Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018 and related bills. Since early May, we have heard nothing from this government except for the word 'fair' thrown about with lots of gusto and abandon. It is a reminder of the 2016 election campaign. Back then, all we heard from the Prime Minister of the government was 'jobs and growth'. Wherever we went, on every advertising sign, on every placard and at every press conference, you would hear those three words: jobs and growth. The government is very good at repeating these slogans—especially three-word ones, for some reason. If you go back a few years, a lot of them add up to three words. Especially with the last slogan, 'jobs and growth', they have shown that they do not have a clue about what either jobs and growth or fairness, which is the word that is being thrown about at the moment, are.

If there was ever any doubt, this year's budget shows that the Liberal government under this Prime Minister is the most out of touch in history. How can the PM talk about jobs and growth while at the same time refusing to do anything to protect the nation's most vulnerable and lowest-paid workers? At the same time as we are hearing about fairness and jobs and growth, there is a pay cut to some of the most vulnerable workers, cuts to penalty rates and a $65 billion tax cut to the highest end of town. This government's refusal to support Labor's Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017, which was in the House the other day, will seriously hurt workers, especially those low-paid workers that rely on weekends.

Figures show that my electorate will be very hard hit by this government's refusal to stop the Fair Work Commission's cut to penalty rates. I have said before in this place that more than 12,586 people, or one in six workers, in the Hindmarsh electorate that I represent in Adelaide's western suburbs work in the retail, pharmacy, food and accommodation industries. These people will be hit the hardest. These people will have an average of $77 cut from their pay, while, at the same time, the government is proposing a $65 billion tax cut to Australia's wealthiest people. That is over 12½ thousand workers in my electorate who could lose up to $77 a week because of this government's cuts. Retail is the second biggest industry in my electorate, employing 7,749 workers. Food and hospitality is the eighth biggest industry, employing 4,837 workers. Hurting these workers will be bad for the economy and bad for South Australia and does nothing to assist the economy of this nation.

I go back to the three-word slogan that the government was using in the last election: jobs and growth. So much for jobs and growth when you are cutting from the lowest-paid workers in our nation. Then we come to the words 'wages growth'. 'Jobs and growth' was the slogan, but wages growth is at a record low in this nation. With this cut to penalty rates, workers will now have even less money to spend in local shops, restaurants and other businesses. If there is less money around—for example, in my electorate 12,000-odd people will be earning less than they did before the penalty rate cuts—that means that there is less money in the economy, so the economy does not benefit from it; all this is doing is cutting money from workers.

The government are giving the top end of town a $65 billion tax cut, which will not get spent in the economy anyway. The top end of town have already got enough money. They are earning very high wages or have very big incomes, and that money will continue to roll as it did two months ago, three months ago and six months ago. This is where it will hurt, because there is less money going straight into the economy. I think the PM is selling out our lowest paid, most vulnerable workers in order to give billionaires a $65 billion tax break. It is unacceptable that more than 60 members in this place, including the Prime Minister, have called for penalty rates to be abolished or cut.

We on this side of the House understand just how much this will hurt workers. The Leader of the Opposition has introduced a bill opposing it, because we will not stand for it. The effect this will have on families, not only in my electorate but in all the electorates around the country, will be devastating. As I said, up to 700,000 Australians will lose $77 per week. People will have to work longer for less pay. Women will be disproportionately affected, because a lot of women are part-time workers who work on weekends. Regional communities will have less money spent in their economies.

But it is not only vulnerable workers who will suffer under the government's cuts. Pensioners will be hit particularly hard. There was nothing in the May budget for seniors. There was nothing but cuts. There was nothing for aged care. We still have massive shortages of aged-care packages around the nation. We are ageing at a rapid pace, yet nothing was mentioned in the budget for our most elderly and vulnerable. And, of course, there was nothing for welfare recipients.

Not only does this government want to raise the pension age to 70 years, the oldest pension age in the developed world; it also wants to scrap the energy supplement for pensioners. That will leave pensioners, carers and Newstart recipients $550 a year worse off. For some of these people, that is the difference between paying a bill or ensuring they have food on the table. It could make the difference in whether or not they can pay their medical costs. For an age pensioner, $550 is a lot of money. This comes on top of other harsh cuts to pensioners as a result of this government's new assets test. How is that fair? We have heard the word 'fair' thrown about by the government constantly in the last couple of months, but I see nothing fair in this. Where are the jobs and the growth that Prime Minister Turnbull spoke about during the election campaign? He is cutting from the most vulnerable, lowest paid workers.

I will go back to pensioners. I have one of the oldest electorates in the country. I have pensioners in my electorate who have worked extremely hard all their lives. Some have fought in wars, and they have paid their taxes their entire life. They have built the foundations that we today stand on to lead the lives that we do. They have contributed to our economy and to our society, and this government is hanging them out to dry. They deserve to be treated better and not as poorly as they are by this government.

We also cannot trust the government when it comes to health. Pensioners and other vulnerable Australians will be hard hit by the government's continued attacks on Medicare. In the lead-up to the last election, the government tried to bring in co-payments. They failed. They then tried to bring in co-payments through the backdoor by extending the freeze, which failed. They then decided to outsource the IT of Medicare. The government say they are committed to Medicare, but there are three examples of how they are not. The only reason those things did not come to fruition is that the opposition opposed them and people in the Senate opposed them. But, believe you me, had the government had the numbers to put those measures through, they would have put those measures through and we would be much worse off today.

I have a lot of doubts and questions when I hear the government saying they are guaranteeing Medicare. We all know that they have opposed Medicare from its inaugural days in the 1970s and have continued to do so over the years. They have tried to meddle with it and do whatever they can to clip at the edges of it until there is not much left. As I have said, they have failed to drop the Medicare freeze immediately, meaning that bulk-billing rates will continue to fall and vulnerable people will have to pay more to see their doctor. It is not uncommon for me to hear people saying that they used to be bulk-billed when they went to their clinic but now they have to pay. It is a regular occurrence that constituents come to my electorate office to tell me about their medical centre and how they are now having to contribute towards their bill. How is that fair for pensioners, for whom every single cent counts? They have a budget and all of a sudden they are hit with higher medical costs.

If this coalition government were seriously committed to jobs and growth, they would ensure that our schools were properly and adequately funded. We know that, without adequate funding for our schools, we will not go on to create the jobs of the future. We will not go on to have high-tech jobs created. We will not go on to have cutting-edge industries, which we are falling behind in around the world. We have to fund schools appropriately. School is where children get the education that they require and learn the things to go on and create those cutting-edge jobs. There was another slogan in the lead-up to the 2016 election. High-tech jobs were to be created in the IT sector, STEM and a whole range of things. To do that you have to educate the next generation of Australians. You have to ensure that there are adequate funds there, not cut $22.3 billion from education, as is being proposed.

We see the government are not interested in ensuring that every child in Australia is adequately supported to achieve their full potential. They clearly believe it is more important to give big businesses a $65 billion tax cut than adequately fund our schools and the next generation of Australians so that they can go on and create the cutting-edge jobs of the future. I do not see how that is fair.

Under the government's plan, school students, parents and teachers will miss out on $22 billion worth of funding. This is funding that was to go to students who need extra support in numeracy and literacy to bring them up to an adequate standard so that they can achieve and basically benefit from the education system. It was also there to help teachers support students with additional needs. What we are getting instead is a $22 billion cut to our education system. That means on average $2.4 million from every school in Australia over the next decade. That would be the equivalent of sacking 22,000 teachers—teachers who make a real difference in the lives of our children. This equates to around $265 million being ripped from South Australian schools in 2018 through to 2019 and, in my electorate of Hindmarsh, a cut of over $10 million in public schools alone. That is just the public schools, let alone the Catholic schools and the other independent schools.

As I said, it is not just the government school sector that is enraged. Catholic principals and educators from all over the country are warning us that parents face fee hikes of thousands of dollars and some Catholic schools may even close. The government continue to talk about fairness. We hear that word 'fairness', yet there is nothing fair in anything produced in this budget. They have demonstrated over many years that they are not interested in fairness in schools. They are not interested in needs based funding that will create a fair, level playing field for our students.

What is more, the government has completely ignored South Australia in this budget. There is approximately $70 billion for roads, rail, ports and airports across the country but not a single dollar for South Australia, and we have projects ready to go, projects that will create work and assist in infrastructure. For example, this means nothing for our roads. Marion Road has been earmarked for some infrastructure works. Before the 2016 election, the Liberal candidate and the Prime Minister were out there spruiking it, saying that they would look into this, do a study and ensure that they fix this terrible mess which is the congestion between Mooringe Avenue, Marion Road and Cross Road, and there is a tram that goes through. I have yet to see a single thing on it. I was hoping I would on budget night. I sat there waiting for the words, 'Marion Road, Plympton: the intersection.' It was promised before the 2016 election, but there was not one cent for infrastructure for South Australia.

We have the proposal for the AdeLINK tram extension which would go right through the middle of my electorate. That proposal is ready to go. It would create 2,000 jobs and open up transport. It would be a link between the tram service in the CBD and the coastal suburbs of Henley Beach with a spike into the Adelaide Airport, giving Adelaide Airport the infrastructure it requires for public transport. But there was not a thing on it in the budget. This is ready to go. It would create, over its life, 2,000 jobs in the infrastructure area. But, of course, we remember the goading of Holden to leave Adelaide back in 2013 by Mr Hockey— (Time expired)

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hindmarsh for allowing me to steal his podium mid-sentence! I also thank the member for Cunningham for allowing me to step in ahead of her on the speakers list. I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018 and related bills before the House. In doing so, I want to address where this budget fails to deliver on fairness and to give a fair go to the people I represent in the federal seat of Calwell.

My constituents are very much everyday Australians. They are workers, families, students, pensioners, young people and refugees—in fact, a large number of them are refugees, as we are receiving a huge number of the 12,000 that have come in from Syria due to the extra places. My constituents are also people with disabilities and, by and large, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and very diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Many of them have worked and continue to work in the low-skilled area of manufacturing, although that is now a vanishing job area. I have highly skilled people, employed people, self-employed people and large numbers of underemployed and unemployed people. They are, by and large, resilient and very hardworking Australians, and they were looking for a fair go in this budget.

It is a budget that the Treasurer has termed 'a fair budget for a time when things are looking up'. So my constituents were hoping for some fair measures that might be of assistance to them in the way in which they get through their daily lives. I think 'a fair go' generally means giving everyone a real and equal opportunity and the resources to have a go and to make the best of what they can. It means paying taxes and making contributions to budgets according to each person's capacity to do so. It also means paying your fair share if you are a corporate or big business, and it certainly does not mean ordinary households and workers doing the heavy lifting of budget repair by paying higher taxes as company taxes and wages decline. I am glad to see, in recent commentary in the media over the last couple of days, that so-called top budget experts are making that point, and they are making it very loudly.

The budget's across-the-board tax increase to fund Medicare, the NDIS and its $65 billion corporate tax cuts at the expense of education through a $22 billion cut to schools, hikes in university fees and cuts to TAFE and apprenticeships is hardly a vote of confidence in enabling opportunity for the ordinary people in my electorate. By choosing to deliver to big business and choosing multinationals at the expense of middle- and working-class Australians, and by making the risky assumption that company taxes will translate into jobs growth and wages growth, the government is putting its eggs in one basket and, therefore, failing to secure better days for all of the people in my electorate and for ordinary Australians generally.

I have had a number of my constituents call me since the budget was delivered to raise their concerns. I also had the opportunity, like many of my colleagues, to visit some of my public schools and, indeed Catholic schools in the short period between the budget and the next parliamentary sitting week. I think it is probably best to use some of their voices today here in the chamber to illustrate the frustration and disappointment of the people in my electorate with the budget.

Sam Caruso is a constituent of mine. I have known him for a long time. He lives in Roxburgh Park. He recently retired after 52 years of working in very labour-intensive jobs. He has been a fitter and turner, and most of his life has been spent working on road construction. He began work at the age of 14, not an unusual story for many of the people who I represent, and now he is very much looking forward to having a rest, as he put it to me, and enjoying his retirement. He and I and many other people in this country feel that people like him have done their bit for the country. They have done their bit for the economy. They have done their bit for the budget. It is now time for them to retire to enjoy their senior years. I think we owe him and others like him that right.

One of the first things Sam said to me is that the thought that the government is still harbouring the idea of raising the pension age to 70—which, as we know, would be the highest in the developed world—riles him. It does a lot of other people also, including me. The type of manual labour that Sam has been involved in for 52 years does eventually take its toll on people. It is the sort of physical work that is not found in corporate boardrooms and it is the sort of work that captains of industry would never understand and would never endure. So people like Sam after 52 years of work are hardly in a state to be physically able to continue to do this sort of work until the age of 70. The question is: what happens to people like Sam?

The zombie measure on raising the age of retirement to 70 was introduced in the 2014 budget. I remember the then Treasurer Joe Hockey said: 'What we are going to do is deliver a fairer system for the age pension. We ae going to focus on the sustainability of the system with a reasonable quality of life. The age pension expenditure today is currently more than we spend on defence.' Well, some people might argue that that is not a bad thing. The fact that our age pension spending exceeds that of our defence spending is a sign of a civilised society that is focused on and prioritises the care of its elderly and, in this case, its pensioners.

As I said, the then Treasurer Joe Hockey made that quote. But I want to quote shadow minister Jenny Macklin when she said:

How does Mr Turnbull expect construction workers, nurses and farmers to work until they’re 70? He’s completely out of touch.

The government is out of touch because it does not actually understand the type of work that these Australians are involved in and it does not seem to care very much whether people are able to retire and have quality time with their families and to do the sorts of things that they did not get a chance to do while they were working and doing their bit for the country.

The real issue here is that working to 70 might be okay for some in the future. I might, if I am lucky, choose to work beyond that as well. But for people like Sam in my electorate, the ones who are physically unable to work because they have endured so much physical labour, what are the alternatives for them? Unfortunately, the government is silent on this. Are workers with their working life potentially prolonged to 70 now expected to end it on unemployment benefits, just ticking boxes at the Job Network providers? What kind of indignity is that for people who have worked most of their lives? Sam cannot imagine himself being able to work on the roads until he is 70. He asked me to say that. He cannot imagine other fellow Australians doing hard yakka until the age of 70 either.

It is only a government that sees its citizens as cogs in wheels that could come up with this nasty policy. Only a government that does not really understand the value and dignity of its citizens could come up with a plan to head off the availability of the age pension to its citizens while, simultaneously, thinking nothing of handing over $65 billion worth of tax cuts to big business—tax cuts that are actually coming out of the public purse, contributed to by the taxes of people like Sam.

The budget is taking from the labour of middle and working class taxpayers and handing it to the corporate speculators. The idea that company tax cuts will lead to jobs growth is speculative. The truth is that most people I speak to tend to think that this is going to be an opportunity for the corporates to increase their profit margins rather than to create jobs. That is the view of the people out on the streets. It is very important to make that point here today.

