Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The data would be aggregate totals of funds transferred from Australia to overseas destinations. Since this type of information has been released under freedom of information, it is not considered controversial to release it under Labor's plan.

Another part of our plan is the disclosure of material tax risk for government tenderers—again, a recommendation of the Senate Economics References Committee. This would see any company tendering for a contract valued at more than $200,000 needing to disclose their tax domicile. The next part of our plan is to develop guidelines for tax haven investment by superannuation funds. Some Australian superannuation funds are known to invest in companies incorporated in tax havens. Our plan would ensure that they are transparent about their dealings in such jurisdictions.

Penultimately, our plan includes a publicly accessible registry of the beneficial ownership of Australian legal entities. While Australia committed to the G20 reforms on beneficial ownership transparency in Brisbane in 2014, the government has been slow to act. Transparency International rates Australia's overall beneficial ownership rules as 'weak', and the Financial Action Task Force found that Australia's beneficial ownership regime was only partly compliant regarding companies and completely noncompliant regarding trusts. We would require ASIC to establish a publicly accessible central register of the beneficial ownership of companies, trusts and other corporate structures. Finally, on the ATO's disclosure of settlements and reporting of aggressive tax minimisation: in its annual report, the ATO would be required to include high-level data about the value and number of settlements above a value of $50 million, providing greater transparency for Australians.

Labor's plan for cracking down on tax havens stands in stark contrast with the government's willingness to allow tax havens and other tax loopholes. While they stand for millionaires, multinationals and those who have stashed their wealth in the Caymans, we stand for battlers and middle Australia and for making sure that middle Australia gets their fair share. (Time expired)

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2017-2018 and the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018. This is an important budget. This budget is about making the right choices to provide opportunity and secure better days ahead for all Australians. I note with pride the Turnbull government's commitment to defence. As part of Appropriation Bill (No. 1) the Department of Defence will receive more than $32 billion to keep our nation safe. Last Wednesday I joined the Minister for Defence Industry at Gallipoli Barracks in my electorate to launch the new generation of trucks and trailers as part of the government's $3.5 billion LAND 121 project. I can assure members here today that through the strategic procurement of new military equipment like the next generation of trucks I witnessed last week and, importantly, many components sourced from local Australian businesses, the coalition is ensuring the best products for our Defence personnel as well as supporting local jobs and growth.

Australian service men and women can be assured that the coalition is acting in their best interests. This year's budget represents a significant increase in funding of $350 million for the support of veterans and demonstrates our commitment to the men and women who ensure Australia's freedom and safety. Importantly, the government is focused on responding to the mental health needs of our former defence personnel and providing support that will help them to achieve a positive life outside of service. Last year's budget saw the coalition provide treatment for depression, PTSD, anxiety and drug and alcohol misuse free for anyone who had served even a day in the full-time ADF. The $33.5 million expansion of the non-liability health care program to cover all mental health conditions, announced in the 2017 budget, recognises that the earlier a veteran receives treatment, the better their health. Funding for mental health treatment is demand driven and not capped. If an eligible person requires treatment, it will be provided. As a government and on a personal level we understand that families of service members also bear the brunt of military service. In recognition of this, the budget provides $8.5 million to expand eligibility for the Veterans and Veterans Families Counselling Service.

The health portfolio will receive more than $11 billion to ensure the essential services that Australians deserve. Of this funding, $3 billion will be used for the Home Support and Care Program to provide assistance for older Australians so they can remain in their homes and stay connected with their community.

The 2017 budget is delivering for health and supports our long-term national health plan, based on the four pillars of guaranteeing Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, supporting hospitals, prioritising mental and preventative health and investment in medical research. The coalition has a solid track record when it comes to improving Australians' access to medicines with a strengthened Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. We are immediately delivering on this commitment in the 2017 budget, with more than half a billion dollars to list special medications for patients with chronic heart failure. This will benefit more than 60,000 Australians every year, who currently pay around $2,000 a year for these medicines. Our careful management of PBS spending means that we are able to list new, effective medicines on the PBS when they become available. Australia's PBS is one of the foundations of a universal health care system, the envy of the world.

The Department of Social Services will receive $5 billion. This money includes more than $800 million per year for the provision of demand-driven disability employment services, and $225 million for other disability and carer services. In my capacity as Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services, I see firsthand how the coalition government's disability employment services policy is creating more opportunities. Members here will be well aware that Australians with disability are underrepresented in our workforce. More than 14 per cent of people who are of working age have a disability, but only 53 per cent of people with disability are working or seeking work, compared with 83 per cent of people without disability. This is one of the lowest rates in the OECD for workforce participation of people with disability. We must do better.

That Australia ranks 21st of the 29 OECD countries is not acceptable. As I often say, if it were a sport, it would be on the front page of our papers and held up as a national disgrace. But for people with disability to be employed at the same rate as people without disability, 640,000 more people with disability need employment. Our challenge is to bridge the gap to help more people with disability find and keep jobs and to encourage more employers to employ more people with disability. Employment offers a person economic security and independence, and contributes significantly to their positive wellbeing. For a person with a disability, often their job is more than just a job; it links them to the community and exposes them to new experiences. In government and in the community, and among business and industry, we need to do all we can to recognise the benefits of employing people with disability.

On budget night the coalition confirmed our commitment to improving employment outcomes for people with disability, announcing improvements to the Disability Employment Services program. I have spoken to many stakeholders since budget night and they tell me the changes have been well received. There will clearly be some qualitative differences on certain budget measures. But, simply put, Australians do not want government to spend more than Australian taxpayers can afford. We all have a moral responsibility to restrain spending, boost investment, encourage economic growth and guarantee a strong social safety net. Labor's magic pudding economics that underwrote year-on-year promises of a non-existent budget surplus resulted in increasing deficits and leaving disappointed Australians genuinely concerned about our economic future. When was the last time a Labor government delivered a budget surplus?

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

1989.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are completely correct, Minister; it was 1989, when the member for Bendigo and the member for Hotham were just nine years old. Much has changed in this time, including a return to surplus during the Howard government years—which was only to be destroyed by the Rudd government's economic mismanagement debacle and his 'School of the Magic Pudding' ministers, many of whom still sit opposite today.

The critical importance of adequately funding the National Disability Insurance Scheme is especially important to me. This vital aspect was addressed in the 2017 budget by way of a 0.5 per cent increase in the Medicare levy from 1 July 2019 to once and for all ensure that Labor's NDIS funding black hole is filled. It is simply not true that the NDIS was properly funded when Labor left office. Savings that Labor claimed were to be directed to the NDIS were simply returned to consolidated revenue and spent several times over; they were never set aside for NDIS. Unlike Labor, the coalition actually has the plan to implement fiscal policy that will ensure a fully funded NDIS not just for the short term but for future generations.

I segue to small business, the engine room of our economy. The 2017 budget gives small businesses right across Australia the confidence that the coalition government is acting in their best interests. The Ryan electorate is home to more than 13,000 small businesses, from sole proprietors to larger entities. Small businesses are responsible for 36 per cent of all economic output in Australia and employ more than 4.7 million Australians, which amounts to 45 per cent of all employment in Australia. Travelling around my local community, I constantly hear about the support small businesses have for the positive impact that this year's budget will have for them. Most notably, small businesses and their supporters are reassured by our measures to increase the small business turnover threshold from $2 million to $10 million to allow more small businesses to access small business tax concessions and reduce red tape.

The 2017 federal budget continues the government's plan to back hardworking small businesses to create more local jobs and pursue new investment. This means a lower and well-received small business company tax rate of 27.5 per cent and simplified depreciation rules, including immediate tax deductibility of assets worth up to $20,000. We know that small businesses are a big deal. Any avenue that we as a government can provide to help them grow further acknowledges their contribution to the Australian economy.

These businesses include businesses like Kenmore Plaza Seafoods. Known by families in the area as the place of 'Charlie's chips', Kenmore Plaza Seafoods is thriving—so much so that the owners, a family business, improved their eat-in dining options. Briki, an espresso and gelato bar located on Hawken Drive in Saint Lucia, typifies the success that local small businesses have achieved through measures of the coalition government. Sav and his family have expanded their business to become the favourite Greek institution known throughout Brisbane.

These are the types of businesses that are the lifeblood of Australia's economy and provide employment for young, old and, importantly, those with disability. I must not forget the quintessential local hardware store, Doyles Home Timber & Hardware, at Blackwood Street Mitchelton. This family-owned business services tradespeople and 'DIYers' alike, but still remains old-fashioned and familiar. With staff employed from the local area, this well-equipped and experienced business is another Ryan business that typifies the positive outcomes of hard work. As a government, we are doing everything in our power to give them a big future. We are a government of results. The beneficial results that the coalition has achieved speak for themselves.

Ben Carson, a famous neurosurgeon and current Republican politician, once said that economics is not brain surgery. So I ask: why is it that Labor continually underperforms and, worse, criticises the coalition for taking the necessary steps to create a secure platform for economic growth? The Australian public is tired of Bill Shorten's relentless negativity. It is tired of the politicking of the Labor Party, which is trying to stop investment in this country—investment that will support more growth for better paid jobs and more jobs for Australians. While I recognise the Labor leader wants to run the government like a union, Australians do not want their government to spend their money like a union boss with a union credit card. More debt is not the measure by which I want future generations of Australians to judge us. This parliament must work.

For the government, money to make things happen can only come from three places—increased taxes, increased borrowings or savings. Only the coalition government take their financial responsibilities for the NDIS seriously. We understand the necessity to ensure that we live within our means, support Australian families, make Australia safe and encourage economic growth. Unlike Labor, only the coalition has a plan to secure better and more jobs, and better pay. Only the coalition has a plan to guarantee essential services like Medicare and the NDIS, and ensure Australian families can raise their children in a safe environment with food on the table. Those opposite simply do not have a plan.

I commend these bills to the House.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This budget and these appropriation bills are, indeed, for big businesses and millionaires. Pretty much, it is not good news for every other Australian, particularly those working Australians who have to have an increase in their Medicare levy. There is an increase in the Medicare levy while there is still a $22 billion cut to schools, while we still have not seen a complete unfreezing of the GP rebate immediately and while we hear from the other side that they are still planning on a $64 billion tax cut for big business. We have a budget that says wage growth is at record lows and that says unemployment is going to go up, and we have those opposite trying to talk about fairness and say that this budget is a good budget. It certainly is not a good budget for most Australians.

Millionaires, with the removal of the deficit levy, will get a tax cut of over $16,000 while average Australian workers on $65,000 will have to pay an extra $325. Those earning $80,000 will have to pay an extra $400 a year because of an increase in their Medicare levy. That is, of course, without the government's plan to cut average working Australians' penalty rates. That will affect all of those Australians and those industries that have been affected today. I hear from people—particularly from nurses and other people in my aged care portfolio—who are concerned that this is going to be much broader than that and that their penalty rates, too, are at risk.

Also in this budget we have seen the farce about the Medicare guarantee. We hear from the other side that they are going to guarantee Medicare, but Australians of course know better. The government have done nothing but undermine Medicare every time they come to office, and then every time Labor get into office we have to fix it. Every single time they get into office they undermine Medicare and take money out of the health system, and then when Labor come into office we have to fix Medicare because those opposite have tried to undo the universality of Medicare. Let's be really frank about what the government call their unfreezing of the Medicare rebate for GPs. In the first 12 months only about seven per cent of those things that are billed under the Medicare GP rebate are actually going to get an increase in that rebate. Everybody is going to have to wait until at least 1 July 2017 for a normal, average GP consultation, and then of course they are already years behind in what that rebate should have been. For those opposite to come in here and suggest that it is all over and there is no freeze on the Medicare rebate for GPs is just not true.

There are so many things about the rhetoric in this budget that are not true. We have had the NDIS lie. Those opposite come in here and say that Labor did not fully fund the NDIS; that is absolutely not true. Our budget papers from when we were in office show that it is not true. Labor did fund the NDIS fully and properly, and our budget papers show that we were doing that. Those opposite want to talk about the NDIS and not politicise it, but they have done nothing but that. Every single day since the budget, they have been coming in here, trying to politicise the NDIS. I want to tell them about people in my electorate who are relying on the NDIS. They are more concerned about its current implementation than a political fight about the way it is funded. They are actually concerned about whether or not the person whom they are caring for, who is relying on the NDIS, is getting the support they need. There are implementation issues with the NDIS, as we would expect with any major reform, and the government should be focusing on fixing that implementation rather than coming in here and trying to play political games with the NDIS, because there are people in my electorate who are relying on it working properly, who are unsatisfied, who are worried about its implementation and who have had packages cut in recent months from their original packages. They are really concerned about the NDIS and how it is being rolled out at the moment. So what we do not want to hear from those on the other side is the politicisation of what is a very significant reform that did have bipartisan support and that I am sure many members on the other side are just as concerned as I am about its rollout, because it is so important that we get this right.

Then we have the government's rhetoric around Gonski and school funding. I asked a question today of the Prime Minister about the $68 million cut to public schools in Tasmania over the next two years. Of course, he did not really want to answer the question about the cut to public schools in Tasmania, because he knows that the schools in Tasmania are getting $68 million less than they would have got under a signed agreement that the government has with the Commonwealth. That is the reality—$68 million less over the next two years going to public schools in my home state, and it means that students in public schools in my electorate and every other electorate in Tasmania will be missing out and not getting the support that they need over the next couple of years.

Interestingly, we have the Tasmanian state budget this week, which I am sure those on the other side would not have paid any attention to.

Mr McCormack interjecting—

It is an interesting interjection by the minister that Will Hodgman is a good premier. Will Hodgman has not stood up for Tasmania at all against this government. He has not stood up for Tasmania when it comes to the cut in school funding. He has not stood up for Tasmania when we received a cut to our hospital funding. He has not stood up for Tasmania when we got zero dollars in the last infrastructure budget, as they wanted to call it, which we know is a farce, because there is no new money for projects in my home state of Tasmania. As I was just saying to the minister, not one federal minister came to the state of Tasmania in the week after the budget—not one. We had something like eight senior shadow ministers come down and talk to Tasmanians about the impact of the budget, but the government could not send one single minister to Tasmania to talk about the budget. Tasmanians are truly feeling left off this government's map. Time and time again, the government is making decisions—and it is only when Labor stands up for Tasmania that this government starts to take notice. So I expect that in the next few weeks we will have a few government ministers come down and do their thing around the state, but we will only see them come because Labor has called on them to do so and because Labor has demanded that they take notice of my home state.

I am sure that when they come they will not talk about their cuts to our schools. I am sure they will not talk about the cuts to universities. I am sure they will not talk about the change to the HECS threshold that many Tasmanians will be affected by. Tasmanians, sadly, have the lowest average incomes in the country. Lowering the threshold from $55,000 down to $41,000 before HECS is repaid will affect a lot of Tasmanians and will affect the marginal tax rate of many Tasmanians. And, of course, there is the TAFE cut. The cut to TAFE will also impact on my home state. I have had a couple of TAFE teachers come to see me concerned about the undermining of TAFE and concerned that Tasmania is getting school cuts, university cuts and TAFE cuts. When this government talks about jobs and growth, Tasmanians start to wonder exactly where the jobs and growth are going to come from. When you do not invest in young people, when you do not invest in the skills and the training that young people need, when you do not give people an option of tertiary education at university or TAFE, then how are the Tasmanian public going to get the skills they need to take up the jobs of the future? Clearly, they are not. Clearly, you cannot say that you support jobs and growth and then not properly fund schools, not properly fund TAFE and not properly fund the university system, and then go and make low-income Tasmanians pay more with the HECS threshold change and the increase to the Medicare levy.

Tasmanians simply can not afford it. As I said, they already have some of the lowest incomes in Australia. We had new data last week that talked about housing affordability. I know it might surprise some people in this chamber, but Hobart is right up there with Sydney for unaffordability of housing. We are one of the worst places in the country for housing affordability, because of the low incomes that Tasmanians rely on. It is well known that a disproportionate number of Tasmanians rely on government support payments, because the incomes are so low. It is no surprise to anybody who has come to Tasmania that we have areas of very significant disadvantage and pockets of high unemployment. But the cuts in this budget in no way address that—in no way at all.

The only infrastructure projects that are happening in Tasmania are ones that were announced and funded by Labor in 2013. There are only two small additional projects that are happening in Tasmania and one large infrastructure one for the university, and they are all things that Labor committed to and promised before the government did. They are all projects that Labor lobbied for. And I go back to my point that this government only pays attention when Labor stands up for Tasmania. During the previous election campaign, Labor came out early for funding the Hobart airport roundabout upgrade in my electorate. We came out early for the University of Tasmania relocation in Launceston and Burnie. The government was dragged kicking and screaming to make those same commitments. They are the only additional things in the budget that the government has funded, and Labor had previously committed to them. So Tasmania is feeling pretty disappointed and pretty left out from this budget.

I also want to talk about my portfolios. I am the shadow minister for ageing and mental health. People in the ageing sector and those older Australians who are relying on aged-care support, either in residential care or in their homes, will be pretty disappointed by this budget also. Whilst they have not had the cuts of previous years—I will grant the government that; it had previously been using aged care as an ATM and taking billions out—what we did not see were thoughtful responses to some of the serious issues around ageing in Australia. What we did not see was a commitment on level 3 and level 4 aged-care packages for home care. There is currently a 12-month waiting list for people to get level 3 and 4 packages in their homes. What happens in that 12 months while people are waiting for a package? Usually one of two things happens—people go into the emergency department or they go into residential aged care before they are ready, because there was no package available. It would be better to support these people in their home sooner rather than it costing everybody more paying for them to go to an emergency department or into residential care. The government is actually costing itself more by not funding the packages.

These aged care packages also come after somebody has had what is known as an ACAT or a RAS assessment. These assessments, too, are behind. I have had reports of the ACAT assessment that the states conduct taking up to six months. So you have your ACAT assessment and then you have the wait for your home care package. By the time you might finally get the package, it is 18 months down the track. Older Australians surely deserve better than that. Older Australians who want to stay in their homes rather than go into residential care or end up in a hospital emergency department I am sure would rather have those packages and stay at home, as I am sure their loved ones would prefer.

I also want to talk about mental health. I have offered the government bipartisan support when it comes to the mental health portfolio— particularly around suicide prevention, given the statistics and the data that we have seen, with suicides in Australia being at the highest level they have been in a decade. It is something that requires urgent action from government, and I have offered my bipartisan support to the government. So, I was pleased to see some additional funding—$115 million—for mental health in the budget, $80 million of that being for psychosocial services that will support those people who are outside of the NDIS and who have severe mental illness and need support who are currently in programs. Whilst I am pleased to see that, I do say it is not enough. I understand from the Minister for Health and the minister's office that the minister is working on some more support, and I would appreciate a briefing from the government on how that is rolling out and how that will occur. We also saw some significant funding for more suicide prevention, which I also support, but we really do need to do more when it comes to the mental health of Australians. Whilst I was pleased to see some $115 million in the budget, clearly we do have a long way to go and clearly we need to do more to deal with the terrible suicide toll in Australia. I again pledge bipartisan support to work with the government in this really important area. I will be doing everything I can to ensure that this area of public policy is properly funded and receives bipartisan support.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is good to be here in the House while the Minister for Small Business is at the table—I thank him for visiting Canning during the nonsitting week. We had a forum with local small business owners, and that was very successful. They found it very useful. I know how hard our ministers work—I think you were home for one or two nights, Minister, over an extended period, so thank you.

