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

It is an old cliche, but budgets are about priorities. They are about governments making choices about what to do, what to fund and who to tax. Through these decisions, through these choices, the character of a government is revealed. As the old aphorism attributed to former United States Vice-President Joe Biden goes: 'Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.'

Unfortunately, the measures in this budget show that the Turnbull government values millionaires, multinationals and Malcolm Turnbull, and not much else. With the removal of the deficit levy on 1 July, millionaires will get a tax cut of over $16,000, paid for by tax increases on average Australians. Australians earning $65,000 a year will pay an extra $325 in income tax this year as a result of the increase to the Medicare levy put forward in this budget. Australians earning $80,000 will pay an extra $400 this year. Multinationals and Australia's biggest corporations will get a $65 billion tax cut, around 40 per cent of which, it has been estimated, will be shipped directly offshore in dividends to overseas based investors, according to research conducted by UTS. And the Prime Minister will get a political band-aid for the issues that he is bleeding on politically. They include a reduction in the cut to Australian school funding from $30 billion to $22 billion. We are expected to congratulate the government on this. It is as though they have robbed a bank and returned 25 per cent of the proceeds, and are expecting a pat on the back for it. It is not the way it works in the community. They also include the removal of the Medicare Benefit Schedule freeze on a small minority of medical services over the coming years, and a bank levy that will raise revenue for the government, true, but will be immediately passed on by the banks to either Australian consumers or Australian bank shareholders.

There is no vision in this budget for the kind of nation that we want to build. There is no narrative, no economic leadership, for a strategy to confront the structural economic challenges that Australia now faces. There is no coherent agenda, just fix ups for vested interests and political band-aids designed to stop what remains of the government's support from bleeding away.

I do want to call out a few areas of the budget that have received less attention in the media and that fail the 'fairness' test that the Prime Minister has set for himself and his government under this budget. The first issue I will talk about in this respect is Australian aid. Yet again, this budget reveals a coalition government walking away from Australia's obligations as a good international citizen. We on this side of the House were, obviously, disappointed when the Abbott-Turnbull government dropped the bipartisan target of growing Australia's aid budget of 0.5 per cent of GNI, but it is the cuts that really hurt. Australian aid cuts have very serious real-world consequences. Australian aid goes directly to the most vulnerable in the world, providing health services, education, gender support and disaster and climate resilience.

The campaign for Australian aid has quantified what some of the impacts of these cuts were. If we consider that in the last year Australian aid helped 1.8 million girls and boys enrol in school, trained 100,000 teachers, provided 4.6 million textbooks to kids in the Pacific, provided vaccinations for 2.8 million girls and boys around the world, provided clean drinking water to 2.3 million households and provided emergency relief in response to disasters like the Nepal earthquake, Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu and recent famines in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, these cuts have life and death consequences. They mean that children will not get vaccinations, girls will not go to school and women who are experiencing violence in Third World countries will not receive support.

These cuts—$300 million in the most recent budget—come on top of the $11.3 billion cuts to Australian aid that have been implemented by the Abbott-Turnbull government since coming to office. As a result, the Australian aid budget is now at its lowest level, as a proportion of gross national income, on record. Most observers in the aid sector thought that after the enormous cuts of previous budgets the government would say, 'Enough,' and would leave the aid sector to regroup and adapt to the new disappointing Australian aid baseline. But, as I said earlier, in the most recent budget the Turnbull government cut a further $300 million from Australian aid, delivering the weakest Australian aid budget in history—spending just 23 cents in every $100 of gross national income on foreign aid. By linking the Australian aid budget to CPI over the next decade it will continue to weaken over time, reaching a new low of 0.17 per cent of GNI.

The justification for this abdication of Australia's role in the international community was, again, the budget deficit, as if we were the only country in the world dealing with fiscal challenges. It is worth noting that the Conservative United Kingdom government—confronting a budget deficit in the order of 50 billion pounds in the last fiscal year and a national debt equivalent to 85 per cent of GDP—did not walk away from its international responsibilities. Indeed, Theresa May, the UK Prime Minister, recommitted just this month, during the current election campaign in that country, to the UK's pledge to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on aid.

In response to this announcement, the former Tory chancellor George Osborne tweeted:

Re-commitment to 0.7 per cent aid target very welcome. Morally right, strengthens UK influence and was key to creating modern compassionate Conservatives.

He is right that that was the morally right decision for the United Kingdom to take, and he is right that that decision strengthened the United Kingdom's influence around the world, as it would have strengthened Australian influence. His comments also reveal the extent to which hard line ideologists have killed off any possibility of 'compassionate' conservativism in Australia. These cuts to Australian aid are cuts to the most vulnerable in the world. They are cuts that will mean more children will die from preventable diseases and more girls will miss a chance to get an education. They also reveal the hypocrisy at the heart of ideological conservatives who claim to have compassion for the most vulnerable in our society.

The Treasurer proclaimed in his first speech in this place:

From my faith I derive the values of loving-kindness, justice and righteousness, to act with compassion and kindness, acknowledging our common humanity and to consider the welfare of others; to fight for a fair go for everyone to fulfil their human potential and to remove whatever unjust obstacles stand in their way,

…   …   …

My vision for Australia is for a nation that is… above all, generous in spirit, to share our good fortune with others, both at home and overseas, out of compassion and a desire for justice.

It is appropriate that we judge members of this chamber against their first speeches. They are meaningful. But a budget that takes the Australian aid budget to the lowest level on record does not meet these values. These values are abjectly missing from the government's further aid cuts.

Unsurprisingly, the Treasurer's failure was endorsed by the Australian Christian Lobby, who congratulated the Treasurer for his 'commendable' and 'positive' message that he would like to increase Australian aid sometime in the future. ACL managing director, Lyle Shelton, had the gall to issue a press release that stated:

Mr Morrison made it clear that aid remained a government priority and in reflecting his own views said that he looked forward ‘to the day when we can be more generous'.

Mr Shelton further stated:

The aspiration to increase foreign aid, espoused today by Treasurer Morrison, will go some way in restoring confidence in Australia’s commitment to be generous to the world's poor.

I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that Mr Shelton was surely the only person in Australia whose confidence in the Australian aid budget was restored during budget week.

Despite claiming that Australian aid is a priority in the face of more than $11 billion in cuts to Australian aid from this government, if you visit the ACL website the only petitions and campaigns you will see on the home page are for a marriage equality plebiscite, the opposition of the Safe Schools program and the very worthy cause of opposing the genocide in Syria and Iraq against Christians and minority groups. If you click through to their 'Issues' pages, you will find a page that notes:

Sadly Australia has failed to meet its MDG—

Millennium Development Goals—

targets and groups like ACL and others are working to encourage the Australian Government to recommit to meeting our MDG targets.

Australians can judge for themselves just how hard they are actually working.

Labor went to the last election with a policy of stopping the clock on further cuts to the Australian aid budget and growing it over time. The greatest challenge to Australia's development assistance trajectory now is a lack of bipartisan support, which is what we have seen in the United Kingdom. Without bipartisan support, it is much harder for either side to protect the budget from further cuts.

Another issue of fairness in this budget, where the fairness test has failed, that I want to touch on briefly here today that has not attracted significant media attention is with respect to the new long-stay parent visa class that was introduced in the days leading up to this budget. There are a number of injustices in this situation. I should explain that there are currently around 500,000 Australians with Indian heritage. It is a very significant issue in their community—the ability for them to bring their parents from India to be with their family as they establish a new generation in Australia. The primacy of parents and of older generations in subcontinent and Asian families more broadly is very significant. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the most important thing in these families' lives.

Before the election, both parties made a commitment to creating a visa class that would enable Australian-Indian families—or families of any ethnic background, I should say—to bring their parents to Australia to stay with them while their children were young. This would not be a cost to the Commonwealth. All costs would be borne by the sponsors. So private health insurance would be covered by the sponsors and a bond would be issued by the sponsors to ensure that, if anything went astray and the parents needed to return to India or needed medical treatment that was not covered by private health insurance, the bond would cover it.

Unfortunately, what we see in the implementation of this commitment by the government in the latest budget is the removal of a bond and its replacement with a visa fee. There is a very important distinction. A bond, you get back at the end of a visa claim, whereas a fee you will never see again. The fee is for bringing parents to Australia. A five-year visa attracts a $10,000 fee. A three-year visa comes at a cost of $5,000. It is not a bond; you do not get it back. That is a fee. In fact, the budget books $26 million of government revenue from this visa class in 2018-19, rising to $44 million of revenue in 2020-21.

I have heard from many of my constituents about the anger that they feel as a result of this change in policy from the election campaign to government. The Australian-Indian community feel like they are being taken for a ride. They feel like their family relationships—they commitment to their parents—is being used as a cash cow by this government. They are angry that the commitment for a bond has been changed to a fee. They used words like 'lies', 'deception' and 'deceit' when they talked about this with me. Not only are they angry about being squeezed for money through this visa class; they are also angry about the very unfortunate family dynamics that this new visa class is going to create, because, as was not revealed before the election, this visa class will be limited for each family to one of their sets of grandparents. So even families with the means to bring out mum's parents and dad's parents, under this visa class, will have to choose: is it mum's parents or is it dad's parents?

I would like to ask the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection and the assistant minister responsible for this visa class whether they have any advice to Indian-Australians—to husbands and wives—about how to have this conversation. I know that it is not a conversation that I would relish having with my wife—whether to bring my mother-in-law and father-in-law to Australia or my parents. I think that would be a very divisive and awkward conversation. There is no need for this cap. There is no need for this visa class to force families to make this choice. If families can afford to bring both categories of parent—both sides of the family—to Australia, they ought to be permitted to. They should not be forced by the government to decide. Members of my community are very angry about this. They told me and the member for Lalor and the shadow immigration minister, Shayne Neumann, about their anger at a recent immigration forum that we held in Wyndham, just to the west of my electorate. It was very well attended, and tensions ran very high. This change certainly does not meet the fairness test from the budget.

Another very important part of the budget that has not attracted media attention is the cut to TAFE and vocational funding in this budget. Under this federal budget, Victoria will see cuts of $128 million each year to TAFE and vocational education. Instead of investing in local jobs and skills, the Prime Minister's unfair budget cuts funding to TAFE, vocational education and apprenticeships by over $600 million in total. In my electorate, youth unemployment is well over 20 per cent. Ensuring that kids who are not able to complete school or who are not going on to tertiary education still have that post-high school education to enable them to increase their skills in order to get a job is a very significant issue. Similarly, underemployment is at a record high, and wages growth is at a record low.

