that we have 1.1 million underemployed Australians and over 700,000 unemployed Australians—that is 1.8 million under- or unemployed Australians, yet this government insist that they have the policies and the plans to drive this country and to create jobs and growth.

To implement their policies they are insisting on going after the most vulnerable—they are attacking students, pensioners and, in general, people receiving any payment from Centrelink. They refuse to lower the deeming rates for our pensioners, they refuse to adequately fund our schools and they will not do a thing about the glacial rollout of the NBN. We saw their desire to drain middle- and working-class Australians manifested in their manufactured debt recovery debacle. This goes to the core of demonstrating their priorities. In chasing the dollar, they are prepared to put people through the wringer. They are prepared to have Australians receive a debt notice from Centrelink six years after they were receiving support.

I have previously spoken about a constituent of mine, and I will do so again this evening, because her story is representative of the type of person this government has deemed appropriate to attack in order to get out of the hole that they have dug for themselves. I sat with this person over the summer period while Minister Tudge was on leave and not available to come back and address this issue when it broke across this country—when people went to their letterboxes and found that thousands of them a week were receiving debt notices. Many of them later found that they had no debt at all.

Most of us in our electorate offices were dealing with the human face of this planned failure—a reported 40 per cent failure. I sat with this resident who had been told that she owed the Commonwealth more than $5,000. She is now working full-time, so the debt was supposedly related to a period six years earlier. She had had Centrelink support six years ago while she was seeking work as a teacher after retraining, while she was applying for jobs. She says the second call she made after getting a job, after being successful in an application process to a school, was to Centrelink. The first call was to her mother, to share the celebration, and the second call she made was to Centrelink to say: 'I no longer need support. I have secured full-time employment.' It was a day of celebration for her.

This is a person this government should be celebrating—someone who was retrained and then sought and found full-time employment. But, instead of being left alone in peace, she was spending her half-hour lunch break on the phone to Centrelink. This was a person who, after gaining full-time employment and working for six years, had bought her house, had got herself into the housing market and had a mortgage—and she was now being told that she had a debt of over $5,000.

After speaking to and getting support from my office, she was then told that she did not have a debt of that size; she had a debt of $100. After one more phone call it was reduced to zero. There was never a debt—there was never a debt. This robo-matching had thrown up a supposed debt, when one check of her Centrelink file would have shown them the date she made the call and the date she started work, which, of course, was when the school year began. It was clear that one human being involved in that process would have avoided this person being put through this situation. Her Christmas was ruined; her summer was ruined and her emotional wellbeing was destroyed while she thought that she may have been guilty of defrauding the Commonwealth in some way. This story typifies this government's priorities. Their priorities are to chase people down rabbit holes for whimsical notions of a debt rather than dealing with their own issues, which is that their priorities are wrong and that they refuse to take on sensible measures to fix their mess in the budget.

Housing affordability is a really important issue in my electorate. Lalor sits in the growth corridor of the outer west of Melbourne and in the city of Wyndham 5,000 houses a year are built and thousands of residents are added every year. People come to Wyndham because the housing is affordable. Well, that is now a joke because it is no longer affordable. Even on the outer fringes of Melbourne, it is not affordable for young people to break into this market. Addressing housing affordability will help to alleviate some of the pressures that force people into homelessness, as the member for Macquarie was talking about. This government really do not think there is an issue with housing affordability and this is shown by the distinct lack of policy on the issue. They are calling for the states to take action when we all know in this place that unless we pull those federal levers, the states will continue to release land and continue to use the things that they can use at their disposal. But the federal levers are the ones that are really going to make a difference in housing affordability, and we really need to address this issue. Labor have the answers on the table around housing affordability. We have put those to the government and there has been a flat refusal to take up those measures and build them into their platform. Hopefully in this budget, they might see sense and adopt those sensible measures from Labor.