I, like no doubt many others in this place, am regularly asked by constituents what I do as a member of parliament. Sometimes that question comes out of sincere curiosity; more often, though, it comes from a place of suspicion and cynicism. Many Australians struggle to believe that politicians achieve anything, let alone that they have the interests of their electors at heart. So, fundamental to the role of an MP is the enacting of good legislation—legislation that serves the public interest and sets conditions for a flourishing Australian society. Since becoming the member for Canning, just over 18 months ago, I have sought to ensure that the interests of people from my region, the Peel region, are reflected in the laws that we make.

Last year the federal government passed the backpacker tax, which made a huge difference to my fruit growers in the north of Canning. Canning is home to a thriving horticultural industry. We grow some of the best fruit in WA. One of the perennial issues we face is that we struggle to secure Australian workers. When Senator Sinodinos visited Canning last year, he spoke directly with the fruit growers and they said to him, 'We are competing with the welfare system when it comes to securing Australian workers.' That is why backpacker labour is so important. We also needed a competitive tax rate for working holiday visa holders, and the government has delivered just that.

We also had a postcode issue. Some growers were living in postcodes that rendered them ineligible for the working holiday visa extension: postcodes 6076 and 6111. It was great to see the Hills Orchard Improvement Group, led by spokesman Brett DelSimone, lobby me and also the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. He met directly with them, and we were able to come up with a good solution. Now those fruitgrowers are working at full steam, and they are being productive. So that is one example over the last year when I think about what my role as an MP in parliament is: it is creating the conditions where my constituents can flourish.

In the budget from last week, there are some great opportunities and measures for the Australian people. I think straightaway of the measures to cut red and green tape. People in Canning want it to be easier for local businesses to have a go and get ahead. We spoke about that with the small business minister when he visited. People want to see jobs in their region. Many want greater freedom to run their own businesses. I have done a lot of town halls over the last month—six, in fact—and the feedback I have had from constituents is frustration with red and green tape. I think of Stuart McCormack from Pinjarra, who spoke for the farmers in Coolup when he said that their competitiveness was being strangled by red tape and environmental regulations. He mentioned prohibitive, inaccessible regulation as being a major disincentive for most farmers expanding their operations. So, in the budget, we have committed to reducing red tape by providing $300 million to the states and territories to remove unnecessary regulatory barriers. This builds on the $5.8 billion of red tape reduction that has so far been delivered by the coalition government.

Also for small business, we are delivering small and medium business tax cuts that will help the 11,570 businesses in Canning with turnovers up to $50 million if they are incorporated, and up to $5 million if they are unincorporated, to invest and employ more Australians. I think of the instant asset write-off. The 2017 budget extends the $20,000 instant asset write-off for a further 12 months, to 30 June 2018. The turnover threshold will also be lifted to $10 million. This measure will help improve cash flow for small business, helping them to reinvest in their business and replace or upgrade their assets. Many businesses in Canning can take advantage of this.

I think of one new business which opened up only 10 weeks ago, King Road Brewing Company in the Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale, owned by Dave McKee. They had to open early because of the overheads, and now they are turning away people at the gates. I took my wife and my son for a meal there on Mother's Day. We rocked up at 11.30, and they had already shut the gates because they had exceeded their 200 patrons. It is great to see business thriving. There is a lot of negativity out there, but I will tell you what: there are signs of life in Canning, and it is again small business taking the lead. It is very encouraging.

One thing that is also in the budget is the introduction of compliance measures such as drug testing for 5,000 welfare recipients, which will take effect in January 2018. We have a serious drug problem in Canning. I do not pretend Canning is a perfect part of the world. Our wastewater indicates this. In fact, regional WA has a higher-than-national-average rage of ice usage. Just last week, approximately 250 metres away from the Centrelink office in Mandurah and about 300 metres away from my own office, I was breath-tested at 10.30 in the morning, not because I was driving erratically but because we have a drug and alcohol problem in the centre of our town. So I am hoping that this measure can be rolled out. I have spoken to constituents. They want to see action taken.

To those who push back against the drug testing, I can say from personal experience that, whilst on service overseas in Afghanistan, I had to take several drug tests as part of my job. We were sending soldiers into harm's way, and we were still being drug tested. If it is good enough for the ADF, it is good enough for welfare recipients who have a drug dependency. Ultimately, this is designed to help them. The cashless welfare system is the proposed solution if they test positive.

Civic institutions are a really important part of Canning. I think of sporting clubs, including the AFL clubs. I recently went to the Port Bouvard Surf Life Saving Club annual awards. It was a great night. I think of the numerous charities and churches, including the brand-new Free Reformed Church of Mundijong, a beautiful building in a nice paddock out in Mundijong. The Free Reformed Church does a lot of good things in Canning. I recently saw how much they care for their community at the funeral of Laeticia Brouwer, who was a member of the Free Reformed Church of Baldivis. The congregation there was a great example of what a strong and healthy community looks like.

All these civic institutions are separate from government. They do not need our bureaucracy; they do not need our assistance—although we do try to empower them, and the volunteer grants are one way in which we do that.

I can think of two examples where people in Canning have achieved success through collective action. They have demonstrated that grassroots democracy is very much alive. The first example is of the residents of Pickering Brook in the north of Canning. Last year I received a number of complaints from constituents about the placement of an NBN fixed wireless tower in Pickering Brook. It was very close to their homes, it was unsightly, and no-one had really consulted with them about the best place to put it. It was also close to a primary school. The residents, working as a collective, alongside the local shire, the Shire of Kalamunda, persuaded NBN Co to relocate the tower to a more suitable site at the Pickering Brook Sports Club—and, incidentally, if you go there for a beer on a Friday night, your phone goes dead, which is great for an MP but, for a lot of constituents, is unacceptable. So it is good to see more telecommunications infrastructure rolled out into the northern hills of Canning. The second example is the Dawesville Chemmart. Due to pharmacy location rules, the Dawesville Chemmart's application to dispense PBS medications was rejected. What was the problem? It was a mere 25 square metres of floor space—they fell 25 square metres short and, because of the rules, they were not allowed to dispense PBS medications. So the pharmacy started a petition, because a lot of retirees and pensioners in the area walk to that pharmacy, and they need those PBS medications listed. They gathered over 2,000 signatures and brought that matter to my attention, and, on behalf of the pharmacy's owners, I then lobbied the former health minister for a ministerial intervention, and she agreed to our request. The Dawesville Chemmart is now dispensing PBS medications and providing a good service to the community. In both these instances, change was driven by people at the grassroots level with the support of government.

The coalition has also been supporting civic society in Canning through the aptly named Stronger Communities Program. Thanks to this program, we have secured better sporting equipment for gymnastics and netball clubs in Roleystone and stadium lights for Mundijong Oval. I went down and watched the first game under lights with my little feller a couple of weeks back, at the Centrals. There has also been park equipment in Coolup and a community garden in Byford, just to name a couple. It is great to see those local projects supported by the coalition government.

It is also important to acknowledge and support volunteer organisations which bridge the gap between civic society and government to provide essential services. Recently, I visited this year's Canning recipients of the coalition's Volunteer Grants program. It is incredible to see how a little support from government towards fuel costs or administration goes a long way towards enriching the lives of everyday families, like those who are part of the Manta Rays Swim Team for disabled children in Mandurah. I also think of Riding for the Disabled in Orange Grove; I saw the delight on the faces of the children, some of whom struggle with a range of illnesses, as they got on the back of a horse and got therapy in that way. It was incredible to watch. So I am very proud that our government is supporting those little institutions which make up Australian society.

The bread and butter of every member in this House is constituent work, but, in the daily running of an office, we are at risk of forgetting why we help our constituents. I do not help constituents because I want their votes; I help them because it is my duty to help safeguard their interests. It is always a pleasure to help someone who is very clearly a Labor or a Greens supporter; that is our job.

Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Convert them!

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Convert them—exactly!

But one example of why I help constituents is the issue of youth suicide. It came to my attention last year that we had lost a number of young people in the Peel region tragically to suicide, all within the space of a few months. Out of the conversations I had with parents, principals, schoolkids and sporting clubs came the concern that there was nowhere in Canning for kids to get help. While there were already service providers working in this space—I think of the Peel Youth Medical Service and Peel Youth Services—it became evident that there was a shortfall when it came to young kids having immediate access to mental health care. So I was very encouraged when the Peel Youth Medical Service took it upon themselves, led by Eleanor Britton, to run a petition to get a headspace in Mandurah.

Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

An excellent organisation.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a very excellent organisation. The petition received over 3,400 signatures from the community in the space of only a month or so. On Thursday the health minister visited Canning to announce that it had been successful and that Mandurah would receive a headspace with the next 12 months. It was very encouraging. We had a great turnout, and I want to acknowledge that this was brought about not just through the federal government, but with the support of local state members and a host of leaders within the community.

Why is it important? This government cares about individuals, too. Last year a young man from the Peel Youth Medical Service got to meet the Prime Minister and share with him the story of his struggle with anxiety and depression. Last week, when the health minister arrived to announce the headspace, the same young man stood up and told the minister that briefing the Prime Minister about his struggle with anxiety was one of the greatest moments of his life. That is why we all do it: to see individual lives changed where we can.

I have moved round the electorate lately holding community meetings, and it is evident from my constituents' experiences that Canning needs better rail, road and telecommunications infrastructure. I think it was Bernard Salt in The Australian last year who said that Mandurah, which is at the centre of Canning, had a population growth since 2000 of something like 79 per cent. Canning has literally exploded in numbers. We have also added about 19,000 jobs in the same time span. There is a lot of growth, and telecommunications, roads and rail have struggled to keep up with that explosion of population growth. So one of my tasks is to go out and see where we can improve things. Last week I went up to Martin and visited constituents who were struggling to get a decent landline service from Telstra, struggling to get mobile phone coverage and are still waiting for the NBN. I have just received pictures of telephone lines held together by plastic bags in Martin. I have had calls about dangerously poor roads in Keysbrook, and I have met people in Byford and Lakelands who want to be able to catch a train to work. All these individual concerns are important, but together they tell a story about the people of Canning, what they care about and what they hope for for the future.

With their support and with the help of other constituents I am fighting for infrastructure that will help make a difference to the lives of people in Canning. I have gone on record recently that we want to see the train station in Byford funded from the $10 billion rail fund that was announced in the budget. We want to see the extension of the Tonkin Highway south to open up the interior to increase business opportunities for people. I want to see the Beacham Road freeway access off the Forrest Highway south into Austin Lakes. A lot of kids go to Austin Cove Baptist College, and it would reduce their travel time significantly if we could get a road direct into that development. It would also do a lot for the IGA there. I will be fighting for all these things over the next year.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018. This is not the worst budget that I have seen in my 21 years here. That prize probably goes to either the 1996 or 2014 budgets. But it is the most political budget I have seen in this place—a budget with one eye, of course, to the next Newspoll. People in my electorate and elsewhere are understandably asking me how Australia is a better place than it was four years ago—that is, since the election of first the Abbott government and, since then, the Turnbull government. They are also asking me, 'What does the Turnbull government stand for? What is its vision?' They ask why the Prime Minister never talks about the things he used to campaign for so energetically: the republic and climate change, for example. Where is the guy, they ask, who would regularly express compassion for asylum seekers? Where is the Malcolm Turnbull who used to campaign for same-sex marriage? I put to the House that they are fair questions. The member for Warringah was not and is not the most popular person in the electorate of Hunter. But people say to me, 'At least we knew what he stood for.'

The member for Warringah is a conservative, and I respect that. I consider myself a progressive, and I know he respects my position. But, having spent all of his adult life espousing progressive views, the Prime Minister no longer ever expresses those views. Of course, the true definition of a conservative is a person who restricts change—does not like change. A progressive, of course, is someone who believes that change should be a constant; that we can always do better tomorrow than we did yesterday or today. The history of human beings has been one of positive progressive advance in the main. Not all progress has been good but, in the main, it has been positive progressive advance. Tony Abbott and those like him are conservatives—

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would just remind the member—

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Warringah and those like him are conservative. It is easy for conservatives to believe that things as they are okay and are not in need of change, because usually those people are in relatively privileged positions and do not need things to change. But many people in our communities do not enjoy privileged positions—indeed, many people in our communities live under the most difficult circumstances—and, for them, change is important. The hope of a better life is something that they need, and they need their politicians to be talking in a progressive way. They need their politicians to be thinking about how we might do things better, not just how we want things to stay the same.

But there is another dichotomy out there in the marketplace that I would like to reflect on, and that is the divide between conflict and cooperation. I consider myself a vocal champion of those who live outside our capital cities. I consider myself a voice for those who work the land. I believe in the private sector as the main driver of economic wealth and job creation in this country. But that does not make me anti-capital city. It does not make me anti-milk processor or anti-meat processor, and I am certainly not anti-public service. They too play an important role in our economy and therefore our community.

Strong regional economies need strong capital cities. Strong capital cities need strong regional economies. It is pretty simple. Everyone in this place should understand that or can surely appreciate that. To be strong, farmers need businesses which add value to their product—again, abattoirs or meat processors, for example—and the private sector and a stable economy require a predictable, steady regulatory regime and therefore a strong public sector. Returning to the land, farmers need a healthy environment and the environment relies on good farming methods to be healthy. The interdependence is obvious and should be very clear to all in this place.

It appeared to me that, at the turn of the century, the consensus was building—that we had learnt the lessons from political conflict; that as political leaders we had learnt the value of consensus. Economic liberalism seemed to enjoy almost universal support. Protectionism appeared consigned to the dustbin of history. The health of our environment seemed front and centre in every debate. And there appeared to be a more enlightened conversation about the environment and how a sustainable environment is critical to a sustainable economy and therefore crucial to sustainable communities. But, by 2009, that emerging consensus on the key issues in our communities was breaking down. Again, I return to the member for Warringah—not in such happy terms on this occasion—and when I believe the breakdown began in earnest. Sadly, the consensus remains under attack under the Turnbull government, particularly under the failed leadership of the Deputy Prime Minister. I say that genuinely reluctantly.

It seems to me that the Deputy Prime Minister wants a war with everyone. Those who worry about our environment, including those who want to ensure farm profitability is sustainable, are front and centre. Again, our farmers can be great custodians of our land, but with limited natural resources in this country we need to ensure that those resources are allocated efficiently and used in the most sustainable and efficient way possible. The Deputy Prime Minister likes to joke about snails and frogs—species that make vital contributions to our ecology. They are not a joke. These are very serious issues. Our biodiversity is very serious and critical to our economy and, therefore, to our communities. Of course, those who add value to our agricultural products are also important to our economy. We should not be promoting a war between them and our farmers and producers. We need to be adding value along the value chain and making sure that whole value chain is as efficient as is possible. There is a role for politicians in that process.

With respect to our public servants, we need to respect them, not sack them, when they stand up to the minister of the day. We need to respect their work and all that they do in our economy in an administrative sense. They are a critical cog in the wheel. We need to respect our capital cities and the role they play in our economy. Where would our regions be without strong capital cities? Where would our democracy be without a strong Canberra? It is the place of democracy and the place where our public servants give us effective and loyal advice. It is a one-stop shop where a farmer from Western Australia can visit and see a minister, a shadow minister, some backbenchers, the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources, the National Farmers' Federation, the Cattle Council or whoever they might be looking for—the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, I might add.

Canberra is a function of decentralisation itself. The founding fathers very wisely found a spot where, in our capital city, no state would dominate, but democracy would be independent of those capital cities and those who run the country would be together, advising government when they were needing that advice or when they were seeking that advice. That is the Australian settlement. That is the way Canberra has worked for many years—since 1927, when the parliament first arrived here. That is how Canberra should continue to work.

Obviously, I have segued into the debate about decentralisation. Decentralisation can be a good thing, but our model should not be built on conflict. If a government agency can do its work just as effectively in a regional centre, there might be an argument for it doing so, but it is not just an end in itself. It cannot be done if the relocation is in any way a threat to the capacity of that organisation to do its work. That is the key to the current debate about the relocation of the APVMA and it is the key to the debate about decentralisation more generally. The government does not have a plan for decentralisation; the Deputy Prime Minister only has a plan to pork barrel, to boondoggle and to create the fiction that he can create jobs in the regions by relocating public service entities which remain unnamed, other than a couple that have been subject to debate.

This is a flawed philosophy, if it can be called that, and it is a disappointing one. It is not the political leadership our regions are crying out for. It is the role of our political leaders to provide leadership—to lead, not just for some of us but for all of us—not just those of us who live in the regions but those of us who live in the capital cities too and those who live in rural and remote Australia: all of us. Certainly, it is not for our politicians to take action for some at the expense of others, which has become the modus operandi of this Deputy Prime Minister.

We need to celebrate our regions, certainly. We need to talk them up. They are doing well. Of course, they can always do better and each and every one of us should do everything we can in this place to ensure that they always do. That is the nature of the progressive approach to politics. That is what I was talking about earlier: we can always do better. We do not want conflict and we do not want war. We cannot grow our regional economies by putting them at war with those who live in our capital cities. We are not independent of one another; we are one economy and we are one community. We need to lead in this place, to ensure that everything that we do in our regions is also of benefit to our capital cities and that everything we do in our capital cities is always also of benefit to our regions.

It is for our politicians—all of us in this place—to show that leadership: to show guidance and, where necessary, to educate people, because we are in a privileged position in this place. We have a wealth of information available to us as politicians. We have an education far better than any university can provide, by virtue of the privilege of sitting in this House or in the other place. From time to time, it is incumbent upon us to use the information we have available to us to bring people with us—to start again to rebuild that consensus.

But, sadly, the Deputy Prime Minister is determined on another course—to divide and conquer: to offset regions against cities and vice versa. He talks about our communities and our country as if they were two different places. Well, they are not two different places. Our environment, for example, is critical to both places, and it is wrong for the Deputy Prime Minister to constantly and regularly ridicule those who have concerns for our environment. And I am not just talking about greenies marching in the streets; I am talking about this country's scientists, who understand the importance of our biodiversity, the importance of protecting our environment and the importance of that to the sustainable profitability of our agriculture sector.

Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I certainly welcome the opportunity to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018 and the associated bills. In my view, it has been a very responsible budget and it builds on initiatives that the coalition government has built in the past and which it has certainly been very good at.

Just from the perspective of a broader overview, it is great to see that for the Future Fund, which was established by Peter Costello back in the Howard years, we have now given undertakings and protections through draw-downs to allow those assets to continue to grow. Of course this will guarantee the protection of superannuation payouts for many years and for future generations.

Again, not long after that there was the coalition initiative for the Medical Research Future Fund. Then in this budget we are setting aside some $10 billion to establish the infrastructure fund. Again, this is looking to the future. We are looking at building that up to $75 billion and, of course, that is going to be a great opportunity for us to be able to look at projects—roads, ports et cetera—into the future. Starting to put the money aside now makes a lot of sense.