In this context, these cuts to TAFE and vocational education come at the worst possible time for Melbourne's west. The number of government funded TAFE students fell by over 20 per cent between 2013 and 2015, and my electorate was particularly affected. Victorian universities are one of the most significant public TAFE providers in Victoria. They felt these cuts acutely. In the last 12 months alone, trade apprenticeship commencements have dropped by 10.5 per cent. Again, we felt this acutely in Melbourne's west. We used to have significant numbers of apprenticeships being taken on at the Williamstown shipyards. The 1,400 jobs that have been lost there used to include over 100 apprenticeships. Those are long gone. What Bill Shorten committed Labor to in the budget reply was to work to ensure that one in every 10 jobs on every single priority infrastructure project funded by the federal government goes to an Australian apprenticeship. That would have meant at least 2,600 apprenticeship places in the context of the last election. That would have made a realistic difference to young people in my electorate.

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

On the anniversary of the address on the forgotten people from Robert Menzies, I cannot help but look and see:

… the kind of people I myself represent in Parliament—salary earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers, and so on. These are, in the political and economic sense, the middle class. They are for the most part unorganized and unselfconscious. They are envied by those whose social benefits are largely obtained by taxing them. They are not rich enough to have individual power. They are taken for granted by each political party in turn. They are not sufficiently lacking in individualism to be organized for what in these days we call "pressure politics". And yet, as I have said, they are the backbone of the nation.

To that I would add retirees, teachers, nurses, ambos, firies, public servants, and I will come to some others in a moment.

Before I address the issues that I would like to bring to this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018 and related bills today, I say: vale Louise Williams, 18 April 2017. I am a co-chair of the asbestos awareness group in the parliament, and this lady, Lou Williams, addressed us on a number of occasions. She passed away on the morning of 18 April. Lou was a long-surviving mesothelioma patient, being first diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma in 2013 at the age of 48. Since then she went through many rounds of treatment, receiving Keytruda for the past couple of years. She was a strong fighter for those who have been diagnosed with an asbestos related disease and for their families, a voice for the Asbestos Diseases Foundation of Australia, the Australian national director for the Global Ban Asbestos Network, and she also worked with the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization in the United States.

Lou was deeply involved with the agency from day one, participating wherever she could and attending our conferences in Melbourne in 2014 and Brisbane in 2015. Unfortunately, her health did not allow her to travel to Adelaide in 2016, so she sent a video of support. As a little girl, she used asbestos as a crayon whilst her father was building a back room on their house. Then he also built her and her sister a cubby house out of the leftover asbestos. He was a contractor in asbestos. He died at 54 years of age. To do the right thing, she used to back his car out for him and, as she used to tell us, 'The dust rose up in the car all around.' Of course, it was asbestos dust. Here we have an amazing girl. When you actually met her and talked to her—and I have a photograph of her here which is absolutely beautiful—you would swear that there was nothing wrong with her, but there most certainly was. We are going to lose thousands and thousands of people, probably mostly connected to many others in our district, in our close area, and in our broader area. There could be as many as 200,000 people who will suffer from mesothelioma and die. Vale, Lou Williams.

I have a letter from an old mate of mine, Tony Calabro, who is a guitar player. I have had a bit to do with music in my life. He said to me:

Good morning Russell,

With the latest announcement of the closure of the Morwell mill—

which is a timber mill in the middle of the township of Morwell—

this is the last kick in the guts Morwell and the Latrobe Valley needed at this time. I'm sure you realise that.

This is also a good time for all governments, State and Federal, to take up the opportunity of doing something really, really special for our Region. If fate gives you a lemon, make lemonade. If governments don't offer help, assistance and offer real incentives in a fairdinkum way, and ASAP, then I believe the people of the Latrobe Valley will make governments pay a big price at the next election; wait and see. I have been talking with dozens of people recently and I am only telling you what you probably realise. I'm only a guitar teacher—

but a beautiful guitar player—

I've only taught close to 12,000 people which means I have been in direct contact with about 60,000 people or more, students and their families, so what the heck do I know? I believe, it's time for all governments to really think more laterally, dig deep, and do something positive for this amazing region, Latrobe Valley, Gippsland. This area deserves better support than it has been given in the past and it is about time governments of all political persuasions really demonstrates to our people that they really care. Well done is better than well said. Who do we vote for in the next election?

Thanks for listening, I hope you can fight for us,

Tony and Mary Calabro

Tony, there is your letter.

Recently I have thought about what we actually have done. I jotted down eight things, very quickly, that we have done that directly affect people. The government, for the first time, is looking at a review of the petroleum resources rent tax—never done that before. For the first time, we are saying, 'We've got to intervene in regard to affordable gas for households'—never done that before. For the first time, we are looking into affordable gas for manufacturing—and I will come back to that. We put a tariff on imported paper, because we had copy paper being dumped here from all over the world, which was directly affecting the paper mill at Morwell. We have got consideration of new coal-fired power stations, which would have been unheard of even six months ago. The government has explained its opposition to the ban on gas exploration. We actually did something about the 457 visas that were hurting locals. Where we have failed: the Heyfield mill, which 6,000 people extended rely on and the benefits that also go to the paper mill from its leftovers, is under threat and the state government do not know what to do about it.

There is one thing that I have never forgotten as the member for McMillan, and I go back to my first stint. I was introduced to Oliver Raymond and his wife, Carolyn, who were very closely connected to the paper mill. There were 1,200 workers there at the time. They were real people, real families and real jobs—good jobs. They were under threat at that time. They are still under threat today for two reasons. One is the gas prices I mentioned before for manufacturing. We are doing a deal for gas so that we can address that. We are going to give them some support in other areas. But, more importantly, we recognise for the first time that they were unfairly competing on the world market, and the government were prepared to do something about it on behalf of local people and local jobs—real people, real families and real jobs. I have repeated it. We have never done that before. I think about what Oliver and Carolyn taught me about what local representation is all about. I have never ever forgotten my representation on behalf of the CMFEU forestry division that were connected to that mill. I have never forgotten them. They were part of my defeat in 1998 but I have never forgotten them. They are still in my mind today when I make decisions. I still want their jobs, creating the best paper in the world, the most environmentally sensitive paper in the world, coming out of that mill, and that mill is under threat.

I believe governments have a responsibility to the workers—not to the owners, but to the Australian people—that we can actually have copy paper that comes from us. There is a responsibly also in this place for government departments to use it. 'No, no, no, we have signed an agreement with the suppliers where they can source of wherever they like, as long as they get the best price they like.' Well, we are actually the government and we can direct departments to do what we ask. Are we afraid to direct government departments or are we completely in the hands of a contract signed on some old forgotten bit of paper? Gentle on My Mind was the song—some old contract signed on some bit of paper that I am beholden to. Well, I am not beholden to that. I am saying that this is a new time and we are in a new world. We are in a world market where we need to address ourselves to our people. If that means making decisions, I made decisions in my business on behalf of my staff and my family, not necessarily in my best interests, not necessarily things that were pure. Honest, yes, but not necessarily pure—that is, put the owners first. In fact, on many occasions, because of the locality of our business and the importance of my business to their families, we did lots of things that benefited their families before it benefited the business. The purists would say, 'Well, you had it all wrong, Russell.' No, I had it right, because my staff never left until the businesses were wound up. The world changed—Coles and Myer came into my area.

I really wanted to say today that we want some honesty in government from both sides of this House. We just saw an argument a few moments ago from the member for Gellibrand, where he talked about the education exercise in which the government has said they are going to put $18 billion extra into education over 10 years. Everybody said that was great, but then the opposition came along and said 'Yes, but we will borrow.' I said, 'Why not use the word borrow?' because I had the strange experience of an opposition front bencher yelling at the other side, 'You are doing this with all borrowed money—the $18 billion.' Well, an extra $22 billion—where is that going to come from? That is going to be borrowed money, too. Ross Gittins has an article in the paper today in which he says, 'Gee, do you think we are getting full value for the money we are spending on our universities? Do you really think we are getting full value? Do you really think they are getting full value for the money we are spending on our junior primary, primary and secondary schools? We are putting more money in but our outcomes are sliding internationally.' So, isn't there another way in which we are going to have to look at these things before we say 'We are going to pour more money into education, because that is the answer, and that is the only answer.' Yet at the same time we are getting worse outcomes than we were getting before.

All I am asking is that I do not have to go to my local community and say, 'Here are your schools—Pakenham Springs, Pakenham Primary School, Pakenham Consolidated, Pakenham Lakes and Pakenham Secondary College, of which I am a former board member, and all my children went there—and you are going to lose all this money over three years.' In fact, they are getting a major increase in their funds over the next three, four and five years. It is dishonest. It is dishonest politics. It is not fair. It scares people and people are out there taking advantage of an argument between politicians that is completely unreasonable and unfair, and the politicians know it.

If I do not fit the pattern of what you have to be to be a politician in this place, I do not resile from that and I do not apologise. I will tell the truth. I will say what we are doing right and wrong, and I will say it again tomorrow on another issue. I will say it loudly. I will speak loudly on behalf of my people, because I do not like to see the transfer of funds from regions to cities.

I do not care how that money is transferred because I know that, when there is a mill in Morwell that is operating well, the only reason that that mill is not going on is because it is not getting the timber that it needs. The only problem that is happening at Heyfield is, because of a possum, we are not getting the timber we need. Just to explain: every time they find a Leadbeater's possum, they put a circle around it that has a radius of 250 metres. It was meant to stop at 30. They are up to 169 now, and there are a whole lot of areas you just cannot go into and it is continuing.

It was meant to stop at 39. I have called on the CFMEU to help me. Those people need the resources of those forests, which was agreed to in our Regional Forest Agreements and with all the pain that we went through between 1996 and 1998. This government spent millions on those Regional Forest Agreements, and we expect them to be carried through on behalf of our communities. Instead of that, they are being ignored by a state government that does not care. They just want a great big, new national park north of Melbourne which they can announce in the run-up to the next election for green votes in the cities.

I will tell you who I represent: I represent real people with real jobs—people who are prepared to go out and have a go. Whenever you think you are doing it hard, just think of that dairy farmer who, seven days a week, no matter what the weather is outside—and we have had some pretty crap weather—is out there. I remember going out to give an award to a farmer one day. The lady I was giving the award to walked out wearing a hat, funny woollen clothes and funny pants. I asked, 'Who am I giving the award to?' She said, 'Me.' I asked, 'What are you dressed like that for?' She said: 'I gotta milk, Russell. I'm leaving you with this. I've gotta milk.' Today we need to stand up for people who are doing real work and making a great contribution to this country, and I will.