We stand in this House day after day and we hear about the measures that they think will help to solve what they claimed was a budget crisis back in 2014. I do not know what words they use for it now since it has clearly spiralled out of their control. We stand here in this framework of a 70-year high of inequality. I know from my experience that one of the answers to address that inequality is to address housing affordability. It is about job creation. It is about reducing the 1.8 million Australians who are either underemployed or unemployed. It is about turning back the tide on the casualisation of the workforce to give people certainty about their futures. It is about education. It is about early childhood education. It is about school education. It is about tertiary education. It is about VET and TAFE education. Yet, this government continue to cut in all of those spaces, or fail to take seriously the issues it needs to address.

We saw that this week with what the government calls their 'childcare package', which I refuse to call such and will call 'child care and early education package', which will see the most vulnerable children limited in their ability to access early education. In my electorate, 30 per cent of four-year-olds do not attend kindergarten and this government have put no answers on the table to support those families. They continue to attack families using family tax benefit A and B, and we saw that again this week with their freeze. This government offer no modelling around its penalty rates. It needs to take a good hard look at itself across the next six weeks and come up with a budget that addresses some of the issues confronting this country.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is good to follow the member for Lalor in this debate because I think the matters that she raised go to the heart of what Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2016-2017 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2016-2017 are all about. After almost four years in office, the Turnbull government—firstly, led by former Prime Minister Abbott and now by Prime Minister Turnbull—has clearly demonstrated to the Australian people that it cannot manage its budget and has lost control of its finances. This government cannot continue to tell the Australian people that the state of the budget is all the fault of the previous Labor government. It might have been able to get away with that for maybe its first six months, perhaps even the first year. But when it has been in office for nearly four years, it is time the government took responsibility for its own budget. The truth of the matter is that it has lost control of its finances.

If we look at the figures, the deficit has trebled from the government's first year in office and now is about to hit $36.5 billion. The national debt has gone up by almost $100 billion to $317 billion. The reason the deficit and the debt have blown out is because the government simply cannot manage the economy. If you have a strong economy then your finances usually end up in good shape. But if you cannot manage the economy, and this government has shown that it cannot, then you end up on a downward spiral.

It is clear from my own observations and observations of many others that this is a government that does not have a coherent economic strategy. In turn, both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer of the day jump from one thought bubble to another, trying to find savings or new revenue-raising measures—revenue-raising measures that simply will not work or that will be totally rejected by the Australian people. Indeed, every time this government has come up with a thought bubble it has very quickly, after testing public opinion out there, retreated from it and dropped the idea—just as we saw happen again last week. Last week, we saw the Prime Minister and the Treasurer refusing to commit to the $50 billion in corporate tax cuts, and yet this week we see that it is back on the table. Again, it was a case of the government wanting to go in one direction and then getting spooked and doing the opposite.

The other clear observation about this government is that it is a government that simply does not understand the unfairness of many of the measures that it wants to pursue. What this government has still not worked out is that every time payments are cut to low-income Australians, the economy is harmed even further. Every time jobs are lost, the economy is harmed even further. It should have been clear to this government, from what happened overseas in many other countries, that austerity measures simply do not work. And then you add to all of that the Turnbull government's ideological stupidity in refusing to acknowledge some of the good ideas that Labor has put forward, ideas that have been supported by many other sectors within society as being sensible and reasonable, that would, in turn, help with the budget repair. But because Labor initiated them, this government says, 'No, we can't do that.' Again, it is their foolish ideology!

From my observations, Australians are not blind to the Turnbull government's spin when it comes to the budget and the economy. That is probably why they have stopped listening to this government and, in particular, to this Prime Minister. People do not accept or believe in this government's trickle-down economics because the reality is that it does not happen. People do not believe that increased company profits mean that there will be more jobs created. They do not believe that cutting penalty rates will result in more jobs. They do not believe that giving big business another $50 billion in tax cuts, much of which will go offshore in the first place, will add, in any way, to the Australian economy. And they do not believe that because most people are aware of the realities of what is happening in life. These tax cuts, in many cases, will go to companies that are already doing very well; entities like the big banks who, over recent decades, have not only made massive profits but simultaneously offshored jobs. They have not created jobs; they have reduced their workforce by offshoring jobs to places where they can get the work done much cheaper. That would suggest to me that if they were to make even higher profits, it would not result in more jobs being created in this country.