I have to say that looking towards a surplus in 2020-21 is something I am pleasantly surprised with. Given the situation we found ourselves in when we came to government, it is something I thought we were highly unlikely to achieve. It is certainly refreshing, and I know that many of my constituents appreciate the fact that we are actually on the right trajectory. The fact that we will be paying for our liabilities for essential services et cetera by 2018 shows that we are certainly going in the right direction.

In regard to some of the more specific measures, I would like to touch on a few matters that are relevant to Leichardt. I will start with the banks. I have been a very vocal critic of what has been happening in banking over many years. Many of my constituents have been profoundly negatively impacted by banks. The banks have engineered defaults on businesses that have never missed a payment; they have engineered things to make sure that they sent them broke. So I do not have any issue at all with the new levy applying to the big four banks plus Macquarie, with liabilities greater than $100 billion. It certainly provides a more level playing field for the smaller banks and non-banking competitors.

I think we need to be reminded that since 2008 they have been receiving the benefit of the Australian government guarantee scheme. That is the government and the taxpayer putting themselves on the hook should there be an issue in that regard. This has given them a great commercial advantage, so it is little wonder that Australian banks are the second most profitable banks in the world. So I do not think it is unreasonable to call on some sort of dividend from those who have benefited the most from this. From my perspective, the levy is quite reasonable.

I also welcome the banking executive accountability scheme. If the banks start to feel the impact in their pocket of wrongdoing by their underlings, I am sure we will start to see that behaviour change that we have been calling for for so long. They should be held accountable for these things. I hope it is not just deregistration; I would like to see them hit in the hip pocket as well.

The establishment of the independent authority is a step in the right direction, but we need to make sure that we do not put the cap at $5 million. If individuals have been bankrupted through these unconscionable processes that we see from the banks—engineering of defaults et cetera—whether they have lost $100 million or $1 million they are just as broke. They cannot afford to go through lawyers. Believe you me, once the banks have put them through the system they cannot afford it. I have people in my electorate who have lost close to $200 million and 500 employees. At the end of the day, I have had to argue to get them on the age pension. Where are they going to be able to get the support to go through lawyers to be able to argue their case? They deserve that moment to be heard. So I think the threshold is inappropriate—$5 million is not enough. Secondly, we have to deal with the historic cases as well, not just current and future cases. There are people who have been suffering and battling for 10 years. The banks know that if they drag it on long enough the problem goes away—because people pass away and with them goes the capacity to argue their case. So we have to move quickly to deal with historical cases as well.

Insurance has been a major issue in my region of Northern Australia. It is still unresolved. It is something I have been battling for for a long time now. I welcome the $7.9 million that has been allocated to the ACCC to monitor insurance pricing in Far North Queensland. The fact that the Insurance Council of Australia does not like it suggests to me that it is good policy. But it is not enough; we need to go further. This is why I continue to push for either a catastrophe underwriting scheme or a mutual.

There also needs to be more done at state government level through strata legislation and the removal of stamp duty on renewals. Of course, we offered the Queensland government $12.5 million to work on engineering reports for strata which to date has not been used. There is also other work that the insurers themselves need to do rather than sit back and demand taxpayer-funded mitigation or mitigation funded by their policy holders. Even when it is done, there is absolutely no reflection in relation to a decrease in policy. So there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in that area. I note that Margaret Shaw, a wonderful advocate for this issue, has welcomed the ACC scrutiny and believes the money will be well spent, as long as the ACCC has the power to rectify extortion, should it occur. She said: 'The Insurance Council of Australia has proved the insurance industry is incapable of regulating itself, otherwise surely someone somewhere would have noticed a sudden mass of increases and acted on them. Now it's time for someone else to be responsible for keeping an eye on the insurance industry. Let's hope that the ACCC is up to it.' I agree 100 per cent with her observation of that.

On welfare payment reforms and supporting people in need, in my area we have one of the largest unemployment levels, particularly youth unemployment levels, in the country and yet we have one of the highest numbers of employment opportunities. We rely very heavily on backpackers to fill those roles. It is just that people do not want to travel away within 100 kilometres or, in the case of the tourism industry, do not want to be pouring coffees and things like that; they choose to do other things. I think reforms like trialling cashless welfare cards for people who fail random drug tests are a very positive step in so much as if somebody presents themselves for a job and they are on Newstart they should be ready to start work. If they present themselves and they are high then surely to goodness it is not unreasonable to expect them to get some support. By identifying the problem, we can then channel them into the right agencies. I do not think Newstart was designed to support an ongoing drug habit. I certainly strongly agree with the escalating financial penalties for that minority who consistently fail to meet their participation requirements. We have a situation where not one person last year incurred a financial penalty by failing to meet job seeking obligations such as applying for positions and turning up for Centrelink appointments. I think that these are the sorts of things that we need to take a harder stand on so that they can be encouraged to take what jobs are available at the time.

I was very pleased to see the $27 million of round 3 Stronger Communities Program grants offering grants of $5,000 to $20,000 to local organisations for small infrastructure projects. It was very well received in my electorate. In rounds 1 and 2 we saw great outcomes including, in my region: a bus for the Bamaga dance troupe up in the tip of Cape York, new yards for Lakeland Horse Sports, various men's sheds equipment, sporting infrastructure, solar panels for the West Cairns Bowls Club and shade sales for the Cooktown race course et cetera. Those are amazing outcomes and, of course, for every dollar spent there was at least a dollar spent by that community group to match, so it was great leverage. At the bigger end, the new $472 million Regional Growth Fund will invest in transformational projects that will unlock the potential for our regions, with government investment of $10 million and upwards, and $200 million of this funding will increase our commitment to the Building Better Regions Fund. In my region there were 21 applications in round 1, and I look forward to hearing about and working with the successful proponents for round 2 projects.

On infrastructure, the Cape York Region Package got $54 million, which was great. We will see the sealing of the Peninsula Developmental Road in my lifetime—something I would have said was not achievable 10 years ago. There is $70 million being spent in 2017-18 on various Bruce Highway upgrade measures in North and Far North Queensland, including $6.2 million on the Robert Road to Foster Road upgrade. Only 12 kilometres of the Bruce Highway falls within Leichhardt, but the upgrades over the other 1,688 kilometres certainly benefit my region. Of course, our local councils will welcome the unfreezing of indexation on the financial assistance grants, and they will also benefit from the Roads to Recovery funding, with 14 councils sharing something like $5.7 million in the next financial year.

There was also benefit for our hardworking small business community, with the extension of the $20,000 instant asset write-off for a further 12 months, to 30 June 2018, and the turnover threshold for small businesses being lifted to $10 million. That will certainly enable a lot more small businesses in my region to invest in their growth, increase productivity and also improve their cash flow.

The budget also included a $300 million incentive for state and territory governments to remove unnecessary regulatory barriers. I think that we have led the way there from a federal perspective, with some $5.8 billion of cuts to red tape. It is certainly not unreasonable for the states and territories to do their bit and for us to offer them some incentive as well.

It was great also from the seniors perspective. I really supported the reinstatement of pensioner concession cards for 92,000 senior Australians. This was something that I thought it was absolutely essential that we do, as was permanently extending funding for homelessness, another significant issue. This is certainly an issue in my area.

With regard to the NDIS, we have seen the criticism, and we saw the Medicare scare campaign at the last election. I think we are guaranteeing Medicare. With the Medicare Guarantee Fund, which will pay only for Medicare and for medicines, we can ensure that service is not going to be reduced and more medicines will end up on the PBS, hopefully putting that scare to bed once and for all.

Fully funding the NDIS is another major initiative. I hear criticism from people earning about $22,000. I think we need to put it into perspective: if you are earning $22,000, you are currently paying $66 for your Medicare levy, and in 2019 you will be paying $99. This is still allowing a contribution, which is great, but if you are on $100,000 a year your contribution at the moment is $2,000, and it will go up to $2,500—again, proportional to your contribution.

The school funding, of course, was major. Every single school in my area benefited from it, some to the extent of tens of millions of dollars of additional funding.

So I think the budget that we have delivered has been overwhelmingly successful in my electorate. It has been very strongly supported by the majority within my community. I think it is a fair budget, it will grow the community, and it will ensure that northerners have access to services that they rely on. I think it maps the way for a credible balancing of our budget. (Time expired)

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Fairness is not just a slogan. Fairness is not something that you can test in focus groups. That is not what fairness is. Fairness is not the answer to shore up this Prime Minister's leadership of the Liberal Party. Fairness is absolutely at the heart of what Australians understand to be the fair go. It means a government that is willing to invest in people, to pursue equal opportunity and to look after the most vulnerable people in our society.

Fairness is actually something you have to believe in. If you really believe in it then you will look at the detail in this budget and conclude that this budget is unfair. I will go through that detail here today. It is unfair because this budget gives tax cuts to millionaires and big businesses and tax rises to low- and middle-income families. The budget is unfair because of the cuts to schools and TAFE. It is unfair because it asks young people to pay more to go to university. It is unfair because it does not address housing affordability. It is unfair because it still contains cuts to families and pensioners. It is unfair because it contains unfair zombie cuts, including the plan to increase the pension age to 70.

For nearly a decade now the key economic debate of our time has been between austerity and inclusive growth; between harsh budget cuts on the one hand and social investment on the other; between trickle-down economics and a model of economic growth that enables everyone to fulfil their potential. This really has been the core economic debate around the world since the global financial crisis. Conservatives, of course, argue that the only way to save ourselves from the so-called debt and deficit disaster is to end what they call the age of entitlement. The conservatives argue that we are a nation of leaners and lifters, and that the only way we can all be better off is to give the big end of town a massive $65 billion handout and that wealth will somehow trickle down and eventually result in a small wage rise of $2 a day in 20 years time. That is the Liberal Party's logic.

Labor, on the other hand, have always shown that we believe in fairness—we do not just talk about it. We know that wages growth in Australia is at record lows and that the minimum wage has been declining as a proportion of average wages over the last 20 years. We do not want to see Australia go down the American road of the working poor. We do not want to see Sunday penalty rates cut. Of course we believe in budget repair that is fair but, more importantly, we believe in inclusive growth. We believe that without good health care, good schools and good universities and TAFEs we cannot be competitive because not all Australians will be able to fulfil their potential. Investing in human capital means investing in Australia's greatest resource—our people.

Here in 2017 we have a Liberal government led by this Prime Minister that wants to rebrand himself. Somehow, all of a sudden, we are meant to believe that the Liberals care about fairness. I am not buying that, and nor are the Australian people. Australians see through this fake Prime Minister, who actually does not believe in anything. Australians ultimately understand that contained in the 2017 budget are tax cuts for the top end of town and for multinationals, and a tax hike for battlers. Australians can see more cuts to family tax benefits and cuts to pensions with the axing of the energy supplement. What this means in real dollars is a cut of $365 a year for a single pensioner—a cut to 1.7 million Australian pensioners and unemployed people. Of course, it would not be a Liberal budget if it did not contain some nasties for pensioners. They always preference the top end of town over people who work and struggle to make ends meet.

Many of the 2014 zombie cuts have been temporarily removed from this year's budget. They include cuts to paid parental leave, the five-week wait for Newstart, cuts to young people between the ages of 22 and 24 by pushing them off Newstart onto the lower youth allowance—a cut that would have seen around $48 a week taken from these young people—and scrapping the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment. How do we know that these cuts are only temporarily removed from this budget? Because the Prime Minister himself said that the unfair zombie cuts 'had merit'. The Prime Minister said:

Well it’s not a question of good or bad. I mean, they were measures that we thought, which we believed had merit.

These were unfair cuts to families, unfair cuts to pensioners, unfair cuts to young job seekers. Let us not forget that, in 2014, the now Prime Minister said, and I quote him again:

I support introducing co-payments for general practitioner pathology and diagnostic imaging services in the Medicare Benefits Schedule. I support the reforms to higher education. I support the changes to family payment reform.

I just remind the Prime Minister that those changes to family payment reform that he said he supported were an $8½ billion cut to family tax benefits.

Just to give one example of one type of family what those cuts would have meant, a family of $65,000 would have lost $6,000 a year. That is how much worse off they would have been. Every single Liberal and National Party member voted for those cuts. This Prime Minister was there when the decision was made to cut pension indexation in the 2014 budget—a cut that would have left pensioners around $80 a week worse off over a decade. This Prime Minister supported those measures. He now says those measures have merit—yet, again, an indication that he has no idea of what fairness means.

I do want to speak tonight about the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It is a landmark Labor reform; a reform that is very, very dear to my heart. As the minister responsible for introducing the National Disability Insurance Scheme in the former Labor government, I do understand just how important this reform is. I know that the old system of disability support in this country is broken and is failing people with disability and their families. So no-one is more committed to the successful rollout of the NDIS than I am. I do acknowledge the fact that the government has continued the rollout of the NDIS in recent years. And it has concluded a number of bilateral agreements with the states on the rollout of the scheme.

But it has been an absolute disgrace that this government has undermined the funding security of the National Disability Insurance Scheme over these last three years. I want to make it absolutely crystal clear to people with disability and to their families and carers that the future of the NDIS is secure. The NDIS is secure. I want to make it clear that Australians with disabilities are too important for this government to play political games with. When the government claims that the NDIS is at risk because of funding, it, of course, causes unnecessary concern amongst people with disability, their families and carers. It is not right and it is, certainly, not fair. We of course can disagree on many, many issues, but we should not fight about the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It is too important.

The government claim that Labor, when we were in government, did not make appropriate provision through various savings to pay for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This is just not true. The government acknowledge that Labor did increase the Medicare levy, but, of course, they choose to ignore many other tough savings decisions that were made. They ignore changes to the private health insurance rebate, indexation of tobacco excise, import duties and fringe benefits concessions. The money from these savings is in the budget. Combined, this is enough money to pay for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Labor rejects the government's attempts to link the proposed increase to the Medicare levy with the National Disability Insurance Scheme. We reject that link just like we rejected the government's early attempt to link a whole range of other unfair cuts to the funding of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and to, effectively, hold the National Disability Insurance Scheme and people with disability to ransom with these unfair cuts. So I just want to say again, particularly to people with disability, that the National Disability Insurance Scheme is secure. Its funding is secure. It is fully funded. It was fully funded by Labor. It continues to be fully funded. What we should all be concentrating on now is the successful rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme in the interests of people with disability.

As for families, I am sorry to say there are more cuts to family tax benefits in this budget. Around 100,000 families will have their family tax benefits cut. So let's just have a look at what the size of these cuts will be. A family on a combined household income of $105,000 and with two children in high school will be around $1,700 worse off on 1 July 2018. That is how much those families will lose from this budget. This cut follows another decision by this government to freeze the rate of family tax benefits, which means that those benefits will not keep up with prices. A typical family with two young children will be around $440 worse off in 2018-19 as a result of this Liberal government's freeze on family tax benefit rates. This cut was originally in the government's horror 2014 budget. It was removed in 2015 after the legislation was defeated in the Senate. The government then rushed it back into the parliament this year—yet further evidence that you cannot believe anything this government says. If they say a cut is out of the budget, the next year back it comes.

There are many other cuts in this budget that I do not have time to refer to tonight, and many of them are very, very controversial. We will have further opportunities to discuss them when the specific legislation for them is brought in. There are so many changes in this budget that will hurt millions of Australians, while, at the same time, it gives a tax cut to the top end of town. That is why this budget is not fair.

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

I am very pleased to be speaking on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-18 and related bills and supporting the government's budget. Just as she leaves the chamber, I refer to some of the things that the member for Jagajaga raised, particularly her indignant response to the view that the NDIS was not fully funded in the past by her government. Just repeating something that is not true often enough does not make it true, Member for Jagajaga; in fact, it reinforces the misleading statement in the first place. What you say could be given some weight if you could find a single reputable economist who would back that point of view, if you could find anyone in the free press who writes on economic and parliamentary government matters to agree with that point of view or if you could find anyone in the NDIS sector, in the disability sector, who agrees with that point of view. There is no support for that point of view. It is widely known that the NDIS was not properly funded. There was a black hole, and this government has had to face up to that issue and deal with it, just as we have had to deal with other issues that we do not particularly like.

The failure of our savings measures getting through the Senate has been a great frustration to the government. We do not want to raise taxes. We want to make Australia a low tax society. Yet we are faced with a situation where we can either govern responsibly or keep plunging Australia further and further into debt, not only placing that debt upon future generations but threatening the very basis on which we operate in this economic world—and that is our AAA credit rating. This rating not only gives great benefit to the Australian government; it also gives great benefit to Australian businesses. All of those things are important and they cannot be glossed over. So we have taken the responsible path and legislated for some cuts to various government payments but also, to balance the budget, to raise some extra taxes, most notably the levy on banks and, of course, the ½ per cent increase in the Medicare levy. It is responsible and pragmatic government, and that is what Australians expect governments to do: to govern responsibly and pragmatically.

The NDIS, as a result of the legislation that will be introduced in this House, I presume, in the next day or so, will be fully funded, as long as enough people in the Senate agree with the government's point of view. I certainly hope that will be the case, because that is what the sector is calling for.

We have addressed the issue of the blowout in demand on the higher education budget by making adjustments to HECS. This is, once again, in response to something that happened under the former government, which uncapped university places. Of course, this is an unrestricted line of government funding: the more students in university, the more the taxpayer will pay. It is good to have people in university—there is no argument from this government—but there are considerable benefits that come to those people that complete university degrees, so we have asked them for a slightly higher contribution. But they can borrow every cent, and if they never earn above a certain level, $42,000 a year, they will never pay it back—the best loan of their life.

Most significantly, we have delivered the true Gonski. When we talk about the unfairness of budgets that come from the other side, what is unfair from their point of view is that we have delivered on the things that they only wished they could do. We have actually done them. This is what really sticks in their craw: we have actually done what they wanted to do but were unable to deliver. David Gonski has come on board and said this is the true Gonski—this is true needs-based funding. It is absolutely demonstrated that 99 per cent of schools in Australia will be better off. We are ironing out the glitches and getting rid of the 27 different secret agreements that were made around Australia, and we are still on track to balance the budget by 2021. It is responsible management.

From a localised point of view, there are quite a few issues that cut across my electorate. Coming from an electorate like Grey means there are not many issues in this place that do not influence us one way or another. Specifically, I welcome the commitment from the government of $110 million for the solar thermal storage project in Port Augusta. This is a project that I have been working very hard to land for Port August for quite some considerable amount of time, and I was very pleased in the election period to be able to announce that it was the government's intention to back a solar thermal project in Port Augusta. The $110 million low-interest loan specifically delivers on that process, and I will be looking forward to it. There are two main contenders at this stage, it must be said, vying to win the majority of that money.

The government has also made a commitment to a study of pumped hydro in the Port Augusta region. This is an artificial hydro system, if you like, but it provides the one thing that South Australia really desperately needs in our electricity market at the moment, and that is storage. The state government continues to approve new renewable energy projects around the state, and I support renewable energy, but I do not support any new projects unless they include storage. Storage is the golden issue. In fact, it is the technology that we have a chance of leading the world in, because South Australia, unfortunately, is the most needy state in the world for energy storage at the moment. Delivering about 41 per cent of our electricity by renewable means, which has effectively destroyed the baseload generators' business case, means that in fact our electricity grid is so unstable at the moment that we have a higher demand for storage than any other economy in the world.