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

As I rise today to speak about the 2017-18 budget—Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018—the fourth since my election as a member of the Australian parliament, I want to highlight to the residents of Indi my focus on the electorate I proudly call home. My vision for Indi is for a community that works with its leaders and representatives to develop opportunities for growth and solutions to challenges as they arise. It is a vision for a prosperous and caring community which values inclusiveness, diversity, honesty and the hard work of all those who seek to realise the goal of making life in our part of regional and rural Australia the best it can be and admired by all.

Today in this speech, I will focus on three main topics: the findings of the Indi survey on the budget, the priority of regional higher education, and I will conclude with my actions on behalf of my community and the next steps in the process of engagement.

Since the Turnbull government's second budget was handed down, I have been listening to my community's responses—what they liked, what failed to hit the mark and what suggestions they would make that would help the government to improve the lives of all those living in rural and regional Australia. The message has been clear—there is a high level of inequality supported by policy that does not consider regional Australia, and too many policy and funding models are based on metropolitan populations. We have just heard very strongly—endorsed by the member for McMillan—that same point.

I will go to the survey. My community is familiar with my call for their opinions. After the 2014 and 2015 budgets, I toured Indi to gauge their priorities and suggestions. Alongside the meetings and informal gatherings in towns and cities throughout the electorate, the phone calls received and walk-ins to my electorate offices by those wanting to share their thoughts, this year I have also sought to engage online with constituents. So thank you to all those individuals, who made in excess of 1,000 responses to my survey.

In summary, 54 per cent of responses were from women; 41.7 per cent were from people aged 41 to 64; and 33.6 per cent were from people aged over 65. Most heartening for me of all that has been done was that young people aged between 14 and 25 heard my call to share their thoughts and opinions. Increasingly, they are responding to my commitment to them to ensure that young people's voices are heard by this government. Almost 140 young people, or 17 per cent of the survey's respondents, got online and on their phones and let me know what they thought about a budget that will play a major role in shaping their futures.

During the week following the budget, I hosted three young people's breakfasts, in Wodonga, Wangaratta and Benalla. Youth workers Anthony Nicholson and Rachel Habgood, of Wodonga; Tom Arnold, of Wangaratta; and Amanda Aldous, of Benalla, together with my staff, were instrumental in bringing together these young people before they headed to school, university and TAFE and to work. And their message was clear: to recognise their energy and commitment and remove the barriers to their education, employment and wellbeing.

Many of these young people made mention of the government's proposed changes to higher education, rightly arguing that rural students should be on an equal footing with their metropolitan counterparts. These proposed changes will further disadvantage young people in my electorate, forcing them to pay higher university fees on top of housing, transport and other living costs that they must pay when they move away from home.

Some respondents argued that Australia can afford to educate its citizens for free, in turn creating a smarter workforce with better paid jobs, who pay their taxes and thus provide a higher standard of living for us all. They encouraged the government to support schools in lower socioeconomic areas ahead of wealthier schools and in turn lift overall standards in our clever country and to provide additional financial support to students in regional and rural areas through more scholarships, bursaries and grants, helping them to meet the added costs of their relocation.

Deputy Speaker, I give notice that next week, as a result of this survey, I will introduce a notice of motion seeking to provide financial incentives for those wanting to study in rural and regional areas.

The proposed tertiary education changes are also a challenge for regional universities in their bid to provide relevant degree courses in the regions. The Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe University, Professor John Dewar, describes the budget as a 'triple whammy' for regional higher education, incorporating three threats to the university's long-term viability. The first is by increasing student contributions and lowering the threshold at which the debt becomes payable. He believes that demand will fall among regional students. They already participate in higher education at a much lower rate than their city counterparts, and many are the first member in their family to go university. The need has never been greater for a highly educated and skilled regional workforce. Economic development and job creation in Indi will be dependent on the skills provided by postsecondary education. We want more, not fewer, students studying.

The second blow, says Professor Dewar, is the likelihood that the demand-driven system will continue to take a growing number of regional students away from their communities and to city universities, which is known as the 'brain drain'—present company excepted. Alarmingly, already that number has increased by more than 76 per cent between 2008 and 2014.

The third and final blow is the rising cost of delivering courses at regional campuses. Professor Dewar argues that there is no budget measure that will address higher costs for regional universities, which want to remain in their regional communities.

I welcome the government's commitment to an independent review of regional, rural and remote education, led by Emeritus Professor John Halsey, of Flinders University. The latest advice from the federal Minister for Education and Training, Senator Simon Birmingham, and his department is that this review will cover the full gamut of education throughout rural and regional Australia, from preschool through to university and the transition to work. The final report is due by the end of the year. I will invite Professor Halsey to visit Indi and meet the education community, families, employers, government agencies and students.

Education was one of three priorities in my survey, rated among the most important by a staggering 92 per cent of all those who responded to the budget survey. The next priorities were health and welfare at 93 per cent, and the environment and renewable energy came third at 89 per cent. Also important to more than 70 per cent of respondents was employment, passenger train services and regional policy, the NBN and mobile phone blackspots.

There was much good news for Indi in the budget. My community welcomed the $100 million to finally fix the North East rail line. Led by the Hume Rail Corridor Group and the Border Rail Action Group, many years of hard work has made the case for providing an updated, reliable, punctual and comfortable passenger rail service between the Albury-Wodonga and Melbourne. This service has the potential to deliver up to 385,000 extra trips a year, benefitting the economies of all towns and cities in my electorate, driving economic growth and improving quality of life. It is time this overdue project is delivered and no more money or time is wasted. It is time for a plan that makes crystal clear the responsibilities of all stakeholders, the timetables and the outcomes that must be met. Today in question time I asked the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport to take the leadership role to make this happen.

Increased investment in roads and infrastructure programs will support the electorate's nine local governments to build their communities and address real need. We welcome the increase in Roads to Recovery funding by $50 million per annum, continuation of the Stronger Communities Program, which is a great program for our communities, and the announcement of round 2 of the Building Better Regions Fund, another program that is delivering enormous benefits in the country areas. I also welcome the lifting of the financial assistance grants indexation freeze. I particularly welcome improved mental health services for veterans of the Australian Defence Forces, the energy offset payment for pensioners and the $4.7 billion investment in inland rail. What a difference that is going to make to rural and regional Australia—truly nation-building.

Indi is well placed to claim a share of the $1.5 billion announced in the budget for vocational training and employment skills programs. Vocational education leaders in my electorate have made progress to develop local and cross-border training programs for young people in the north-east. These programs will go a long way to improving the options for the more than 15,000 young people in my electorate aged between 15 and 24. Minister, can I say what a delight it was to have you in my electorate. Thank you for your support for this really important age group.

On health, there is a strong view that it should be higher income earners who bear the cost of the Medicare levy and there is an expectation that lifting the freeze on GP co-payments should see more bulk-billing services in small rural towns. There is recognition of the burden of the higher cost of health services, particularly the rising costs of private health care to a declining membership.

Deputy Speaker Morton, as you know as a rural person, country people are innovative and no more so than in my electorate. I will work with the community on the many suggestions and solutions they offered as part of the survey: incentives for specialists for regional areas; greater use of remote diagnostics via the internet; the increased need for funding for appropriate mental health services for the young, right through to our senior citizens; and funding for aged care and pension payments, particularly for the pensioners reliant on rental accommodation and those whose incomes are not supplemented by retirement savings. The introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme is welcome and its funding via an increased Medicare levy is viewed as a positive move by government to improve services in the long term, particularly for the disabled and their families. However, there is a note of caution among respondents that the money needs to be spent wisely for those most in need.

On the environment and renewable energy, there is a clear push throughout Indi for sustainability and financial support to make the most of renewable energy sources. Rising costs of energy have impacted heavily, both domestically and on businesses and is a particular concern to the people in my electorate. The respondents, however, made clear that there is strong opposition to coal and coal seam gas exploration and objection to tax-funded support for those operating within this sector. Indi residents want the government to plan for the effects of climate change, and they seek support for the development of solar and wind energy.

The largest number of submissions to the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network into the rollout of the NBN came from Indi, and my community reinforced their comments, saying that copper wire is outdated and that the NBN program should utilise fibre-optic cabling. Moving from ADSL to NBN is described by some as a complete shambles, and many are indignant at the slow pace of the rollout. Those unable to access the NBN resort to expensive mobile broadband, and slow internet speeds make it very difficult for young people to study. Indi has been blessed to receive funding to address 38 mobile phone blackspots, but the pace of the rollout is slow. Emergency services during fire seasons continue to be impacted by black spots, and it is not just remote areas where services are poor; some areas very close to the city have no coverage.

In summary, the Indi budget survey has identified health, education and environment as the electorate's major priorities. The percentage of respondents who highlighted their priorities were 93 per cent for health and welfare; 92 per cent for education; 89 per cent for renewable energy; 88 per cent for employment; 82 per cent for trains; 78 per cent for regional policy; 76 per cent for the NBN; and 58 per cent for the arts. The next step is my publishing of the report and the distribution to the more than 400 constituents who asked for a hard copy. There will be a new round of kitchen table conversations and the second Indi Summit in 2018.

In closing, I highlight my vision for Indi, a prosperous and caring community. I look forward to reporting back to my electorate, reflecting the priorities they have highlighted. I highlight my commitment to work with the Minister for Education and Training on higher education, to work with the Prime Minister for a minister for youth, and to work with my community so we are not just coming and asking the government to solve the problems but doing it together. Finally, thank you to the people of Indi. It is an absolute pleasure to be your representative.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Vocational Education and Skills) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2017-2018 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018, which deliver the government's 2017-2018 federal budget. It is a unique budget in that much of the debate and commentary has been fixated on its nature rather than its content. It has been characterised, rather than analysed. It has been labelled, rather than examined in the context of the political realities we face. I think that is an important point.

I totally respect the right of people—and of course that includes those on my own side of politics—to be critical and to make judgements on ideological grounds and to argue their convictions. The bottom line is that this budget is about striking a balance, a balance that will achieve our objectives of budget repair and reducing government spending and still provide the essential services the Australian public want and expect like quality education; a secure Medicare and PBS; and the NDIS, to help those most in need. We have to meet these goals, despite starting behind the eight ball because the Senate has already rejected of $13 billion in savings measures from previous budgets.

This budget makes the right choices now to build on our gains and create a more prosperous future. It is a budget based on delivering fairness, security and opportunity for all; a budget that recognises that many Australians are doing it tough. It is a budget that provides the conditions for stronger economic growth to create more and better paying jobs, including delivery of continuing support for small businesses and greater training opportunities for our young people. It is a budget that guarantees the essentials, including securing Medicare, restoring the pensioner concession card and tackling cost-of-living pressures by delivering energy security, boosting education funding and providing better access to child care for working families.