Returning to Sam—because Sam is very important; there are many Sams in my electorate—he will not forget that this budget has provided little help for or interest in helping the automotive supply chain manufacturers successfully transition either. My electorate, the federal seat of Calwell, is home to the now closed Ford factory plant. It was a Liberal government that ended car manufacturing in this country, and the so-called Growth Fund that was introduced, which was supposed to help the supply chain diversify, has always been grossly underfunded. There is no joy in this budget for people in that industry, because the top-up that was introduced in the 2017 budget has for many been too little and come too late. Our manufacturing firms struggle to remain competitive, especially now, in light of skyrocketing energy prices. The budget has offered no immediate assistance for manufacturers who are under serious pressure as result of this. To this end, I want to speak about Willow Ware and their 200 employees in my electorate.

Willow Ware is a manufacturer in my electorate that has experienced the disinterest this government has in helping Australian manufacturers. It is a 130-year-old company, founded by Ralph Wilson Sr, and I think we are on to the third consecutive Ralph Wilson. Willow Ware has survived the Great Depression. It has survived the credit crunch and the global financial crisis. It is a company that, during the world wars, did its bit for Australia—this iconic Australian company, by the way, makes the Esky; that is how iconic it is—but now that it needs help it is having to fight this government's war against manufacturing. Last year, Willow Ware was faced with the very real possibility of shutting its doors, ending a long family tradition of manufacturing Australian products, including the iconic Esky, and leaving 200 people in my electorate unemployed and their families out in the cold. It faced challenges from cheap overseas mass imports, with major outlets preferring the cheap plastic buckets to the quality, Australian-made product. In order to compete it needed to transform and upgrade its machinery, but it faced challenges with rising energy costs. Willow Ware is a company that also makes a car component for the Toyota motor car company—it received an award for from Toyota last year—so it is part of the automotive parts supply chain.

Willow Ware reached out to the Turnbull government and its ministers. It invited the Prime Minister to visit its factory in Tullamarine, but Mr Turnbull's office told the company he was unavailable. This is a company that is very close to the Prime Minister's political party, by the way. It wrote to the then minister for innovation, Christopher Pyne, in early 2016 for some assistance. All it got back was a letter suggesting that it apply for a government grant that was already out of date. Approaches were made after the last election to the then innovation minister, Greg Hunt, and to the current minister for industry, Arthur Sinodinos, all to no avail. As the local member, I have tried to help Willow Ware. The Leader of the Opposition visited its factory, and the shadow minister for industry, Senator Kim Carr, and I have made a number of trips to the Willow Ware factory in Tullamarine. We have tried to be of assistance to Willow Ware.

The truth is that they came close to closing their doors not long ago. If it had not been for the Andrews state Labor government intervening and assisting Willow to make that transition—that crucial transition and upgrading in order to be able, as I said, to compete against cheap imports—I feel that our local electorate would have copped another 200 job losses as a direct result of a situation that exists in Australian manufacturing at the moment and is dependent largely on who are in government and what their attitude towards manufacturing is. So I am pleased to say that we have been able to preserve Willow Ware, one of the last iconic Australian manufacturers, in my electorate and protect their jobs.

On the issue of manufacturing and jobs growth—and I do not have much time left, unfortunately—I must say that the whole debate around penalty rates and working conditions and the incredible failure of the government to understand the needs of working men and women in the middle- to lower-class sectors of the economy have left me and a lot of other people absolutely dumbfounded. The idea that penalty rates are somehow a luxury that employers cannot afford is so ludicrous that it needs an entire 15 minutes to explain. On that note, I thank the Deputy Speaker!

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

I rise to speak today on the budget bills, Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2017-2018 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018. I have to say, like my colleague the member for Calwell, that there is a great deal of detail that needs to be addressed in terms of the issues and concerns that I have with the budget, but I will take the opportunity in various specific pieces of legislation to go through those in more detail. Already having spoken on the schools funding bill about my concerns in that area, I will do the same on a variety of other issues, including the broader education field, which includes TAFE and university, and health, in particular the changes that are in place around Medicare and the very, very, very slow winding back of the freeze and the impacts that is having on my electorate.

Also I would like to take the opportunity in the future to talk in more detail about infrastructure funding. There is a very significant project in my area called the Maldon-Dombarton rail link. That is very critical to the development of our port and job opportunities locally and is also, at the other end of the rail link connecting into south-western Sydney, an opportunity for our two communities and economies to be well integrated and to work together more effectively. So I will canvass that as well.

It is also, I think, very important to recognise that for age pensioners there are some real issues in this budget. My colleague has just spoken about extending the retirement age to 70. I also come from an area with a high percentage of people working in sectors such as manufacturing. It is a real problem for people who do physically heavy work to be required to work that much longer. And, of course, there are changes that have occurred to the energy supplement and what they will mean for pensioners.

It is probably quite clear to the chamber that I have some real concerns about the inherent unfairness in the priorities that this government has decided to fund in this budget, particularly given the fact that, when you look at some of those cuts and who is paying and compare that to a decision to implement a $65 billion cut for the big end of town, it is not like the government is saying, 'Everybody's pulling their belt in.' It is actually saying to those who need it least: 'Well, you can have a bit extra. Millionaires, you can get a tax cut. Big business, you can get a tax cut.' If you balance those two decisions, the government is expecting those who are on average and low incomes to take a further cut to their income at the same time as it is increasing the capacity of those who least need it and probably will not even notice it, to be honest, to have an opportunity to get a tax cut—people like me, on an income in the top tax brackets, getting a tax cut.

But I specifically want to talk today about an aspect of the budget that gives me great concern. It is something that has been worrying me for quite a while because it is consistently raised with me in my local area. That is what I see as an inherent generational unfairness that is developing in our communities, and the budget not only does not address that but will, in a significant number of ways, exacerbate it.

It has been the case for a number of generations that each of us has aspired to leave our kids, the next generation, in a better position than we were. I consider my grandparents. My grandfather worked his whole life—he turned 100 recently, so I will say on the record: happy birthday, Grandad!—and my nan, as was usual with her generation, was a stay-at-home mum her whole life. A trip to Sydney was probably the furthest they travelled in their lifetime. Neither of them finished high school education. It was pretty standard for their generation. My parents, by contrast, finished high school. My mum did not go on to post-high school education but, after finishing the early raising of children, had a very successful working life, working for a state member of parliament, actually. She was very good at her job and very well respected. My parents were able to buy their own home, not only their first home but to upgrade and to do better over the lifetime of home ownership and be in a position where they did not have a mortgage when they came to retirement age. They have had advantages that their parents did not have—for example, being able to travel overseas. Then we come to my generation. It is the case that for us finding employment was reasonably easy. I and many of my brothers and cousins were the first in our family to go to university—we were the first generation to get a university education. I will say that one of my brothers, who completed an apprenticeship, has probably ended up doing even better than the rest of us who had a university education. He is an electrician, an electrical engineer. But we all had post-secondary education, and we had the opportunity for the good jobs that that made available for us.

This generation is facing a situation that we in this parliament need to start coming to terms with. The way this generation is connected to the employment market is very disjointed. Even with a post-secondary education they usually find that they have casual, part-time or contract work. They may in effect be working full-time but do not have the security of a full-time job. My sons are of an age to be in that group, and I know that many of their friends have been the same. It takes a long, long time for them to get their first permanent job. They may be bringing in an income that is equivalent to working full-time, but if they try to compete in the rental market, let alone apply for a mortgage, on an insecure income base then they are disadvantaged significantly. So the implications of that very casualised, unreliable work experience that many of our young people are having is delaying them put down the roots that will pay off when they reach retirement age. Among the big advantages of our retirement system are not only superannuation and the age pension but also the high levels of home ownership that we have in this country and the support that that gives to retirement lifestyles and income. I am very concerned that young people now are finding that that is an increasingly difficult reality to achieve. They of course have much higher HECS debts than we did. Even if they do diplomas and vocational education, often they will have a debt from that.

On economic but also on equity grounds, this parliament needs to start looking at the reality of their lived experience and how we address it. That is my disappointment with this budget: it does not come to grips with those issues. In fact, some of the decisions in this budget, in particular the post-secondary school decisions, the significant funding cuts from our TAFE and vocational sector and the significant shift of cost from the government onto students for university students, are going to exacerbate those issues. There will be a triple-whammy effect: the cuts to universities, the impact of the increased percentage of the cost of a degree being borne by the student and the fact that you will have to start repaying HECS even earlier. Quite honestly, if you are living in any of our major cities—or our major regional cities, somewhere like Wollongong—and you are getting $42,000 you are going to be really struggling to meet your ordinary cost-of-living requirements. That triple whammy is going to have a very significant effect on the young people that we are talking about.

Turning to housing, I know the government has introduced a savings proposal through the superannuation scheme. I have talked to a number of young people about this. The general feeling was: 'Okay, instead of taking me 30 years it will take me 20 years to get anywhere near saving a deposit.' The real issue for them is what is happening in the market when they want to try and buy. The fact that the cost of housing has gone up so significantly and that in the last 10 years we have moved from a 10 per cent deposit being required to a 20 per cent deposit being required, means that young people feel like every time they start to get towards the goal post that makes it viable, the goal post moves again. Labor has been pointing out very accurately that the competitive forces in that market from investors, who are using multiple investment properties to increase their own wealth, are having a real impact on young people.

I want to finish by reporting to the House on a survey. Because of this concern, I did a survey in my electorate of people between the ages of 18 and 25 to see what issues were concerning them. There mentioned exactly those issues I have mentioned: affordable education; health care; job opportunities; increasing costs of housing; TAFE and university course fees; and insufficient action on climate change, which was a big issue of concern for them; as well as disability issues and asylum seeker issues. That is the full range of the sorts of issues that were raised with me. Jobs, wages and penalty rates came out at 60 per cent of what those young people who responded were concerned about.

I will share some of their comments with the chamber. Elise from Bulli said:

Casual work — the requirements to obtain causal work is almost impossible, you have older retirement age and young adults (school leavers) in the workforce and university students, and stores are going automated. Penalty rates and stagnant wages.

Miriam from Thirroul said:

I think working for the dole is no good and you should bring back free education and healthcare. The youth allowance is not enough to live on.

Lucy from Bellambi said:

Keeping university affordable. Making jobs available to people over 18 years old. Ensuring that young people aren't paying more so baby boomers can earn more – accountability.

Lachlan from Wollongong said:

Plans to combat the increasingly obvious underpayment of students in the hospitality and service industries. I'm referring specifically to the Fairfax investigation published late last year, highlighting the prolific exploitation of young workers by supposedly 'great local businesses' in the Illawarra area.

Blake from Bulli said:

I think Mr Turnbull should realise that what he believes what will help the nation Australia will actually make it much worse for the future. I think also, if no one will reverse these damages, then we will have more hungry homeless people living in our land, which would be us all, and the only housing we would afford will be tents. And also if education will rise up more, then we will have no future for our country because no one can afford an education to lead us forward. No jobs + no money + no education = no future.

Mark said:

Fair penalty rates. Fish and chip shops have to pay $35ph while maccas get away with $22. This is how our businesses die.

Claire from Woonona said:

Affordability of housing in the city is becoming so high that most university or TAFE students cannot hope to work, study full time and live comfortably. As a commuting student, I believe youth wages need to be reviewed.

Remy from Coledale wrote:

Minimum rate of pay is too low making it impossible to break into the housing market. Competition in the local housing market and fake inflation by real estate agents makes it impossible to buy your first home/apartment …

Alexis from Austinmer wrote:

I have recently completed a 2 year TAFE course and was unlucky enough to start in a year that it went from $1200 to $12000 a year. The way things are, I'm worried about the education of the children of the future …

Callum from Woonona wrote:

To put it simply Wollongong TAFE if not the whole TAFE system is a complete circus. Soon to come out of my time as an apprentice I know the future isnt that bright, with only 1 4th year apprentice last year securing a full time job out of 10. Some got casual work but how am I meant to get a house loan with a casual job, or any job? Maybe i should of just gone to uni and avoided the TAFE system, racked up a massive hex debt and never find a well paying job so all the thoughtful tax payers have to pay my debt off for me.

Nathanial from Cordeaux Heights wrote:

Penalty rates being slashed — pretty obvious why this is a bad thing. Rising TAFE and Uni costs - It's important to improve the accessibility and affordability of education.

He also talks about higher rents and decreasing housing affordability, writing:

My generation will never be able to afford a property if the market continues the way it is.

Courtenay from Stanwell Park said:

… we need real, immediate action on climate change. Stop putting profits before people and our environment. NSW is our worst state for renewable energy. This deeply saddens me. We could be leaders …

Those are the voices of young people in my electorate, and I think it is clear why I feel that the budget fails the next generation.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018, which is, effectively, where the coalition government have laid out their priorities for Australia. This 2017 budget delivers a clear picture of what the Turnbull government stand for: absolutely nothing. Contrary to the rhetoric from the Treasurer on budget night, the LNP certainly do not stand for fairness. Fairness is not a quality you can fake. It is not a quality that you can rote learn and trot out in a speech. It is not a quality that you can trot out when it suits your political interests and then shove back in the political drawer, waiting for the next year. Fairness comes from the heart, not a focus group. Let us look at some of the unfair budget announcements by the Turnbull government, to confirm that they just fundamentally do not get fairness.

Let us look at higher education. The Turnbull government thinks that it is fair to hike up fees for university students and make them pay back the debt sooner, all while cutting funding for universities by $3.8 billion. Not only is this unfair; it is short sighted. Increasing student fees and lowering the repayment threshold for students to just $42,000 will no doubt deter some potential students from embarking on a tertiary education and the career that follows. We should not be deterring students from participating in tertiary education; we should be encouraging them. That is how we boost productivity. Unlocking the educational potential of young Australians is good for them and good for our economy. All Australians should have the opportunity to pursue a tertiary education, no matter where they live or how much their parents earn. Cutting funding for universities will have a detrimental effect not only on university teaching but also on the availability of university programs and university facilities. Also—scarily so—it will damage Australia's research efforts.

We have a proud history of groundbreaking research endeavours. The vaccine for the human papillomavirus was developed by Professor Ian Frazer and his team at the University of Queensland, just down the road from my electorate. Professor Brian Schmidt, an astronomer at the Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, at ANU, here in Canberra, was awarded a Nobel prize in physics in 2011 for his part in discovering that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Professor Barry Marshall, another Nobel laureate, showed that a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, is the main cause of stomach and duodenal ulcers. He leads a team undertaking varied research into the bacterium at the Marshall Centre for infectious diseases, research and training, within the University of Western Australia. And that is just to name a few.

There are many more Australians who have made important research discoveries in varied academic disciplines, and there are many more researchers right now in our universities currently striving to make the next big discovery or medical breakthrough. So it is short sighted to cut investment to universities, and it will have a detrimental impact on such important research endeavours. Cutting university funding to pay for a $65 billion big-business tax giveaway is short sighted; it is dumb economics; and it is fundamentally unfair.

Prime Minister Turnbull's 2017 budget fails on child care. It is unfair that an average Australian family with two children will face childcare fee increases of over $2,500 per year, a $2,500 fee hike at a time when wage growth is at record lows. Effectively, living standards are going backwards. One in three families is going to be worse off. Over 70,000 families on incomes under $65,000 will have to pay more. The most vulnerable and disadvantaged children will have their access to early education halved. The out-of-pocket costs for child care have risen every year under the Liberal government—and, as you know, Deputy Speaker, the coalition is about to commence its fifth year in government.