What it might result in are greater payments for the already overpaid CEOs and other highly paid executives because their incomes and their salaries are quite often directly attached to the bottom line of the entities' profit at the end of the year. So if the entities make more money then they get bigger bonuses or higher salaries. That is who will benefit from this, and that is who this government continues to listen to as though those people speak for the whole sector they represent. Perhaps the government should take a reality check. The people the government speaks to speak for themselves and not for the rest of their organisation. And I have no doubt that they do not speak for the workers they employ.

The other matter that this government seems to be obsessed with but does not want to face the reality of is its spin in respect of the free trade agreements. If the free trade agreements were as good as the government claims, and has been claiming for the last three years, why is it that our economy is still struggling? After all, in the last three or four years we have signed free trade agreements with our major trading partners—with Japan, with China and with the USA prior to that, the three countries that we do most of our trade with. We, supposedly, should be doing better because we have now entered into free trade agreements. The reality is that they were our strongest trading partners before the free trade agreements and they would have continued to be, just as trade with China had been increasing well and truly before the free trade agreement was signed. I accept that there may be some entities and some Australian firms that will benefit even further from free trade agreements, but the truth of the matter is there will also be many that will lose out, and it is the losers, in most cases, that were employing mainly Australians within their businesses. So, if we are going to make a realistic assessment of free trade agreements, then we need to look at the net effect of the agreement and not just look at one particular sector—which the government always does and then crows loudly about, without looking at the global picture that has been created.

The truth of the matter is that from my observations—and I have not done this in recent months, but some months ago I did do an exercise where I looked at the trade figures before the free trade agreements and after—in most cases the real beneficiaries of those free trade agreements are the other countries and not Australia. We live in a globalised world and the reality is that, if we have a product that another country wants, it will buy it regardless of whether there is a free trade agreement or not. It comes down to availability of the product, whether it is fit for purpose and whether it is sold at a cost that the other country can afford to pay. If it is, those other countries will buy our products, as they always did before the free trade agreements came into effect. What these agreements often do, in fact, is result in us having to be tied to international rules and regulations which in turn do not do our own economy very much good at all.

The other concern that I have with the way this government manages the economy—and it has been a trend of conservative governments in this country for a long time—is that it has relied on the sale of our resources, in particular, in recent years, gas and mineral resources, to prop up the Australian economy. That was well and good when those resources were highly priced and there was a lot of money coming into Australia, because Australia is, indeed, blessed with resources, whether it is gas, oil, coal, iron ore or the like, but the reliance by governments on those resources to prop up our economy has been foolish because, when the price of those resources falls, as it has in recent times, then our economy also suffers and suffers badly. It is also what I would term as lazy economics. It is the kind of economics you do when you cannot really manage your economy. We should be looking for a stable economy where things like our resources become a bonus and not relying on resources to ensure that we have a sustainable economy, as we have done.

We now hear, almost every day from members opposite, that our high energy prices are also undermining our own industries in this country. This is also a matter of real concern because the truth is our industries here in Australia are competing globally and, therefore, energy prices are one of the core costs of every industry that operates both here and overseas. It is not the only cost, and I have to say I am not entirely convinced that it is just energy prices that are causing industries difficulty in this country, but I, nevertheless, accept it is an important issue. It seems to be an extraordinary position to have in this country when we are blessed with coal, blessed with gas and blessed with sunlight and wind energy options, and yet we are now in a situation where we are paying more for our energy than the very people we supply the oil, the gas and the coal to. That is, again, because of lazy economics and the fact that we do not have an energy policy from this government. Again, the government has been in office for four years—where is our energy policy? It was about four or five years ago that this became the important economic issue of the day. It is not as though it only arose two or three months ago; it is an issue that should have been brought to the attention of this government from the day it took office, and yet it has been sitting back doing absolutely nothing.

It seems to me that what we now have is a Prime Minister who is not only beholden to the four major banks; he is also now beholden to the gas companies, as we saw a couple of weeks ago when the best he could do was say that he would talk to them about gas prices. Indeed, it goes further than that. It seems to me that one of the reasons the gas companies are holding out on supplying Australian gas is that they want to put pressure on the state governments to lift their bans on fracking, Therefore, by creating a shortage, they are putting the pressure on the state governments to lift those bans. And who was the greatest salesman for the gas companies in doing that—the Prime Minister. He is the one who has been going around the country saying that the state governments need to lift the bans on fracking. He is doing the gas companies' bidding for them.