Importantly, it is a budget that ensures the government lives within its means with a plan to return the budget to surplus by 2020-21. I want to make this point very clear: this is not a tax-and-spend budget. Higher revenues have been allocated for two different purposes; the first is filling the hole left by savings opposed by the Senate for which Labor and the Greens are primarily responsible; and the second is strengthening the budget, including fully funding the NDIS.

I would like to make a serious point about the NDIS: when they were in government, Labor raised expectations and made all sorts of grandiose promises but failed to provide adequate funding for the scheme, so that task has fallen to us. We will not let those people who are living with a disability and their families suffer because of Labor's failings.

As I said at the outset, budget repair and strengthening the budget remain key objectives, as they always are, for coalition governments, and the fact is: our decisions have improved the budget by $6.3 billion over the next five years even after taking into account reversing measures that were blocked by the Senate. This is considerably better than recent updates—for example, last year's MYEFO had an improvement of just $2.5 billion. Last year's budget delivered an improvement of $1.7 billion. Real spending is expected to grow by just 1.9 per cent on average over the forward estimates—the same pace as it was in the 2016-17 budget and the 2016 MYEFO, and much lower than the 3.5 five per cent we inherited from Labor.

Compared with the projections in the 2015 budget, the government will spend a total of $26 billion less over the period 2015-16 to 2018-19, and this is because we recognise that the first step in paying down the debt is getting the budget back to surplus. So there can be no mistake, we are continuing to work solidly and surely towards budget repair and returning the budget to surplus. By the same token, we know that the public expect the government to take decisive action to tackle some of the challenges we face. And so we have with a plan to deliver vital infrastructure; a plan to improve housing affordability; to secure our energy supply for the future; and to provide $18.6 billion in practical needs based funding for our schools.

I am particularly proud, as Assistant Minister for Vocational Education and Skills, of our plan to establish a new Skilling Australians Fund to work in partnership with the states to deliver an additional 300,000 apprenticeships. It is all about putting Australian jobs and Australian skills first, and ensuring our businesses have access to the best skilled workforce possible. It is funded in part by a new levy on foreign workers, and I look forward to working with the states and territories to deliver the skills outcome we need for the future.

As I travel around the country, I see so many positive, practical things being achieved in the vocational education sector. I am very proud that our government has recognised the significance of the sector by boosting funding in the budget.

I want to spend a few moments in this debate talking about the benefits for my electorate of McPherson on the Gold Coast, because, whilst I am honoured to the part of the ministry, my first duty is always to my constituents—the wonderful people of the southern Gold Coast. We have a large seniors population on the Gold Coast, who I am sure will welcome the reinstatement of the pensioner concession card; the one-off payment to help with cost-of-living pressures; the securing of Medicare and bulk-billing; and the extension of a number of medicines on the PBS. I also know my veterans will welcome reforms to improve the services of the DVA.

As I have said many times in this place, the Gold Coast is the small business capital of our nation, and the huge raft of reforms that our government has introduced to support and encourage the small business sector are a boost for our local economy, including the historic tax cuts and the enterprise tax plan. I welcome the extension of the $20,000 asset write-off for a further year to encourage business investment and expansion. Having already cut federal red tape by $5.8 billion during our government, this budget offers up to $300 million in incentives to states and territories that remove unnecessary regulatory barriers. Cutting red tape means giving businesses more time to grow and create jobs.

Our ongoing investment in national infrastructure is vital. I have fought and will continue to fight for funding to widen the M1 from Varsity Lakes to Tugun and complete this vital project. I was delighted we were finally able to reach agreement with the state government earlier this year to get works underway for the crucial section from Mudgeeraba to Varsity Lakes. I am also pleased that funding for planning the improvements further south was included as part of that agreement. I would like to say to my constituents, the people of the southern Gold Coast, that the upgrade from Mudgeeraba to Varsity is but the next stage in the widening that I will be fighting to make sure goes all the way through to Tugun, as was the original agreement back in 2007. We have to make sure that something as vital as the M1 does not just get stuck in the planning stage forever. We are talking about the major coastal link between Brisbane and Sydney, so completing the M1 is imperative and I can assure the people of McPherson and the southern Gold Coast that I will be keeping up that fight.

I have also pledged to advocate for the extension of the existing rail line from Varsity Lakes to Coolangatta airport. In this budget, the government is investing $10 billion in a new National Rail Program. We recognise that rail lines have the potential to be true city-shaping pieces of infrastructure. The transformational impact of linking the Gold Coast Airport with rail infrastructure into Brisbane and South-East Queensland has great benefits for local tourism and will help ease congestion on our roads. So I will be advocating for that major project on behalf of my constituents and I certainly hope that the Queensland government will work with us in securing the funding required.

Finally, I want to return to something I touched on at the start. This budget is about achieving the attainable—a balanced and measured response to the challenges our nation faces. This budget should have the greatest chance of passing through the parliament, given it has been characterised as the least partisan in a long time. That is why I am disappointed and disturbed that Labor seems determined to work to block crucial elements of the budget and, in so doing, create a new potential black hole of $14 billion. I note that recently The Australian reported:

At least $14 billion in key budget measures faces a Senate blockade, undermining the Turnbull government's attempt to reset its reform agenda as crossbenchers begin talks with Labor in a bid to expand the controversial big-banks tax.

The article continued:

New budget measures in trouble include the 2.5 per cent Medicare levy meant to fully fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme, random drug testing of welfare recipients, the revised higher education package, "Gonski 2.0" school funding changes and the superannuation saver scheme for first-home buyers.

This is a thoroughly irresponsible approach by a Labor Party intent on creating division and chaos. How in good conscience can they reject things like Gonski and the NDIS—things they supposedly believe in but apparently just do not want to pay for? It can only be for political reasons. It beggars belief that they would try to create a new $14 billion black hole, when we have just moved to fix the last one.

With continuing Senate intransigence to the government's first preference of genuine savings, in this budget we had to step in to do something to preserve our nation's AAA credit rating and stop piling debt on the shoulders of our children and our grandchildren. To do otherwise would have been economically irresponsible. For the purposes of assessing our AAA rating, the ratings agencies have made it clear that they would not take into account spending cuts we factor into the budget that have no prospect of passing through the Senate. Hence, we reversed over $13 billion of such measures in this budget. But Labor want to continue to put our economy in jeopardy by turning around and creating a new budget black hole by opposing completely reasonable and fair measures in this budget. I implore members opposite to stop the class warfare, stop the empty populist politicking, look into their hearts and recognise that this budget is an opportunity for all sides of politics to come together for the benefit of our nation. We must be able to come together as Australians and act in the national interest. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the House and in the Senate to pass these budget measures and allow the government to get on with the job we were elected to do. I commend these bills to the House.

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

As the dust settles and the details clear on the 2017 budget, we see that there is much to be disappointed in. This is not a budget for the Illawarra, the South Coast and the Southern Highlands—the regions that I represent. There is not a dollar in it for the long awaited Maldon-Dombarton rail link which will connect our port to the inland rail routes. There is not a dollar in it for a bridge over the Shoalhaven River which would help those thousands of people who each week make their way from the Illawarra and from places further north down south to the Shoalhaven. There is not a dollar in it for affordable housing; although we heard a lot about affordable housing in the lead up to the budget. It has nothing for our pensioners who have worked hard for generations, saving a little to put forward for their retirement.

The budget has got more in it which is about spin than substance. It cuts money away from our schools; in fact, $22 billion over the forwards and beyond for school education—$20 million from my own electorate. It increases student fees, cuts funding to universities and, through these two initiatives, ensures that class sizes will be larger and the quality of education will decline. It sees the reduction in employment with over 95,000 fewer jobs over the forward estimates. In fact, there has never been a budget which is more pessimistic about the future of employment than this government's budget in 2017. It has assumptions about wages growth in it which go in the exact opposite direction to the government's treatment of its own workers and its campaign, which champions the reduction in penalty rates for workers throughout many industries, particularly those workers who are some of the lowest paid in our economy.

Budgets are a statement of the government's priorities, and the priorities in this budget are not about the wellbeing of the Australian people; they are about one thing—that is, the future of the Liberal Party's leader, the Prime Minister of this country. It is an attempt to convince the people of Australia that the direction set by his predecessor in that universally reviled 2014 program has been reversed. This was a budget that included within it attacks on Medicare; attacks on hospitals, universities, TAFEs and schools, on pensioners and the unemployed, on family payments. It proposed to do damage to family budgets. This program devastated the coalition party politically. However great that political damage was, it was nothing compared to the impact, the human costs that it would have wrought on each of the groups and individuals who were affected by these proposals, each of these wrong turns.

In 2015, the Prime Minister set the standard against which his own government and his own prime ministership will be measured. Thirty consecutive Newspolls show a lack of faith in the government's program. In my view, this is a puerile measure but most Australians can hardly be blamed for holding him to the standard that he has asked them to hold him to. He is halfway through. This budget will do nothing to reverse the political fortunes of his government but, more importantly than that, nothing t reverse the real problems that are being encountered by Australians every day.

The people of Australia are not buying it. A part of the problem that the government faces is that there is no clear vision for what it stands for and what it wants to do for the country. We have, over the last two years alone, been asked to be excited about innovation only to see that dropped like a hot potato. We were then asked to get on board that jobs and growth express only to see that dropped like a hot potato because the projections on jobs and growth in the 2017 budget are so anaemic that they could not possibly champion that as their campaign slogan. We are now asked to believe that there are better days ahead when Australians looking for work see that in this budget there are nearly 100,000 fewer jobs in the economy over the next four years.

We have seen thought bubbles masquerading as serious policy debate only to see them disappear as quickly as the bubble bath that entertains my children at night. Too often we have seen these ideas put out only to be reversed the next day. Is it any wonder that the people of Australia are looking at the 2017-18 budget through the same cynical glasses that they have used to look at the chops and changes, the constant reversals and the overblown rhetoric of this Prime Minister? They are asking themselves, 'What has changed?' Quite simply, the answer is nothing. What we want is an alternative story for Australia and the policies that are going to back it in, particularly for regional Australia.

Too often when city politicians come to this place, they imagine regional Australia as a place to deal with the overflows and the excesses that they are experiencing in the cities—everything from waste to excess of people. If they are not thinking of our regions as somewhere where they can dump the things that they no longer need or they can no longer fit anywhere, they are thinking of our regions as sites of remediation: things that are overwhelmingly different and in need of being fixed. I think of my own region and the regions that I visit as very different places—places that we live in by choice; places, sure, with challenges but with a multitude of assets and unique identities, and so often the custodian of our national legends. To think of our regions in this way does not mean that we ignore growing inequality, particularly the inequality that is growing between those Australians who are living in our capital cities and those who are living in regional, rural and remote Australia.