The Turnbull government will also introduce a complex new activity test. This test will only make it harder for working women, especially those working part time and casually, to access affordable child care. Not only is this unfair; it is short sighted. The participation of women in the workforce in Australia is still 13 percentage points behind that of men. They are an untapped resource. Women in Australia have a lower participation rate than in New Zealand—and I can't stand it when the Kiwis beat us at anything!—in the United Kingdom and in Denmark. Affordable and accessible child care is essential to improving the participation rate of women in the workforce. Making it harder for women to access affordable child care is unfair to Australian families, unfair to Australian women and unfair to Australian children, particularly those who are most disadvantaged.

It is unfair that the Turnbull government's 2017 budget affirms that they will see an increase in the pension age to 70. The Minister for Finance confirmed last week in Senate estimates:

Increasing the pension age to 70 is a measure that we remain committed to …

He said it remained government policy. If so, Australia will have the oldest pension age in the developed world. Builders, tradies, nurses and farmers would have to continue what is sometimes backbreaking work until they are 70 before they would be eligible for the age pension.

And people on the pension are being hoodwinked by the Turnbull government, who want accolades for a one-off payment secured by Independent senators, effectively a paltry $1.50 per week for pensioners, while at the same time they are axing the energy supplement, which will cost those same pensioners $365 a year—all to pay for a $65 billion tax giveaway for big business, and many of those big businesses are foreign. And not everyone will get the one-off payment. People struggling on Newstart will not get a cent, but they will still get a cut of $8.80 a week from the axing of the energy supplement, at the same time that power bills are going through the roof. It is unfair to force people to work until they are 70 before they can access the age pension. It is unfair to rip money off pensioners while at the same time giving a $65 billion tax giveaway to big business.

It is unfair that the Turnbull government's 2017 budget totally ignores climate change. There was not one mention of climate change in the 2017 budget. Former President Barack Obama said last year:

One of the most urgent challenges of our time is climate change …

Why is it unfair for the Turnbull government to ignore climate change? It is unfair because Prime Minister Turnbull is leaving one of the most urgent challenges of our time to his children and to his grandchildren to solve. It is unfair because climate change is having an impact on our planet right now. It is unfair because, unless we tackle climate change now, my children may not get to enjoy the natural wonders that we enjoy in Australia, like the Great Barrier Reef, and the tourism jobs associated with it. A combination of two mass bleaching events has meant that half of the Great Barrier Reef has died over the past two years. This is on the watch of the member for Wentworth, the very same member for Wentworth who famously said:

I will not lead a party that is not as committed to effective action on climate change as I am.

Now, some might argue that the Prime Minister is not actually leading, but the Prime Minister and his government have shown that they are not committed to doing anything at all about climate change. We have even had bizarre suggestions that clean climate-change action might entail funding coal-fired operations.

When Labor was in government, carbon pollution fell by over 10 per cent. The Turnbull government has spent $2.2 billion of taxpayers' money under their Direct Action Policy, only to see pollution increase—not decrease but increase—by almost six per cent. The central pillar of the Direct Action Policy, the Emission Reduction Fund, has actually run out of funds. This government has no plan to tackle climate change. It is unfair—cowardly, some might say—to leave our children and our grandchildren to tackle dangerous climate change. It is unfair to fail to address one of the most urgent challenges of our time. It would be unfair to leave our children a dead Great Barrier Reef.

It is unfair to announce a major transport infrastructure project and not announce any plans for funding to connect that project to the Port of Brisbane. It is unfair and incompetent to end up 35 kilometres short. On budget night the Turnbull government announced funding of $8.4 billion to build the Melbourne to Brisbane Inland Rail. In their media release they said it was the biggest rail project in 100 years. The problem is the railway line starts in Melbourne, which is okay, it heads north, which is okay, but then it ends at Acacia Ridge. Acacia Ridge is right in the middle of my electorate. The Turnbull government has announced no plan and no funding to get freight from Acacia Ridge to the Port of Brisbane. For those who may be from a little bit further south and may not know Acacia Ridge, it is near Stable Swamp Creek, which is a tributary of the Oxley Creek, which flows into the Brisbane River, which then goes down to the Port of Brisbane. I am not sure that the transport minister has ever been to this area, but you cannot take cargo ships up Stable Swamp Creek, I can assure you.

It is unfair to leave the people who live in my electorate in the dark about how this essential part of the project is going to be implemented—or, in fact, whether it will be implemented at all. If there is no new railway line for the freight to get to the port, the freight will have to be transported on trucks, which will increase the traffic congestion on the already choked up roads in my electorate, and you obviously cannot have trucks double handling coal or wheat—or even cattle, for that matter. It is not efficient at all. So, if there is a new railway line to be built to finish the project, there are only really three options, you could say. The first is a tunnel from Acacia Ridge to the Port of Brisbane going right under the homes of people living in Macgregor and Sunnybank and those places in my electorate. The second option is another train line to be built alongside the Gateway Motorway, which would need to cut into the Karawatha Forest, one of the largest areas of remnant bushland within Brisbane and Logan. The third option would be perhaps to connect with the Beenleigh line around the Princess Alexandra Hospital and out onto the Cleveland line, with a spur off to the Port of Brisbane.

Moreton constituents deserve to know whether the Turnbull government intends to finish this project, how they intend to complete the line and what the time frame for the project is. Or are they just going to stop at Acacia Ridge, 35 kilometres from the water? It was unfair to leave the people of Moreton worried about their homes and the amenity of the suburb they live in just so the Prime Minister could make a glib announcement on budget night.

This 2017 budget is unfair because it cuts $2.2 billion out of Medicare. It is unfair that Australians will continue to pay more for their health care under the Turnbull government. Despite announcing that they were lifting the GP freeze, it has now been revealed that the freeze will not actually be lifted until 2020. The Turnbull government fundamentally does not care about Medicare. They fundamentally do not hold it dear and cannot be trusted to protect Medicare. There are 113 Medicare items that will stay frozen for another three years. These items were accessed 23 million times last financial year. Important health services like consultations for mental health plans and chronic disease assessments will stay frozen. These services are essential to keep Australians healthy and safe. We need to encourage Australians to access these services, not discourage them. It is very short-sighted.

As if continuing the freeze on Medicare were not enough, the Turnbull government has actually established a secret task force to cut our public hospitals. The reports so far reveal that the plan involves a significant cut to public hospital funding and abolishing the private health insurance rebate. The Liberal government cannot be trusted with our health care. Senate estimates have revealed that senior health bureaucrats have been actively working on options to attack our universal healthcare system for years. The task force proposal was discussed as recently as two weeks ago. We should have learned by now that the Liberal Party will attack Medicare every chance it gets. It is unfair that the universal health care that we all cherish is under attack by this government.

I am particularly incensed that the 2017 budget sees the Turnbull government walking away from giving every child in every school the best opportunity for a great education. It is unfair for the Turnbull government to walk away from needs based funding for schools. They do not understand equity in education funding.

The 2017 budget is unfair because the Turnbull government are giving big business a $65 billion tax giveaway at the same time as they are cutting $22.3 billion from education funding, cutting $2.2 billion out of Medicare, taking money off pensioners and making families pay more for child care. This is all while millionaires will receive $16,000 extra in their wallets from 1 July. The $65 billion big business tax giveaway that I referred to will cost the budget $15 billion a year in 10 years time and forever. This unfair tax giveaway is a long-term structural drag on the budget. It is unfair and irresponsible to have ordinary Australians, pensioners and families paying for a tax giveaway for big business at this point in time. This is not the time, while the budget deficit is mushrooming, to be making this extravagant commitment to big business.

The Turnbull government do not understand fair. They are committed to an educational policy that will not boost productivity. They are committed to a $65 billion tax giveaway that they hope will trickle down. Their own Treasury suggests it will at best give a small, less than one per cent, boost to the economy. The Turnbull government might say the word 'fair', but fundamentally they do not understand fair. Perhaps once upon a time this Prime Minister did, but that man is gone and only a husk remains.

Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish it were a pleasure to rise and speak in this debate on the appropriation bills, but it is not. We are speaking today about a budget that is not Labor light, as so many have called it. The budget is a poor imitation of what fairness and decency look like. The fact is the government may have stripped away some of its zombie measures, some of its cuts to families, some of its cuts to education and some of its health cuts, but it is still a budget that seeks to penalised low-income earners so that they can hand out $67 billion in tax cuts to big business.

At the heart of this budget is the same lifters-and-leaners approach. If you are looking for work, you are a leaner. If you need a disability support payment, you are a leaner. If you need assistance to make sure your kids get the textbooks and uniforms they need for school, according to those opposite, you are a leaner. In fact, just about the only people those opposite do not think are leaners are the big multinational companies and high-income earners.

The Prime Minister says that fairness is at the centre of this budget, but let us look at the facts. If you earn over $180,000, you will get a tax cut but everyone else will pay more. Those earning $80,000 a year will pay at least $400 more tax. In fact, the government will rip $8.2 billion out of the pockets of workers. It is always the same from those opposite—lifters and leaners; bludgers and their mates in big business.

If you want to see how unfair this government is, look no further than the Minister for Human Services's portfolio. Every time he runs out of things to say he announces another welfare crackdown. At this point, by my count, we are up to at least No. 9 in terms of welfare crackdowns. This government has run the Department of Human Services into the ground. We have had robo-debt and skyrocketing wait times at Centrelink, not to mention blowouts in pension claim processing. These are not problems that only affect leaners. These are issues that affect people receiving an age pension, people who have lost their job, young families who want to claim their family tax benefit or those with disabilities who need some support. That means age pensioners waiting longer in queues and on phones. It means more jobseekers waiting for hours on the phone, struggling to clarify their responsibilities. It means people with a disability trying to get assistance they need. It means new mums and dads jumping through bureaucratic hoops trying to get parental leave so that they can spend time with their children.

The minister says that the average wait time for calls to Centrelink is around 12 minutes, but the truth is that for most Centrelink clients the wait times are often hours. For older Australians, the time in December last year just to get an answer before being put back on hold was 23 minutes; for youth and students the wait time was 33 minutes; and for the dissipation solutions the wait time was an unbelievable 57 minutes.

I know those in the chamber are eager to hear the Turnbull government's solution to the damning service standards at Centrelink: surprise, surprise, it is more cuts! A total of 12,000 staff are to be axed from the Department of Human Services, which is already at breaking point trying to deal with the incredible mess created by the minister's bungled robo-debt system. This makes no sense. In the last two years this government has cut 2,000 jobs from the Department of Human Services—almost 5,000 in five years. There is no way that this will improve services. What it will do is put more pressure on hardworking Department of Human Services staff, who are already under immense pressure. This will only make things worse for those who are already struggling. These cuts are a tragedy for those who are already struggling to find work and are being demoralised and dehumanised by a system that is broken, and they are heartbreaking for those who will lose their jobs.

The minister has yet to explain his justification for these cuts, other than saving money at the expense of the most vulnerable communities in Australia. He has been completely silent. After all these job cuts and falling service levels the minister owes this place and the community an explanation. The best he has offered so far is a plan to replace 2,000 job cuts in his department with 250 labour hire call centre workers. These workers will most likely be casual and will be untrained in the complexities of our social safety net. Most disappointingly, they will be unable to actually help in specific cases. They will offer general information.

Last year Centrelink missed almost 29 million calls—29 million calls went unanswered. Just to fix that problem, without actually making wait times any better, those 250 privatised call centre staff will need to answer 116,000 calls each year. Working 260 days a year, excluding public holidays and weekends, they will need to answer at least 440 calls a day just to stop people getting the engaged signal when they call. That is the best those opposite have to offer and it is not going to make any difference at all.

But the disasters of Centrelink in this budget do not end there. We have all heard of the bungled robo-debt program of the Minister for Human Services. It is the one the Ombudsman said was not a fair or reasonable system. Robo-debt is a program that has seen thousands of Australians accused of defrauding the government, even though they have not done the wrong thing. It is the one that slugged thousands with debts they do not know, which were grossly inflated. This budget will expand the robo-debt system, seeking to claw $1 billion out of the pockets of age pensioners who have income streams and investments or super. If people own money or claim allowances they are not entitled to, they should pay it back, but we should be very sure before we accuse people of doing the wrong thing. We should not leave these decisions to unaccountable robots and computer programs.

The minister has not acted to fix the problem of his broken system. In fact, he is still waiting for PricewaterhouseCoopers to finish their review and tell him if it is working. Policy and programs designed and implemented poorly are not just a failure of management. When it comes to social and human services they are plain cruel. Quite aside from the disastrous administration of this program, the minister's response to the public outcry summed up just how nasty those opposite can be. Rather than fix the problems with the program they chose to leak private information about a private individual to the media. Centrelink clients are currently waiting hours on the phone trying to get information. Perhaps they should be putting media requests to the minister's office. Then, it seems to happen more quickly!

This budget is unfair because, at its heart, this government is unfair. But the failure does not end with the Department of Human Services. The schools in almost every electorate across the country will suffer thanks to this budget. The Liberal's faux Gonski 2.0 funding program is a con designed to hide the fact that their only plan for schools is cuts. Those opposite are selling out students, whether they are in public, independent or Catholic schools, and it is simply unacceptable. We already know that, under the government's plan, schools will get $22 billion less in funding than they would have under the real Gonski plan. Those opposite are more interested in giving $65 billion in tax cuts to the big end of town than properly funding schools. It is astounding.

It is worth examining the history in this area. In the Abbott years, firstly, they told us we were on a unity ticket. Then they won and they changed their minds. They said that they did not think fair funding mattered. They continued on that argument for a while, but the community did not buy it, so now the Prime Minister has changed tack. He decided to commission a review into the Gonski review, to be led by David Gonski, to establish whether the needs-based model was a good one. That just seems to me to be astounding. But Mr Turnbull's Gonski 2.0 is a fiction. It will actually see less funding made available for schools.

In the community of Barton, which I represent, there will be about $14 million less funding for schools in 2018 and 2019. There will be less money for programs tailored to the needs of students in our area, which means less one-on-one attention for students who need it and less support for students with a disability. The contact I have had with the schools I have visited clearly outlines what this is going to mean for students. That seems to be where the focus should be. It will mean students who are behind in literacy will not be able to catch up. It will mean students who are anxious and who have self-esteem issues will not ever rebuild that self-esteem. It will mean parents will be very, very worried about the programs they have supported in schools, as will the school principals and staff who have added to those schools and, therefore, to the life choices of those children. Put simply, these funding cuts marketed as Gonski 2.0 will hurt schools in all of our electorates.

This is not a fair budget. This is the kind of budget that a Liberal government struggling in the polls produces when it is out of ideas. This is not a budget about fairness. It is more of the same from a government which is entirely bereft of ideas. Those opposite keep saying that this is a budget that offers fairness, opportunity and security. They are just three words. Those three words are important words, but not in the way they are being applied in this budget. It simply cannot be. It is not fair, it does not provide opportunity and it certainly does not provide security. In fact, it does the opposite of those three fine goals. It does not offer any of those things for struggling parents, those looking for work, students or older Australians. People do not choose to be unemployed. People do not choose to grow old. People do not choose to have a disability. Those groups of people that rely on us in this place to represent them—that rely on us in this place to make their lives bearable—must be sorely disappointed.

What this budget does offer is service cuts and empty rhetoric. No wonder there is such cynicism out in the community about the role of politicians. This budget does not demonstrate that there is any fairness or any opportunity. There is certainly no security. This government is trying to convince the community with empty slogans and lip-service. If it starts listening to the community, it might know what it is supposed to do and who it is elected to serve in this place.