But there is another critical issue associated with all of this, which time will hopefully allow me to talk about. I want to refer to an article by Ian Verrender that was published only a couple of weeks ago. Ian is an ABC Business editor:

AGL is actively considering buying Australian gas in Japan and shipping it back home. And why not? It's cheaper there.

That means energy-rich Australia is subsidising Asian manufacturers while penalising our own, a situation likely to force many to the wall …

Just to rub salt into the wound, the ramp-up in exports has not delivered the resources rent tax bonanza once promised by US giant Chevron. In fact—

and this is the critical point—

… thanks to a shifty cash shuffle, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell until two years ago were booking around $3 billion a year in profit, tax free.

That's seen our Petroleum Resources Rent Tax proceeds, which in the past delivered around $2 billion a year, plummet. In fact, by the time we overtake Qatar for global gas domination, it's anticipated our resources tax will collect just $800 million.

Qatar, on the other hand, is expected to receive $26.6 billion in royalties that same year for roughly the same volume of exports.

The critical point there is this: this is the government that went in to bat for the big mining companies over the tax that we were hoping that they would pay on top of their profits each year, and yet these very companies are now not even paying to this government the royalties and the taxes that one might have expected them to pay had they not been shifting their profits overseas. They have turned on the very political party that supported them when we were talking about the superprofits tax a few years ago.

The fact that we are not even getting from these companies the $2 billion a year that we were getting from them only a few years ago is part of the reason why this government cannot manage its budget. That is money that is being lost because of this government's incompetence, and because of this government's support for the very people who are literally pulling the rug out from under their feet.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the previous speaker for a wonderful exposition on why this government's economic management is so poor. Firstly, let me say that I am very proud to belong to a federal Labor Party that has one of the best financial teams in federal parliamentary history, led by shadow treasurer Chris Bowen, shadow finance minister Jim Chalmers, Matt Thistlethwaite, Senator Katy Gallagher, shadow minister for housing Senator Doug Cameron, and former Treasurer emeritus Wayne Swan. They have a budget plan that will raise revenue and address one of the most pressing social needs of the last 20 years: that of housing affordability.

This government appears confused, conflicted and unable to formulate policy in any coherent way. Yes, there is a lot of anger and shouting from the other side, but little in the way of meaningful policy. They seem to want to act as reverse Robin Hoods: punishing the poor, but supporting the more advantaged. Everyone I have spoken to understands the increase in inequality, underpinned by the reduced housing affordability that has occurred in the last 20 years. This includes senior bankers, economists, politicians on all sides, business leaders, health experts, senior police, architects, academics, teachers and young people.

There is also a generational aspect to this. Many of my generation, the baby boomers, have done well out of the property market, but this is now at the expense of subsequent generations. We are developing a nation of older landlords, and younger renters who cannot get a toehold in the housing market. Maybe it is my age, but the more time I spend in this chamber the deeper my appreciation is for silent movies. There is something a little reassuring about anything that has stood the test of time, and silent movies have more than a little in common with this government's approach to housing.

For much of the Menzies era and a little after, federal coalition governments more or less got away without having to worry too much about housing. Up to the late 1960s, a policy of benign neglect pretty much worked. It was underpinned by lots of available land, high levels of migration that included significant numbers of skilled tradespeople, and an expanding economy. Federal coalition governments recognised that what they did with macropolicy might affect housing prices, but beyond that they pretty much left it to the states and the market to deal with issues as they arose.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a reawakening of interest in housing policy. At the time, there was no absolute shortage of housing, but the rapid rise from then on of interest rates, in anticipation of higher rates of inflation, soon reduced the proportion of households that could afford to buy a home from the mid-1960s peak of around 75 per cent. At the same time, scholars and writers, such as the 1974 Boyer lecturer, Hugh Stretton, began popularising the idea that access to housing, in particular a house of one's own, was good for individuals and good for society in many ways. I certainly agree with him. Quality housing was a productive asset for the community, not just another consumer good. Good housing meant a better quality of life, better health and an even longer life expectancy. It also meant, for children, a much more stable life and a much more stable schooling environment.