I look at wages alone, and I see the gaps that are growing in wage inequality in this country. Here, in one dataset, we can see the problem that we are facing. Wage growth in the Australian economy is at its lowest level ever. But, in regional Australia, we compound that issue by the fact that people in regions like my own are already earning wages—if they are lucky enough to have a job—that are well below the national average. When I compare the average wage of somebody working in Dapto at $55,800 a year or in the Shellharbour LGA at a little over $56,700 a year to somebody who is working in the Prime Minister's own electorate at $89,500 a year—and these are averages—is it any wonder that people in regional Australia are saying this is an acute problem? But these calls are falling on deaf ears, and the world that the Prime Minister lives in is a very different place to the one that we live in and represent.

If there has been a debate around this budget that has attracted the focus of the nation, it has been around the priorities for school education and post-school education. If you look at the post-school participation rates in higher education between regional Australia and the capital cities, you will see the pathway to change is getting harder and harder and harder. Participation rates in higher education in the Wollongong and Shellharbour LGAs are between 20 per cent at the lower end and 29 per cent at the upper end—lower high school participation rates than the Australian average. In the Prime Minister's own electorate, they are well in excess of 50 per cent. Is it any wonder that there is no priority for higher education in this budget? The Prime Minister does not see it in the world that he lives in and therefore he does not believe that anybody else has these problems. We have to have a different plan for the region that I represent and a different plan for the rest of the regions in this country.

I want to stress again: I do not subscribe to the deficit model that sees regional Australia as a dumping ground for other people's excess or as a place that needs remediation. We have fantastic assets. We have one of the most beautiful regions in the country. We are connected by the busiest commuter corridor in the country to the largest city in the country. We are connected, mostly, by decent NBN. We have a hell of a lot of copper based NBN in the ground, which is a headache but there is the capacity to change. We have a fantastic regional university. It is not only one of the best in the country but one of the best in the world. We have the capacity to leverage off the enormous strength and depth of knowledge and expertise in heavy manufacturing and engineering. We have some of the smartest and hardest working people in the country. We have the benefit of decades and decades of migration of people from just about every country on earth who have made Australia and our region home—a great connection to the people and the markets of the world.

We have much to be proud of, but this does not mean we turn our backs on the challenges that we need to focus on to make it a better place. The things that are going to make the Illawarra, the South Coast and the Southern Highlands not only a great place to live but a great place to do business and work are things that are going to make us a more connected region by road, rail, sea and, yes, fibre.

If we are going to ensure that this occurs, we need bipartisan support not just within this place but also across three tiers of government which endures across the political cycle. We do not need to see one government, for example, fund the Maldon-Dombarton rail link only to see it half-built and have another government cancel it, leaving a bridge literally half-built and hanging in the air. We need to have consistent long-term policies which are going to see that railway line built, that are going to see investment in the Albion Park Rail M1 bypass, that are going to see the much needed river crossing over the Shoalhaven River built and which are going to see the M1 extension in Sydney, which we call SouthConnex. I know the problems that they face in Western Sydney, but there is life south of Sydney as well and we suffer the same transport links problems. We have one of the busiest rail corridors in the state. Over 20,000 people on a daily basis make their way from the Illawarra, South Coast and Southern Highlands to Sydney city or its western suburbs for work. If we cannot do that in under an hour, we are wasting human capacity, productivity and potential. We can do it much better than we are doing it at the moment.

We have to invest in our people, our human capital, as I have spoken about, which means investing in our schools. The $20 million the government has taken out of schools in my electorate needs to be put back and re-invested in our primary schools and secondary schools. We need to be working together with the state governments to ensure that we can reinvest in our TAFE system, a national icon. People come from other countries all around the world to see this great thing that we built in this country over many governments and over several decades—the TAFE system. It is systematically being dismantled. It is not too late to stop. It needs to stop if we are going to ensure that we can invest in the skills that our nation will need in the future.

I want to see a retirement and income policy that provides people with certainty that if they are saving for the future they will have that nest egg available for them to ensure that they will derive an income from it over the years of a long and happy retirement. We need to set a retirement age which acknowledges that, if you have worked with your body your entire life, you probably are not going to be able to work in heavy, physical, manual labour until you are 70. Your body is going to start breaking down. Yes, people have different capacities, but almost universally if you have worked in backbreaking work for your entire life a retirement age of 70 is not going to cut it.

A dignified society means Medicare. It means the NDIS. It means affordable medicines. It means reasonable income support for people who are looking for work, not demonising the unemployed. While many of these are Labor ideals and values, we invite those across the aisle to join with us in ensuring that these become part of a bipartisan vision for a great country and a great region. Labor cannot do it alone. We need to work with all levels of government and across the aisle to ensure that these things become a reality for my region and our country now and into the future.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Turnbull government's 2017 budget is one that delivers fairness, security and opportunity, not just for those who live in inner-city metropolitan suburbs but for Australians in regional and rural areas, cities and towns. It makes the right choices for Australians who are working hard to secure the better days ahead for themselves and their families. This budget will grow the country's economy and help secure more and better-paid jobs for all Australians.

We are continuing the solid work of the coalition government since 2013: creating the National Innovation and Science Agenda, which is helping to diversify Australia's economy; protecting Australians through the Defence white paper, which backs local advanced manufacturing in regional Australia; opening up Australia's trade potential through free trade agreements with China, Japan, Korea, and moving into Hong Kong as well; and protecting women and children from domestic violence through the $100 million Women's Safety Package.

Health is the most important facet of life. Health is actually your wealth. This budget delivers on the election commitment to guarantee Medicare and deliver the world's best health system, in which people in regional and rural Australia have access to the best health services and amenities that we can provide. The government's long-term National Health Plan is supported in the budget through guaranteeing Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. As we heard, there are 1,400 new medicines on the PBS, compared to 331 in Labor's last three years. That is really great news for Australians, including people in my electorate, who desperately need the new medications. We are supporting hospitals, prioritising mental and preventive health and continuing our investment in medical research. These are the measures that will make a real, genuine difference in my electorate of Forrest and throughout regional Australia.

As Nelson Mandela said, 'Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.' Students in the South-West will be better off under the government's education policy. Schools in Forrest will receive $119 million more from the federal government next year, an increase of over 6.4 per cent, and over the following three years federal government funding to schools in Forrest will grow by over 20 per cent. It is a massive increase.

Under our plan, federal funding to schools will be distributed on a needs basis, something that all of us should be supportive of. Our plan gives all Australian schools a fair go, wiping away the 27 secret special deals that Labor signed up to, which were actually quite a slap in the face to David Gonski and his team. As Ken Boston, the Gonski review panellist, said, Labor's arrangements corrupted needs based funding. Under this government, and unlike under those opposite, federal funding is based entirely on David Gonski's recommendations. Each student's background, level of disability and socioeconomic status are assessed to ensure funding is truly needs based and fair. That is a great boost for regional and rural students—students in your own electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker Hastie.

This budget makes the right choices to ensure a fair and responsible path back to a balanced budget. The underlying cash balance will improve from a forecast deficit of $29.4 billion in 2017-18 to a projected surplus of $7.4 billion in 2020-21. In simple terms, this means hardworking Australians and businesses will pay less tax in the future to pay down Labor's debt. In addition to Australia's economic growth being in its 26th year, the budget is projected to be back in surplus in 2020-21, and net debt is projected to fall to 8.5 per cent of GDP over the next decade. In addition to guaranteeing essential services that Australians rely on, like Medicare and the PBS, this budget will grow the economy, and the south-west will play its role in this. It is one of the engine rooms of the economy in Western Australia and, more broadly, Australia.

After a lot of very strenuous lobbying, the Bunbury Outer Ring Road completion is now one step closer, because I was able to secure $10 million towards this project. As members of the chamber may well recall, the project will link the key transport and export opportunities throughout the south-west, linking the Bunbury port and the new Busselton-Margaret River airport upgrade. It will also improve road safety in the south-west and reduce freight and passenger congestion in the region. It is a major issue, when you consider the amount of events and functions that are held throughout the south-west. The Busselton-Margaret River region is known as the events capital outside of Perth. I think I read in the newspapers that over the Easter weekend something like 100,000 vehicles travelled through to the south-west from Perth. The Bunbury Outer Ring Road is a key part of that, but more critically for the freight component.

At the start of the year the contracts had been signed for the Busselton-Margaret River Regional Airport upgrade, and for this I secured $9.78 million. This is an absolutely transformative project for the south-west. The Busselton-Margaret River Regional Airport upgrade will, by next year, see international and domestic flights directly into that region. The freight opportunities that will go with that are significant. Members of the House may not know that we produce some world-quality produce—whether it is beef, lamb or the wonderful wine—in my part of the world. You will see the truffles from Manjimup coming out through the Busselton regional airport as well. From a very self-interested perspective, our dairy products are also world class, as is that fabulous fresh water crayfish, the marron. For those of you who have not tried it, I am hoping that through the Busselton-Margaret River airport those sorts of wonderful products will be sent to the east coast. If it is packed today, I hope it is on your shelves and in your restaurants tonight in this part of the world. We have some fine wines and breweries as well in our part of the world. Opening all of this up to international and domestic tourists is a massive step to further putting the region on the doorstep of the world.

We know that Margaret River is basically an internationally brand. The amount of people who will want to come directly into this region will be significant. We have some amazing events, from the Margaret River Pro to the Busselton Jetty Swim. There are one-off triathlons. There is one event after another. I am sure that from the gourmet escape all the way through we will see people from around the world flying directly in. I am very proud to have been part of that.

Housing affordability has been an issue for many people, from those trying to downsize to those trying to buy their first home. This has been the case for several years. As the Treasurer said on budget night, by adopting a comprehensive approach to affordable housing, we actually can make a difference. Through the tax advantages of superannuation, the government's First Home Super Saver Scheme will assist people trying to get into the market for the first time. People will be able to make voluntary contributions of up to $15,000 annually and $30,000 in total to their super to purchase their first property. These contributions will be taxed at a reduced rate of 15 per cent, with withdrawals for the deposits taxed at a greatly reduced tax rate of less than 30 per cent of their income tax rate. In other words, if someone is paying less than 30 per cent tax then they will not pay tax on their withdrawal, or their deposit, from their super account. That is great news for first home buyers.

As we all know, small business is at the heart of this year's budget. I am really proud of that. We are continuing to focus on those fantastic I think 3.6 million small businesses that employ nearly half of Australia. We see them throughout rural and regional Australia. They do an amazing job in our small communities.