I will just finish up by focusing on that very point. We are elected by people to serve in this place. We are elected by people who expect us to carry their aspirations, their hurts, their loves, their pains and their joys into this place. They do not expect government to design budgets that will undermine the very life that they have sought to build and that will undermine the very way in which fairness is understood in this country. At the start, I said that I wished it were a joy for me to stand and give this speech about this budget. But it is not, simply because it is so very unfair.

Sitting suspended from 13:30 to 16:02

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

I call the very patient member for Kingston.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am glad that the government has finally turned up so that we can get this debate underway. Of course, if I were the government, I probably would be ducking and weaving from this debate, because we are debating the unfair budget that was delivered a couple of weeks ago. What this budget did is deliver a tax cut for millionaires and multinational companies, and it will make every ordinary Australian working person pay more. That is exactly what it did. It will make people who go to visit their doctor pay more. For those who go to Catholic schools, particularly in disadvantaged areas, we have been told that their parents are going to pay more. That is what this government has delivered in the budget. No matter how many times Malcolm Turnbull says that this is a fair budget—he can say it is much as he likes—it does not make it true. That is something that our Prime Minister really struggles with. He thinks that if he says it time and time again suddenly it will be true. That is not the case.

For my electorate, this budget delivers very little. In fact, it delivers a $22 billion cut to our schools. That is $22 billion cut from some of the most needy schools. Last night in the House I went through some of those cuts. There is $15 million being cut from public schools in my electorate in 2018 and 2019, schools such as Christies Beach High School, Christies Beach Primary School and Christie Downs Primary School. These schools service and provide schooling to some of the most vulnerable children—children with a disability and Indigenous children—and they are receiving massive cuts. So the Prime Minister can come into question time as often as he likes and say that it is a needs based funding model, but when you are cutting from Aldinga Primary School, cutting from Sheidow Park Primary School and cutting from Hackham West Primary School that is not needs based funding, and people in my electorate are very concerned. Catholic and independent schools in my electorate are also supporting a lot of vulnerable children, and it is disappointing that again we are seeing cuts to our schools.

When I think about the future of this country and the future of the younger people in my electorate, I want them to have a better life than the generations before them. Part of that better life, no matter where you live, involves an excellent schooling. That is what sets the building blocks for navigating the future in what is going to be a complex employment market with new jobs that have not even been invented yet. The base we need for that is a decent, high-quality education system. Other countries around the world are not cutting funding from their schools; they are investing. But unfortunately this government, in this budget, has seen fit to cut from our schools.

Equally, countries around the world are investing in their universities and ensuring that university education is accessible based on merit, not on someone's ability to pay. We all remember the 2014 budget, when the government tried to bring in an American style model that would hike up fees for universities. They are still trying to hike up fees for universities. In this budget the government have indicated that they want to see higher fees for students, while at the same time cutting $3.8 billion from our universities. They have also flagged that they want to see students paying back HECS faster. Taking the threshold for repaying HECS from $55,000 to $42,000 might sound good, but $42,000 is not a princely sum. That is a modest income. At the same time these students are graduating from university and getting their first job, they are trying to start a family. They might be trying to start a small business or buy a house. What the government are saying to them is: you have got to pay back faster. That is not a fair system. It is not one that supports students to get a high-quality education or supports them into jobs. Let's face it, that is what a university education is about: giving people the opportunity to be their best so that they can turn that opportunity into a high-paying job. This government, unfortunately, is dashing that dream for many students. Many students will think twice about going to university as a result of these cuts.

Indeed, it is not just young Australians who will be affected. It is those who may have had one career and found themselves looking for a new career direction. I have met so many of those who are termed mature age students, who may not have got the best results in year 12 or had the money to go to university and who have decided they want to change direction in life. Unfortunately, this government is saying: 'We are going to jack up your fees. We are not going to support you to take a new direction.' That is the wrong approach when we are in a global race—not a race within our country but a global race—for educational skills.

This budget cuts another $600 million from TAFE and apprenticeships. That is a significant problem when we know that getting a certificate III, a certificate IV or a diploma can increase your chances of getting a job. Instead of the government investing in this really important area, we are now going to have 130,000 fewer apprentices and trainees. That is appalling, and it is something that many parents in my electorate talk to me about. They want to see apprenticeship opportunities for their child. In fact, a lot of young people come and talk to me about how they would love to get an apprenticeship. But we have seen this government wax and wane and not support the apprenticeship and skills sector.

These are the types of investments we should actually be celebrating. Investments in education, in our universities and in skills are investments in our people. In the future our people are going to be critical to our success in this global race. Being highly skilled and highly trained is what will ensure that our country remains competitive—not how much iron ore we can dig out of the ground and not how many minerals we can export. It will be our people who will add value and ensure that our country remains globally competitive and that we continue to have a high quality of living standards. This government has shown no regard for this. It has been using every excuse to cut these in this budget.

I want to move on from education because, of course, there have been many other unfair measures in this budget. For our pensioners we have seen the government reinforce its commitment to raise the pension age to 70, the highest in the developed world. When I am in my electorate speaking with those who are coming up to pension age, they are extremely scared of this. They are particularly scared if they have had a labour-intensive job and they have physical ailments as a result. Nurses, builders and other people who have had a very physical job in their life have told me directly that their bodies are not going to hold out until they are 70. They will be broken and they will have no income as a result. Raising the pension age to 70 shows the government is so out of touch with the real lives of those who have worked hard all their lives and deserve a decent retirement.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hear interjections from those on the other side. Quite frankly, I am not sure it is going to make much difference for people whose bodies are already broken at the age of 50. At the age of 50 and 55 there are people out there who have worked hard their whole lives. This is an outrageous measure that should be opposed.

Equally, abolishing the energy supplement, which will leave new pensioners up to $366 a year worse off, is an appalling measure. It shows no regard for our pensioners. It is something that the government should look seriously at. Once again we know that this is not a fair budget. Unlike what the Prime Minister keeps repeating, this is an unfair budget.

What hits pensioners, families and everyone is the continued freeze of the indexation of Medicare. The government would like you to believe that suddenly in this budget they have fixed the Medicare indexation freeze. That is just not true. We know that this freeze will continue for many medical services and allied health services for at least three more years. This is doing damage in my electorate. We know that the out-of-pocket costs are growing. We know that more and more people are struggling to pay to see a doctor. What is the result of that? I have said this over and over in this place. The result is that people do not go and see a doctor. They do not go and see their GP. They do not go and see a specialist. What happens then? What happens is that their condition gets worse and worse and they end up in hospital. Freezing the Medicare rebate and dissuading people from going to see their GPs and getting early intervention will place a much bigger burden on our healthcare system because it will lead people to go to hospital, and that is a much more expensive proposition. I know that the previous Prime Minister, Prime Minister Abbott, and the current Prime Minister probably do not really care about that because they think it is the states' problem, not the Commonwealth's. But anyone who believes in a decent healthcare system should be looking at all levels of our healthcare system and working out how we can prevent people getting sick, because that is what will improve quality of life.

I am running out of time and there is so much to talk about here. There are so many unfair measures in this budget. But I am going to finish on what I think is an appalling omission in this budget, and that is the fact that there is no new funding for infrastructure for South Australia. South Australia is facing difficult times. We are seeing the exit of the automotive industry after the previous Treasurer, Joe Hockey, goaded Holden into leaving this country. This is having a massive impact right around South Australia, but particularly in my electorate, because so many automotive and manufacturing components are manufactured in my electorate. With the exit of Holden, Ford and Toyota, this is a significant issue.

We need real investment in our state from the Commonwealth. We need a true partner in the Commonwealth. That has not been demonstrated in this budget. We have a government that has said: 'Bad luck! We're going to give this money to the eastern states and we're not going to give you one new cent.' I have a long list—and it may not be the same as everyone else's—of major infrastructure that could be funded. Of course, we have AdeLINK. That could be funded with this money. We have the rail extension to Aldinga. That is an excellent project that could have been funded in this budget. We have the dual carriageway upgrade of South Road between Seaford and Aldinga. That could have been a project funded in this budget. There are many, many projects that could have been funded by this Commonwealth government—projects that would not only improve economic development within my state but also provide short-term jobs. But, of course, this government has completely ignored South Australia.

Before we hear the government's usual protest, 'But we're going to support you to build the submarines,' let me say that one policy is not enough. The government was forced into ensuring that South Australia got any work from the submarines. Let's not forget that former Prime Minister Abbott was planning to have the submarines completely built in Japan. That was his plan. We know that. Instead, the government was embarrassed, cajoled and forced by Labor into building them in Australia.

But that work does not start for some time. We are losing jobs now, and we need a government that is going to take that seriously. We need a government that actually has a plan for jobs and infrastructure, and that is something that this government does not have. There is nothing in this budget that shows the government is serious about creating jobs and investing in South Australia. I call on the government, if it is serious about South Australia and serious about the investment, to show us the money. It should show us what it is going to spend on infrastructure projects, because I have a long list and I know every other Labor member in South Australia has too. If those opposite are not sure, I can tell them. On that note, I end my contribution by condemning this unfair budget. (Time expired)

Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the comments of my colleague, who is a very strong advocate for the state of South Australia. I will be putting my case in the context of my great state, the state of Tasmania, which seems to have been completely forgotten in this budget. I think I need to give every member of the coalition a map of Tassie, because it has been completely wiped off the national map—although I cannot recall Tasmania seceding to join Antarctica or anywhere else. This budget has been a huge disappointment for my state. In fact, it was quite telling that the Treasurer's speech on budget night did not mention Tasmania once.

The previous speaker, my colleague the member for Kingston, talked about the lack of infrastructure projects in her state. I can tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that there was nothing new in the budget for infrastructure for Tasmania. In fact, what was in the budget for Tasmania was an $85 million cut to Tasmanian schools, including about $65 million cut from Tasmanian public schools. The Premier of Tasmania, who was obviously watching on budget night, tweeted: 'What a great budget this is for the state of Tasmania.' What a joke! It was a cut to public schools.

The Medicare freeze is to remain in place for years to come, which will have a huge impact on the health of the people in Tasmania and in my electorate of Braddon. As a mentioned, there is not one new cent for job-creating infrastructure, and there are continued attacks on our pensioners. I have a disproportionately high number of pensioners in my electorate, and they are certainly not happy. There are massive cuts to TAFE. Considering where we are with the huge reduction in the number of apprentices and trainees in my electorate, that is very disappointing.

And there is a higher cost to higher education. Particularly in my electorate, where we have low educational outcomes, to try to then whack it onto higher education and say, 'Well, I'm sorry, but you're going to be paying more for this,' sends a signal to the people, potentially: 'You shouldn't be going to university.' That is detrimental to my state.

And, just to rub their noses in it, Tasmania is a state with lower than average wages, lower than the rest of Australia. An increase in taxes is a huge hit. But, on the other hand, the government is giving millionaires a tax cut. The priorities are completely wrong, and they could be no further wrong than in the state of Tasmania.

On jobs, health and education, this budget is a failure for Tasmania and for my electorate of Braddon. From the young to the old, this government has spared no-one. It is little wonder that not one coalition minister and not one coalition assistant minister or even parliamentary secretary has come to Tasmania since the budget. Not one visited the state. But I have to say that I can reel off, probably on two hands, the number of Labor shadow ministers that came to the state, including leader Bill Shorten. The 'Bill Bus' came to Tasmania to tell the people what this budget meant for them, and it was disappointing for them to hear the facts. Only an alternative Labor government will deliver for my state. I have to ask: why did they not come? Is it because they were too ashamed? Did they have nothing to sell the people of Tasmania? They are not really rhetorical questions, but I think that, if you were to answer those questions, your answer would be yes. This budget for Tasmania is a dud.

Last week I spoke about the government's cuts to education and what they meant for Tasmanian schools. Today I want to talk about what these cuts mean in a social and economic sense for Tasmania. Economic commentators and local businesses are on the public record saying that improving our educational outcomes is a key to my region's and the state's future. Sadly, Braddon and Tasmania generally have some of the worst educational outcomes in the nation. Writing in The Australian earlier this year, respected economist and University of Tasmania Vice-Chancellor's Fellow Saul Eslake stated:

The proportion of Tasmania's population with a bachelor's degree or higher is 6.2 percentage points below the national average, while the proportion of the population with no qualification beyond Year 10 of high school is 10.4 percentage points above the national average.

In December last year, Mr Eslake launched his second Tasmania report, a document that maps Tasmania's social and economic performance. The news headline from the launch of this report reads 'Boosting engagement in education is key to lifting living standards in island state'. In launching that report, Mr Eslake said the single most important thing that needed to be done in order to improve Tasmanians' living standards relative to those of other Australians was to increase the levels of educational participation and attainment. Mr Eslake went on to say:

Higher levels of educational participation and attainment won't solve all of Tasmania's economic and social challenges — but they will make them less difficult to solve, not least by sustainably increasing the resources which can be used to solve them …

Given the social and economic challenges facing Tasmania, can anyone in this building explain why it makes sense to cut $84.4 million from Tasmanian schools in the years 2018 and 2019? The silence is deafening.

The coalition said they were on a unity ticket with Labor when it comes to education—remember that, in 2013? They said they would match Labor's education funding dollar for dollar. Clearly, they were not being truthful. Labor's plan to fully fund the original needs based funding model is already making a difference in my electorate and Tasmanian schools. In my electorate at Ulverstone High School, as I said last week, the school association have told me that their additional needs based funding has meant that they are able to provide extra support for students in literacy and numeracy and, most importantly from my perspective, provide support for disengaged students.

Ulverstone High School, with the support of Labor's needs based funding, are doing just what Saul Eslake and others are suggesting. They are engaging in education the very students who may fall through the cracks, the same students who more than likely would not go on to a post year 10 qualification and most certainly would not go on to a tertiary education. It makes no economic sense to punish the students of Braddon by cutting, on average, $2.4 million from every local school. It makes no social sense not to support disengaged students as best we can.

I am running out of time, and, as the previous speaker said, there is so much to talk about. Let me talk about TAFE. You would think investing in local skills should be a priority for this government but, again, in this area the budget is a dud. The budget cuts more than $600 million from TAFE and vocational education over the next four years. This comes on top of almost $3 billion in cuts to TAFE skills and training since this government came to office. As at September last year, when the National Centre for Vocational Education Research reported, Tasmania had lost 1,700 apprentices since the member for Warringah became Prime Minister back in 2013. That is not a great record. I challenge those opposite, particularly those from regional areas, to step forward and explain how cutting a further $600 million from TAFE would help young people in their communities.

The triple education attack on Tasmania's future in this budget is complete with the decision by the coalition to cut university funding and increase fees. As I have already said, Tasmania has the lowest rate of participation in tertiary education of any state. The University of Tasmania, or UTAS as it is known, are still assessing what a national cut of $3.8 billion will mean to them. On top of this, Tasmanian students are already facing significant barriers to tertiary education and are now facing increased costs and demands to repay their HECS debt at lower income levels. How on earth are they meant to get ahead in life? How on earth does it make sense for the government to invest $150 million in Labor's policy to support the expansion of UTAS in Launceston and Burnie but at the same time send a signal to potential students that they will pay more to attend. On the one hand, I do welcome the government's commitment in the budget to lift the cap on associate degrees, which is very important for the Cradle Coast campus of UTAS, but, on the other hand, students will have to pay more. It just does not make sense.