I am very pleased to provide the information to my local councils—I have 23 of them—that the freeze on the financial assistance grants indexation from the Commonwealth has been lifted. This is something that councils have been lobbying for, long and hard, for quite some time. The savings have been made in those areas, and they are structural now, but the freeze has been lifted, so they can expect those payments to increase in the future.

Especially pleasing from a South Australian point of view is the reinstatement for two years of the supplementary local road funding program—a sum of $20 million per year for the two years. This is a program that had its roots right back in the early and middle years of the Howard government. It was seen that the formula that distributed funds for local roads meant a deficiency in South Australia, where we were receiving around 5½ per cent of the funds nationally but had about 7½ per cent of the population and 11 per cent of the road length, so a special payment was made. Unfortunately, the last budget delivered by the Labor government made no future commitment to this program and so there was no new decision made by the incoming government, that was left, obviously, with huge debts and deficits to deal with. The fund just expired, but that left South Australian councils exposed. I thank the member for Barker and the member for Boothby, in particular, for their staunch efforts in lobbying for this money to come to South Australian councils and to even things up a bit.

The doctors in my electorate have been lobbying hard and long to remove the freeze that was originally put in place by the Labor government on the Medicare payments. Once again, this is an area where there has now been a saving, and it is a saving which has become institutionalised—it is built into the system. So the time is right to lift that freeze. But let me say in its defence that we had been told repeatedly that doctors would desert bulk-billing. Of course, through this entire period the rates have tended to rise, but I think they have gone about as far as they can go so it is right and proper that the freeze should be lifted.

In the same area, in pharmacy: under the Sixth Pharmacy Agreement there was an arrangement made that, should prescription numbers fall, the Commonwealth would bear some of the strain with the pharmacists. That has been honoured, and the result of our decisions in pharmacy will lead to an extra $1.8 billion being cut away from the cost of medication for the people of Australia and to the registration of new and developmental drugs. So there have been great wins there.

I am very pleased to be able to tell the people of Grey that the government is investing $472 million in a Regional Growth Fund. Most importantly, that leads to another $200 million into the Building Better Regions Fund. Building Better Regions has superseded Building Stronger Regions. It is something that has been very keenly sought after in Grey and we have been quite successful in attracting funding. The last two rounds brought over $25 million into the electorate. So we are very pleased, of course, that that fund will continue and that we will be able to bid from those funds for the very good projects that come out of a diverse and interesting electorate like Grey. There is also another $272 million going into a major projects fund for projects that need an injection of over $10 million. I am sure we will see some very good projects proposed out of the Grey electorate to focus on that money as well.

I had a significant number of letters from people who work in the Meals on Wheels organisations. They were concerned about their future funding, and of course they are very pleased that this budget confirms the Commonwealth's ongoing commitment in this area, as it does with a number of other support packages and the Regional Assessment Service.

I must say that business has warmly welcomed the new tax rates—the reduction in company tax rates which come into effect from 1 July—and the recognition that small businesses are not necessarily those with turnovers of just under $2 million. Those categories will rise to $10 million and then eventually to $15 million in 2018-19. Once again, that is a very popular decision with businesses out there. Many have reported to me that they have used it already, that they intend to keep using it and that it has led to extra investment, which leads to extra production and better outcomes for Australia all the way round.

There are also a few reforms in the social services area. As the federal representative of Ceduna, it gives me great pleasure that Ceduna was the first town in Australia to step up to the plate and say that it was willing to trial the cashless debit card. That trial is going exceedingly well. I told the people of Ceduna right at the beginning of the process, 'It is highly likely that the eyes of Australia will turn towards you and look for leadership.' They supplied that leadership and now, after developing that model in Ceduna and having ironed out a few of the glitches and bugs around it, we are looking to extend it to a further two communities across Australia. Within my electorate, at least one has already expressed great interest, but I know that we may be joining a very long line.

It is very interesting that the cashless debit card is now designated to be used in managing welfare difficulties in other areas—and, of course, in this area I am talking to the imminent drug testing of those who are repeat failures in showing up for their work commitments or consultation commitments with job service providers and Centrelink. There will be those who will say, 'You're picking on the vulnerable,' and 'They take drugs for all kinds of reasons,' but one thing we do know is that, when someone starts down the trail of taking drugs, particularly with some of the very addictive and dangerous drugs like ice, we not only do the country a tremendous favour but we also do them an enormous favour if we become involved, intervene and save them from themselves and try to reroute their lives and provide new direction. This drug testing will identify those people and then we can apply ourselves to making sure that they do not go further down that route, because it not only affects them but also their families. And we know that intergenerational disadvantage is just that: it is intergenerational.

All of those things in the budget are very good. I am very proud of the budget. It has been very well received in my electorate, and I look forward to continuing to speak about it over the next few weeks and months.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too join my colleagues in rising to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018, which of course is the bill that largely enacts the government's budget measures. Make no mistake: this is not a budget that is designed for all Australians or to help all Australians; it is a budget to try to help the political fortunes of a Prime Minister. It has unfairness at its core, delivering a tax cut for millionaires—a $65 billion tax cut—and a tax hike for every working Australian. How is that fair?

And, in the health portfolio, it is a complete and utter insult. The government would have you believe that the past three years were all imagined—that they did not actually happen. Their attacks on Medicare, their cuts to public hospitals, their cuts to the patient rebate to go and see GPs and specialists and their attempts to increase the cost of medicines for all Australians somehow did not really exist—they are no longer there and somehow or other we have had a complete and utter reset. Frankly, it is a desperate attempt at window-dressing the exact same cuts that the government took to the election.

Only this government could keep the freeze in place for years and think that is fair. Only this government could cut billions of dollars from Medicare and structurally embed that in their forward estimates and somehow think that is fair. That is exactly what this budget does. It locks in billions of dollars of cuts to Medicare—cuts that make our healthcare system less affordable and less able to be accessed by people. The minister thinks that, by making up a national health plan—four pillars—that somehow or other he will seem to get over what has been a disastrous attempt of this government to decimate our universal health insurance scheme. This minister is lots of spin and not a lot of substance.

The former Prime Minister put in place the government's Medicare freeze in December 2014, and it was the current Prime Minister who came up with the genius idea to extend it right the way out until 2020. While this freeze has been in place we have seen the impacts on bulk-billing, with GPs saying they can no longer afford to bulk-bill all patients and out-of-pocket costs soaring. The previous member tried to say that bulk-billing rates are going up. Of course, bulk-billing rates include pathology and a range of other MBS items, but when you look at item No. 23, which is the item number for GPs, you will see that since the election GP bulk-billing has been going down. For years, GPs, specialists and health experts have been sending a very clear message to this government: the freeze is hurting now and it should have been dropped a long time ago. This is what the AMA president said during the election:

We know there are some GPs that are changing their billing practices and that commences today, on July 1. The reality is that there are a lot of GPs who decided they could probably take the hit for a couple of years but they are saying enough’s enough.

That is the damage that has been embedded in Medicare under a Liberal government. And still, after all of this evidence, did the government go and drop the freeze immediately? No, they did not. Australians will still have to wait years until the freeze on the patient rebate is finally dropped. These are not the actions of a government that understands the impact of its cuts to health, and listens. These are the actions of a government that wants to pay lip-service to the idea of doing something, but cannot bring themselves to actually do it until just before a federal election. We know the impact the freeze is having on access to GPs, with bulk-billing for GPs dropping since the election and out-of-pocket costs skyrocketing.

The impact is not just in the GP waiting room; the freeze also impacts Australians who need specialist care. In the past 12 months, 40 per cent of Australians needed to see a specialist. That is around 7.4 million Australians who need to see a specialist each year, but more than 600,000 Australians delay seeing a specialist at least once because of cost, with those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds more likely to delay because of cost. Keeping the freeze in place continues the impact on Australia's sickest and most vulnerable patients, such as people undergoing oncology treatment, children needing paediatric care and people undergoing dialysis.

The decision in the budget to keep the freeze in place for years comes when out-of-pocket costs for specialists have skyrocketed. Only last week, new data showed that, on average, patients are paying an extra $24 out of their own pockets every time they visit a specialist, up 42 per cent since the government introduced their freeze in December 2014. Every single day the government's freeze continues is another day that Australians pay more for their vital health care.

The budget is also woefully inadequate when it comes to funding our hospitals. It was a bitter disappointment for our public hospitals that the government did not allocate any additional funding to address the blowout in elective surgery wait times or the queues in our emergency departments. Our public hospitals are in crisis under this government. Elective surgery waiting times are now the worst they have been since records began being kept in 2001. Patients presenting to emergency departments requiring urgent medical attention are being left in emergency departments for longer. In the last financial year, only 67 per cent of emergency department patients classified as urgent were seen within the recommended 30 minutes. Critically, public hospital capacity is not keeping pace with population growth and it is not increasing to meet the demand for services. And yet, the government's budget has done absolutely nothing to address this—nothing for elective surgery and nothing for our straining emergency departments. Not only that, the government has now, from 2021, changed the funding formula for public hospitals, reverting back to the levels set in the disastrous 2014 budget, without a new agreement. That is what the budget says is going to be adequate for public hospital funding post-2020.

Beyond the freeze and the failure to invest properly in our public hospitals, there are some measures which I believe have finally been taken off the table, for now. The health zombie measures, the cuts to Medicare safety nets and the increase in PBS co-payments for both concessional and general patients have been scrapped, for now. That is a good step, although the government has lamented that it was 'regrettable that they had to be dropped'. The Prime Minister said that the government believed the measures had merit, and the Minister for Social Services said that they were largely reasonable efforts to make savings. Hiking the cost of vital medicines for every Australian is not reasonable, nor is it fair. Leaving Australians facing huge out-of-pocket expenses when they are going through stressful medical times in their lives is not reasonable or fair. These cuts should never have been on the table in the first place. Labor has fought against these unfair measures because we know the impact they would have had on Australians who could least afford it. But be in no doubt: if the government gets its chance, if it has the Senate that it wants, these cuts will be back on the table.

The government has also finally scrapped its plans to cut the bulk-billing incentive for pathology and diagnostic imaging. Again, it is not because they wanted to scrap these cuts, but because they could not get the political support to get it through the Senate. We were consistent in our approach: we would disallow those regulations when they came into the Senate. We are pleased to see that they will now not see the light of day in this parliament, but I expect they will be pushed up again at some point.

During the election the government signed a multitude of rushed deals, basically to get itself out of political trouble in the middle of an election campaign. It signed those deals with Pathology Australia and the Diagnostic Imaging Association. It has broken both of those deals. These deals were nothing more than a cynical ploy to get them through the election, proved by the fact that they have now been dumped in this budget. As these dumped deals show, when it comes to this government honouring commitments, agreements or compacts, they are not worth the paper they are written on. The minister's grandstanding about agreements he has put in place with various health stakeholders is absolutely worthless. If groups think that the minister or this government will not come at them again if we get to another budget—if we do not have an election before them—they are kidding themselves. The signing of these agreements shows the utter fatigue and resignation which has settled across the health sector after being treated with complete contempt by the Liberal government. It has been a long fight against measures like the freeze, the hospital cuts and the various zombie measures. That fight is not over. It has been a long fight, with little changing along the way. A new Prime Minister and an election did not trigger any change at all. Groups were desperate for any progress, even if an inferior option was put on the table. Behind these pieces of paper individual GPs, medical practitioners and specialists are furious that the freeze still remains in place. They are furious that they have been dealt an inferior deal, and their patience will continue to pay. They are raising those concerns at every single meeting that I have with them. Labor has heard this feedback, and we will continue to fight against the freeze until it is over once and for all. This freeze is all of this government's making, and it has been patients who have paid every day and will continue to pay every day until it is lifted.

If you want to see why the government cannot be trusted with Medicare, you only have to look at their track record of cuts and neglect. The government knows that it cannot be trusted on Medicare, so much that it has now had to legislate to try and say, 'We won't touch Medicare—we will legislate to guarantee it.' Only a government that cannot trust itself to keep its hands off Medicare would try and come up with something like the Medicare Guarantee Fund to paper over what it has done over the last three years. If you cannot trust yourself, you have to legislate to try and keep your hands out of the piggyback. But does the fund guarantee that the government will not cut Medicare? No, it does not. Does the fund guarantee that the government will keep its hands off public hospitals, which are fundamental part of Medicare? No, it does not. Does the fund guarantee that the money the government is saving through PBS price disclosure arrangements or the deal it has done with Medicines Australia or the generics industry will be reinvested into new medicines? No, the fund does not. As former health secretary, Stephen Duckett, says:

The Medicare Guarantee Fund—

I am going to call it the 'so-called Medicare Guarantee Fund'—

is nothing more than a rebadging exercise: it changes the badge on a policy in the hope people might think it is a new policy.

It is not. Once again, this is another example of a desperate smoke-and-mirrors attempt to distract from the fact that this government has cut billions of dollars out of Medicare and is continuing to prop up its budget with those cuts.

Without a doubt, one of the biggest blows in the budget was the failure to seriously invest in prevention. This is one area we had big hopes for. After all, the Prime Minister said at the start of February:

In 2017, a new focus on preventive health will give people the right tools and information to live active and healthy lives.

What a disappointment this budget was. How quickly things change. Of course, this government is known for its abolition of the National Preventive Health Agency, a $368 million cut. They also cut the National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health. They also cut around $600 million from the Health Flexible Funds, reducing the capacity of health promotion organisations around the country. It has been a massive blow for public health groups who were hoping the Prime Minister would live up to his word and actually take action on prevention.

On a final note, in the very brief time I have left, as the member for Ballarat I want to acknowledge the budget and its impact on our region. The government's cut of $22 billion from Australian schools—an average of $2.4 million from each school, or 22,000 teachers—will have a severe impact on my area. I have spoken to the local Catholic education office and they tell me firsthand that the impact will see fee rises at Catholic primary schools across my electorate. With 25 per cent of parents choosing Catholic education in my electorate, that is a massive impost on parents.

Once again, Ballarat has also missed out when it comes to major infrastructure projects—there were none. We had many ready to go. There was the waste-to-energy projects in Ballarat and Hepburn Shire; the Ballarat sports and events centre, which we are still hoping against hope the government will actually eventually fund; and the racecourse reserve in Bacchus Marsh. None of these were funded in the budget. Again, it was something we had hoped to see—we hoped that we would get some of this funding.

It has been a bad budget for the electorate of Ballarat and it is a bad budget for the health of Australians. The budget does not lie. Billions are being cut from Medicare. It is all smoke— (Time expired)

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party, Assistant Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018. As a regional MP, one of the important aspects of the 2017-18 budget is the government's commitment to investing in regional Australia. We are doing that by delivering infrastructure which will drive economic growth and secure more and better-paying jobs. It is important that the benefits of economic growth are shared across the country and in communities just like my electorate of Hinkler. There are a number of programs announced by the Treasurer on 9 May which I believe are worth exploring in my electorate.

The National Rail Program, of course, is one. The coalition government will invest some $10 billion over the next decade for the National Rail Program. This program will fund transformational rail projects so people can move around our cities and regions more efficiently and better connect our cities, suburbs and surrounding regional areas. This $10 billion rail investment will reduce the burden on Australian roads, provide more reliable transport networks and support our efforts to decentralise our economy and grow regional Australia.

Last week I met with state and local government representatives to discuss the possibility of developing the inland rail through to the Port of Bundaberg, which can then be developed as a container facility. We need ambition in this. The Port of Bundaberg exports raw sugar, molasses, wood pellets and silica sand, however its throughput on average is only 254,000 tonnes a year for the last five years. In comparison to somewhere like Gladstone Ports, which does almost 100 million tonnes of coal—just one product—obviously there is room for a potential expansion.

In February this year, the Queensland government Coordinator-General declared the Bundaberg State Development Area. The 6,067-hectare SDA includes land on the eastern side of the Burnett River, near the Port of Bundaberg, including surrounding port-related industrial uses, and land on the western side of the Burnett River predominantly used for sugarcane cultivation and rural landholdings. According to the Coordinator-General:

The Bundaberg SDA was established in response to a growing demand for land for port-related and industrial activities around the Port of Bundaberg. The Bundaberg SDA could help facilitate economic growth and employment opportunities in the Bundaberg and Wide Bay Burnett regions.

The $19.8 million, 28-kilometre Bundaberg Port Gas Pipeline was completed by Australian Gas Networks earlier this year and has opened up even more opportunities at the port. Without that gas pipeline, the Knauf plasterboard-manufacturing plant would not have become a reality. This $70 million facility is nearing completion and is expected to create around 70 permanent jobs. It will be the company's third facility in Australia, with manufacturing plants also in Sydney and Melbourne. The project will include gypsum-handling and processing facilities to support plasterboard production and for the sale of gypsum to our large agricultural sector. As many of my colleagues know, the Bundaberg region is one of the largest horticultural producing areas in Australia. For us, as the biggest producer of heavy vegetables, to have a company directly import lime and make it into pelletised product—at a much-reduced cost, of course—right there on our doorstep will be of great benefit to our local growers. While there has been a lot of talk about opportunities, I am calling on the state and local governments to fight for significant expansion, which will result in jobs. We must absolutely continue to build our local economy.

I was very pleased to see in the budget funding of $1.295 million for improvements to five road black spots in Hinkler—three in Bundaberg and two in Hervey Bay. The coalition government is continuing to fund the Black Spot Program, with $684½ million from 2013-14 to 2020-21 so it can continue to deliver safety improvements such as safety barriers and street lighting to sections of dangerous roads that have a crash history. Already there have been a number of local black spots identified in Hinkler which have received funding through this program: $536,500 to install a roundabout at the intersection of Torquay Terrace and Bideford Street in Torquay, and $410,000 for the intersection of Scotland Street, Eastgate Street and Steindl Street at Bundaberg East to upgrade the roundabout and improve signage, line marking and bike lanes, just to name two. Since I was elected in 2013, more than $8 million has been invested in making road black spots safe for the motorists of my electorate.

A local project nearing completion is the $1.4 million extension of Kay McDuff Drive through the ring road in Bundaberg. This is funded through the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program. Once complete, the extension will not only direct traffic away from one of the largest high schools in the district but allow easier access for 25-metre B-doubles to the industrial area. More than 6,200 vehicles, including 320 heavy vehicles, use the current route every single day, and this extension will make the road safer for the 1,500 students of the nearby school and provide direct access to the freight network. This project is also expected to deliver vehicle savings of some $15 million over 25 years.

The coalition government has already invested almost $30 million in upgrades of the 90-kilometre stretch of the Bruce Highway which runs through my electorate. These upgrades include an $8 million upgrade to the three intersections near Childers, $6 million for an overtaking lane north of Howard, $4½ million to widen the four-kilometre stretch near Adies Road at Apple Tree Creek, and $7.1 million for widening of the highway for 2.2 kilometres near the Wongi State Forest south of Torbanlea. In Queensland, the government is providing $844 million for new Bruce Highway projects. These will benefit motorists that travel both north and south of the electorate for business or leisure, as well as ensuring freight has a flood-proof and reliable route to market.