I am by nature an optimist, but I am very bewildered by and more than a little despondent about this government's abject refusal to address the ticking time bomb that is the east coast property market. There are many issues involved in this. As I have already stated, housing is an important social need and a social good. It affects families in very positive ways. There is even evidence that a stable housing environment improves health and improves long-term life expectancy.

Were this government to act—and there are plenty of sensible options open to it—it could simultaneously ease the pressure on the federal budget by many billions of dollars; provide genuine help and hope to many currently shut out of the housing market; allay the fears of those already under mortgage stress and who now see the banks starting to raise home loan rates independently of any Reserve Bank action; and also relieve the mums and dads of the dread that comes from the prospect of their kids not having a stable home, and with that stable housing and stable lives. Many families of course now see their kids staying with them until they—the kids, that is—reach pensionable age.

The government, though, continues to take action at the edges of policy rather than facing up to the challenge of dealing with housing markets now running totally out of control in two of our largest constituencies. That is not my view or the Labor view. You would be hard pressed to find an economic commentator, public official, international agency or financial industry regulator who seriously believes that the housing affordability crisis can be solved with this do-nothing approach. House prices in Sydney and Melbourne continue to rise at double-digit rates, fed by an investor tax subsidy that has the federal budget leaking in the vicinity of $10 billion to $12 billion a year to fuel this ridiculous fire.

The situation is unacceptable and fraught with risk, and everyone, including many on the conservative side in the government, know it. The government's response, or lack thereof, amounts to the most wrongheaded piece of fiscal policy in living memory. And that is not just my view; that is the view of many well-recognised and well-respected financial commentators. You shudder to think what would have happened if this lot had been in charge during the global financial crisis.

Being an economic realist in the Liberal Party these days is akin to being seen as the rotten apple in the barrel. They are not respected, their views are not taken seriously and it leaves the government in a complete mess in terms of housing policy and the budget. Like some of the brave souls opposite, including those who have been fighting this good fight on housing affordability for years, we all know that it is only a matter of time before nervous markets impose the very sort of shock therapy solution on this government that it says it wants to avoid. House prices in Sydney, in particular, cannot continue to defy gravity for ever. As the head of ASIC, Greg Medcraft, noted this week, global house prices generally sit comfortably around a ratio of four to one to annual income. That ratio in Melbourne is now around 9.5 to one and, in Sydney, an astounding 12.2 to one.

Policy, as is generally agreed, left the rails when the Howard government coupled negative gearing to very generous capital gains tax concessions. As I have mentioned, many of the baby boomers, myself included, did very well out of that. In 1988-89, the year that the two were joined, there were 1.3 million taxpaying landlords, making a collective return of $700 million in tax to the government. By 2010-11, there were, all up, 1.8 million landlords, making a combined tax loss of $7.8 billion. That is astounding and is not hard to see how it happened. In the early 1990s, investor demand accounted for about 16 per cent of home loans. After dipping during the GFC, it climbed to a 55 per cent share before APRA controls were tightened in 2015. But now, again, it is over 50 percent. Investor demand for loans now is over one in two of all loans.

Domestically, the RBA, the chair of ASIC and the head of APRA have expressed heightened concerns about high levels of house prices and high levels of housing related personal debt. Back in November 2016 the IMF observed:

A major concern is that external risks with a large impact, including a sharp growth slowdown in China, could interact with or even trigger domestic risks, especially a housing correction.

The IMF issued a similar warning earlier this year. In a consultation paper issued in February, it warned that Australian:

Financial regulatory authorities would need to stand ready to intensify targeted prudential matters, if lending or housing price growth were to reaccelerate.