I want to move to health, a very important issue for Tasmanians. We are now seeing, under a Liberal state government and coalition national government, a crisis in our health system. Braddon has an ageing population and a disproportionate number of people who are on benefits, and they rely on Medicare for support. But in Tasmania bulk-billing rates continue to drop. People are paying more to see the doctor. You only have to go around to the GP clinics in my area to see the signs in reception areas telling people they will no longer be bulk-billed. The community have to wait until 2020 for relief on the cost of going to see a doctor, if at all, and they have to wait more than two years for the freeze on specialist procedures and allied health services to be lifted. On this issue alone, the budget fails the people of Braddon.

I want to move on to some last comments, because I am running out of time—although I could talk on this all day long. Let's go to infrastructure. You would think that infrastructure was a mechanism for growing a state's economy and actually creating the jobs that we need in our state. But the important job-creating projects, like the Cradle Mountain Master Plan, which is in my region and a No. 1 priority for all my local councils, did not see any additional funding under this government. That is quite strange, because the tourism minister in the previous parliament was from my electorate in the state of Tasmania, yet there is no additional money for this project. According to Deloitte Access Economics, this project will generate about 140 long-term jobs and $29 million per annum of additional economic activity in my region, which is a rural and regional community. That is massive for the people in my electorate. Despite commitments from the state government and the federal opposition, the best this government can do is a measly $1 million for a feasibility study. This project is a public-private partnership potentially worth $160 million, and this government does not send any signal to private investors that it is worth funding, worth putting their money into. I can tell you now: that is not the opinion of the opposition. But even this study has not been completed. Again, you have to wonder what the state government has been doing to secure additional Commonwealth investment—clearly nothing.

To top things off, not one cent has been offered for important road upgrades on the Bass Highway at Latrobe or between Marrawah and Wynyard. Fixing the entry to and exits off the Bass Highway at Latrobe will open up that community's industrial estate for development, giving further job opportunities. I am sure my colleagues in Bass, Lyons and Franklin will also highlight the infrastructure neglect by this government in their electorates. It really demonstrates that the coalition has abandoned Tasmania.

The state government's response has been weak, if not laughable. While the education minister of every other state, including the coalition state of New South Wales, criticises the budget, Tasmania's Premier and its Minister for Education and Training have welcomed it. It just goes to show how the Hodgman government does not have the gumption to stand up to the Prime Minister like its colleagues in other states. The bungling Minister for Infrastructure at state level, Rene Hidding, also promised he would fight for a better deal with infrastructure projects—again a failure. I have to ask the question: what are our Tasmanian Liberal senators actually doing? I do not know. I do not see them. I do not hear from them. The silence from them is deafening.

As I have said before in this place, Braddon has a disproportionate number of pensioners and an ageing population. How does this government want to treat them? Make people who have worked in some of the most challenging circumstances—at sea, underground, on the land or on the factory floor—work until they are 70. In many cases this will not be physically possible. To top it off, the government remains committed to axing the clean energy supplement for pensioners.

The Prime Minister says this budget is about fairness. He can say the word, but the reality for pensioners in Braddon is that this budget is not fair. This budget is about choices. You can choose to look after people, or you can choose to look after big business. This government chooses to give away $65 billion to big business while cutting almost $85 million over the next two years from Tasmanian schools. It chooses to give millionaires a tax cut while a person in my electorate on the average income will face a tax hike. The government chooses to still make the sick and elderly pay more to see a doctor. Clearly none of this is fair. When I talk to people in my electorate it is clear what choices they would like to see: investment in health, in schools, in hospitals, in jobs and in infrastructure, and that is not happening.

Ross Hart (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Braddon for her contribution on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2017-2018 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018. The privilege of being elected to this place carries with it a responsibility in participating in the contest of ideas in this place to represent and reflect the views of the electors of northern Tasmania. Whilst there are admirable attempts to ensure that the public have access to the speeches and events which occur daily in this place, there is little hope of rising above the snippets of vision that will be broadcast from question time or a doorstop during the day. This is my attempt to explain the differences in vision between my side of politics and the present policies adopted by the government, as expressed through the budget handed down by the Treasurer.

When I speak in this place, I often need to emphasise the disadvantage within my electorate. This is regrettable but necessary. Educational outcomes are poor. On multiple measures, health outcomes are amongst the worst nationally. The social determinants of health provide an explanation for poor health outcomes and point towards potential solutions, even if those solutions are long term rather than short term. Unemployment, in particular youth unemployment, is unacceptably high. There is, in common with other areas of disadvantage within the nation, intergenerational disadvantage expressed in long-term unemployment and reliance upon the social safety nets within social security and other legislation.

There are nevertheless actual and/or potential advantages within Tasmania, including striking beauty, a stable population, a temperate but much maligned climate and considerable expertise in primary production, fisheries and tourism. However, the economic performance of the state, measured in per capita gross-state-product terms, is significantly below the average per capita gross state product of other states. There are multiple potential causes of this deficit, including an older population and in particular a lack of educational attainment. Many young people feel that they are forced to leave the state to search for employment or, if they complete tertiary education within the state, they should pursue employment elsewhere.

We know that this electorate relies upon aspects of the social safety net, in particular services funded or substantially funded by the state and federal governments in the form of access to public health and public education as well as social security payments and benefits; therefore, any conversation on the topic of fairness has real, not theoretical, impact in my electorate. The importance of access to public health is consistently underestimated by those opposite. Access to a GP is constrained if a person is unable to meet the gap between the Medicare schedule rebate and the charge raised by the GP. Despite the statistics relied upon by the government regarding access to bulk-billing, it is very difficult to locate or access a bulk-billing GP practice within Northern Tasmania. Indeed, I am surveying my electorate at present to collate information on what services are able to be bulk-billed in Northern Tasmania.

The consequence of a lack of bulk-billing GPs is that many people who are unable to access a GP practice will attend the emergency department of a public hospital, leading to increased demand in our public hospitals. This is particularly notable at the Launceston General Hospital. That hospital has struggled with demand, both within the emergency department and within the hospital for hospital admissions. Health policy needs to address access to general practitioners as well as the proper funding and resourcing of public hospitals.

The Tasmanian health system can be properly described as being in crisis. This is a fair description, given that the Australian Medical Association Tasmania indicated on 20 May 2017 that it had lost confidence in the Tasmanian Health Minister, Michael Ferguson, stating that the system was 'plagued by governance dysfunction, deteriorating patient safety indicators, worsening hospital overcrowding and a toxic bureaucratic culture'.

This federal government, as successor to the Abbott Liberal government, has delivered cuts to health and education that have had a lasting impact on our health and education systems. In education the government has now adopted the mantle of a needs based system, in rebadging its education policy in the name of Gonski. What it still delivers is cuts to education, just as it previously delivered cuts to health funding. What most concerns me, therefore, is that this government is prepared to deny Tasmanian children, particularly disadvantaged Tasmanian children, the opportunity to put that disadvantage behind them through the transformative power of education.

There is no doubt that the Northern Tasmanian community that I represent in Bass understands the importance of policies that address unemployment, underemployment, low-paid work, the maintenance of penalty rates, funding for public education—and, indeed, education generally on a needs basis—and support for public health, including access to GPs and support for our public hospitals. The policies that I took to the 2016 federal election contained comprehensive responses to these issues.

The university transformation project and the Launceston sewerage improvement plan provided important infrastructure funding and consequent much-needed employment. The University of Tasmania project will see, as a consequence of the government's adoption of the UTAS proposal, $350 million invested in Northern Tasmania in relocation of the Newnham and Bernie campuses. Labor supported this project early and pressed the government every day of the 2016 election campaign to adopt it. Labor saw not just an infrastructure play but an opportunity to improve tertiary attainment within the state for the state's long-term social and economic benefit.

Labor's commitment of $75 million to the Launceston sewerage improvement plan would see a vitally important infrastructure project start sooner rather than later. It is disappointing that both the state and federal governments have failed at this stage to recognise the importance of this project with respect to both environmental outcomes and in supporting employment. Whilst it is wonderful to see significant private and public investment in Launceston—in particular, Launceston City Council's North Bank project, Errol Stewart's Silo Hotel and CH Smith projects, and Josef Chromy's continuing positive influence in the city at Penny Royal and its immediate environs—these developments occur within metres of a contaminated water body, where sewerage spills and outflows should be addressed by the upgrading of the city's ageing sewerage infrastructure.

Just last night, the House passed the government's Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. This has enshrined the government's $22 billion in cuts to education over the next 10 years. Labor is committed to the full restoration of these cuts when it comes to government. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the difference between our position and the position of those opposite when it comes to fairly funding education. The 2013 federal election campaign was marked by the government's dishonest claim that there was not a dollar of difference between the Liberal opposition and the then government in funding for education. The 2014 federal budget, where $30 billion worth of cuts were delivered to education, gave the lie to that. What makes the government's position worse is that at that stage, and subsequently, it consistently argued that it was delivering increased funding and that what would deliver better education outcomes was not more money but better teaching and, remarkably, that Labor's commitment to Gonski was unfunded.

Every school principal, every teacher and, indeed, every parent of a child denied funding in the 2014 budget needs to understand that the Liberals perpetuated a fraud on the Australian public by claiming that there was not a dollar's difference between the Liberals and Labor on education funding whilst claiming that years 5 and 6 of their Gonski funding plan—a plan that was incorporated into intergovernmental agreements—was unfunded. The fact of the matter is that Gonski 2.0 delivers increased funding from the low base adopted in the 2014 federal budget. This enables the present government to claim increases in funding. Put another way, what was a $30 billion cut to education is now merely a $22 billion cut. The Liberals demand credit for having introduced a less worse education package and now claim that what has been produced is needs based in accordance with the Gonski model.

The original Gonski plan was needs based and sector blind. This meant that, in order to reach the schooling resource standard by 2018-19 and, in the case of Victoria, by 2020, available funding for individual schools was based upon disadvantage. Gonski 2.0 does nothing of the sort. Some schools will never reach the schooling resource standard goal set by the original Gonski plan. Despite what I have said about significant disadvantage within the Tasmanian system, the indexation proposed in the name of Gonski 2.0 is the second-lowest level of indexation, after schools in the Northern Territory. What sort of system produces the lowest and second-lowest rate of indexation to the two most disadvantaged education systems in the nation? Schools within Tasmania will lose more than $84 million in the next two years.

When it comes to supporting low-paid workers and those in receipt of penalty rates, the government is nowhere to be seen. It is content to see low-paid workers in receipt of penalty rates lose up to $77 dollars per week come 2 July, whilst handing a tax cut to high-paid individuals and businesses. It is still determined to deliver a tax cut to the big end of town; a tax cut that will cost $65 billion or more over 10 years. I understand that small business needs customers who have money in their pockets. A cut to penalty rates just for hospitality and retail workers would mean a loss of up to $12 million from the Bass economy. It is an unfair and unaffordable cut.

In the time I have served as the member for Bass, I have been able to gauge from contact to my office what are the most pressing issues within my electorate. There are two issues that I would like to speak about in the remaining time available to me. Labor introduced the National Broadband Network. The present government has done its best to destroy or hobble the NBN. We have the absurd situation that Bass has both the best and the worst to offer with respect to internet connectivity within Australia. As of 11 am today, 30 May, a local Launceston internet service provider, Launtel, is offering Australia's first commercial gigabit internet connections. Meanwhile, substantial parts of my electorate—Legana, in particular—do not enjoy broadband internet access due to difficulties with the implementation of fibre to the node or, where fibre to the node has been installed, difficulties with the copper connections used for the service. This situation arises due to a failure of policy, for which the present government, and indeed the Prime Minister, should be loudly condemned.

The next area I would like to highlight is the government's absurd persecution of Centrelink recipients. The so-called 'robo-debt' program emphasises this government's incompetence and lack of respect for people who may be quite legitimately dealing with Centrelink. I have seen many occasions where the government's automated debt recovery program has produced injustice through no fault whatsoever of the Centrelink recipient. Indeed, I have become aware of circumstances where persons have received overpayments through administrative error and do not meet the supposed profile of a so-called rorter of the public purse. This person, who I will not identify, served in public life at a senior level. There could be no suggestion that this person had failed in their communication with the department, but they were overpaid. Indeed, my inquiries to the minister confirm that.

What I have seen is that ordinary citizens do not receive the benefit of the doubt or reasonable assistance when it comes to receiving correspondence which has been automatically produced. Every person should have the right to receive respect in their dealings with government. The former Labor government used a data-matching program but with human oversight in order to ensure that absurd situations did not cause undue hardship for those who are in receipt of correspondence from the department seeking clarification as to eligibility to claim benefits. This government claims that, in repudiation of its previous ideology, it has embraced concepts of fairness and equity. Its actions speak otherwise.

I would like to speak also about the issue of infrastructure commitment to Tasmania generally. The member for Braddon, in her address today, spoke about the fact that there was no additional funding for infrastructure within Tasmania other than that which had previously been announced and provided for in the budget. I commend the government for its funding of the City Deals, particularly for the city of Launceston and within the electorate of Bass. That is a laudable commitment to transforming the city of Launceston through the university transformation project, but any further opportunity that the government has to invest in infrastructure in the state of Tasmania has been well and truly missed. There has been no additional commitment to road projects; there have been no commitments to providing further funding for rail; there is no additional commitment for other projects which might provide economic assistance to the state of Tasmania—a state, as I said previously, which is beset by disadvantage.

This government needs to understand that we are in a federation. It is possible for the government to make strategic investments in the state of Tasmania.

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Many in this place, and many Australians, are familiar with the Beatitudes, some of which include, 'Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,' 'Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled,' and, 'Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.' Then there is the hardly unique notion that we should treat each other as we ourselves wish to be treated. Bearing these in mind, I want to relate a reasonably famous parable.

A man was trapped in his house during a flood. He began praying to God to rescue him. He had a vision in his head of God's hand reaching down from heaven and lifting him to safety. The water started to rise in his house. His neighbour urged him to leave and offered him a ride to safety. The man yelled back, "I am waiting for God to save me." The neighbour drove off in his pick-up truck.

The man continued to pray and hold on to his vision. As the water began rising in his house, he had to climb up to the roof. A boat came by with some people heading for safe ground. They yelled at the man to grab a rope they were ready to throw and take him to safety. He told them that he was waiting for God to save him. They shook their heads and moved on.

The man continued to pray, believing with all his heart that he would be saved by God. The flood waters continued to rise. A helicopter flew by and a voice came over a loudspeaker offering to lower a ladder and take him off the roof. The man waved the helicopter away, shouting back that he was waiting for God to save him. The helicopter left. The flooding water came over the roof and caught him up and swept him away. He drowned.

When he reached heaven and asked, "God, why did you not save me? I believed in you with all my heart. Why did you let me drown?" God replied, "I sent you a pick-up truck, a boat and a helicopter and you refused all of them. What else could I possibly do for you?"

This is where we come in, for it is my view that it is the role of us, as parliamentarians, and the role of government to provide support to those who need it, to look after our neighbour.