Unfortunately, getting projects off the ground in Queensland has been hampered by a state Labor government. On more than one occasion, the federal government has made funding available and it seems like the state government want to avoid that at all costs. A prime example is the National Water Infrastructure Development Fund. The feasibility study component of the project agreement for the National Water Infrastructure Development Fund clearly sets out that the federal government will make annual payments for projects on advice from the Queensland government that the agreed milestone has been met, yet the Queensland government was claiming the successful proponents did not know the funding was provided in this way. Under the agreement, the state or territory government is the project proponent, not the councils, not-for-profits or industry associations. The agreement is intended to support state and territory governments to deliver key water infrastructure projects, which is their responsibility, and to help them to attract co-investment from project partners. In the end, the Queensland government dragged its heels for seven months before finally submitting a project delivery schedule for feasibility studies, two of which directly affect my electorate.

And we want to get on with the job of delivering water infrastructure needs in our regions and delivering our election commitments, which will ultimately provide long-term jobs, because water is wealth in this country, Mr Deputy Speaker Irons, as I am sure you are aware. So, I hope that the Queensland government can get its act together—although, I have to say, I am not that confident. In terms of local infrastructure, a new initiative announced in the budget, which again shows the government's commitment to regional Australia, is the Regional Growth Fund. This fund will invest $272 million to provide grants of $10 million or more for major transformational projects which support long-term economic growth and create jobs in Australia's regions. While small infrastructure projects are very important for regional communities to upgrade and improve facilities, in some regions larger infrastructure investment is needed to unlock significant economic potential and to transform a local region.

The government has also extended the Building Better Regions Fund for four years from 2017-18, with an additional $200 million investment. This fund will be targeted at regional communities, just like my electorate of Hinkler, and not capital cities. The first round of BBRF is being assessed right now, but the second round will again consider local infrastructure projects that will drive economic growth, create jobs and build strong regional communities. Successful projects will be required to deliver economic and social benefits, and grant funding is available through two streams. The infrastructure project stream supports projects that involve construction of new infrastructure or the upgrade or extension of existing infrastructure. The community investment stream funds community development activities, including but not limited to new or expanded local events, strategic regional plans, leadership and capability-building activities.

I look forward to seeing the successful applications under round one, and I would certainly encourage any groups or organisations in my electorate to start thinking about round two. Locally we have had several successful community development grants get underway, including stage two of the multiplex in Bundaberg. The coalition government has committed $5 million to stage two, which will include a civic hall, community function rooms and a commercial kitchen and cafe. Once completed, the multiplex will be able to attract community events, business conferences and major sporting events to the region. Stage one of the multiplex was officially opened last month, April 2017, and stage two is due for completion later this year. It is being built by a local contractor, Murchie Constructions. They are doing a fantastic job.

Another great local project that is about to break ground is the expansion of the Bundaberg netball courts—again, through the community development grant. The Bundaberg Super Park will gain another four courts, shaded grandstands and shade structures around the barbecue area to provide cover in bad weather. With the additional courts, the Bundaberg Netball Association would be able to bid to host the state carnival, potentially attracting 500 teams of 10 players each, and their families and supporters. That could bring up to 10,000 people to our region, who all need somewhere to stay, somewhere to eat and, of course, somewhere to shop. This will be a great boost to our local economy.

As I have said many times in this place, small business is the lifeblood of regional economies. In my electorate, around 8½ thousand of those small businesses will benefit from recent tax cuts. We have cut the small business tax rate to 27½ per cent, the lowest level in many decades. We also redefined small business to a $10 million turnover so more small businesses will pay that lower tax rate. The budget has also been good for small business with the $20,000 instant asset write-off extended for another 12 months and $300 million to help state and territory governments complement our cuts to red tape.

I want to take this opportunity to thank some of the Bundaberg business owners who received a visit from the Minister for Business just last week. Kate Marland and her mother, Kay Warner, Scott Allison, and Tracey and Michael McPhee all had the chance to speak to the Minister for Small Business about the budget and what it would mean for their businesses directly. Kate was a great advocate for the instant asset write-off. It sounds like she has already planned what assets will be purchased in the next financial year. I have been a business owner, and I know just how important these measures are. It is great to see that they are having positive impacts for the people who are getting out there and actually having a go.

The other good news of course was for local government, in terms of Financial Assistance Grants. A measure from the budget which I know the two mayors in my electorate were extremely pleased about was the announcement that the coalition government would resume indexation on the Financial Assistance Grants Program from 1 July. Queensland is estimated to receive $465.3 million under the program, which includes the payment brought forward into 2016-17. Individual council allocations will be finalised early in 2017-18, and councils will benefit from an estimated additional $78 million, bringing the total allocation for that year to almost $2.4 billion. That is a substantial investment.

This year's budget estimates that councils will receive a total of $12.3 billion between 2016-17 and 2020-21. The government has also announced that it will bring forward two quarterly payments from the 2017-18 allocation, to be paid in 2016-17. This decision will result in councils receiving an immediate cash injection of almost $1.2 billion in the coming weeks. The reason that this program is so important to local councils, as I am sure my colleagues know, is that they can use this untied grant funding according to local priorities, including for infrastructure, health, recreation, environment, employment and roads projects.

The other thing we are doing is decentralising. The government is committed to building the capacity of our regional communities by boosting their skills base and supporting job creation. One of the ways this is happening is through the coalition government exploring opportunities to decentralise Commonwealth agencies and broaden the range of skills and job opportunities in our regions. I am a supporter of decentralisation. The 33 per cent of Australians living in regional areas should have the same opportunities as anyone who lives in the city to get the benefit of their taxpayer money. I think it is important that we diversify the locations of the departments and that people in regional areas should get the benefit of those jobs in their economies.

Regional Australia deserves well paid, skilled jobs. It deserves centres of excellence to be established to create knowledge hubs which will continue to attract and grow those jobs. Technology and modern communications give us the opportunity to reshape our vibrant regional communities. More government functions can be delivered from across Australia and no longer have to be centralised here in Canberra and other capitals. I am sure I am not the only regional MP who is eager to see the report later this year into which departments might be suitable to be moved to regional Australia.

Finally, there is the cashless debit card. Two additional communities for the cashless debit card were announced in the budget. The evaluation of the trials in Ceduna and the east Kimberley has shown a significant reduction in gambling, drug use and alcohol consumption, and an improvement in the care of children. The independent evaluation of those trials reported that across the two trial sites, on average, trial participants surveyed reported that 25 per cent of them were drinking less alcohol and 25 per cent were engaged in less binge drinking; 32 per cent said they gambled less, 24 per cent said they used illegal drugs less often, and 31 per cent said they were better able to save money and care for their children.

As the local member, I think this is an incredibly important issue. We have a community which, for some time, has certainly struggled in terms of employment and the very longstanding issues with multigenerational welfare dependence. My view on this is quite simple, and I think we have got the community behind us: if we continue to act in the same way that we have been, we will continue to get the same outcomes. Change is difficult. Change will be hard. Change will be controversial. But change is absolutely necessary. It is absolutely worth the attempt. We have an opportunity with the cashless debit card to make change for our community. It will be tough, but it will have absolutely a good outcome. As I am sure you are, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, I am tired of talking to school principals who feed over 100 children a day for breakfast because, without that, the children would not get a feed. I am tired of talking to businesses and employers who fail to get people to even apply for their positions. So I commend the bill to the House.

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

I call the honourable member for Kennedy and congratulate him on his birthday as well.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It was good to listen to the previous speaker because he was a great exponent of what we call the transfer of money, as opposed to making money. Every single thing he spoke about was about taking some taxpayers' money and spending it in his electorate, and I congratulate him for securing that money for his electorate.

Probably the individual major feature of the budget was $5 billion for a tunnel in Brisbane. That will bring the tunnels in Brisbane to 30 kilometres. That is quite intriguing, actually, because Sydney, with a population five times that of Brisbane, has only 14 kilometres of tunnels. In fact, Brisbane will be, per head of population, the most tunnelled city on earth. We who are in the quarter of the population of Queensland who live in the north of Queensland get a little bit upset because, where Brisbane has 200 overpasses, we have nine. We have about the same population: we have a little bit under a million people and Brisbane has 1.2 million people. They have 200 overpasses and we have nine. They have 30 kilometres of tunnels and we have none. They have $5 billion worth of pleasure domes, starting with the magnificent football stadium and going all the way down to the function centre, which I measured at nearly a kilometre and a half long. As John Quiggin said, the wonderful thing about the politicians that represent Queensland—state and federal—is that they have tunnel vision! I have seldom heard a more appropriate comment.

There are those of us in this place who belonged to a government in Queensland that built a nation. Where does your peak load power come from? The Snowy Mountains. Where would this nation be without our ownership of our peak load power? We were building a nation. In Queensland, in the government I was part of, we built 6,000 kilometres of rail line into the mining fields of Queensland, and created it out of nothing. We were a coal-importing nation. We in the Queensland government—the much maligned Bjelke-Petersen government—created not a coal-importing nation but the greatest coal-exporting state on earth. That was Queensland. We provided 20,000 or 30,000 direct jobs and 100,000 total jobs in the state of Queensland—arguably, we created 200,000 jobs.

People asked us why we were in bed with the CFMEU. Of course, those workers were members of the CFMEU. They loved us for creating this great industry for them and for creating the most highly paid workforce on earth. Our colleagues over here on my left and on your right, Mr Deputy Speaker, say that that is a problem. High wages in Australia are the problem! Well, we said with pride that the workers of Queensland were the most highly paid workers on earth.

The budget: kicking the banks. Well, at long last, the ruling class took a really hard kick in a most painful place for the first time in my 22 years here. Remember, for half that time it was the ALP in here; they seem to be more in love with the owning class and the CEO class. I refer to the wonderful works of that Frenchman, Piketty, and his book, which is a mass best seller throughout the entire world. It is a very boring, academic treatise—very thick. He said that the new rich on earth are the CEOs—the managerial classes. They are the ruling classes. Effectively, they pay themselves what they feel like paying themselves. On average, in this country, that is about $10 million a year. Their colleagues are paid about $2 million or $3 million a year.

So, we kicked the banks. Did it hurt? Well, every newspaper in Australia was running the banking line: 'Oh, we owe a responsibility to our shareholders. We'll just have to pass it on!' Where were the free marketeers? Where were the great advocates of the free market here? Are they just going to pass it on? What they have admitted to, if not conscious parallelism, is collusion. Supply and demand is supposed to determine the price; interest rates are determined by supply and demand. Well, no they are not, because the banks just said, 'We'll pass it on.' So they have admitted that there is no free market here in the financial operations of this country. In spite of all of that, I very much appreciate that now we have found out that there is no free market in banking in Australia. We already know it does not exist in the sugar industry and we already know it does not exist in any other of a hundred industries that I could name. But now we have found out that it does not exist in banking.

But we did kick them, and I want to pay tribute to the Treasurer. Whatever his reasons for doing it, the fact is that for the first time in 23 years or whatever it is that I have been in this place, we kicked the big boys. And I can tell you that the much-maligned Bjelke-Petersen government in Queensland were on record kicking the big boys all the time. We hit them with coal freight rates, which led to an unending stream of criticism for us.

Now, to the important point about the budget. I have been asked, 'Why are you so depressed about the budget?' Well, it did not create a single job; it did not create one single job. It just transferred some money from over there—off these people, called taxation—and handed it to some people over there. That is called 'transferred money'. But there is a difference between that and 'made money'. I pay great tribute to Emma Bradbury, the local government CEO of the Murray Darling Association, who said, 'We are talking about made money.' I said, 'What does that mean?' She said, 'Well, we get some water, we spread it out and we grow potatoes or we grow grapes and we turn those grapes into wine. We make money out of it. That is made money.' All the government ever talks about is transferred money. We heard the last speaker go on for 15 minutes about how he has transferred some money from taxpayers and spent it on some self-indulgence over here.

In North Queensland, we can provide for our fellow Australians, if we can get you to build a nation. But there is nothing in this budget—not a single dollar—for nation building. If we could get a quarter of a million off you, we could build the enhanced extended waterway—IPIPI waterway, or canal. Murrandoo Yanner dreamed up that name—God bless him. If we build that waterway, we can get our fertiliser, our phosphate. We have ammonia trapped gas. So we would not caught with a lack of the government's reserve resource. We are the only country on earth not to have a reserve resource policy. We can buy our gas from the Japanese cheaper than we can buy it from the Australian suppliers through this non-existent reserve resource policy.

If you give us that quarter of a million dollars and you allow us to build that canal, which is under the federal government, not the state government, then we can provide for you a billion dollars a year in fertiliser production. That is not a figure plucked out of the air. I had the very great honour and privilege of presiding over the Incitec Pivot plant in Mt Isa which produces two thousand million dollars a year from just one mine—the Duchess Mine. We are talking here about six mines going into a central plant and having no costs for transportation. The canal is $7 a tonne whereas, with the Port of Townsville—we are transhipping at sea—and the railway line, we are talking about $70 or $80 a tonne. Here, we are talking about $7 a tonne. That is the difference between getting this project going and not getting this project going.

Hell's Gates, which is a giant dam scheme at the back of Townsville, will supply Townsville with a much-needed water supply. In fact, the dam, the last time I looked, was $260 million. The cost of the pipeline to Townsville is a pretty negligible item. You could build that tomorrow and Townsville would have its water supply tomorrow. But Hell's Gate produces for our country $3 billion a year forever and 30,000 permanent jobs.

There is not a single nation-building project in this budget. There is no canal waterway to get our fertiliser out. There is no dam so that we can hold back a little tiny bit of the massive floodwaters in North Queensland and spread it out onto land which is now called the Desert Uplands. We can turn the desert into a golden bowl of food production, ethanol production and timber production. And the wonderful thing about Hell's Gate is it will produce almost all of North Queensland's power needs—one per cent of Australia's entire power needs—and it would be totally renewable because of the great technological breakthroughs with algae that won the United Nations prize for the environment. We found out that, if we bubble the CO2 from burning sugarcane fibre into ponds, it produces magical cattle feed or biodiesel. You can use a different sort of algae and produce biodiesel. The STADS project, which is on the upper Herbert at the back Cairns—not the back of Townsville in this case—is $2.5 billion a year.

Our first Australians are dying from diabetes—malnutrition—in proportions that are a disgrace to this nation. We give them $5 billion a year for the silicon from Cape York, and hundreds and hundreds of jobs. We are going to give a foreign corporation a gift of $1,000 million to build a railway line into the Galilee! If I were a betting man, I would bet that the greenies are going to win the battle—so we will burn up the $1,000 million and still have no railway line! If the government builds the railway line, then it will be built. The government environmental departments cannot stop the government; a government cannot stop itself from building a railway line. Every single kilometre of 6,090 kilometres of railway line in Queensland was built by the government—and not a single cent from private enterprise. And, speaking as probably the third- or second-ranking minister in that government, we made an awful lot of money out of those railway lines. With the rail profits that we made and the payroll tax and the mineral royalties, we ran Queensland on a tiny little budget of $8 billion—because we were smart and we got the money from building a nation. That is where the money came from—building a nation.

The Fitzgerald inquiry told us all how corrupt we were. I thought we were a bit brutal at times, but it is rather intriguing that we are supposed to be 'a police state'. Hold on a minute! We only had 2,000 people in jail. The socialists who have ruled for most of the 29 years since, the great freedom-loving socialists, have 8,000 people in jail. We had 2,000 people in jail; they have 8,000 people in jail. If you ever forget to send in your money to renew your gun licence, as one of my constituents did last week, you are put in jail. If you have a few beers at the wrong time and drive your car, you go to jail. Little kids go to jail for being stupid and driving around in someone else's car that their brother has stolen or something. This is good fun, except that putting those kids in jail is costing us $570 million a year. Is it any wonder the state is going broke? But you count on the old socialists to be self-righteous and oppress everybody. They do not just oppress the rich; they oppress everybody. They have a very good egalitarian spirit when it comes to oppression and restriction and a freedomless state.

Finally, it will not cost the government anything much at all—maybe a couple of hundred million dollars—for micro-irrigation in small towns like Hughenden, on-farm irrigation for our cattlemen and title deeds for our first Australians. Give us that and we will give you $7 billion a year in cattle income. And I would at some future date like to talk about young families and retirees and how they can be looked after. (Time expired)

Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018. It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Kennedy. I want to report that this government's budget has been quite well received around Brisbane. I held mobile offices around my electorate over the past week and spoke to a great variety of local people about different measures in the budget. Whether it was the small business measures to help small businesses grow and make that prosperity that the member for Kennedy was talking about, the infrastructure investment, the schools funding or the certainty being provided to the NDIS, the feedback has been almost universally positive. One constituent I met yesterday on racecourse Road in Hamilton was Cathy. Cathy told me how she liked the fact that this budget was trying to move Australia past some of the divisive and partisan arguments that have bogged down and distracted this parliament for too many years. She wanted me to congratulate the Prime Minister on this government's announcements on schools funding, on guaranteeing Medicare and on fully funding the NDIS. Well, Cathy, consider it done. I also met a lady named Sue on Kedron Brook Road in Wilston, who is the carer for her disabled child and who told me that she was relieved that the government was trying to bypass the politics that threaten the bipartisan support for the NDIS. She told me how the budget would provide the NDIS and many families like hers with the stability and security they would need to move confidently forwards into the future.

Three days ago I was very pleased to have the Commonwealth Treasurer visit Brisbane. We attended a pretty big gathering of local businessmen and businesswomen, as well as many from other Brisbane community and non-government organisations. The Treasurer was able to talk through many aspects of the budget and many of the budget measures, and answer questions along the way. I say a very big thank you to the Valley Chamber of Commerce, its members and its partners, as well as to the Property Council, for helping to bring together such a great event and so many people from right across Brisbane. The small-business measures are very, very close to my heart. I have been very pleased to observe, over the last three or four years, how it is becoming a hallmark of budgets these days to place a special focus and a special emphasis on small business. And so we should, when we consider how small business continues to drive the creation of jobs, entrepreneurship, innovation and risk-taking in Australia. Focusing on small business in a budget is not an automatic outcome; it is a record of achievement of this Liberal-National government. Talking with Brisbane business people the other day, the Treasurer noted in passing the incredibly popular instant asset write-off being extended for small businesses in the budget. There are about 30,000 small businesses in Brisbane that can, hopefully, take advantage of this measure and more easily invest in and grow their businesses.

The centrepiece for small business is that the budget enshrines the Turnbull government's delivery of small and medium business tax cuts—immediate tax cuts for small businesses—and then further tax cuts over the course of the Ten Year Enterprise Tax Plan. This will be one of the hallmark achievements of the parliament this year, and it is something I have already spoken about a number of times in this chamber. Everyone who works in small business or helps run or manage a small business needs to know that the Labor Party is proposing to reverse those tax cuts if they ever win government.