Of course, in addition to the tax cuts for the sector, the government is continuing the instant asset write-off for small businesses with a turnover of up to $10 million. It is a fantastic opportunity for small- to medium-sized businesses. I look at some of the major transport companies that cart cattle and freight throughout the regions. The tax cut is something they are so pleased to have. The instant asset write-off is used repeatedly. That is exactly what we wanted. We wanted to give confidence to small business and get them to the point where there are able to employ more people. I have repeatedly said that it is frequently small business that gives Australians their first jobs and it is frequently a small business that gives us our last job. That is beside all the basic services that they provide. In my community small businesses support our local sporting clubs and our community service organisations. Often they are the people in the fire brigade and St John Ambulance. They make a huge contribution.

We are also offering incentive payments to the states and territories to help cut red tape, particularly for small business. It is the bane of their life. Generally it is, 'We want the government to get out of our way and we want the red tape gone.' This is just another example of how the government is delivering sound economic management and is assisting over 12,600 small businesses in my electorate of Forrest. I have built and still have a business. These measures may seem simple to some, but they are massive to every small business, where every cent counts. Every cent counts in a small business.

As I have said, one of the greatest challenges is facing dairy farmers in the south-west of Western Australia. For the first time ever in Australia's history we have seen some of my dairy farmers not given a contract with a milk processor. This has caused incredible heartache. It has also caused great uncertainty in the region. Those small business dairy farmers absolutely love their land and their cows. For instance, like many of our neighbours, our business has over 40 years of amazing genetic depth in our herds. It takes an extraordinary amount of time to build a quality herd and a quality dairy business. It requires investment besides the blood, sweat and tears.

I want to finish this speech by acknowledging the dairy farmers that we lost in that way: Dale Hanks, Graham Manning, Tony Ferraro and their families. We have another group now who may not have their contracts renewed. This wonderful industry has underpinned much of the economic stability of the south-west in the majority of its history. I see the appalling loss of these businesses and the effect on these families. One of the toughest things I have had to deal with as a member of parliament is seeing the milk of my neighbour Graham Manning no longer being required. He was producing in the top five per cent of milk quality in this country for 14 years. I see the loss of the workers from his property and the fact that he is no longer spending money in my local small businesses.

Measures in this budget are so important for all of us, but I want to thank those families and those men and women for their extended service to what has been an outstanding industry. I commend them for their work and I thank them for it. Graham and Jane Manning were given a ceremonial milk bottle at our dairy innovation awards dinner. They went through the history of this family. They were probably the first dairy farmers in Western Australia. They actually milked cows at the edge of Mounts Bay Road in Perth underneath Jacob's Ladder before they moved down to the south-west.

In losing Graham and Jane Manning and the other farmers, we have not just lost those businesses and those farmers. This was the fifth generation of dairy farmers in the Manning family. This was the last way he and his family would have chosen for him to exit the industry. I do thank him and I thank all of my fellow dairy farmers.

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-18 tonight. Obviously I will raise concerns relating to the Turnbull government's budget for 2017. In overview, this budget has failed to support industries in transition and has failed to invest in the outer suburbs of Australia's major cities, in particular the south-eastern region of Melbourne and my electorate of Holt.

In a broader sense though, I wanted to talk about the failure of governments, both state and federal governments, to deal with the issue of what I call 'disruptive technology'; the havoc that it wreaks on good people who have made investments in good faith, who then have those investments taken away from them by these disruptive technologies that are not regulated in the same way; the impact it has had on industries, and on one particular industry that I am going to mention; the fact that governments of all persuasions are allowing these disruptive technologies to come in without appropriate regulation and oversight; and what the long-term consequences of that are going to be for our community and our society.

The primary example I want to talk about tonight is the ongoing plight of Australia's taxi and hire car industries. The taxi and hire car industries throughout the world have been going through a global transition that has been brought about by the digital revolution, and by the new economy. However, rather than receiving the needed support that happens when new industries come in through transition, the federal government, the Turnbull government, and, unfortunately, state governments have completely neglected the industry and the ongoing suffering that is being experienced in dealing with this transition.

Many of my constituents and others would have read about the term 'global disruption' to various industries. One of the first prime examples of this has been the global disruption to the taxi and hire car industries. This occurred due to changes in the way people can order a taxi and/or other transportation services, such as Uber. Governments around the world have responded in different ways to technologies and new industries like Uber. For example, Denmark, France, Bulgaria and Finland have all stood up and banned Uber, while Uber has in the main been allowed to exist in the USA and is trying to spread into 82 other countries around the world. It is now interesting that, because of some of the concerns about Uber, there is some unionisation occurring of the Uber workforce in the United States.

In Victoria, the previous Baillieu and Napthine Liberal Victorian government between 2010 and 2014 failed to take any action to address the disruption of this industry when it first came in. What happened was they allowed Uber to exist in Victoria, effectively unregulated. As a result, taxi licence values dropped by half, from about $500,000 on average to about $250,000 during the four years of the previous Liberal state government. During that period, not one cent of financial assistance was paid.

In light of this legislative mess, the Andrews Labor government brought in reforms to attempt to compensate those who were affected; however, I would say they are not ideal. They provided $494 million to those affected. Through this package, perpetual metropolitan licence holders will receive $100,000 for their first licence and $50,000 per licence for up to three more, while additional financial support can be provided under the hardship funding. It sounds good, but let us see what the ramifications of that are. Rather than supporting the need to provide much-needed financial support to this industry, the Liberal opposition in Victoria is blocking the bill in parliament—that compensation bill. Because the bill is now stuck in parliament—it is being debated in committee—it is denying families vital funds that they need now. In addition, if we look at the Turnbull government, it is still planning to tax the payments the Andrews government will be making to those taxi cab and hire car owners and drivers that are in need.

Despite this taxi and hire car assistance package being provided, the families involved in this industry are under a great deal of stress. The value of their licences is now zero, and their income has been radically reduced. In many cases the value of their taxi or hire car plate was superannuation for these families. That was their investment. As a result of the establishment of Uber, these families have nothing. They have no superannuation, just a substantial debt.

Over the last two years our office has been working closely with Victorian Taxi & Hire Car Families. We have been assisting roughly 3,000 families who individually own or operate taxis or hire cars. To those who do not know each of these 3,000 families are suffering to varying degrees as a result of very comprehensive changes to the taxi and hire car industry. For example, in one case a family bought a taxi licence in 2011 for $513,000. In Victoria this taxi licence is now worth nothing. The family is clearly now in severe financial hardship. The family still owes $350,430 on the taxi licence. It will receive only $100,000 of financial assistance from the state government. This means the family is left with a debt of $250,430 to deal with for the rest of their lives. This is but one example of how taxis and hire car families have been affected and of the financial hardship they are experiencing.

Let me talk about that in a more graphic way. Since August 2016 Victorian Taxi & Hire Car Families has compiled statistics from among their members. They have attribute to the hardship experienced by this transition, the death of three members due to ongoing stress, 11 families having had to sell their family homes, six families having gone through a divorce, five members having suffered a heart attack, four members suffering other severe health issues and four members now suffering from cancer. This situation could be mitigated if the state Labor government were to fully fund and provide additional financial support to those families that are struggling to cope at present. I call on the Turnbull government also to commit to not taxing the payments the Andrews Labor government is wishing to make as this financial assistance.

The Victorian taxi and hire car industry wants a long-term future, and it is vital that Australian governments consider assisting the taxi industry. There is a reason why I would do that Uber has failed to fulfil its tax obligations, infringed workers' rights and failed to provide insurance protection for customers injured in a crash in Australia in all cases. That does not apply to the taxi industry.

New operators providing transportation services should be treated like taxis and hire cars and not be allowed to get away with not paying tax and with disobeying Australian laws. Yet that is what is actually happening. The people involved in the taxi and hire car industry have done nothing wrong. They pay their taxes and provide an essential service to Australians. In contrast, the families involved in Victorian Taxi & Hire Car Families believe existing laws are not being enforced to properly regulate Uber. So there is a situation where there is a disruptive industry, a technology, a grouping and a major conglomerate worth $60 billion that comes into this country and does not abide by the law of the country. It does not pay tax. Yet it is rewarded by governments bending to its will by allowing this lack of regulation to occur. That sets a very undesirable precedent for other industries where that will occur. We are seeing the thin edge of the wedge. It will not be just taxi and hire car families; it will be other industries. This plan of deregulation and disruptive technology will not stop with taxis and hire cars. It will progress through all sorts of industries. We are seeing the canary in the coalmine. It is the taxi and hire car families that are having to pay the price at this point in time.

Victorian Taxi & Hire Car Families also wanted to remind the chamber that a taxi driver in Manchester, AJ Singh, decided to turn off his meter and offer free lifts to people who were caught up in the atrocity committed last week in Manchester. During the Bourke Street tragedy in Melbourne in January 2017, taxi driver Lou Bougias intervened and immediately went to the aid of multiple victims and provided direction to others who joined in to help. His actions became one of the most inspirational acts to emerge in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy. In contrast—and we know this because we have looked at it—during the Lindt cafe siege in Martin Place in December 2014, according to Ben Grubb in an article in The Sydney Morning Herald, Uber decided to charge passengers four times the usual rate under its surge pricing scheme. In times of need we see taxi drivers—the regulated industry—stepping in and showing compassion. I believe compassion should be extended to those in the taxi and hire car industry in their time of need.

According to Elizabeth Knight's article in The Sydney Morning Herald last week, one of Australia's wealthiest and most high-profile investors, Hamish Douglass, has called Uber 'a Ponzi scheme and one that will be broke in 10 years'. Thus, it might be a good idea for the Australian government and some of our state governments to question their ongoing support for Uber and look at whether it is leading to ongoing hardship for those in the taxi and hire car industry in Australia. They are seeing a regulated industry being wiped out for an industry that might not be around in the next five to 10 years.

I and my colleagues the member for Wills and the member for Batman have worked assiduously to ensure the taxi and hire car industry is supported. I would certainly urge the Turnbull government to intervene in some way to take some action to address the unfolding human tragedy that is occurring within an industry in transition in Australia. There are 3,000 families in the Victorian taxi and hire car industry group that need urgent financial assistance right now. I would also make that call to the Andrews Labor government. It needs to step in and provide additional financial support as soon as possible.

Rather than just talking about the taxi and high car industry, I would like to point out this budget's neglect of the outer suburbs like those in my region. I note that the Turnbull government has a plan for the new airport at Badgerys Creek in Sydney, but there is certainly no commensurate plan for the outer suburbs in Melbourne and, in particular, in the south-east of Melbourne in my electorate of Holt. In light of the decline of Australia's automotive manufacturing capability and the closure of Victoria's Hazelwood power station, it is vital that we set a new renewable energy manufacturing jobs plan for the south-east of Melbourne.