And it has reaccelerated. In the last few weeks, two new OECD reports have also sounded the alarm bells on the risks for our economy. That is largely because of high levels of personal and housing debt. The Reserve Bank has issued warnings about the possible consequences of personal debt growing faster than incomes and the limitations placed on monetary policy by an overheated east coast housing sector. Household debt in Australia is now indeed at record highs, and housing debt is now the equivalent of 132 per cent of annual household disposable income. That is well above the peak in the global financial crisis. Home owners are very worried. The Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research have reported that general public confidence in property as a safe investment has hit 40-year lows. It has now plummeted from 28 per cent confidence levels in September 2015 to 11 per cent recently. It is hardly surprising that the head of ASIC has weighed into this too. The blunt message from everyone is that it is a bubble, with heightened nervousness amongst new home owners and mortgagees, again a symptom of where things may be headed.

Government inaction also places it firmly in the camp of the property investors and speculators. Soaring house prices—for example, 16 to18 per cent in Sydney and 15 per cent in Canberra—are largely being driven by the rapid growth in investor demand. The growth rate in investor borrowing has accelerated from nine per cent growth to now 27 per cent growth. Investors again now account for more than half the money borrowed for housing, and we all know what that means for first home owners. There is no way increased supply of housing can ever hope to keep up with these sorts of numbers. Investor and tax-fuelled demand makes it impossible for first home buyers to get a look-in. To fill the policy vacuum, we are now seeing a fair number of people rushing about desperately in search of alternative ways of giving first home owners an even break. Some of those ideas may be worth exploring, some are disastrous but each comes with its own baggage. And many do not really address either the cost of current policies to the federal budget or the inherent unfairness of subsidising investors at the expense of first home buyers. I would like to repeat that: we are subsidising investors at the expense of first home buyers, mostly young families. The government simply refuses to recognise that housing is simply unaffordable because of the interaction of two policies that only it can reverse or ameliorate.

State government cannot do much. It tries to do some things but it is nibbling at the edges. Where there is plentiful supply of flats and units, for instance, tipping the scales back a bit in the direction of first home owners through stamp duty concessions might work for a time but may just increase prices more.

The key levers for change rest squarely in the hands of the federal government because only it can alter the negative gearing and capital gains tax rules. Labor has a plan for this which we took to the last election. The government still has absolutely nothing. Even if it did not want to follow Labor's approach of limiting future negative gearing and capital gains concessions in housing to new home owners while grandfathering the existing arrangements, there are plenty of options that it could pursue. For instance, it could just limit tax right-offs from negative gearing in any year to a set amount, or limit claims to a maximum of one or two investment properties. It could phase out some of the current concessions. That would help genuine, non-speculative home buyers and it would help the budget bottom line too. Allowing young people to potentially squander what little superannuation savings they have on dodgy home loans in an overheated property market is such bad policy it is almost bordering on the ludicrous. Only a truly desperate or clueless Treasurer would have allowed that one to be floated much less seriously considered.

The problem with this government will be getting it to act. The first step along that path is the government realising that what have lasted of the Labor and 'Menzian' housing policies of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s are the goals and the aspirations and the outmoded means of achieving them. Yes, it is a difficult and complex area that is not getting easier. But, Treasurer, if you do not like Labor's approach, design a better one; do not just squib it. Do not try to push it all off on the states. The states do not make federal tax laws; we do.

Sydney reportedly already has over 80,000 vacant investor owned properties. If that is not a case of excess demand, I do not know what is. Building more unaffordable housing of the wrong sort or in the wrong spots will just add to underutilised capacity if you do not deal with what is driving investors and speculators to treat housing as a one-way bet.

With their well documented false starts, pratt-falls and back-offs, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer are to housing affordability what Laurel and Hardy were to piano moving—you feared for the piano even when you were distracted by the sideshow. This government has little idea about housing policy, economic policy or any of the other important structural problems that are besetting our economy such as climate change, energy policy and certainty of supply of the things like energy and jobs that our society needs. It is time this government developed some proper policies that would help the young generation, the future of our nation, to get ahead.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I start in my contribution to this cognate debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2016-2017 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2016-2017 by commending my colleague the member for Macarthur. The issue of housing affordability is a very significant one, and it is no different in my electorate. The Wollongong area has seen a significant increase in the cost of housing and, flowing from that, the cost of rental accommodation. That has put great pressure on young people in particular trying to get into reliable permanent housing. Very sadly, many young people in my area are now expressing to me the view that they will never own their own home. I think that is a very sad state of affairs. The member is right: we have not seen any real action or determination by this government to address this matter. Simply buck-passing it off to this states as state issues is not sufficient. Simply buck-passing it off to parents saying, 'You should dip into your life savings to help you kids onto the housing ladder,' does not reflect the reality that many parents are not in a position to do that. So the member's contribution, I think, was very important to this debate.