It is in this light that I turn to a speech given by the Minister for Social Services at the National Press Club recently. In that speech he spoke about the proportion of those who are young carers, young parents and young students relying on support from our welfare system who will subsequently rely on welfare payments at some future point in their lives or, indeed, for the rest of their lives. The minister spoke about how the welfare system was a failure because it was not acting to stop these people from developing a welfare dependency. The fundamental problem with this approach is that it is confusing cause and effect. Indeed, as famously used by the great President Jed Bartlett in The West Wing, the minister has fallen into the fallacious logic of post hoc ergo procter hoc—after it, therefore because of it.

It is not the case that the welfare system is creating dependency on welfare by these and other groups but rather that there is a complete lack of investment in the social issues that these people confront, both the issues they confront when they are carers, young parents or students as well as those they may face later in life. The problem that this creates is much greater than merely the subsequent reliance on the welfare system. Chronic underinvestment in the social issues in society is costing our society in many ways. The really sad part about this is how obvious an approach it represents.

We hear from those in health all the time about the idea that prevention is better than the cure, yet we continue to increase our spending, year after year, on law enforcement, policing, courts and imprisonment—the consequences of crime—not to mention the cost to the victim and society at large, but we do not come close to matching it in spending designed to prevent crime from occurring in the first place. We see the effects of this, in particular, when we look at those cohorts of Australians that face some of the greatest barriers and disadvantage, reliance on welfare and their interactions with the criminal justice system. In particular, we see it for Aboriginal Australians, who make up only three per cent of the national population and yet in 1991 made up 14 per cent of our nation's prison population, which by 2015 had increased to 27 per cent. Rates of incarceration for Indigenous Australians are 16 times higher than for non-Indigenous Australians; 48 per cent of the juvenile prison population are Aboriginal. ABS figures show that nearly three-quarters of Aboriginal prisoners had a prior adult imprisonment under sentence, compared with just under half of non-Aboriginal prisoners. The system clearly is not working.

We cannot and should not sit idly by. But what are the causes of these disproportionate incarceration rates and the crime leading to them? While I am pleased to say that the government has referred an inquiry to the Australian Law Reform Commission to examine the factors leading to the overrepresentation of Indigenous Australians in prison, it is not the law that is the sole or, in many ways, even the predominant cause of crime and imprisonment, especially amongst Aboriginal Australians. The causes include stolen generations: those taken away from their families as a child at twice as likely to be arrested as their peers. They include differential treatment by law enforcement: Aboriginal people are 15 times more likely to be charged for swearing or offensive behaviour than the rest of the community. They include social and economic situation: poverty and unemployment, particularly for young Aboriginal people or in rural and remote areas, sometimes described as crimes of need, are the very things that saw the need to establish the Australian penal colonies in the first place. Then there is inadequate legal representation, a lack of language skills and foetal alcohol syndrome. The causes include health problems, which we see in life expectancy and in overall health being linked to prison and incarceration. There is family breakdown and violence. As Queensland barrister Cathy McLennan has pointed out:

You can do whatever you like …

But if they’re going home and getting bashed at night, if they’re going home and they are starving, they’re going to reoffend. That is the reality.

There is lack of accommodation: the Children's Court is often being told that imprisonment is the only option because of no safe and stable accommodation being available. There is a lack of community services. According to The Medical Journal of Australia there is increasing evidence that many people in prison are there as a direct consequence of the shortfall in appropriate community-based health and social services, most notably in the areas of housing, mental health and wellbeing, substance use, disability and family violence.

Then there is childhood trauma, where leading experts have observed how lasting and profoundly damaging the effects of trauma on children up to the age of three are, and that in some cases it will result in permanent brain damage connected to adolescent criminal offending. Not only are these issues related to causing crime but, of course, they also drive unemployment and welfare reliance. These are varied and multi-factored, complex issues. I have spoken separately this year about the issue of people requiring assistance with complex issues, and I incorporate those comments here. Essentially though, we need government agencies, state and federal, to work together across and between levels of government to ensure that people do not fall through the cracks and are given the dignity and assistance that they deserve.

But the key point I wish to raise is one that is often raised in respect of the concept of making investments in preventing crime and complex social issues, crime prevention and legal assistance funding from the Commonwealth—the issues that arise from vertical fiscal imbalance. The reality is that while they keep having to fund police, courts and prisons it does not leave much else in state budgets or the capacity to fund well-directed programs targeted at social improvement and inclusion that would assist in reducing crime. But, wait! Why would the federal government spend money on social services and intervention when the savings will be realised by the states, as crime reduces, not having to spend as much on the outcomes of crime. It turns out that the Minister for Social Services might have been inadvertently onto something. Yes, if the Commonwealth properly invests in addressing the causes of crime, not only will you start to reduce the requirement of many having to rely on welfare, but they will also become employed earners paying income tax. There is even a name for this policy concept: justice reinvestment, or, as it is known by some, social reinvestment. While his logic is a bit flawed I am going to choose to believe that the minister's Try, Test and Learn Fund is essentially designed to support such a justice reinvestment approach. The irony of this, given the minister's track record as the WA state Attorney-General is notable, but I will save that for another day.

The Closing the Gap strategy, introduced through COAG by the Rudd government, also goes a long way in promoting such an approach. However, despite the interrelationship between the areas addressed by that strategy, and its goals, and the over-representation of Aboriginal people in Australia's prisons there is a justice gap component to the strategy. No focus on dealing directly with the over-representation of Aboriginal Australians in our prisons, and yet not dealing with that issue prevents us from dealing with the other areas of focus for the strategy, as well. We have had the Senate inquiry, we have the evidence and we have the community support and yet all we hear from state governments are the typical law and order mantras, repeating tired slogans and policies that clearly are not working. If you want an old slogan how about this: instead of just being tough on crime, also be tough on the causes of crime, as Labor called for at the last election. I implore this government to work with all states, local governments and community organisations to bring about a true nation-reaching, grass-roots-active justice reinvestment approach before we lose more people to recidivism, crime and intergenerational welfare dependency.

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

I rise today to try to get some answers out of this government. Why have our communities in McEwen so clearly missed out in the Turnbull government's latest budget? McEwen is one of the fastest-growing regions in the nation, yet the government has failed to commit a single cent to this developing region. They have ignored our health needs, they have ignored our family needs and they have ignored the housing crisis that is happening all around us. This is about as bad a budget as we have seen in the northern suburbs. The Liberal government has not delivered on roads, education, health or mobile phone blackspots. In fact, last week we learnt that Minister Nash had duped the Australian public with the round 3 of blackspots by converting it into pork-barrelling for coalition electorates.

They are very good at doing a few things, like cutting much-needed money from family tax benefit part A, ripping apart school funding, half-heartedly addressing their Medicare catastrophe and desperately trying to save one job, the Prime Minister's. They are also, as we see, very good at giving tax cuts to millionaires. As I have said before, and I am not going to stop repeating it until it gets through to those opposite: there is nothing fair about making middle- and working-class families pay more while multinationals and millionaires get a tax cut.

While some may say that this budget was 'Labor light', from where we sit it is nothing like a Labor budget. We do not put millionaires over pensions. We do not put multinationals over families. We actually look after people. We put people first. When we look past the shadow puppets, we are left wondering: where is the funding for the suburbs of the outer north and the towns north of Melbourne?

As we know, the Liberals just will not stop attacking Medicare until they finally sink it. They are forcing Australians to pay more for visits to the GP, prescription medication, medical tests and scans, dental services and cancer treatments. What kind of government targets the wellbeing and health of ordinary people just to get a few dollars in the back pocket? Families throughout the electorate are left struggling to make ends meet with the government's Medicare disaster. The continued rebate freeze that the Abbott government put in place means that, while families are paying more and more for basic services, they are receiving less in return. At the beginning of the year I took the time to write to the minister for health and aged care to express my concern over the cuts and the policies that are making health care more expensive and less accessible for all of us. It is obvious that the minister did not listen, when we see the proposals for this budget leaving my constituents and all Australians wondering why our basic health services are now looking more and more like luxuries.

Local families are crying out for affordable access to health care. Only last night, a constituent of mine posted on the local Facebook page: 'We need a bulk-billing centre in Mernda. This is a joke.' If it were not so serious, it would be a joke. The Liberal government fails to fully reverse the Medicare rebate freeze until 2020, which means that not only will our medical services be underfunded but the additional payments will now fall onto the patients. It is flat-out wrong. I cannot stand by and watch the government jeopardise the health of generations to come. For the average family in Mernda, it costs $65 for a standard consultation, with an out-of-pocket expense of $27.95. When you are struggling to pay the mortgage or buy the books for kids for school, 30 bucks will make you think twice about going to the doctor. The standard consultation jumps to $75 on the weekend, so you had better hope your kids do not get crook on the weekend.

Not fully lifting their Medicare rebate freeze means that services such as mental health plans and chronic disease assessments will stay frozen for the next three years. They are just a few of the services that the Liberal government refuse to reverse their freezes on. Australians accessed these services over 23 million times in the last financial year—23 million times—and the government think the answer is to just sit on their hands. Shouldn't the government be encouraging people to access these services, not just cutting $2.2 billion from Medicare?

This government has zero credibility when it comes to the health budget. In my electorate, we have countless testimonies to the failure of the government's health budget. I was approached by a bulk-billing doctor in Seymour who raised concerns about the outdated and inefficient processing system for Medicare bulk-billing vouchers. Since November 2016, his practice has not had its bulk-billing vouchers processed, forcing him to redraw on his home loan to avoid financial trouble. The excuse that Medicare has given my constituent is, 'Oh, it's staff cuts.' Are we supposed to believe that staff cuts are a reasonable excuse for owing a doctor over $20,000?

Whittlesea Family Medical Centre, in my home town, has been forced to start charging co-payments to keep up with the rising costs. The practice manager was devastated, telling me that they try to provide a service for patients who cannot afford to go to the doctor, but now they will have fewer patients and there will be a greater strain on our local hospitals.

Internationally, policies like these have led to short-term boosts to the budget line but no long-term savings, because of the much larger strain on the public hospital system, which is more expensive to run. The continued Abbott government Medicare freeze means that doctors like these will continue to pay more for their practices, their staff, their medical products and their utilities, while the amount paid for their time, for their services, remains the same. Not only is this government not helping Australians access affordable health care; it is actually not helping providers to stay afloat.

That is why we need Labor, because Labor will always protect Medicare. Under a Labor government this freeze would have been removed in January this year, a policy that was welcomed with open arms by the AMA. But instead the Turnbull government has chosen to stand idly by and watch our health system follow the same grim path as that of the United States.

I turn to schools. Not only can this government not guarantee health services for all Australians; its budget also tells Australians, 'If you want a good education, you've got to get yourself rich parents.' The Liberals are taking $22 billion from our classrooms over the next decade. They are hoping that maybe ruining our education system means that we will not be up to pick up on their bad maths. So I thought I would simplify it down to a level even Liberals can understand. Let's say you had 10 Cayman dollars. I found these Cayman Island dollars in the hallway. Some bloke probably dropped them. So you have them and then the government comes in and takes them all away. That is what happened in 2014 under the then prime ministership of Tony Abbott. Then they put two back—

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

I remind the member for McEwen that props are not allowed. As a deputy speaker, he should know that.

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

That was when the member for Warringah was Prime Minister. Then they put two back. A bloke with a monocle and a top hat living in Point Piper singing about Cristal and truffles for everyone said, 'Look, you've got more funding than ever.' But the reality is—and I hope those opposite learn this—this bit is still missing. The government have taken money from education. They have never put any back. As a result, students and education are worse off.

Mr Pasin interjecting—

Obviously we can dumb it down, but the member for Barker has arrived and even I cannot dumb it down that far.

In my electorate, each and every year Wallan secondary school is set to lose around $700,000, Gisborne secondary school is set to lose around $800,000 every year and Sunbury College will lose around $800,000 as well. Ask the principal at each of these schools what it means. It means fewer teachers, higher class numbers and less individual attention to every student.

My electorate has over 53 government schools, and each and every one of them is set to be the biggest loser under the Turnbull government's budget. Apparently the government expects us to believe that the cuts are needs based and means tested. It is just not true. Last Friday I sat down with the leadership of St Patrick's in Kilmore. They, like government schools, are devastated by the impact that the government is having on Catholic schools. It is ridiculous. These schools are shaping the future doctors, lawyers, builders, nurses, farmers and even politicians. They are developing our nation's leaders through STEM. Schools such as Whittlesea Secondary College are the frontline of technical training. How do we expect students to learn and grow in an environment where teachers are not even sure if their own jobs are safe and where schools do not know which programs they will have to cut next year because there is no stability in their budget?

Last week I attended an education seminar alongside dedicated teachers and principals of schools around Australia. One school in particular has stuck with me, and I hope it will help the Turnbull government realise its funding of schools is about lives, not just learning. The principal told us that for years their all-girls school has been running an integral mental health program to help students cope with anxiety, depression, eating disorders and the stress and pressures that they experience during schooling. She told us that the cuts put forward by the Liberal government mean they will no longer be able to run this program. She teared up as she told us this and explained that they have lost students in the past, and this program has helped them detect mental ill-health earlier and give students the support they need. How do those opposite to sleep at night knowing that their government is jeopardising revolutionary programs throughout Australia that are changing lives? How does the Liberal government not understand that schools are nonnegotiable? Funding cannot just come and go at the whim of the Prime Minister. All Australian students deserve access to the best education.

Another thing that has been completely ignored nonstop by this government is housing affordability. What does it matter if your family misses out on a tax benefit when under the Liberal government they will probably never afford a house either, right? That is wrong. Home ownership is the lowest it has been in 60 years. The rate of home ownership for 25- to 34-year-olds is collapsing. Under this government it is now below 40 per cent. It is a disgrace the government will not commit to tackling skyrocketing house prices throughout my electorate and across the country. Since the Liberals came to government, house prices have risen 30 per cent throughout Australia, and they are still going up. They are going up alongside the rising unemployment rates, the rising debt and the rising mortgage stress. The Liberals had a chance to reform negative gearing and capital gains, and they had a chance to fix the housing problem, but they lacked moral courage. They did nothing, and now it is the rest of us who are left to pay. In my community, the mortgage belts like Mernda, Beveridge, Donnybrook, Doreen and Craigieburn are left wondering: what is this government actually about? What they have delivered is a grab bag of poorly planned measures and hasty reactions, instead of careful plans that will address key drivers of housing, like winding back negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts.

Once again, the government fails the fairness test. The plan announced in this budget is not a solution. It is a false hope for people who do not have rich parents. We are not supporting this cruel hoax, but we will deliver on our plan for affordable housing by driving construction of some 55,000 new homes over three years and creating 25,000 jobs every year. While the Liberal government has been content in tearing apart services to find every last hidden cent behind every corner, on this side of the House we are fighting for what actually is fair. We are fighting for a healthcare system that does not require a platinum credit card. We are fighting for a schooling system that does not discriminate based on where you were born or who your parents were. We are fighting for a tax system that does not rob from the poor and give to the rich like some sort of reverse Robin Hood. We are fighting for affordable housing for thousands of Australians who work day in and day out to save in hopes of getting out of the exorbitant rental market.

On this side of the House, we are committed to this fight. We are not going to stop the battle against this budget. This not a fair budget. This is a budget that forgets about the people of my electorate of McEwen, just as this government has done. In three terms, we have not seen the Liberal Party or this government commit to any major infrastructure funding in the fastest growing areas of Australia—not one cent. As I said earlier, we have seen Minister Nash come out and admit that round 3 of the Mobile Black Spot Program became nothing more than a pork-barrelling exercise, and they actually washed away all of the government's own criteria.