The Treasurer also spoke in Brisbane about the infrastructure being delivered for Queensland and for Australia in this budget. It is a $75 billion infrastructure budget. It commits to a long-term vision, and it is a game changing infrastructure set of projects across the nation. The major funding announcements for Queensland to help ease congestion on both the Bruce Highway north of the city and the M1 south of the city are good news for almost everyone who goes anywhere around South-East Queensland. The $8.4 billion equity injection that the Turnbull government will make into the Australian Rail Track Corporation for inland rail between Melbourne and Brisbane is good news not just for those of us at the end of the line in Brisbane but for every region and every centre along the route all the way to Melbourne. The Treasurer also specifically named the Brisbane Metro and Cross River Rail in the budget as projects that should, in the future, be able to access the new $10 billion National Rail Program, once their business cases are completed and assessed. There has been a little bit of argy-bargy about the Cross River Rail project in the news over the past week in Queensland. I will be generous and limit my comments now, in passing, to saying that maybe some of the silly arguments that were progressed are down to the fact that pre-election nerves are driving state politics at the moment in Queensland, and move on.

The topic of school funding has been receiving a lot of support as well in Brisbane, I can report. The Minister for Education and Training, Simon Birmingham, was in Brisbane one week ago, and we met with the principals of about 40 local schools as well as representatives from many of the P&C and P&F associations right across Brisbane. Our needs based funding model for schools, endorsed by Gonski, is about fairness, but, just as importantly, it is about transparency. I have 46 schools in my electorate of Brisbane. Under the school funding announcements made by this government and funded in this budget, over 40 of those schools will be getting significant funding increases. I do have a handful of local schools that will receive approximately the same funding levels going forwards, and I have one school that looks like it will receive cuts going forwards. Based on those facts, I encourage all parents in Brisbane to check out the online estimator to see for themselves how much extra funding the federal government will be providing for their school and to look at how the funding of so many of our local schools will change. I encourage all parents to do this—to look at the details—because I am confident that, once you get into those details, the school funding announcements made by this government and funded in this budget are eminently fair. They are creating a system that is equitable and needs based, as Gonski originally intended.

By way of example, for the Kelvin Grove State College, which is the biggest school in my electorate in inner-north Brisbane, this government will provide Education Queensland with funding that starts at about $2,300 per student on average in 2017 and that rises to $3,682 per student in 2027. Even assuming no further growth in student numbers, that will add up to over $18 million of additional funding for Kelvin Grove State College over the next 10 years. For Windsor State School, a much smaller school, right near my house, the government will provide Education Queensland with an extra $4.3 million over the next 10 years, assuming no growth in student numbers. It is a similar story for almost every other school in the government, Catholic, Anglican and independent school systems. For St Columba's, for instance, in Wilston, funding from the Commonwealth to the Queensland Catholic education body will increase from $3,500 per student on average to $4,950 per student in 2027. Similarly, for St Agatha's in Clayfield, funding from the Commonwealth to the Queensland Catholic education body will increase from $4,092 per student on average to $5,781 per student in 2027. So schools across Brisbane in every sector will be receiving significant increases in funding under this government's needs based funding model. The total increase in federal government funding for schools in the electorate of Brisbane over the next 10 years is $211 million, spread across those 46 schools and currently across the enrolled 26,000 school students.

The transparency of school funding we are providing is the key here. It demonstrates the fairness for everyone to see. To the extent that that transparency then raises subsequent questions about how individual systems such as Education Queensland or the Catholic education body distribute the funding we provide from the Commonwealth, then I believe that is a healthy consequence, because I trust in parents and principals and school systems to have a logical, grown-up and constructive conversation about that based on the facts. It stands in stark contrast to the alternative approach that we inherited when it comes to school funding, Labor's 27 different deals for different states and different sectors, with no transparency and no ability for parents, school communities and principals to understand what is really going on.

On another topic, health care, contrary to some of the silly scare campaigns that have been run by the Labor Party in recent times, Medicare funding will continue to increase by $2.4 billion over the next four years. To the extent that the Commonwealth helps the states to run the state hospital systems, that will also increase by $2.8 billion over the four years. While Labor froze the GP rebate when they broke the national budget all those years ago, it is the Liberal-National government that is now unfreezing it. While Labor stopped listing new medicines when they broke the national budget, it is the Liberal-National government that is listing new medicines, such as for Australians at risk of chronic heart failure.

The government is also working closely with doctors on the introduction of the Health Care Homes model of care to improve services for people with complex and chronic conditions. Specifically for Brisbane, I was very pleased to see in the budget that the Turnbull government's Health Care Homes program will include a trial site at the Spring Hill Medical Centre right in the heart of Brisbane, and I look forward to seeing the trial up and running as quickly as possible.

I was also pleased to see in the budget that Brisbane is receiving another road blackspot funding project, following on from the four intersection upgrades that I have already been proud to deliver, working closely in partnership with the Brisbane City Council. This funding will continue to deliver safety improvements, such as safety barriers and street lighting to sections of dangerous road that have a crash history. After the successful completion of works near the Waterloo in the Valley, the works on Wickham Street and Gotha Street in the Valley, the Kelvin Grove Road intersection near the Normanby and the intersection of Lamont and Newmarket roads in Wilston, we will now be turning our focus to the next most dangerous intersection according to the statistics, which is the intersection of Wickham Street and Brookes Street in the Valley. So there will be approximately $350,000 going towards safety improvements on that intersection. They are most welcome, and I want to thank the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Darren Chester, for that announcement.

On the topic of housing, I was very pleased to see in the budget quite a number of measures that will work in a number of different ways to improve housing affordability, particularly but not just for young people and prospective first home buyers. In Brisbane, of course, the market is not exactly the same as in Melbourne and Sydney. In Brisbane we are currently experiencing a surplus of new apartments, and it is driving down rents in some areas, like Newstead, and prices for some types of housing. Prices for apartments in some areas are reportedly 10 to 20 per cent lower than they were just this time last year. I want more people to buy their first home in Brisbane. I want it broadcast across the country how you can find dozens and dozens of properties in inner Brisbane for less than $200,000 right now, today, if you search online. I want prospective first home buyers to know about the different measures being implemented by this government that are aimed specifically at people like them and the types of properties they are most likely to buy the first time around in places like Brisbane.

I also want to acknowledge in passing the extra funding in this budget for homelessness and social housing, especially for domestic violence victims and youth. The housing debate is not just about people wanting to buy their first home; it is about people who struggle to pay the rent and therefore could never save a deposit and it is also about all those people who will not even have a roof over their heads at some point in their lives. The inner city is naturally where a lot of vulnerable and homeless people go to access the help, services and safety that is more readily available there.

In closing, I want to reinforce that the people of Brisbane have generally received this budget quite well. They approve of the measures that are in front of them. As they become more aware of them, I think their support is only going to grow. I want to note that much is being said by the opposition about some of the budget measures, and I suppose we will wait and see what happens in the Senate over coming weeks and months. It is disappointing to me in this debate on the appropriation bills that the opposition would be seeking to misappropriate the word 'fairness', which applies, sadly, less and less to the policies being pursued by the modern Labor Party and the current Leader of the Opposition. It is all politics and hypocrisy with the current Leader of the Opposition. Labor froze the GP rebate. This Liberal-National government is unfreezing it. Labor made big spending commitments for the NDIS outside the forward estimates. This Liberal-National government is securing the funding and the certainty that disabled people, their carers and their families deserve. Labor bastardised the Gonski recommendations and delivered 27 different funding models that treat every state and every system differently, which no parent can see, let alone understand. This Liberal-National government is delivering the needs based funding that treats all students equally and that Gonski originally intended.

Labor has committed itself to increasing the taxes on all small- and medium-sized businesses if it ever wins power, whereas this Liberal-National government has just decreased the tax burden on our hardworking small businesses, who are, as I said, the most likely to generate the new jobs, the opportunities and the prosperity that our country so desperately needs. Labor wants to pretend that it has a silver bullet for housing, whereas it is actually pursuing policies that will probably seek to indiscriminately or bluntly smash the values of all homes of all kinds, such is the bluntness of their policy prescriptions, whereas this Liberal-National government has targeted its range of measures at prospective first home buyers and at the classes of housing most likely to be bought by new home owners in places like Brisbane. Just thinking about the budget in broad terms, Labor wants to massively ramp up spending, whereas this government is keeping a lid on spending growth, which, with the hopefully constructive collaboration of the Senate in the weeks and months following, should see Australia return to a balanced budget position in 2020-21. Labor wants to massively increase the intergenerational debt burden we place on the next generation, and it has the audacity to talk about fairness. It is time the Labor Party stopped misappropriating the word 'fairness' and made some sort of constructive contribution to Australia's future based on the very sensible measures outlined in this budget. I commend this budget to the House. I commend this appropriation bill to the House.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-18 and related bills. Tasmanians will grin and bear the tired jokes about two heads, up to a point, but if there is one thing that really annoys us it is when Tasmania is left off the map of Australia. In 1956, we were left out of the Olympics signage. In 1982 and 2014, we were left off the map design on uniforms for the Commonwealth Games. In 2012, Arnott's left us out of the artwork for their Australia-shaped biscuits. Even South Australia left us off their logo. Woolworths had to withdraw caps from the market because the great state of Tasmania had been left off the map of Australia. We can live with the two heads, but we will not live with being left off the map. So you can imagine how we feel when it is not a Sydney graphic designer drunk on his chai latte leaving us off the map but the Treasurer and the Prime Minister of the nation who leave Tasmania off the map. That is what they did two weeks ago in the budget.

The Prime Minister and the Treasurer of Australia left Tasmania off the national map. They left Tasmania off the map in every way—in infrastructure investment, health and education funding, and support for tourism. They ignored Tasmania at every turn.

There was $75 billion in infrastructure investment for the rest of the country but nothing for Tasmania. There was $5.3 billion for a new airport in New South Wales, $1 billion for rail in Victoria, $1.6 billion for road and rail in WA and $844 million for roads in Queensland. You know what, Treasurer? Tasmanian roads need investment too, well beyond what is already in the pipeline—a pipeline started by Labor. We could certainly do with a new Bridgewater Bridge to provide certainty to north-south traffic flows and to ensure that the billions that have been invested to date in the Midland Highway—investment that has occurred mostly under Labor—is put to best use. It is not like these are pie in the sky projects; they are on the Infrastructure Australia short list for priority funding but ignored by this Treasurer and by this Prime Minister. There was also nothing for much-needed sewerage in Launceston in the seat of my good friend the member for Bass or for the University of Tasmania's STEM relocation project.

It is little wonder then that in the two weeks since the budget not one minister from this government has set foot in Tasmania—not even the most junior assistant. The Liberals have been too embarrassed to show their faces in a state they have abandoned. This budget is a betrayal of Tasmania and particularly of the 119,000 Tasmanians who put their faith in those opposite and voted Liberal last July. This Prime Minister and this Treasurer have told all Tasmanians in no uncertain terms that they do not matter to them. Where are Tasmania's federal Liberal representatives, the four Tasmanian Liberal senators, the four horsemen of the apocalypse as it were? Missing in action—perhaps sharing a bush with Sean Spicer, hiding from Tasmanian journalists and inconvenient questions, notable only for their silence and their abject failure to stand up for the people of their state.

Compare the government's risible performance with that of Labor. In the two weeks since the budget, Tasmania has played host to the opposition leader, to the deputy opposition leader, to the shadow Treasurer, to the shadow infrastructure and transport minister, to the shadow communications minister and to the shadow minister for veterans' affairs and defence personnel. Labor has also held community meetings on the NBN, on jobs, on education and on veterans. Labor is talking to Tasmanians and Labor is listening to Tasmanians. So if there is one document that sums up this government's complete contempt for the people of Tasmania, it is this budget.

It is not just the big-ticket items like infrastructure. The government's contempt reaches right down to community level. A year ago sports and community groups in my electorate received letters from the former Liberal member that they had secured $10,000 grants for solar panels. Since his defeat, the former member has been appointed by the government to administer Norfolk Island, but surely the promises he made on behalf of the government should stand? Tasmanians have certainly been assured repeatedly that all commitments would be honoured, despite the defeat of the three Liberal MPs across Tasmania, but in the 10 months since the election we have heard nothing.

I wrote to Minister Frydenberg last October to seek some answers and, some weeks later, Minister Nash replied, essentially saying, in terms admittedly more polite than this: 'Butt out. We will deal with the groups directly and we are not telling you anything.' But seven months later the groups are getting nervous. They tell me they are still waiting for their solar panels, and I do not see any sign of their funding in this budget. I have learnt that groups like the Perth Football Club have been directed to resubmit their paperwork to apply for funds that they have already been promised. So not only was there little mention of Tasmania in the budget, but it also seems that members of my community now have to scrounge and beg simply to receive what they have already been promised.

If there are two areas of the budget where this government really fails Tasmanians, they are health and education. The Liberals continue to put vulnerable Tasmanians' health at risk with their three-year delay to reversing the Medicare rebate freeze. Those opposite will cackle like galahs every time we mention the freeze, pointing out that it was introduced by Labor. That is very helpful of them. We have never denied it. But what those opposite fail to point out is that the freeze was designed to last less than a year. It was the Liberals, elected in 2013 and re-elected in 2016, who decided, over our objections, to keep it in place. It is only because of Labor's ongoing pressure that they have now agreed, reluctantly and far too slowly, to remove it in 2020.

Every day the freeze remains is a day that the cost of a visit to the GP increases. Tasmanians already suffer from below-average bulk-billing rates. Across Tasmania, just 74 per cent of GPs bulk-bill, compared to the national average of 84.1 per cent. Between July 2016 and March 2017 Tasmania's bulk-billing fell by 2.2 per cent, more than three times the national average, taking Tasmania to being the second lowest bulk-billing state in the country. Out-of-pocket costs to visit a GP have risen by $5.90 per appointment since December 2014, from $30.79 out of pocket to $36.74 out of pocket. Each day the freeze stays in place is another day when a mum on a low income has to choose between paying the rent and getting that lump checked out; when a man has to decide between a birthday present for his grandchild and asking his doctor why it hurts to urinate. Worse, most people in my electorate earn below the national average income. More people than average are in receipt of Centrelink payments. More people than average suffer from intergenerational welfare dependency, and more people than average suffer medical conditions. People in my electorate and my state cannot absorb these further cuts to health, and there is little doubt that these outcomes are linked to the historically poor outcomes in education.

Labor would have invested more in schools and TAFE across Australia and Tasmania; but the Liberals are slashing funding. $85 million is to be cut from schools in Tasmania, and $65 million of that is from public schools, where the investment need is historically greatest. On average, it is a $2.4 million hit to every school in Tasmania. That is a hit that my communities cannot absorb. Schools in my electorate have already lost pathway planners and other essential resources due to decisions by the state Liberal government. We are not cutting fat anymore: the Liberals are into flesh and bone. It makes no sense, because at the same time that this government is cutting $22 billion from schools it is handing $25 billion to corporations and banks, and it wants to hand over another $25 billion if it can get the rest of its corporate tax giveaway through the Senate. Economists, the Australia Institute and the OECD all agree that investing in education provides a much bigger bang for our buck than a handout that will at best deliver 0.1 per cent economic growth in 10 years time. That is not growth—that is a rounding error. So if you are not convinced by the touchy, feely, left-wing idealism of providing young people with better opportunities just because it will make them happier, healthier and wealthier, be convinced by the fact that it is better for business.

When we talk about big numbers we can sometimes get in a bit of daze. One of the aspects of this budget that really upsets me is the $11 million being ripped out of Tasmania's TAFE and training sector. I am a big believer in tertiary education. I know that I personally have benefited greatly from it. As a boy from the suburbs—from Maddington in Western Australia—tertiary education opened my eyes, I think, as no other education could have.

I do acknowledge that tertiary education is not necessarily for everyone and that TAFE and apprenticeships provide a fantastic vocational pathway to work for many people. But we need to resource them properly, not cut them to shreds. I still recall that the first act of this government in 2013 was to axe the trade training centres program when the next trade training centre on the books was to be in Campbell Town in my electorate—a town that would have benefited greatly from a trade training centre and the opportunities it would have provided to young people in the northern Midlands.

Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, explain to me, please, the logic of increasing the cost of university while also lowering the threshold at which fee repayments have to start. It is a double whammy for young people, and it is getting to the stage already where too many young people in regions and outer suburbs are not even thinking of university as an option—especially when they are anxious about the rising cost of housing and power. It is not even entering their consciousness that it could be a possibility for them. We are restricting social mobility when we should be advancing it.

At its heart, this is a budget of unfairness because on 1 July every member of this chamber and the other place will get a big tax cut, while the people who clean our offices, and the men and women who guard our galleries, serve us our meals and drive us around in the big fancy cars will all get a tax rise. And that unfairness sticks in my throat. On 1 July someone earning $1 million will pay $16,400 less tax, while someone earning a relatively modest, these days, $65,000 will pay $325 more tax in two years time. How on earth is that fair? In a country where there is a widening income gap, where unfairness is getting worse not better, how is that fair? This budget makes it worse, not better.

This budget fails the jobs test. Unemployment is going up. We do not hear 'jobs and growth' anymore. It has been clear, though, since that little slogan bit the dust that it just has not happened. This budget fails the Medicare test. And this budget fails the fairness test.

Australians cannot trust this Prime Minister nor this Treasurer to deliver a fair budget. They do not believe it. Their party does not believe it. And Tasmanians—well, we certainly do not believe it.

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

It is a great pleasure to rise to speak. This is one of the best topics to speak on during the course of the year—the 'approps' bill. It is budget time. Some look at it and think: 'What are appropriations?' For those who are listening out there, Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018 is an opportunity for members to come into the chamber and have a free kick. You can go hard. And I am going to go hard because—

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are a Queenslander!

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

Absolutely. And I want to acknowledge the honourable member from Tasmania—

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Lyons.

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

from the seat of Lyons, for his heartfelt contribution. And, in the robust spirit of the debate on appropriations, we will hear opposition for the sake of opposition. But, in saying that, you made some points, and the idea of having a robust debate is to be able to freely put your case forward in the nation's parliament and then have it rebutted aggressively by those on the other side. But I always welcome the debate and your contribution to this place; you are nothing other than entertaining in this joint. So I appreciate your contribution.

I am going to start by just picking up on the honourable member's contribution around education. A key word was 'fairness'. He said that we were cutting funding to education. I am going to start there—in the education space.

My electorate of Wright is beautiful. It is an absolutely beautiful electorate. It is on the Gold Coast hinterland, and goes up to Toowoomba and down to the New South Wales border. It is very picturesque. I have 71 schools—primary and secondary, Catholic, independent and state—with 23,220 students. I can stand here in this parliament, put my hand on my heart and dispute the comments made before that there were cuts to education and say that every single one of the schools in my electorate—71 in total, with 23,220 students—will be the beneficiary of extra funding as a result of Gonski 2.0.

I have not looked at the Tasmanian numbers, but I am aware that if there are 90,000 schools 42 schools will be worse off—their funding will go backwards. The member for Lyons must have the unluckiest seat in the country if 42 of the schools in his electorate are going to go backwards. I will go back up to my office, I will go to the online calculator and I will check his schools and bring to the attention of the House whether his schools will be worse off. A question was asked of the Prime Minister in question time today about a school that was going backwards, but when we looked at the online calculator, surprise, surprise, the school mentioned in the question was going to be many hundreds of thousands of dollars better off. I will do that for the member for Lyons to assist him—it might change the flavour of his media releases; his principals, who have been hearing him saying they would be worse off, might be surprised to see that they might be better off under Gonski 2.0 than they were last year.