Today I want to touch on a number of issues in my electorate that require urgent attention by this government. They are things that are relevant and related to the issues that the member for Macarthur was outlining. I want to talk first of all about the very important issue of community legal centres as we approach the next budget. On 14 March, I and the member for Whitlam visited the Illawarra Legal Centre. While we were there we put out a public call for the government to reverse their very cruel cuts to legal centres, including our own in the Illawarra. From 1 July the Illawarra Legal Centre will be forced to turn away about 500 Illawarra locals, thanks to the government's devastating cuts to community legal centres through the national partnership agreement.

Community legal centres, as many of my colleagues in this place on all sides would know, are critical for thousands of people around Australia who desperately need free legal assistance but do not qualify for legal aid. They are, indeed, on the front line of the battle against domestic violence and they assist people with diverse problems, such as Centrelink—we certainly had a lot to do with the robo-debt disaster at the beginning of the year—tenancy disputes and employment issues. In my area, the South Coast Labour Council has worked to highlight the extraordinary and disgraceful level of exploitation of young workers. I know that the legal centre is closely involved in working to protect young people in those positions. They and their dedicated staff have been providing free legal advice and assistance to people in the Illawarra for 30 years. They have helped around 5,000 people every year.

In 2016-17, the federal government contributed 65 per cent of Illawarra Legal Centre funding from the national partnership agreement and the rest came from the New South Wales government. However, 85 per cent of the centre's cases are related to federal issues. So they were already funding less than the caseload that the Illawarra Legal Centre was dealing with. Now, on top of that, the legal centre faces a 21 per cent cut in their funding, thanks to this government. This will seriously jeopardise their ability to help vulnerable locals. It is a cut of $166,000, as well as the loss of the corresponding administration and support that goes with it. It is the only free legal service in the entire Illawarra. It provides a one-stop shop for assistance in a variety of areas, as I have indicated. Many of their clients require assistance across multiple areas, often finding themselves with a range of difficulties when they get into financial trouble. Many require assistance in an urgent capacity. They have nowhere else to go and they turn to the legal centre. These cuts will have a very serious weakening effect on the ability of their programs to deliver for very vulnerable people in my area. As I said, as we approach the budget, I call on the federal government—I call on Malcolm Turnbull and the relevant minister—to reinstate funding for these community legal centres because they do such critically important work. Again, we do not need to see the most vulnerable in our society being the ones who are paying the price when the government is prioritising big tax cuts to big business, big banks and wealthy individuals. They are the wrong priorities and we should make sure these community legal centres do not suffer as a result and the people they help miss out on that assistance.

The second issue I want to talk about in this debate as we look at appropriation and budget bills is the very important area of supporting pensioners in our community. On Tuesday, 7 March, the member for Whitlam and I had a forum which was attended by over 200 pensioners from across the Illawarra and Southern Highlands. We were joined by the shadow minister for families and social services, Jenny Macklin. We wanted to give people the opportunity to tell us what their current situation was and to express their views on changes that are proposed to the age pension, and they were certainly more than willing to do that. Their message was loud and clear: they are very fed up with proposals by the Turnbull government to cut funding and support for older Australians.

Almost 4,000 pensioners across the Whitlam and Cunningham electorates have seen an average cut to their pension of $130 a fortnight. When you are living on such a small amount of money, every dollar counts, and this has had a huge impact. Indeed, one lady broke down in tears as she was telling us about some of the effects it has had on her ability to manage. A further 1,500 local pensioners have lost their pension entirely. This leaves them, on average, worse off by around $180 a fortnight. The legislation to change the pension assets test and cut the age pension passed the parliament in June 2015. This was the result, I have to say, of a very unhappy backroom deal between the Liberal Party and the Greens. In the last session of parliament, Liberal Party members voted to scrap the energy supplement for pensioners, and if the government gets its way the energy supplement will be scrapped for new pensioners from September this year. That will mean a cut of $14.10 per fortnight to single pensioners, which is $365 a year. That could be a repair for a car; it could be a new whitegoods item, if, say, a washing machine breaks down. At that amount of money, I tell you what—they are already shopping at second-hand stores. So that makes a big difference to their annual income. Couple pensioners will be $21.20 a fortnight worse off, which is around $550 a year.