If you look at the scale of the contribution that the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne make, they generate 44 per cent of Victoria's manufactured product. That is according to the South East Melbourne Manufacturers Alliance, or SEMMA. Industry provides 17 per cent of south-east Melbourne's 549,000 jobs. There are more than 300 exporters located in this region. The question is: what support was provided in the budget for Australian manufacturing, especially as the automotive sector is winding down? One of the key priorities is to continue to invest in this manufacturing hub of the south-east of Melbourne so we can keep jobs in our local area.

Another important point that can be made is in respect of the lack of funding for road congestion in my electorate. This is a substantial issue. We deal with congestion on the Monash Freeway, the South Gippsland Highway, Clyde Road and Thompsons Road, to name just a few roads, and congestion, particularly on Thompsons Road, is a substantial issue for people in my constituency. The priority is to fully fund the completion of Thompsons Road in Cranbourne. During the 2016 campaign I was delighted that Labor committed to investing $85 million in funding for Thompsons Road, which would duplicate high-volume sections of Thompsons Road, making it six lanes wide, build a full grade separation at Western Port Highway intersection and upgrade the intersections with Frankston-Dandenong Road and Narre Warren-Cranbourne Road. The grade separation, if it is not funded, becomes a self-defeating enterprise. There are funds available, we know there are funds available, and we have certainly seen those funds committed by the Prime Minister to other states and territories. I would call upon the federal Turnbull government to make a commitment to fund this grade separation, in particular at the intersection of Thompsons Road and Western Port Highway. It is essential work that needs to be done. It should not just be left to the state government to fund this. The Turnbull government should be doing this. We made that commitment, and we would expect to see that matched by the Turnbull government.

I would like to finish where I started and remember those taxi families and hire car families. They continue to need our support. They are the canary in the coalmine: where goes the taxi and hire car industry, we will see other industries doing the same fairly soon.

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

It is an honour to have the opportunity once again to rise in this place and speak in relation to yet another budget. The government, like the ancient mariner, has had the 2014 budget around its neck like an albatross for the past three years. And it seems, from this budget, that is in no danger of abating. Yes, some of the so-called zombie measures are were scrapped, finally, like a lot of the cuts that were first instituted in the 2014 budget but never actually passed, but the ghost of that budget still lingers on because this year's budget really is built on the same set of values that that 2014 disastrous budget was established on. These are values like seeking to reduce services to the Australian community and like seeking to favour the top end of town at the expense of ordinary working people of ordinary middle-class households. Those were the values of the 2014 budget that saw the then Abbott government wanting to cut the indexation of the pension. Those values still hold true today as the Turnbull government seeks to find ways to cut school funding and to cut funding to higher education.

The centrepiece of this Turnbull budget is a $65 billion tax cut for corporations, including the big banks. And that is often justified on the basis of the pretty discredited idea of trickle-down economics. People say: 'We need to cut corporate taxes so that companies get can get more money in. Then they'll take that money and spend it on creating jobs and increasing wages for working people.' That is the argument often put for the $65 billion tax cut for corporations, including the big banks. But it is just not borne out on the evidence.

We have actually got a great control group in the form of the United States of America. They cut their corporate taxes in the 1980s under then President Reagan, and of course you did not see a wonderful jobs utopia, where inequality shrank, middle-class jobs became more well-paid and there were more jobs for everyone. In fact, it was quite the reverse. Middle-class families in the US have had living standards eroded for a very long time. It is just not the case to say that, as soon as you start to improve a company's earnings, the money that is earned is reinvested into making the business bigger and better and creating new jobs.

If you want another example of that, there is a much more recent one, and that is what is happening in this country. Earnings for corporate Australia are up. In fact, they are up 18 per cent. At the same time we have seen a trend since the late 1970s and early 1980s where the profit share of national income has been increasing and, correspondingly, the wages share has been dropping. If the conservative argument held true that having companies make more money immediately and necessarily means more jobs and better pay, you would think that right now—when earnings are up and the profit share of national income has been increasing and is very high—we would be seeing that happening in Australia, but we are not. To the contrary, it is just not the case that there is some sort of trickling down effect meaning wages are increasing.

Wages growth is the slowest and lowest it has been since this country started keeping the wage price index in 1997. We are at a record low period of wages growth since 1997. That is 20 years, a very long time. I don't about you, but in 1997 I was watching a bit of Buffy. I was on college, playing a bit of touch footy, playing in the orchestra and going to class. A lot has changed since then. It is a long period of time over which these stats have been kept, and we are seeing wages growth at this really incredibly slow rate right now, despite the strength of our corporate sector.

Similarly, we are not seeing a massive reinvestment by the corporate sector of their very strong earnings into capital deepening, into making their companies better. We know this because private capital expenditure has been tumbling. If you look at private capital expenditure, it has actually been falling through the floor—decreasing in the order of four per cent per quarter over the last few. We are not seeing this incredible reinvestment and reinvigoration of Australian corporations, but what we are seeing is really an investment strike. We are seeing record high payments to shareholders in the form of dividends, so it seems that what you get when companies do better financially is that more of that money goes into the pockets of shareholders. It does not necessarily go into the pockets of workers or into capital deepening for that company, into growth for the company.

Why is that? It is not as though corporate Australia is in some way ill willed or does not want to invest in capital, of course. There are perverse incentives that incentivise the payment of dividends in order to keep share prices up. This is a real problem, and it is something that needs to be considered, but that is not in and of itself enough of a reason to say, 'Actually, what we should do is just take it as a leap of faith to say that, if we cut corporate taxes, that will necessarily mean more jobs or better pay,' because that is just not the experience. That is not the experience in the US. The analogous situation, where companies have been doing better here in Australia, has not led to more jobs and better pay. Yes, we have some pleasing news on the unemployment front in this country, particularly since the highs that we had just after the 2014 budget actually. Remember that we had unemployment at the time that was at higher rates than it had been even in the depth of the global financial crisis a few years earlier.

Unemployment is not as high in 2017 as it was in 2014 after the first coalition government budget smashed this nation's confidence, but it remains high. What is probably more insidious—more difficult to see and to notice—is the record rates of underemployment that workers in this country are facing. It is record rates of underemployment. It is declines in hours worked. This is a new problem that we are facing right now—the abundance of labour and the lack of availability of jobs. People on worksites talk to me about automation. Whether you are a wharfie whose job started disappearing when they got those giant robots that move around the port, whether you used to work on a mine site as a truck driver and the trucks are now fully automated or whether you are looking at the possibility of losing your job to a self-driving train, this is happening across the world. It is not something that is by any means confined to Australia, but it means that we need to have a real conversation about what can be done to ensure that people are not left powerless and jobless as a consequence.

This blunt instrument of cutting corporate taxes to make capital more profitable is not good enough. It is not an answer to the problems that working people are facing. We need answers that go to making wages better, to finding ways to create more jobs and to making sure that there are not these weird skews where you have some people working 80 hours a week while others cannot get more than 30 hours. Those are the real issues that a government with vision and leadership needs to come to grips with, but instead all we have seen in this budget is a centrepiece of $65 billion in corporate tax cuts and, I think probably just as terribly and just as disappointingly, the cuts to education. I say that because if we want to be able to deal with the fact that the labour market is changing, that jobs are changing and that the skills that we need are changing that means investing in our people. It means creating a workforce of the future that will have the skills that are needed for the jobs of the future, and I am not just talking about content knowledge.

There will be all sorts of skills, attributes and traits that are needed in order to navigate the future. There are big challenges coming. There is one that we are facing right now that, frankly, we are not doing a very good job of facing, and that is climate change. Climate change is posing a very big challenge to our entire world. To respond to that, it is going to take not only the content knowledge of science but also the skills that we need to negotiate, to listen to each other and to work together to solve problems and to not only try to stop the increase in the temperature but also deal with the effects that are already being caused by the change that has already happened. To mitigate the effects of climate change we are going to have to have a population that has the skills that are needed to be able to work together to solve really big, thorny problems.

We are also going to need to do something right now about inequality, because a less-equal world is a more conflict-ridden world. It is hard enough as it is. We are already facing conflict across the world as it is. If we keep having situations develop where we allow the exacerbation of inequality that is going to make things much harder than they otherwise would be. Education is important for that, too. It is not just about making sure that the kids of today and the kids of tomorrow get the education they need to be able to get a good job or to live in a society. It is also about making sure that they get the education they need not just for themselves but to help make a society that is more peaceful and more equal, where people do get a fair go, where in fact the opportunity you get is not something that comes from the privilege with which you were born, but from how hard you work and how much you make the most of the natural talents and abilities you have.

To me, cutting education funding in these times right now, particularly when the government's intention is to worsen the deficit to the tune of $65 billion with the corporate tax cuts, is not just unfair—it is obviously unfair—but is incredibly reckless and damaging to the nation's future. If we do not fund schools properly we are going to have a range of problems. There are the mundane problems you get when you have only some good schools and everybody gets on the road at peak-hour and goes to those schools and you get all this unnecessary traffic congestion because people do not want to go to their local schools. But there are the bigger problems that come with the inequality that comes from there being great schools and terrible schools. I went to Cairns State High and to Edge Hill State School, two great public schools up north. I loved those schools and learned incredible amounts of amazing things there and I am so proud to have been to those schools. But even I—someone who was at school 30 years ago—understand the difference in opportunity that I had compared with the opportunities kids who went to wealthier schools in capital cities had.

That is more pronounced today than it was when I was a student. I want to start to reverse those trends, so we have to fund their education properly. The $22 billion in cuts to school funding must not be accepted. Labor is absolutely right to be fighting the $22 billion in cuts this government is making. They went to the 2014 budget saying, 'We are going to cut $30 billion from schools.' This year they went to the 2017 budget and said, 'No, no. It is all right. We are not going to cut $30 billion; we are going to cut $22 billion.' And we are supposed to be grateful for that—our kids are supposed to be grateful for that? The kids in my electorate, whether they are living in Cannon Hill, Annerley or Holland Park West are meant to be grateful for that? Of course they are not. This country needs a well-educated future workforce and a well-educated future citizenry. That is what we need, and investing in education is the way to do that.

It is the same with the kindy cuts. I thought that this government would go to the 2017 budget and say, 'We have finally fixed universal access kindy funding. We have finally got to the point where we are not going to give one or two year extensions. We are going to do a five-year commitment so that kindies can have certainty moving forward.' But they did not. Imagine my shock. I was ready to write to my kindies and say, 'Well done, everyone. You have convinced the government to do the five-year funding.' But instead of running out this year it is going to run out next year. The government says that they wanted more time to negotiate. What we know is that the additional education opportunities that kids get from kindie are incredibly important for their future prospects. It is time the government gave a long-term commitment to the universal access funding and stopped leaving these kindergartens with the uncertainty that they are facing as a consequence of the funding decisions the government has made.