The member for Lyons was talking about 'if Gonski was instigated', but we now have Gonski 2.0, which is not as aggressive. He is playing on words when he says that is where the cuts were. We make the point, in open debate, that those investments were never going to materialise because Gonski was not fully funded. Our education process is fully funded; nevertheless, I will help the honourable member for Lyons by pointing out that most of his schools will be better off, and I look forward to taking the opportunity to school him.

There is a total increase in federal government funding for schools in Wright over the next 10 years. I am not a fan of forecasting over 10 years. I love my economics. Our budget papers run for a period of four years—they are the forward estimates. Anything outside the estimates are outlook years, and I do not normally like those forecasts. But we have included, this year, 10-year forecasts because schools, rightfully—the member for Lyons will agree with me—are looking for financial security for their planning and they are looking for an indicative idea of what government's intention is into the future, so in this case we are using 10-year forecasts and I am very proud to say that in my electorate alone over the next 10 years we will be the beneficiaries of no less than $275 million extra, all things being equal from today. Importantly, our increased funding will be tied to reforms, and evidence shows that that makes a real difference in supporting our teachers and schools to improve student outcomes.

Over the weekend I had the privilege of having dinner with a group of high school principals who are motivated to change the trajectory of our English and literature outcomes for students in the state of Queensland. We were joined by a gentleman by the name of John Collins. John is the author of the Collins reading and writing program out of Harvard—an incredibly talented man, 75 years of age. His wife, Becky, was unable to travel with him this year—on behalf of the parliament we hope that her surgery went well and we look forward to seeing her on their next trip. I am pretty sure, after speaking to John Collins, that he is not of the government's political persuasion, but, as someone from Harvard University, he was excited about the extra money and the reforms being spent in the education system. He did make the point that extra money does not normally mean better outcomes for students—it does go to better quality teachers and it does go to a number of other factors relating to socioeconomics and demographics. Another issue around education is that maybe we should not get too hung-up on our PISA standings—that is a conversation for another bill on another day. This is a fair system. It is good for students, it is good for parents and it is good for teachers.

Just before I leave education, I want to quickly mention an opportunity I had last week to visit a school whilst I was in the Lockyer Valley. Not only are we making a commitment to all my 71 schools that they are going to be better off financially next year and over the next 10 years but, on top of that, we are going to partner with our schools, either in the Catholic system or in the state system or others, in our Capital Grants Program. I was very proud the other day that we are partnering, to the tune of around $2.3 million, with our Catholic school over in Gatton, Our Lady of Good Counsel. The principal over there is Nathan Haley, and his deputy is James Bradley. They are doing an amazing job with that school. The first compliment I offered them—the Capital Works Program was around $2½ million—was the value for money that you see when you walk into the place. I remember back when we were doing comparative analyses of value for money I saw similar types of capital expenditure in the education revolution world under a former government, where $2.5 million would basically get you a lean-to and a tuckshop.

Mr Hammond interjecting—

The interjection from the honourable member for Perth alluded to the stimulatory effect of the Building the Education Revolution, and it did have some stimulatory effects. Could it have been better? Again, that is a debate for another day. So, I acknowledge the member's interjection.

I am going to leave education now and roll into something else the member for Lyons spoke about—the Medicare situation. I said to you wholeheartedly that I do enjoy your contributions in this place, and I was interested when you mentioned that you have a 74 per cent Medicare bulk-billing take-up. We are far more fortunate in my electorate of Wright. We have already seen a record number of Australians in Wright accessing vital Medicare services. Last financial year there were just under a million—923,298 GP services bulk-billed in the electorate. I am up at around 90.9—financial year statistics. So, I would not suggest that the system is broken, because it works for me. I am quite happy to have a chat with you. They are perplexing figures that you have—whether or not it is an ageing demographic, or something else.

This budget provides $1.2 billion to provide cheaper access to vital medicines. We are seeing extra drugs being put on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that go to helping some of the people in my electorate who suffer from heart disease, pulmonary fibrosis, schizophrenia and severe asthma. In this budget we see further strengthening of our support for mental health and suicide prevention packages of around $170,000—probably not a significant number in the overall budget. For me, I am always going to reach out and help organisations in that suicide space, particularly if it is saving the lives of some of our younger people. Australians living in regional and rural areas will now have significantly improved access to psychologists under our new $9.1 million telehealth incentives to roll out this year.

Dotted through some of the speakers on the other side of the House were those saying that this budget is unfair. For those who are listening tonight through our broadcasting capabilities, if you think spending more money on schools, putting more money into vital medicines, spending more money on prevention on suicides, spending more money on telehealth facilities and spending more money looking after veterans—in my electorate, 1,569—is unfair, well, I will then have the debate with you on what you perceive fairness to be, because I am telling you that this is fair and it goes to the people who need it. You will have the opportunity, as those who sit on the other side of the House, to come in and vote against all these measures if you wish. Vote against them, because as you come in here—rightfully so—lying, saying it is unfair, I will come in and defend the government's position that it is fair. It is right, because it goes to the heart of addressing the poor and vulnerable in my electorate who need the representation. I was elected by my people to come to this place and defend their rights. In my maiden speech I spoke of representing the voice of the silent majority. We hear the minority groups. I will come and defend this through the Appropriation Bill because I believe it is a fair budget.

We are creating a fund to help train Australian apprentices in key trades and skills to get more young Australians to work and to help them in business. This extra investment will help approximately 1,700 local young Australians aged between 15 and 24 for jobs, looking for work in Wright. Some of those on the other side are saying that helping people get an apprenticeship is unfair. That is their prerogative.

Agriculture is a key local industry in my electorate. It is the single biggest contributor to GDP in the electorate. This budget goes to helping it. The government is committed to establishing a regional investment corporation to stream the delivery of up to $4 billion in concessional loans which will benefit our local producers. Our local producers were on show more recently in Adelaide. I went down to the AUSVEG gala dinner on the weekend, where we saw some of my local growers. I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge Queensland's and Lockyer Valley's Anthony Staatz from Gatton, who was named the vegetable industry's grower of the year. He is a great Queenslander and a constituent of mine in Wright. He was flanked by a number of other finalists from all over the country, including Rob Hinrichsen, who was last year's grower of the year and is from Kalfresh in my electorate. Finalists from this year were Matt Hood from Rugby Farm and of course Sharon Windoff, making some incredible inroads for the sector in and around the work we do in making sure that we can put food on the table for Australians. Local dairy farmers will benefit from a $2 million investment in creating a commodity price index to help with planning and decision making, and $8.3 million will be invested in the livestock export industry to develop more efficient and effective insurance systems for local exporters.

We are going to spend some money in child care to help those mums and dads who are out working, trying to make ends meet. When they put their children into child care there used to be a $7½ thousand cap and government would maximise 50 per cent rebate. If you have a household under $185,000 annual income, which is the vast majority of my electorate, we are going to take that cap away again.

To those on the other side, if you think this is an unfair budget, come into this House and vote against it, but I will debate the merits of this budget. It is a budget that is designed to help those that are vulnerable. It is a budget that is designed for jobs and growth. It is a budget that is designed to help those in my electorate. Pull out the measures you think are unfair, absolutely—that is the hustle and bustle of this place. I know the organisations that are going to benefit from this budget.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker Kelly, for your company last week. I want to commence my contribution to the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018 not by talking about the budget but by talking about something which is probably far more important in many respects—that is, to express my condolences to Ray Riley and his family for the passing of his wife, Sue, who died very recently from mesothelioma.

She died from mesothelioma as a result of acquiring the disease through washing her husband's clothes. She lived down on Mosquito Bay on the south coast and was someone who I came to know well over the last decade or so. She was a fine person and an extremely wonderful woman. She was a nurse and a champion for her community. Her family was the centre of her life—her husband, Ray, her children and her grandchildren. I can only imagine the pain they are feeling as the result of her loss.

I just wanted to say how sad I am at her passing. My partner, Elizabeth, would want me to express our condolences forthrightly and appropriately in this place. I have said elsewhere and at other times that often we do not spend enough time contemplating the good deeds of so many Australians. Sue was a wonderful woman and a great Australian who gave her life to her family. She was also a highly qualified nurse who worked up until very recently. To Ray and the family, please accept our condolences on the sad passing of Sue.

I also feel sadness when I look at this budget. We have opportunities here to do things which are fair and reasonable for all Australians, but this budget fails dismally. It fails, as others have said, the economic credibility test. It fails the fairness test. It clearly sees it as important to allow someone earning $1 million to have a tax break while someone on $65,000 pays more tax. That is not fair and it is not reasonable. It is not fair to attack young Australians or low- and middle-income earners as this budget does. When I go around my electorate—and there are not too many millionaires, I can tell you—there are many who say they want something that is fair, that addresses their needs and that addresses the aspirations they might have for themselves and their families.

It is in that context that I want to talk about the education cuts in this bill. The Northern Territory, almost perversely, will be $254 million worse off over the next decade than it would otherwise have been if the full Gonski 1.0 had been put in place. The schools of the Northern Territory serve 19,000 Northern Territory families and 34,500 kids at 153 public schools. The majority of those schools are in my electorate of Lingiari. The majority of those are in remote Aboriginal communities looking after the educational interests of the most disadvantaged Australians in the country. As a result of this budget the students, the families and the schools will be worse off. Average per-student funding for government school students across Australia will grow by five per cent per year for the next decade. In the case of the Northern Territory, funding currently receives 23 per cent of the school resourcing standard. Under the proposals in this budget, schools in the Northern Territory will be expected to transition to 20 percent of the SRS by 2027. So there will be an effective three per cent cut in terms of that standard in the Northern Territory applied to the most disadvantaged students and the most disadvantaged schools in the country.

One wonders how the Commonwealth and the government—in particular, the Minister for Education, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer—can stand up and say that students in the Northern Territory will somehow be better off. They are clearly going to be worse off, and this is the direct responsibility of the government. I am sure they will come up with some proposal for transitional arrangements—offer them a little bit of money—but it will not address the disadvantage and inequality that will come out of the Northern Territory as a direct result of this budget. In 2017 the Commonwealth funding per student in an NT government school is $6,445. In 2027 it will be $7,369. That is a difference of $924 over the 10 years. It is hardly a remarkable amount of money. In effect, these students will clearly be worse off in real terms as a result of that funding arrangement.

It is up to the Commonwealth to address this issue and support Labor's view on the education cuts. It is not reasonable to take $22 billion out of the education funding across the country, which is what is happening. As I said, $240 million of that will come out of the Northern Territory. Why should Northern Territory kids and their families be persecuted in this way by this government?

I sit here very close to the front of the chamber, and I see a rancorous Prime Minister at every question time trying to demonise people who object to or criticise the government's position. All I can say is that clearly he has not walked in the shoes of the people I am referring to, nor does he understand what it would be like to walk in them. If he did, he would change his view.

I also want to refer briefly to health expenditure, particularly in the area of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. Clearly in this budget there is very little new funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. There are a small handful of announcements, which we welcome. The National Partnership Agreement on Rheumatic Fever Strategy continuation and expansion measure allocates an additional $7.6 million to continue and expand the agreement. The Project Agreement on Improving Trachoma Control Services for Indigenous Australians is due to receive an additional $20.7 million over the forward estimates to continue trachoma control up to 2021, by which time that dreadful Third World disease should be eliminated from this country forever.

What is not in this budget, though, is any funding for the implementation strategy for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan, which is a bipartisan plan supported by the government and the opposition. We were hoping we would see something concrete around how the government sees this plan progressing over the period, because it goes from 2013 to 2023, the government has been in office now for four years, and we have not seen an implementation strategy. It is hard to see how the plan can be properly implemented until we see resources allocated to this implementation strategy.

I note also that we are getting back a bit of the money cut out of the 2014 budget. A hundred and thirty million dollars was cut out in the 2014 budget, principally from Indigenous antismoking campaigns, and still that money has not been fully restored. Some of it has been put back, but we still wait to see the full restoration.

The other area where we have seen not new funding but an announcement in this budget is the expansion of the Australian Nurse-Family Partnership Program to four new sites to increase the number of sites by the end of June 2018. It might be worth pointing out, just so that people do not have any illusions about this, that this is not new money either. This money was first announced in the 2014 budget, and it is being reannounced in this budget. The 2014 budget made the appropriation. Minister Nash was the minister at the time, and her press release of 19 June 2014 said:

As Minister Nash outlined in Senate question time today, the 'Better Start to Life' investment in the 2014-15 budget will commence from July 2015. It will include:

…   …   …

In this year's budget, the minister responsible, Minister Wyatt, said:

The Australian Government has committed $40 million under the Better Start to Life approach to progressively expand the ANFPP from three sites to 13, by 30 June 2018.

Clearly, there will not be 13 sites funded by June 2018, and we would like to know what has happened to the money that was allocated to those sites. Will there be additional sites selected? What will be the process for their selection? When will it be done, so that we can meet the commitment which the government itself has made to have these new programs commenced by the middle of 2018? They are very important, and we support their expansion, but it is important that we understand what the government is actually proposing in the budget. It is very hard to tell.

The other issue I want to talk about very briefly is funding for the Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service. CAALAS's current funding is due to expire in December 2017, and there is no indication that it will be renewed. In 2016 CAALAS provided 8,342 legal services to its clients across Central Australia. In 2016 its lawyers each handled an average of 491 cases. It provides a duty lawyer every day at the courts in Alice Springs and attends every single bush court in the region. It also does important work for the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory. The funding of CAALAS is extremely important for the provision of justice to Aboriginal people who live in Central Australia, and it is up to the government to make sure that this funding is provided.

The Attorney-General may have a reason—I do not know what that reason could possibly be—that he will not guarantee funding beyond December this year for this service. Other Aboriginal legal services have been assured of their funding as part of a reversal of planned cuts to community legal centres and ATSILS which were due to happen in July this year. These organisations need to engage staff to make sure that they have security of employment. They supply an essential service for the justice system and for Aboriginal people in Central Australia. So it is up to the government, and up to the Attorney-General, to make sure that sufficient funding is made available so that they can continue to operate.

As I say, we see the Prime Minister carrying on like a pork chop most question times, and we need to appreciate that the palaver that we are hearing from him has very little to do with the real world. When he was asked a series of questions today—very good questions, I would have thought—about the impact of a tax measure, he was simply unable to answer. He was asked a simple question about taxing the banks and then allowing them to write it off as a business expense in the taxation system. He was asked what that means in terms of the dollars that will be spent, and he was unable to tell us. It demonstrates just how disingenuous the Prime Minister really is. (Time expired)

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018 and particularly to use this opportunity to outline the Turnbull government's very substantial commitments to infrastructure investment. Indeed, a centrepiece of the 2017 Turnbull government budget is a $75 billion infrastructure funding and financing program, extending from 2017-18 through to 2026-27, to deliver critical infrastructure projects right across the country.

A key feature of this budget is a major commitment to rail investment. The new $10 billion National Rail Program will fund transformational rail projects so that people can move our cities and regions more efficiently and so that our cities are better connected to their surrounding regional areas. We are providing an additional $8.4 billion equity investment into the Australian Rail Track Corporation to enable the delivery of the transformational Melbourne to Brisbane inland rail project. Together with nearly $800 million for new rail projects in Perth, over $550 million for rail in Victoria and our $10 billion National Rail Program, the government's total investment in rail in this budget reaches some $20 billion.

Of course, there is investment in many other areas in this budget as well. We make a $5.3 billion commitment to an equity investment in Western Sydney Airport. This is part of our plan to have Western Sydney Airport operational by 2026. Our Western Australian package also includes some $800 million, in conjunction with the Western Australian government, for new road projects, including works on Armadale Road, the Kwinana Freeway and regional road projects to improve road safety in regional Western Australia. The budget contains funding for new road projects in New South Wales and Queensland, including $844 million towards priority projects on the Bruce Highway.

As part of this budget the government is establishing the Infrastructure Financing and Project Agency, to be set up as an independent authority to further explore ways to be innovative in our approach to funding and financing infrastructure. This is so we can drive the Commonwealth's taxpayer dollar further in delivering the infrastructure projects so vitally needed around Australia. This budget also sees a commitment to maintain the funding levels of Infrastructure Australia.

Let me speak in some more detail about the National Rail Program. The rationale for this program is a recognition that investment in public transport networks—in rail networks, in particular—is a critical part of easing congestion and boosting productivity, both in our cities and in their surrounding regional areas. The $10 billion National Rail Program aligns with the Turnbull government's broader cities agenda, because it recognises that urban rail projects can be truly city shaping. They provide opportunities for urban regeneration, to unlock land for affordable housing and to promote and stimulate better urban planning. The Turnbull government plans to work with state governments and to cooperate in the planning process, with a view to ensuring that Commonwealth funding is targeted towards projects that will have the biggest impact.

Of course, the investments we are making in this budget build on existing Australian government funding for a wide range of significant rail projects around Australia, including the Gold Coast light rail in Queensland, the Forrestfield Airport Link in Perth, Flinders Link in South Australia, planning work on Cross River Rail in Queensland and work underway as part of the joint scoping study between the New South Wales and Commonwealth governments to invest in rail options for the future of Western Sydney Airport.

As part of the Asset Recycling Initiative, the Turnbull government is providing $1.7 billion in funding for the Sydney Metro project, a transformational rail project that will connect Chatswood to south-western Sydney. There is a $98.4 million commitment for Sydney's Rail Future and $78.3 million for Parramatta Light Rail. And in the ACT there is $67.1 million for Capital Metro.

Let me speak in a bit more detail about some of the commitments in the rail area in this budget. We are going to provide $792 million towards rail projects in Perth, to help ease congestion and to improve connectivity across that city. This funding includes over $700 million for the Thornlie and Yanchep line extensions, subject to satisfactory business cases being provided to Infrastructure Australia. It includes $26.8 million for the development of those business cases, $49.6 million for the Denny Avenue and Davis Road level crossing removal and $15.6 million for the relocation of the Herne Hill Depot.

On the other side of the country we have made a $500 million commitment to regional rail in Victoria, designed to improve connectivity of regional cities to and from Melbourne. This includes upgrades to the North East line, the Gippsland line and the Geelong Line, and a study into future improvements to the Shepparton rail line. There is also a commitment of $30 million for the development of the business case for the Melbourne Airport rail link. There is a rail link between Sydney and Sydney Airport. There is a rail link between Brisbane and Brisbane airport. There is a rail link under construction between Perth and Perth Airport. A city of the size of Melbourne and a city with the growth prospects of Melbourne is a city which needs an airport rail link. Indeed, the corridor between Melbourne's CBD and Tullamarine airport has been identified by Infrastructure Australia as one of the most heavily congested in Melbourne.

I want to speak for a moment about one of the specific elements in the budget, which is a process to encourage ideas for faster rail connections between major capital cities and regional centres by committing $20 million to support private sector proponents and state governments for the development of project business cases. The Turnbull government intends to carry out a three-step process to identify projects to receive funding. It will start by issuing a prospectus describing the program and the opportunities and calling for initial proposals in response. We aim to have those initial proposals being sought by September this year.