The government is desperate for one job to be hung onto, and that is the job of the member for Wentworth. He has failed and he has been a fizzer, and there is absolutely nothing in this budget that will turn that around. When a government comes into this place on budget night and announces it is going to give the Prime Minister an $8,000 tax cut while making a family on $65,000 a year $400 worse off, you have to sit there and ask, 'What's fair about that?' There is nothing fair about it. If the government was half-serious or had any credibility or moral courage, it would have left the deficit levy for high-income earners. It would not have given millionaires tax cuts at the expense of pensioners. But this is a government that is by millionaires, for millionaires and only cares about millionaires. It never has and never will care about pensioners or people who are struggling to make ends meet. It is time they got out of the way, and it is time that we got a Labor government that puts people first.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The problems this budget is attempting to solve are those of this government, not those facing Australians and, in particular, not those which are of most concern to constituents in the Scullin electorate. It presents the wrong answers because the government has been asking the wrong questions for the wrong reasons. It is fundamentally concerned with the political survival of the Prime Minister and his hapless Treasurer, not the challenges facing our nation. This budget, like this government, is all about tactics—tactics in place of vision, a vision of a government, a vision for our nation and particularly an inclusive vision for Australia and for Australians.

Indeed, what this budget demonstrates is pretty much the reverse. It is a recipe to deepen inequality and also to constrain economic growth and, with it, all of our futures. It is a very crude exercise in trickle-down economics. Indeed, it is cruder than that proposed elsewhere. Extraordinarily, the centrepiece of this budget is not housing affordability, as it was supposed to be, but a $65 billion giveaway to large corporations. It is cruder than similar trickle-down exercises elsewhere, including that proposed by President Trump, because here there is no trade-off; it is a straight giveaway, a straight transfer of wealth.

This kind of exercise is not a novel experiment. As we debate this budget, as we pick apart the threadbare agenda of this government, we see the evidence of what this sort of policy agenda means. We can look to the US and the impact of their company tax cuts on American society and, indeed, on the American economy. It is a vision of the future which Australians should and will reject.

We also have before us our present circumstances. On this side of the House we are deeply concerned that inequality in Australia is at a 75-year high. Today we face circumstances where company profits are at record highs but we have very low rates of investment and, of course, stagnant wages growth, the lowest on record. I asked myself, as do all my Labor colleagues: how can large company tax cuts be an answer to any of these problems? While the government's cheerleaders and boosters in the Business Council of Australia say there is no plan B, this is the only way ahead, on this side of the House we join with pretty much everyone who has thought about these questions in the international community—bodies like the IMF and research bodies like the OECD—and we do not merely reject the notion that there is no alternative way forward but we set one out. I was so proud to be in the House for the budget reply speech of the Leader of the Opposition. It was a strong reply to a weak budget, building on strong foundations—a body of policy work that we started back in 2013, founded on a very different vision for our future, a vision of inclusive growth, a real fairness agenda rather than the fakery of members opposite.

The Prime Minister, as he works his way through the process of this budget, is a diminished figure. He has come a long way from the optimism of that courtyard where he launched his leadership bid and promised a sophisticated economic narrative. All of that has disappeared. Cities are an afterthought, really a way of wrapping around some local infrastructure commitments and all about marginal seats. Innovation seems to have been entirely forgotten. He is operating a one-size-fits-all antidote to Australia's problems—although, of course, it is an antidote not to Australia's problems but the problems that bedevil his government. I ask, as I make my contribution to this debate alongside my Labor colleagues the member for McEwen, the member for Braddon and the member for Richmond: isn't the silence on the other side of the chamber extraordinary? The government members do not want to talk about this budget; they do not want to talk about these bills. I think there are some very good reasons why they do not. They understand, as we do, that this budget has already been rejected by the Australian people; that it offers nothing more than a recipe to deepen inequality and no pathway to sustainable and strong economic growth that can be shared by all Australians, our children and our grandchildren.

When we look at the budget we see that perhaps another challenge preventing government members from rising to their feet to debate it is its incoherence. It oddly combines ideological surrender on the surface, with the government walking away from many of the most egregious aspects of the 2014 budget. I think about question time and the way the Prime Minister clings on to those words 'needs based' when it comes to schools—and I will return to that. He does not mean it of course, but he understands he has to mouth the words because the Liberals and their coalition partners have been unable to persuade Australians that their race-to-the-bottom agenda is acceptable. They seek to cloak it, to disguise it, in the language of fairness. We heard 'fairness' a lot on budget night. I actually had a sense of deja vu because of course they tried this repositioning a couple of years ago, as the member for Richmond will well remember. How did that work out? Not terribly well, because they did not have any conviction in mouthing these words.

We see this most obviously in how they really think about those measures from the 2014 horror budget. No less a figure than Senator Cormann, the Minister for Finance, has admitted that this is not a position he is committed to. It is again a tactical withdrawal, no more, in a budget that is all about strategy and tactics but absent any strategic direction for the Australian economy, much less Australian society. I think we should remember that very important elements of the 2014 budget still remain, such as keeping the pension age at 70, which, as we on this side of the House all know, is the highest in the developed world. This is alongside deep cuts to family payments. Notwithstanding some sleight of hand around the edges, there is a very cruel cut to pensioners, through the abolition of the energy supplement.

As a whole these bills remain both incoherent and still deeply unfair. The most well-off in Australia, be they wealthy individuals or shareholders in major corporations, will receive significant tax relief while those on ordinary incomes are being required to pay more today whilst their prospects are being constrained—constrained in terms of the continued cuts in health, despite rhetorical positions to the contrary, and in particular in terms of this budget's vision for schooling, skills and higher education.

I ask myself: what is the point of this budget and, indeed, its authors: the Prime Minister and the Treasurer? The journey to budget day is instructive in this regard, because this budget was going to be all about housing affordability. That was to be the centrepiece, but it ended up little more than an afterthought, and perhaps that is a generous description. This is extraordinary at two levels for those of us on this side of the House and for those of us who talk to young Australians who are interested in purchasing their first home, not investors looking at six, seven, eight, nine or 10.

There is a plan on the table—the plan that the shadow Treasurer and the Leader of the Opposition put forward to make significant changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing—to boost the bottom line, to allow young Australian families into the housing market and to do something about this awful trend to greater wealth inequality. There is a solution there. It is free of charge to the government to take it up, yet they spurn it, despite the evidence and the soundness of the case.

Beyond this it is critical to examine the budget's foundations because they are extraordinarily weak. We know wages growth is at a record low in Australia, but apparently, if one is to have regard to the budget papers, there is a miracle cure somewhere around the corner. This budget contains the most heroic assumptions about wages growth—not out of any sense of what is going to happen in the world of work but rather to support equally heroic revenue forecasts to disguise the fundamental structural weaknesses of this budget.

Today's Australian Financial Review really tells it as it is. In an article entitled 'Slugging households "no budget fix"' it says:

A budget crisis looms because the Turnbull government is asking ordinary households and workers to do the heavy lifting of budget repair by paying higher income taxes as company taxes and wages sag, top budget experts say.

The 2017 budget is built on heroic assumptions about company taxes and wages growth returning to pre-global financial crisis levels, and the burden will instead fall on wage and salary earners who will have to pay higher effective income tax rates … to close the gap.

It is no foundation at all. I will say very briefly on tax that of course we are not opposed to the bank levy, the centrepiece on the real revenue side, but, as the shadow Treasurer and other Labor members demonstrated in question time, this is not a policy that has been developed with any thought. It is policy making on the run. This is not the way a government should go about its business.

There are many aspects of the budget that I would like to discuss in detail, but time means I will be able to only pass over them. I would like to talk very briefly about infrastructure. What we have seen in infrastructure under the member for Warringah and now the member for Wentworth is almost a strike, and that is particularly in terms of my home state of Victoria and my city of Melbourne, which contains Australia's fastest growing suburb in my electorate of Scullin. Victoria has 25 per cent of Australia's population yet has less than 10 per cent of the infrastructure spending, despite extraordinary growth and despite emerging evidence that congestion is one of the greatest drags on the Australian economy. This failure to support urban infrastructure, particularly public transport, is coming at a huge economic cost and also a huge cost to the lives of too many of my constituents.

I would like to talk more about schools, my own portfolio area, but let me just say this: a $22 billion cut to school education will not lead to a nation that is agile or innovative. It will not. The rhetorical position of the government is simply extraordinary. They are wrapping themselves up in words that actually convey the opposite meaning to that which is suggested. When they talk about needs based funding and when they talk about being sector blind, they mean the reverse. At the heart of the government's schools-funding package is a retreat by the government from any national responsibility for school education. It will hit schools in Tasmania, in the Northern Territory and in South Australia the hardest. It will hit regional communities the hardest. It will hit remote communities the hardest. It is a betrayal of a vision of school education as a driver of equity and excellence in Australia. For these reasons, I am so proud to have rejected these measures in the House with all of my Labor colleagues.

Similarly, in higher education, we see a cut of nearly $4 billion alongside increases in fees and—I think most shockingly of all—a decrease in the repayment threshold to a level that will discourage people from disadvantaged backgrounds from participating in higher education. Similarly, in skills, could the contrast between Labor's vision of investing in TAFE and supporting apprenticeships and the failures of this government be any more stark?

The member for McEwen dealt very effectively with health, but let me just say this: what a cruel hoax the supposed end to the rebate freeze is. What a betrayal of all of our communities from this government!

Fifty-one percent of Australians are women, but extraordinary revelations in Senate estimates this week have shown that Treasury did not model any impact of this budget on women. In Labor, through the member for Newcastle and many of my colleagues, we have focused on a women's budget for some time. It is an extraordinary omission, and one that this government stands condemned for—that it is not concerned about the impact of this government on women—particularly in the light of other evidence showing that many women under the measures here will be paying effective tax rates at quite extraordinary and punitive levels.

I should touch on overseas aid. Under this government, in this budget, we see the weakest levels in Australian history: 23c out of every $100 in national income. The cruellest cuts in this budget go to those who are unable to speak to it in this place. On climate change, you have to look very hard at the budget to find a mention—in fact, it is not even there. What a cruel betrayal of future generations. It is one that must be rectified when the Finkel review is before us.

In conclusion, obviously I do not oppose these appropriations. I want the business of government to continue. But I want government members to get real. I want them to account for themselves and to account to their electorates for this budget. I want them to make clear why it is, how it can be, that they can support this recipe for more unfairness, to deepen inequality, to constrain economic growth and to deny young Australians a foothold into housing, education and decent lives.

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

I too rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2017-2018 and the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018. Like those on this side of the House, I intend raising a lot of the concerns that I and my constituents have about the unfairness in many of the measures that are contained within this budget. It seems that, year after year, we have yet another unfair budget that particularly impacts people in regional and rural areas. This budget is indeed unfair because it delivers tax handouts for multinationals and millionaires whilst hurting families, especially in regional areas like mine, in the electorate of Richmond, on the North Coast of New South Wales. Budgets are all about choices, but this government's choices are all wrong.

Before I list some of the details that concern me about the budget, I will talk about the fact that one of the harshest choices is the lack of funding to assist northern New South Wales recover from the devastating recent floods. Those floods were a devastating and heartbreaking event felt by the people in our region and that are still very pertinent in our concerns. Make no mistake, the flooding associated with Cyclone Debbie has been far reaching, with many homes wrecked and businesses destroyed. It will be a very long road to rebuild and repair. Of course, the tragedy of lives lost due to the flooding is extremely sad. Again, I would like to express my condolences to all those families and communities that lost loved ones in the floods. The massive weather event caused by Cyclone Debbie spread south from Queensland and caused the largest flood that we have ever seen. The swiftness and strength of the rain was overwhelming for us. The record rainfall resulted in thousands of residents having to be evacuated from flood affected areas. I again strongly commend our outstanding police and emergency service workers, our SES volunteers and our council staff for their work and commitment throughout that challenging time. I would like also to commend our community again for coming together and assisting one another.

Whilst locals welcomed the very early decision to appoint a disaster recovery coordinator, we have rightly been very critical of both the New South Wales government and the federal government for their lack of substantial funding and commitment to repair and rebuild our region. In fact, our community had to protest and campaign locally to force the state government to commit to category C funding, particularly for business assistance. Many smaller villages, like Uki, are still waiting for this. In some areas, such as the Byron shire, they are still waiting for some disaster relief payments. It has certainly been a very long time since the floods and we will keep pressing the state and federal governments to ensure that funding is there as well as to obtain more needed funding.

I would like particularly to thank both the federal opposition leader, Bill Shorten, and the New South Wales opposition leader, Luke Foley, for visiting Murwillumbah and Lismore and meeting firsthand and listening to residents, business and council representatives and SES volunteers and community groups. Both of them, individually, held very extensive roundtables with all of those community representatives, and I thank them for that. I know that New South Wales Labor subsequently released an 11-point plan to address many of the urgent issues that were raised at these meetings. To date, the New South Wales state government has failed to lend support to the plan, let alone adopt it, despite the offer of bipartisan support from Labor. I again call on it to do that.

I would like to thank the New South Wales opposition leader for returning to the North Coast the week before last. Again he met with locals in Tumbulgum, Murwillumbah and Lismore, continuing to hear their concerns. He renewed his call to the state government to waive payroll tax for flood affected businesses and to set up two separate funds: a local government infrastructure fund and a business assistance fund.

Recently, Tweed Shire Council passed a resolution calling on the New South Wales Premier to waive payroll tax for the next 12 months for all flood affected businesses on the New South Wales North Coast. I would like to thank the council for its continued advocacy for our community. I particularly acknowledge the outstanding work of Tweed shire mayor, Katie Milne, and our deputy mayor, Chris Cherry. I also acknowledge all of the hard working Tweed councillors. I especially acknowledge the Tweed council general manager, Troy Green, and thank him for his leadership and resolve in such challenging times for our region.

Whilst we have a very strong community, we need governments that support us. I acknowledge that both the Prime Minister and the New South Wales Premier visited Murwillumbah very briefly soon after the event, but I call on them to come back for a substantial period of time, to sit down with our community and business leaders and hear their stories firsthand, hear about the action that is needed to help us recover and rebuild, and to deliver substantial funding to help us do that.

I note also that the Murwillumbah District Business Chamber has recently written to the New South Wales Premier, requesting that she visit Murwillumbah for a roundtable meeting with business and community representatives to update her on the continuing dire situation that we face, many weeks after the flood. The chamber has said that it is happy to meet with the Premier at any time it suits her, but it does want the meeting to take place soon, due to the struggle that Murwillumbah as a town continues to face.

Last Saturday's Tweed Daily News, one of our local papers, ran a story about the Premier being invited to meet with the chamber. The story reports that the Premier is refusing to come and meet with the chamber but is, instead, sending a representative. That is insulting to our community, to the business chamber and to the rest of the community. In that article, the acting vice-president of the chamber said:

Our chamber board has been actively keeping in touch with many flood-affected business owners and we are desperately worried about many of them due to the lack of suitable financial assistance available and the inconsistencies and barriers that exist to access funding and other financial support.

The ability of our businesses to recover is integral to the long-term recovery of our town as a whole.