Probably closest to my heart at the moment, because of my portfolio as the shadow assistant minister for universities, is the cuts to universities. This government has a budget in which they want to cut university funding by almost $4 billion over four years. At the same time they want to put up student fees—so, increase the fees and drop the public funding. Then they want to make it harder for people on low incomes to be able to get by and save, by dropping the threshold at which you start to make a contribution to higher education. The reason we have an income contingent loan in this country is that there is a view that if you never get to a reasonably high income as a consequence of university fees then you never get to a point where you start to make that contribution. But once you do, you pay more in income tax and you pay a contribution to the cost of higher education. It is fair because there is a private benefit from higher education and there is a bigger public benefit from higher education. We all benefit if there are doctors, if there are lawyers, if there are trained veterinarians and if there are architects. I think that these cuts and these fee hikes, requiring students to pay more for less, are deeply reckless, particularly at a time such as we are facing right now when there are global challenges for which we will need an educated population.

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

I thank the member for her remarks and her confession of a youth misspent watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

Cathy O'Toole (Herbert, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in this place today to speak about the impact of this government's budget on my electorate of Herbert. The reality is that if I were just to speak today about what the Turnbull government has delivered for Townsville and North Queensland in the 2017 budget I would have very little or nothing to say, because this government has delivered absolutely nothing to Townsville and absolutely nothing to North Queensland. Instead, I will enlighten the government on everything that they could have delivered and everything they did not deliver in this year's federal budget.

Firstly, the two big-ticket items that were not in the budget, the two things for which Townsville has been screaming for some time now, the two infrastructure projects that need urgent acknowledgement and funding allocation are water security and energy infrastructure. The Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, has been meeting with local business leaders since before the last election and as recently as April to discuss how to get the Townsville economy and community back on track. In less than a month after his visit in April, the Leader of the Opposition came back to Townsville to announce $200 million for the building of a hydropower station and $100 million for water security infrastructure. These announcements were not rocket science. The lack of these significant and fundamental infrastructure projects is having a significant negative impact and is holding Townsville back. This is very obvious to those of us who live in the north, but if you see the world from the perspective of wealth, as does our Prime Minister—who is used to having a solid silver spoon in his mouth—I guess it does not really matter.

I was flabbergasted that the Turnbull government has committed nothing to water and energy security infrastructure in the budget for the north. The Turnbull government tries hard to copy a great deal of Labor's policy and commitments. This was clearly evident in regard to the Townsville stadium announcement. In October 2015, Labor committed $100 million towards the Townsville stadium, and more than eight months later—in fact, on the day before prepolling opened—the Prime Minister was dragged kicking and screaming to follow suit. Unfortunately, it looks like Labor will lead the way again, and I will continue to be a loud, persistent and strong voice in Canberra for my electorate of Herbert. I live in hope that someone in the government will listen and act. It would have been great if the Turnbull government had done what governments are supposed to do: deliver vital infrastructure for struggling communities. But it seems that Townsville's cries are falling on deaf ears. The Turnbull government's ignorance is outstanding. Townsville should not have to fight this hard to have access to water, and businesses should not have to shut their doors before the Turnbull government does something about addressing our growing energy crisis. But, due to the sheer pigheadedness of this government, I will take up the fight for Townsville and I will not stop until either this government is kicked out and a Shorten Labor government, which will deliver water and energy infrastructure, is voted in or the Turnbull government matches Labor's commitments.

Here we go again, it seems. The most obvious solution sits in our backyard, and even though the Turnbull government cannot seem to see it you can see the catchment area for this resource from space. Of course, I am talking about the Burdekin Falls Dam, a 'two birds with one stone' solution. The Burdekin Falls Dam is 130 kilometres west of Townsville. This dam is five times the size of Sydney Harbour, and the catchment area is bigger than England. But accessing this water resource is expensive. It is currently costing the Townsville City Council tens of thousands of dollars per day to pump 130 megalitres of water from the Haughton pipeline to the dam, which only delivers 90 megalitres due to evaporation. Currently, the Haughton pipeline does not directly feed to the Ross River Dam; it feeds into the Haughton channel, where water has to travel a further 46 kilometres to reach the Ross River Dam, which was built as a flood mitigation strategy.

What Townsville needs is a gravity-fed pipeline directly from the Burdekin Falls Dam, the raising of the dam wall and the construction of a hydro power station, as was the original vision. The plans were drafted in the eighties and the land purchased by a forward-thinking Hawke Labor government. It was the Howard government that stopped funding to deliver the full vision and construction of this vital infrastructure. The coalition government now have an opportunity to fix what they have ruined for the north, but they had better be warned: if you do not match Labor's $300 million commitment then you will be kicked out at the next election by the people living in the north that you have ignored.

Of course, this government could have addressed our growing ice epidemic. The electorate of Herbert has a substantial ice problem, which has contributed significantly to a high youth crime rate in the city of Townsville. Our closest youth drug rehabilitation and detox centre is in Brisbane, and this facility is mostly at capacity, which then leaves facilities in Melbourne available for our youth. That is simply too far for families and young people to travel. Once again, it would have been so easy for this government to match Labor's $5 million commitment to fund the Salvation Army to include a youth drug rehabilitation and detox centre in their new facility in Townsville, but, once again, the Turnbull government just did not think it was important enough.

This budget has pointed out the absolute hypocrisy of the Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, and his regional jobs plan, because nowhere in this budget has funding been allocated for government departments and services to be decentralised. It appears that the Deputy Prime Minister is interested only in his electorate and not all regional areas when it comes to his decentralisation plan. I have spoken to many organisations in North Queensland that have now seen the Deputy Prime Minister for what he really is. No funding in the budget has been not only a kick in the guts but a stab in the back, with salt rubbed into the wound. North Queenslanders will not forget this. It is not like it would have been hard for the Deputy Prime Minister to make a start regarding regional services. The government could have reinstated the 200 jobs cut from the Australian Taxation Office, the 19 jobs cut from the CSIRO and the four jobs cut from the office of the Department of Veterans' Affairs. That would have been a great start, but they could not even do that.

Now our community has heard whispers of even further uncertainty. It appears that the Turnbull government is considering closing the Bureau of Meteorology in Townsville. How quickly the Prime Minister has forgotten his trip to Proserpine, where he saw firsthand the devastation in the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie. I would have thought the member for Dawson would also understand the critical reasons for the Bureau of Meteorology to remain in Townsville, as his electorate was devastated by Cyclone Debbie. For the member for Dawson's sake, I will outline the great work and importance of the Bureau of Meteorology office in Townsville. It is because of their on-the-ground work and capacity to quickly provide information to local council disaster recovery management teams, state government, Defence and, of course, the community that there were no lives lost. Governments, businesses, organisations and communities were able to quickly prepare and be ready, and for that we can thank the initial on-the-ground work by the BOM staff, who were able to provide life-saving information as quickly as humanly possible. North Queensland is the heartland of tropical cyclones, and having the Bureau of Meteorology's office located in Townsville, which can act as a central point in North Queensland, is not negotiable; it is vital. No assurances have been given, and these whispers are getting louder.

Then, of course, we have the $22 billion cut to education. Education is the cornerstone of the future development of this nation. Education is the only way out of poverty and disadvantage for people wanting to contribute and achieve a good life. Our principals, schools, teachers and parents desperately need Labor's needs based funding, but sadly the Turnbull government would rather give a $65.4 billion tax cut to big business. Parents, principals and teachers know schools will be worse off because of the Liberals' $22 billion cut to education, which is the equivalent of cutting $2.4 million from every school in Australia over the next decade, or sacking 22,000 great teachers.

It will not be the schools in Wentworth, inner Sydney or Melbourne that miss out. No, it will be the schools in regional, rural and remote Queensland that will be left out. Of course, they are the schools that need funding the most. There is enough pressure on our schools as it is without this government cutting over $22 billion. Principals are already struggling to make ends meet. For example, the principal of the Aitkenvale State School is even doing a lot of the hard work and irrigation upgrades himself on weekends, pinching every penny he can to invest back in his teachers and students. Education should be bipartisan. This should not be an argument that we are having. But, sadly, it is. I cannot support $22 billion cuts to education, and I will not support anything other than Labor's full rollout of needs based funding.

Then we have the cuts to health. Australia used to be a place where we valued our health system. Everyone had a fair go when it came to access to quality healthcare services. But it is clear that the Turnbull government is hell-bent on destroying our healthcare system. This budget confirmed what the Australian public already knew: you cannot trust the coalition with health. The Turnbull government's budget locks in $2.2 billion cuts to GP, specialist and allied health services. This is further proof that the Prime Minister has simply paid lip service to caring about health. He has kept these cuts in place for three years.

Just today reports have come to light that the Turnbull government intends to abolish the private health insurance rebate. Consumers will be charged more for extras and states will be forced to find more money for public hospitals under radical funding changes being considered by top government officials. Documents reveal that the nation's most senior health bureaucrats are part of a secret task force developing a proposal for a Commonwealth hospital benefit, a new funding formula for public and private hospitals that would have widespread ramifications for patients and the medical industry.

I currently have my mother-in-law dying of cancer in the palliative care ward in the Townsville hospital. I can tell you that they need every cent they can get because that hospital has had to take that palliative care centre and turn it into an overflow unit for medical and surgical procedures—and that is simply unacceptable.

Before the Turnbull government tries to sweep this under the rug, tender documents show that the Department of Health has paid $55,000 to establish a task force on hospital funding. The task force have met three times, as recently as March 2017. This government is just hell-bent on destroying our public health system. We saw the task force created by the coalition government to privatise Medicare, and now we are seeing a new task force to destroy public hospitals. It is obvious when it comes to public health and public education that you just cannot trust the Turnbull government.

The disgraceful lifting of the GP index freeze is hardly worth noting. I recently met with a healthcare reference group that I have formed in my electorate of Herbert, made up of local medical leaders, including GPs, from across Townsville. I asked them openly and honestly about the Turnbull government's lifting of the GP index freeze. The replies were very disheartening, indeed. GPs told me that lifting the GP freeze gives patients a maximum of 12c for the next two years and then they will get $2.

Sadly for the people of Townsville and North Queensland I am sorry to say to say that the Turnbull budget does very little to nothing for us. This is a shameful budget. It is not only that there is nothing delivered north of Brisbane; we were not even afforded a mention in the budget speech. The Turnbull government has just ignored Townsville and the north. Had it delivered any of the things that I mentioned, I would have welcomed the announcement. But instead of rejoicing in North Queensland we have a huge fight on our hands, and I will be a loud and strong advocate in this place.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended fro m 18:59 to 19 : 44

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

It being after 7.30 pm, the debate is interrupted. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next day of sitting.

Federat ion Chamber adjourned at 19:44