Proposals could come from private sector proponents or consortiums, such as consortiums of property owners and developers and specialist high-speed rail companies. State governments might also bring forward such proposals. For example, such proposals might involve a proposal for a new stretch of line which would connect into an existing line into one of our big cities and provide rail access to new greenfields areas where a new town or towns would be built by a developer or consortium of developers. So that is one possible class of proposals which might be brought forward. Alternatively, another class of proposals might involve state governments bringing forward proposals to improve or to extend existing lines between one of our major cities and a surrounding regional area. Those proposals might involve improvements to bridges or tunnels or gradients which presently slow down trains. They could involve replacing stretches of winding or steep track which prevent trains running at high speed. They could involve the electrification of track which presently can only be used by diesel trains. The proposals could involve new-generation signalling and train control technology which would allow trains to be run more frequently on a given line.

The prospectus to be issued will specify the criteria that would be applied by the Australian government in selecting from the initial proposals a shortlist of up to three projects that would go forward to a business case development stage. Those criteria would include such matters as the time savings over existing means of travel to the regional locations, including both existing rail means of travel and other means of travel such as road, the extent of new housing opportunities that might be opened up and of course value for money, with the key factor to be the number of new users of the new or upgraded line delivered per million dollars invested.

The next stage of this process would be business case development, intended to be completed by the middle of 2018. The Australian government will be committing a total of up to $20 million for the development of up to three business cases, and the Australian government's funding would be intended to match funding provided by the project proponent, with the Australian government's commitment to any one business case capped at $8 million. Once provided, the business cases would be assessed by Infrastructure Australia. The final stage would be a decision by the Australian government as to whether it would provide funding to one or more of these business cases. The Turnbull government expects decisions would be made in relation to at least one business case in time to allow a funding commitment to be made by the end of 2018.

Another source of information that will inform decisions to be made about the allocation of funding under the National Rail Program will be the urban rail plans, which are presently under development through joint work between the Commonwealth government and state governments, for Australia's five largest cities and their surrounding regions. This initiative was announced in November 2016 in response to Infrastructure Australia's 15-year plan. The urban rail plans will consider global trends and drivers of urban rail, including technology developments and changing demographic patterns as well as linkages between rail and urban planning.

Let me turn to speak about the Turnbull government's commitment to Western Sydney Airport. After decades of indecision, the Turnbull government has committed to building a second Sydney airport at Badgerys Creek. Western Sydney Airport will be a major catalyst for the future growth and prosperity of Western Sydney. In this budget the Turnbull government has committed up to $5.3 billion to build the Western Sydney Airport through a new company to be established, WSA Co.

A new airport for Western Sydney will deliver the people of Western Sydney improved access to aviation services, it will deliver much-needed aviation capacity in the Sydney Basin and it will, very importantly, deliver significant new employment and economic activity in Western Sydney. Western Sydney Airport is expected to deliver around 20,000 direct and indirect jobs by the early 2030s and 60,000 over the long term. Initial works are scheduled to commence by the end of 2018, and the airport will be operational by 2026. Governments are able to take a long-term view when it comes to investing in major infrastructure assets. The business case for Western Sydney Airport has been assessed by Infrastructure Australia, and it has been found that this project would deliver long-term net benefits to the Australian economy.

Of course, it is also very important that, as we plan for Western Sydney Airport, there is extensive community consultation. That is why the Turnbull government has established the Forum On Western Sydney Airport, a community consultation mechanism with some 22 members included, as well as the chair, Professor Peter Shergold AC, Chancellor of Western Sydney University.

The airport is being supported through the $3.6 billion Western Sydney Infrastructure Plan, funded by the Australian government and the New South Wales government, which includes extensive upgrading of existing roads. For example, the Northern Road is to be upgraded to four lanes, Bringelly Road and Werrington Road are also being extensively upgraded, and there will be a new M12 Motorway that will run from the airport to the M7, connecting the airport to the Sydney motorway network.

In addition, the government is undertaking a joint study into the rail needs of Western Sydney and Western Sydney Airport with the New South Wales government. That study is looking at the question of what the right route should be, how much it will cost, when it should be built and how it should be funded. The scoping study is expected to report to the two governments by the middle of this year, and the two governments will have more to say about the way forward following that.

So this budget demonstrates that the Turnbull government is delivering on a significant infrastructure investment program. It was notable that, by contrast, in the Leader of the Opposition's budget reply speech, a speech of over 4,000 words, the word 'infrastructure' was used only three times. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition struggled to fill even a single paragraph with statements about infrastructure. That may be the approach that the opposition wishes to take, but the Turnbull government is very strongly committed to infrastructure. We have had a very strong program in infrastructure since the coalition came to government in 2013, and this 2017 budget sees a very significant extension of our commitments to infrastructure, with a $75 billion infrastructure investment program between now and 2026-27, supporting a very wide range of projects all around the country—road, rail, airports and others.

Infrastructure is vitally important to the economic performance of Australia and to being able to move people and freight quickly and efficiently around our cities and our regions. It is also absolutely critical to livability so that people can get from home to work and back quickly and efficiently every day. Infrastructure is one of the major responsibilities of government, and the 2017 budget contained a $75 billion commitment to infrastructure as one of its centrepieces. I very strongly welcome that and commend that to the House.

Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would also like to offer my contribution on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018. When it comes to this government, this budget proves that you should pay attention not to what it says but to what it does. That is very clearly something that we should have learnt, particularly coming off their zombie measures. We know that their actions speak louder than words. Bear in mind that this is the government of Work Choices. This is the government that sought to cut the living standards of pensioners, those on disability support and unemployed young people. Now they want us to believe they have changed. Jeez, I tell you what: Crosby Textor must be working overtime these days. The budget does nothing to protect the everyday lives of Australians. It has clearly failed the fairness test. It fails to address the growing inequity in Australian society.

How is it fair that the only tax cuts coming out of this budget apply to millionaires and big business?

What type of government robs schoolchildren and university students of $22 billion, on the basis of handing out a $65 billion tax cut to big business? It means that, on average, $2.4 million per school will be lost.

This is a government that certainly needs to do some reviewing of its priorities. I remind everybody here that an investment in education is an investment in our future—it is an investment in this country's future. I think that is something that has been lost on the government.

Schools in my community will suffer over the next two years from a staggering $37.5 million being taken out of the schools in the Fairfield and Liverpool areas. To put this is in some perspective, I would like to cite just two examples of schools which are to be very hard hit. Cabramatta High School is set to lose a massive $3.9 million over the next two years, and Canley Vale High School will lose $3.6 million over the same period. These figures raise a huge question mark over how the current government sees the future of education—as a matter of fact, over how they see the future of children.

Bear in mind: these cuts apply to schools in my electorate, an electorate that plays host to a disproportionately large number of migrant and refugee communities—one of the largest number of migrant and refugee communities in the country. There are students with special needs: students for whom English is not a first language. These cuts will no doubt make it more difficult for teachers and schools in our community.

The unfairness does not stop there. Health cuts are also at the heart of this government's unfair budget—a government that is asking everyday Australians to pay more for health care, cutting Medicare and threatening bulk billing. This is a government that does nothing to protect vulnerable Australians and the health of our nation. It is clear that this government has no intention of making health care a priority for everyday Australians, proving that their values do not lie in an inclusive, smart and healthy nation.

I have learnt a fair bit about the health system of late. You might put it down to personal experience. But I must say that I am in awe of the dedication and the professionalism of all those serving our community, attending emergencies and caring for our fellow Australians.

On 26 February this year, I had, as many would be aware, a rather serious motorcycle accident just outside Queanbeyan. It is the first accident I have had in over 40 years of motorcycling. As a result of the accident, I spent 15 days in the Canberra Hospital, six days of which were in intensive care. I broke several ribs and suffered a collapsed lung as well as significant internal injuries.

For what started out to be a pleasant afternoon of motorcycling to end up in ICU in a world of pain certainly remains a nightmare. However, I consider myself to be very fortunate that Senior Constable Mark Smith of the Queanbeyan highway patrol was in the immediate vicinity at the time of my accident. He was probably booking somebody! But, nevertheless, he was there. And an off-duty nurse, Donna Hodgson, who was passing with her husband, stopped to render me assistance. Donna and Senior Constable Smith sat beside me, keeping me talking to ensure that I did not pass out after the accident. Being in shock, I could not remember, for instance, the security code on my mobile phone, but, after talking to these two good Samaritans, eventually I recalled that code and Senior Constable Smith was then able to notify my wife, Bernadette, of what had occurred and to have her meet me at Canberra Hospital. Meanwhile, Donna Hodgson was able to get word through to Parliament House security, alerting them to what had just occurred as well.

Despite the serious nature of the accident, as I say, I consider myself very fortunate that this police officer was immediately to hand and that this nurse, who was travelling with her husband, simply saw it and unselfishly pulled off the road and attended to me until the paramedics arrived. They certainly made a difference for the better in my particular circumstances. In Canberra Hospital, both Donna and Senior Constable Smith visited me on a number of occasions, checking on my welfare.

I would think it is probably not likely that there would be many interactions with officers of the highway patrol where members of the public might be so moved to write a letter of commendation to their commissioner. I did on this occasion. I thought this officer went well beyond what I considered his duties to show me care. To Donna Hodson, who was carrying an injury at the time, for stopping and staying with me until the ambulance arrived, I am indeed very grateful.

Given the impact of the accident on my wife, Bernadette, and my family, I have agreed to put motorcycling behind me, with a fair degree of regret, and the minister at the table would appreciate it. Nevertheless, I will stay involved with the various motorcycle safety campaigns that I have always been associated with. I will particularly stay involved with the police Wall To Wall Ride for Remembrance, which is now one of the biggest motorcycle rides in the country, in order to show our support for the police, particularly to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the course of their duties.

I am certainly very indebted to this particular police officer and to this particular nurse. They have shown professionalism and a profound sense of care and compassion. They did what they were not necessarily obliged to do, and it certainly made a difference for the better for me. In turn, I will also thank the ambos who came, managed to get my helmet off, cut me out of my leather jacket, shredded me out of my jeans and everything else, and probably filled me with morphine as well. I do not really recall the pain as I was travelling to hospital.

On arriving at hospital, I was processed in the emergency department. They were very professional people and they cared for my wife as well, but once the scans showed that I had a lacerated spleen the tempo sort of changed object and I found myself in the intensive care unit for the next six days, undergoing a number of operations. I would like to particularly thank from the Canberra Hospital's trauma team Dr Frank Piscioneri, Dr Thembikile Ncube, Dr Nicole Rodrigues and Dr Yunfei Hun. They are certainly very, very skilled and dedicated young people working very long hours and they are all there to assist those of us in need. I would also like to mention the nursing staff—Kate Evans, Thimitra Panteleon, Rebekah Ogilvie and Lisa Farrall—not only for what they did for me but also for the way they stayed in contact with my wife, ensuring that everyone knew what was going on and that they were kept in the loop. I think that had a huge impact on my recovery, but it certainly also made a very significant contribution to settling down my family.

When I wanted to travel back to Sydney, the nursing staff and doctors at Canberra made arrangements with the Liverpool Hospital's trauma team and with the Camden Hospital's fracture clinic. As I stand here, I am held together by plates and screws and probably rubber bands and other things, but it is very nice to sometimes—as I did the other day when I had a sore throat—think, 'At least I can feel it.' The alternative was a little bit more dire than that, so it has probably changed my outlook on life a little bit and put me in touch with my own mortality. Sometimes these things can happen in the blink of an eye and, as my mother keeps saying—she is a very religious woman—'You should keep your bags packed, because you never know when you're really going to go travelling.' I will take mum's comment on board.

I would like to thank all of my colleagues here in this rather eclectic work environment for sending their wellwishes. It was not just my Labor colleagues who I received emails and wellwishes from. I received many from all those on the other side and the minister at the table did say that he certainly felt my pain and that he thought perhaps as an alternative to motorcycling I might take up sports-car racing with him. I will get back to him on that; I have not checked it with Bernadette!

It does show that all here care for one another. Those who turned up, I thank them for it. Those who turned up and who I cannot remember, I still thank them for it! With the amount of drugs that I was on, my recollections of being in the intensive care unit are very scratchy at best.

And to my wife—I had better thank her! Today is our 41st wedding anniversary. I did not get choked up when we got married, but 40 years later I am working up to it. When you are a mother—and, in Bernadette's case, when you are a grandmother of 10—you sort of sign on to do various things. You wash and look after your kids—bath them and do all that sort of stuff. I do not think that she realised when I came out of hospital—covered in plaster, my leg in a brace, my arms in the air and all the rest of it—that I had to be washed and that my bandages had to be treated every day. She certainly did that. I can say that much of my motorbike was mostly written off and has been repatriated slightly into her jewellery box as a sign of some appreciation for all that additional care that she had to show me. I have indicated to a few people that one of the upsides of this incident is the fact that I was able to spend more time with my wife.

As I said, I also think it is time to reflect on all those in our community who unselfishly undertake careers and professions to work very long hours to look after the community. I mean those doctors in the trauma teams in emergency; the nurses and the ambos who attend; the police officers; and members of the community, such as Donna Hodgson, who pulled off the road to see whether she could help. It shows that we live in a very fine country. There are a lot of good people. We can sit here and argue about various things which are matters of state, but one of the things we should be very proud of is the people who serve our community. Much of what we should be looking to do in budgets, like the one we have before us, is to make sure that we do everything that we can to help those people who make a change for the better in the lives of many in our society.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank you for giving me some indulgence; I did not spend too much time on the budget. I will work up to that as the bills are introduced progressively into the House. I am sure I will find a number of things to say. But this is an opportunity to come in here and to thank all my colleagues for their care and concern, and also to thank all those who offered prayers on my behalf. I did get a call from Father Frank Brennan, to tell me the Jesuits were praying for me. I thought that was probably a good thing! It is just nice to know that, despite our differences, we do care for one another.

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

I thank the member for Fowler. I would just like to add that it is good to see him back, fighting fit. I would also like to acknowledge his wife, who is here in the advisers box. I am glad that she has given him the advice to give up the bike!

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too wish to give my best wishes to the member for Fowler. Welcome back—you are looking fighting fit! I look forward to ensuring that our healthy love of debate will continue, which is what it is all about. But, indeed, there are times when we stop, pause and take stock of what is important. It is good for you to have your wife here today too. Rest assured that we on this side of the House have been with you and that it is good to see you in good health.

I will move on to more sombre issues, maybe, in talking about the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-18, the related bills and the budget. Can I say, as a relatively new member of this House, how delighted I am to be speaking about this year's federal budget—a budget that ultimately does represent fairness, security and opportunity for the existing generation of Australians and also sets Australia up for the years ahead. Let me start by making the point that context counts, particularly for the Australian federal budget, given that we are such an open, liberalised, free market economy working within a highly integrated international economy. What we see within the global economy is renewed investment and optimism. We see some of our key trading partners, key investment partners, having their own economies find renewed optimism. We are finding this in particular from the likes of the United States. We are seeing it also with a bounce in China. This sets the scene for better days ahead for the Australian economy and, therefore, for the everyday Australian citizen.

That is why you see that the economic transition underway within Australia is gaining momentum. As we come off the back of the mining investment boom, we see an Australian economy that is diversifying across other sectors. We are seeing growth come into those other sectors while our resource exports are still looking for a positive trajectory moving forward, as are our service exports. This is why we see a growth forecast of 2¾ per cent in 2017-18 and up to three per cent in 2018-19. This all translates into jobs. Indeed, jobs has been the mantra of this government from the get go, and it will continue to be so.

The budget tabled by the Treasurer promotes jobs not in a fiscally irresponsible manner such as those opposite are renowned for—a 'hold nothing back, stimulus by any account' approach—but, rather, in a fiscally responsible manner. So much as it is optimistic, based on that broader international context and strong growth rates, the underlying assumptions about Australia's growth within this budget are actually below those forecast by other authoritative bodies, including the IMF. So we have relatively conservative assumptions on growth.

We also have a determination to ensure that real growth in payments is restricted to 1.9 per cent. So as we enjoy higher economic growth, and therefore increasing receipts, we are holding a very firm fiscal discipline of restricting an increase in payments to 1.9 per cent or lower. This also means that, as time goes on, we are going to see something Australians have been screaming out for for years; we are going to see that our everyday expenses do not need to be borrowed for come 2018-19. That is a very large commitment, and it is one that we have measured on very conservative assumptions. What it means is that the Australian nation will go back to days it has not seen since the coalition was previously in government, and we will have our current expenditures being covered by something other than debt. This is all about that often expressed comment that 'we need to live within our means'. Indeed, come 2018-19, we are going to be in a position where we are no longer borrowing just to keep the wheels in motion. Net debt will peak in 2018-19 and then decline over the forward estimates.

So it is a fiscally responsible budget but it is also a practical budget. Running government is not a matter of academia; the government took the very responsible decision to withdraw measures that were in previous budgets that we could not get through parliament. So, you have about $13.5 billion of budget withdrawn at the time of this most recent budget being tabled—which is why you also see that the government is trying to meet the Labor Party halfway over several measures while also dealing so productively with the crossbenchers and of course all of those in the Senate.

We need to make sure that this budget passes so that small businesses in particular can be the winners. We do know that small businesses are the main ones creating jobs throughout Australia, and in particular in regional and rural areas that have been most hit with unemployment struggles over recent years. That is why I am very excited, being from a region where over 98 per cent of businesses are small businesses, that the government has already changed the definition of 'small business' from ones with a turnover of only $2 million a year to those with a turnover of up to $10 million a year.

This budget has also extended the $20,000 instant asset write-off. Small businesses certainly in my part of the world have been celebrating this $20,000 instant asset write-off. Keep in mind, of course, that by virtue of extending the $20,000 instant asset write-off while simultaneously seeing the increase in the definition of small business to a $10 million turnover means you have thousands of businesses across Australia who for the first time in the next financial year will be able to make good use of the instant asset write-off. Cutting red tape—regulatory reform—continues to be a focus of this government. We recognise that there are regulatory constraints imposed by other tiers of government, which is why I welcome the $300 million funding package in this year's budget to incentivise states and territories to reduce their own regulatory barriers, again improving life for small business.

It is worth at this point asking what would the Labor Party propose for small business. They have already made it very clear in their questions during today's question time. Their questions homed in on the aggregate cost of the government's Enterprise Tax Plan. What they have so far failed to realise is that by prosecuting the case against that aggregate package, the aggregate cost of our proposed tax decreases for business, they are by default saying they are going to take a tax increase policy to the next election—as nearly half of the cost of the government's Enterprise Tax Plan has already been legislated for. So, with the opposition screaming today about the cost of tax decreases, every time we hear that from now on we will know that what they are really saying to small businesses, what the opposition is saying to any business with turnover of less than $10 million a year, is that they want to see them pay higher taxes. The Labor Party have confirmed today that they want small businesses to pay higher taxes. They are opposing legislated tax decreases. They are not having a moot debate about prospective policy here—they are very clearly talking about legislated tax decreases being reversed. That is why those in small business know that the Labor Party is no friend of small business.

But it is not just the fiscal responsibility and the practicality of this budget that is significant, nor is it only what the budget does for small business; indeed, it is the boost for the broader economy through game-changing infrastructure, with a commitment to over $70 billion for transport infrastructure—road, rail and air. Of course, we know that there is an $8.4 billion equity commitment—

Debate interrupted.