This government's track record for age pensioners is nothing short of atrocious. We all well remember the promise before the 2013 election that there would be no cuts to pensions, but we have seen exactly the opposite. It is funny how this government trumpets that it cannot reverse its commitments made at the election, except for ones like this. It is a really appalling priority and it shows just how out of touch the government is with real people. I thank all those pensioners who came along and shared their experiences and stories with us and I am very pleased to give them a commitment that I, along with the Labor Party, will continue to campaign to protect their income because we understand how tough they are doing it.

The other issue I want to touch on today is also about very vulnerable people in my community. I had a meeting today with representatives of the Australian Services Union. They are at the front line of really important work with the most vulnerable in our community. I want to start this part of my contribution by paying great respect to community sector workers. They are not very well paid, they work in very difficult circumstances, they work with very vulnerable people and their contribution to our national effort is invaluable. We should all recognise how significantly important they are because of the work that they do and the vulnerable people that they directly work with. But we should also understand that those vulnerable people have families, and those families often would not be able to get by without the support of these community sector workers, and that would pull them out of the workforce and out of community service and activities that they are involved in, and we would all be the poorer for that. I want to start by paying my respect to the work done by community service workers in this country.

I want to finish my contribution by talking about a couple of issues that the Australian Services Union representatives and workers wanted to talk to me about which I think are really important. They are in desperate need of serious attention from this government and a commitment to ensure that they are viable into the future. The first issue they raised was around mental health services. Not only did I meet with the Australian Services Union people today, but last week in this parliament I met with a delegation from Mental Health Australia, and they raised very similar issues with me. They are very concerned that programs, such as the Personal Helpers and Mentors and the Partners in Recovery programs, are potentially under great threat because of the way they are being managed by this government.

It is really important to understand that the vast majority of the work of these programs involves dealing with people who may have periodic episodes of mental health problems or may have lower-level mental health problems. That early intervention and support ensure that they are able to manage and, hopefully, get themselves back on the road to recovery from that mental health episode. Sometimes it is about working with people with mental health issues to provide them with ongoing support, a safe place and a safe person to deal with to get them through the tough times. That enables them to be more fully functioning members of a family and members of our community. It really is important work.

I want to recognise that there are many of these organisations in my own area, particularly working in the Partners in Recovery program, that are doing great work. I am very concerned that the government has not addressed the concerns of such organisations and has not delivered a national plan that gives priority to mental health to ensure that these sorts of programs are not under threat. We have seen funding cuts; we have seen a government dragging its heels around dealing with a mental health plan. All of these sorts of decisions are taking a toll on our communities, and the fact that I had one group from Mental Health Australia and another group from the workers in that field visit me during these two weeks of parliament indicates how critically important it is. The government really must give attention to those issues.

The other area that these groups particularly wanted to talk to me about was, obviously, disability services, in particular making sure that we recognise the importance and the work of the workers in the disability field. These people are just amazing—they are so caring and they go above and beyond—but they are not very well paid, and there are some real concerns about the future workforce in the disability sector. Of course, as the National Disability Insurance Scheme rolls out there will be increasing demand for workers in this field. That should be a good thing. That should be an opportunity, particularly in areas like mine, where unemployment rates and particularly youth unemployment rates persist higher than state and national averages, to create a real job and career opportunity for people to enter that sector. But you cannot do that if you are driving the workforce at a pace and with a remuneration that so undervalues the work that they do. How are you going to attract people into a sector when they see that that is the reality?

It is also impossible if you are not actually committing to workforce planning and workforce training. This is not unskilled work. This is very, very skilled work, and it is the sort of work that people need to be supported and trained in to do effectively and safely. We need the government to pay attention to this and to get on with addressing these issues.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.