The business chamber wrote to the premier asking her to come up, at any time that suited her, to sit with them and meet with them and talk about what they desperately need to rebuild and recover. The premier has refused to do that. She is sending a representative and quite frankly this is an absolute insult to our region. So I call on the New South Wales premier to listen to our community and commit to this meeting yourself. Quite frankly, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian's response so far has been disappointing and, I believe, disgraceful—the fact that she is not herself coming up to meet with our community. I intend to keep calling on her to come and meet with them. We also need to see comprehensive, long-term plans to address the mass destruction caused by the floods. We need much greater funds flowing to affected families, businesses and communities and indeed to our local governments, which have also suffered devastating losses.

We also desperately need more funding to address chronic homelessness issues. We had quite a large rally in Murwillumbah recently to highlight the issue of homelessness in our region, particularly since the floods, but also the general issues relating to accessing affordable housing. As I have said before to the House in relation to the flooding caused by Cyclone Debbie, we need our governments to help us, and our need for that help is absolutely desperate. That is one of the issues that I was concerned about that was not highlighted or addressed in this budget at all.

Since this unfair budget was announced, we have seen this incompetent government move from disaster to disaster. Whether it is cuts to the education funding or cuts to Medicare, they are truly incompetent and unfair. The Australian public do know this. This is also a budget that completely fails the economic credibility test. Remember, this is a government that promised to fix the budget. They had lots of talk about jobs and growth. Well, it does in fact fail the economic credibility test, because gross debt will now pass half a trillion dollars in the coming months, growth is down, employment is down, and wages growth is down. The budget also fails the jobs test, because unemployment is up. Also, the deficit is 10 times bigger for the coming year.

This is an unfair budget because it delivers tax handouts for multinationals and millionaires, whilst hurting everyday Australian families. The only people who will see better days in this budget are the very well off or big business. That is a fact. For example, as a result of the budget, someone earning $1 million will pay over $16,000 less tax this year, while someone on $65,000 will pay $300 more tax in two years' time. That is incredibly unfair. In the budget the government chose to continue with its tax handouts to big business, whilst increasing taxes the workers but does nothing meaningful to tackle a huge issue across our communities, which is the housing affordability crisis. Compared with our initiatives, such as action on negative gearing and capital gains tax, we are seeing absolutely nothing from the government. And, of course, they harshly cut $22 billion from Australian schools and also extended their cuts to universities. We know that last night in this House all those Liberal and National party members voted six times to cut that $22 billion from our schools. I can tell you that in regional and rural areas this will be particularly harsh and will hurt those communities.

Also, this government is increasing taxes in the budget. As the real wages of ordinary workers go backwards, the government wants to slug low and middle income earners with new taxes. That is all that they are doing. We see the government running around trying to sell this budget by framing it around fairness. But it really is quite a contradiction with this government. How can it be fair when there is a $22 billion cut to schools, tax hikes for battlers, tax cuts for the top end of town, and their refusal to level the playing field for first home buyers. There is nothing fair at all in any of that, and people have seen through it. Indeed, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer said this budget was about choices. Well, they made their choices and they have chosen big business over middle and working class families.

They claim to be about lower taxes and smaller government, but the coalition has propped up its budget with $21 billion in new taxes. One of the harshest measures is the government's $22 billion cuts from our schools, which is the equivalent of cutting $2.4 million from every school in the country over the next decade, or like sacking 22,000 teachers. In my electorate every school will be worse off under this government's cuts. The school cuts mean $14 million in cuts in 2018-19 to my local public schools and, of course, massive cuts to our Catholic schools. This will be devastating for rural and regional areas, like mine.

In contrast to all of this, Labor will properly fund our schools, because we believe that every child in every classroom deserves every opportunity. We want better schools, better results and better support for our great teachers. Whilst the Prime Minister is cutting that $22 billion from schools, on the other hand, of course, he is giving a very big tax cut to big business of over $65 billion. So that is where this government's priorities lie, and it is only Labor that understands the importance of proper funding and needs based funding to ensure the future and full potential of all of our students right throughout the country. We have announced that we will commit to an extra $22 billion in funding for our schools and properly funding our schools and will continue to oppose this government's cruel cuts to our schools. Again, I highlight that last night in parliament we saw those members vote six times to cut that $22 billion from our schools. It is a disgrace, and our schoolchildren deserve so much better.

We are also seeing this government ripping $3.8 billion from universities and making Australians pay more for a degree, so we will also oppose the unfair cuts to universities and their funding and the increase in student fees. Also, we will be opposing the change to the repayment threshold that really does impact on women, Indigenous Australians and low-income earners the hardest. Again, talking about cuts to universities, and, indeed, any cuts to education generally, it is those people in regional and rural Australia who are impacted on the most. It is very difficult for our younger people to access training. We have also seen some massive cuts from this government to apprenticeships and TAFE. Indeed, at a state level as well we are seeing the state Liberal-National government shut many TAFEs in our region. So they are making it harder for younger people to get training of all sorts, but when we look at the cuts to university funding that particularly impacts on people from regional areas.

The budget also fails the test when it comes to health care, and it fails the Medicare test. The government have delayed reversing their unfair cuts to Medicare for three years, and that is because we know they are committed to destroying Medicare. We have seen that time and time again. In fact, yesterday we saw their secret task force to attack public hospitals. Indeed, we see that public hospital funding will be cut and the private health insurance rebate abolished under reported plans being progressed by a secret Turnbull government hospitals task force. It really is proof that they have not given up attacking Medicare. They are just expanding their attack to another target. They will try, in every way they can, to undermine Medicare, the universality of our healthcare system and bulk-billing initiatives. They will constantly try to do this. We will always be here fighting them and fighting against that.

In this budget speech, we heard so many times the Treasurer talking about 'better days ahead'. Where are they? I can tell you that they are not in regional and rural areas like mine, the North Coast of New South Wales. The fact is that budgets are about choices, as I said, and the Prime Minister has made his choices. The Prime Minister and the Liberal-National government have made their choices. They chose big business over middle- and working-class families, they have chosen multinationals over Medicare and they have chosen big business over battlers. So it is about choices, and it is important to note that a Shorten Labor government will make different choices. We will make choices that put people first and create more jobs for Australians and choices where we properly invest in our schools, such as investing that $22 billion. We would also save Medicare from this government's very, very cruel cuts. We understand how important it is to have all those initiatives in place, and it will be particularly important for those people in regional and rural Australia, who will be very, very harshly impacted on by these cuts.

I finish by saying the unfairness is harshly felt in regional and rural areas, particularly because of the education cuts but also the fact that this government is giving massive handouts to multimillionaires and big business but nothing for those everyday working people in the country. Those people are the ones who have told me that they know this government is not concerned about them. As I have said before, in regional and rural Australia, Labor has your back. We are always fighting for those people in the country to make sure they can have access to decent healthcare systems, education systems and infrastructure funding. We are the party of the country, the bush and regional and rural Australia. The Liberal-National Party is just the party of multinationals and big business. It is only Labor that stands up and fights for the country.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My friend the member for Richmond took the words out of my mouth when she said, 'This is a budget that does nothing for middle- and working-class Australia.' I think that that is evidenced by the fact that, in my electorate of Greenway—and I have checked with my staff, I have checked through my emails and I have checked through my correspondence—I have barely heard a whimper from my constituents about this budget. I am very amused to hear that the Prime Minister is reportedly talking to the party room about the need to go out and sell this budget. I would like to know, firstly, who they are trying to sell it to.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It sells itself!

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My friend from Barker interjected and said, 'It sells itself.' No-one is buying, buddy!

The only feedback that I have had on this budget is outrage from my local community about the cuts to schools and the fact that this is a budget that completely ignores the needs of middle- and working-class Australia.

I will touch on two things. The first is a local piece of expenditure generally, and it enables me to talk about a very important group and an important project that is being conducted in my local area. The other focus I will have is on the portfolio of communications, which, again, simply registered a nothing in terms of the impact on the portfolio and the complete lack of focus, lack of vision and, quite frankly, lack of competence by the relevant minister when it comes to doing his job.

To start off, I was very impressed when sometime last year I met with a local group called Skate Park for Riverstone. This group was brought together thanks to a number of individuals including Sonia Grima. These people have been advocating for a very long time to have some sort of youth facility in the Riverstone area and specifically a skate park facility. Riverstone, as many people might know, is an area of north-west Sydney undergoing tremendous change. It was once semirural and is now regarded as outer urban. When you drive down the streets of Riverstone now, from one week to the next it is a mass of new housing development. With that comes new families, changing demographics and new challenges. So I was extremely pleased to be able to support the campaign being undertaken by Sonia Grima and her fellow Skate Park for Riverstone members. Many of them, of course, are children and young people. They were brought together following the death of a 14-year-old skateboarder named Michael Hannon near Campbelltown in January. It brought home to them the need to have safe operating facilities for teenagers. He, unfortunately, died after a collision with a car. Sonia Grima took it upon herself to form this group and to lead the charge for a local skate park in Riverstone.

It was very pleasing to see that Minister Fiona Nash has said that she is prepared and is working towards delivering a $400,000 grant to enable this to go ahead. Recently, Blacktown City Council was told by the minister:

I recommend that you do not enter into financial commitments or begin any construction work on the project until such time as a Deed of Agreement has been signed with the Australian Government.

Blacktown council submitted these application documents in December last year. Understandably, I have been receiving a number of requests, from people who are interested in and supportive of the Skate Park for Riverstone project, to follow this up. I have written most recently to Minister Nash this month seeking an update. I look forward to this being delivered. Of course, Blacktown council is the sponsoring entity for this project. The mayor, Stephen Bali, is very supportive of this. I genuinely hope that it will be delivered very soon—that we can finalise these funding arrangements and that we can actually get on with the job of delivering, as a community, for young people in the Riverstone area. I pay tribute to Sonia Grima and her team. I want to assure them that I am doing everything possible as their local member to ensure that this gets delivered, and I am very prepared to work with the federal government, and of course Blacktown council, to make that happen.

I move on to issues of the communications portfolio. Again, as I said, this exposes the utter incompetence of this minister and this government, including decisions made by the now Prime Minister when he was the Minister for Communications, decisions he made which are now coming home to roost, wrong decisions made in terms of technology choice and false assumptions made on the basis of finances—simply getting it wrong every step of the way. I note that in a speech to CommsDay in April this year Minister Fifield declared 2017 to be the year of the customer. Well, what does it say when, in debates in the parliament towards the end of last year on the issue of the NBN and on the issue of the long-term interests of end users, barely a member on the government benches could summon an understanding of the poor consumer experience that is currently going on in relation to this failed network—this multitechnology mix which is delivering nothing but stuff-up after stuff-up for consumers?

You do not need to take it from me, because the facts are these. TIO complaints about NBN faults soared by almost 150 per cent over the 2015-16 period and complaints about specifically slow speeds increased by nearly 50 per cent. Seven of the top 10 postcodes for TIO complaints about the NBN during this period were for areas—what a surprise!—served by fibre to the node. So the Prime Minister's choice of technology, copper, of which he has purchased 15 million metres on his watch is delivering—surprise, surprise!—such a high level of complaints that have never been seen before. The TIO has subsequently advised the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network that the total complaints in the telco sector are projected to reach 150,000 for the 2016-17 period. If this projection materialises, it will reverse years of progress that the sector has made towards a focus on consumers and reducing complaints.

In December 2016, just a few days before Christmas, it is notable that the government stripped information from the NBN website about what technology households and small businesses would be connected with. The reason offered for this was that consumers, apparently, do not care about what technology they are going to get. After being called out on this underhanded act, the NBN website was updated within a few weeks and the technology information became available. It is notable that this government, which on its watch failed consumers, has suddenly discovered consumers now because of, I suggest—and I am quite sure I am not wrong, and I am sure the member for Longman would support me on this—complaints to our offices about the poor quality of this government's broadband. For me, it is the No. 1 unsolicited complaint that I receive as a local member.

It is interesting that the ACCC gave evidence to the NBN joint standing committee that it first proposed a four-year broadband monitoring and reporting program. So this was the government's solution—it would have a broadband monitoring program. Bearing in mind that we are at the end of May 2017, the ACCC first proposed a four-year broadband monitoring and reporting program in the week commencing the 15 February 2016. So it was over a year ago. What has the minister been doing? It has gone into the Fifield triangle—this void into which every important decision is simply sucked and then spat out in the most underhanded way. Why has it taken 15 months to get this speed-monitoring trial underway? Why weren't consumers the top priority for this government until, all of a sudden, it discovered it had a problem?

Further, the $7 million in funding allocated for the speed-monitoring program over the forward estimates is not from government. It is not funding from government at all. It is the telco sector that has been made to pay for it. Of course, it is not going to pass that cost on to consumers, is it? If the government itself never had any intention of funding this monitoring program from consolidated revenue, why did it take so long to get up and running?

I will end on this point on this topic of consumers. On 7 April 2017—so only recently—the ACCC issued a media statement in response to the government's announcement that it will 'fund' the speed-monitoring scheme. The release stated:

After appointing a qualified testing provider, the ACCC will commence the program in May 2017 …

There is not long to go until May 2017 and—what a surprise!—the ACCC only just issued its tender documents this very afternoon, not meeting the deadline. I do not blame the regulator. It can only take so much direction. I blame this minister. I blame this hapless minister and his predecessor for putting us in a position where consumers are treated as though they are at the bottom of the food chain.

Turning to other issues in the communications portfolio, I want to talk about spectrum reform. Despite all the rhetoric that this government espouses about the importance of communications in today's digitally networked economy, there is nothing in the budget to demonstrate that this government has any vision whatsoever for the media and comms sector or that it is prepared to put its money where its mouth is to support Australia's successful transition to a digitally networked, knowledge economy of the 21st century.

Spectrum, as I said, is a case in point. When he was communications minister, the now Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, kicked off the spectrum review on 23 May 2014—that is, more than three years ago. We have been waiting a long time for the spectrum review. The Spectrum review report included an implementation time frame which stated that the consolidated legislative reform package would be released in September 2015 to enable the passage of the legislation by early to mid-2016. That has come and gone. The original timetable would have seen the new legislation passed a year ago and here we are, almost at mid-2017, and not only has the legislation not been passed but the exposure draft has only just been released for initial consultation on what will be a two-step process before the legislation is introduced to the parliament later this year. When asked at estimates earlier this year as to whether he was concerned about the government's delay in progressing spectrum reform, the communications minister passed the buck, saying the delay was on account of the industry wanting consultation. Blame the sector because that always works! Apparently, it has nothing to do with the minister's lack of policy vision and nothing to do with the resourcing of public sector agencies tasked with implementing the recommendations of the Spectrum review report.

Despite this being a generational opportunity and despite the fact that spectrum reform is worth so much to the economy and the fact that the review process has been subject so far to so much delay, what is in this budget for additional allocation for spectrum review implementation? What has the ACMA been allocated to prepare for spectrum review implementation in this budget? In a round figure, nothing—absolutely nothing; zero. The 2017-18 budget makes no provision for preparatory work to be undertaken by the ACMA to inform the draft bill. It is extremely concerning. Normally, spectrum review and spectrum management and implementation has a bipartisan approach because we need to make sure that it is aligned with international standards, and we know how much value that this scarce resource has for the economy. It is deeply concerning that the regulator is expected to prepare for this generational change on the smell of an oily rag. With $177 billion in value to the economy over 15 years at stake, one would think it an opportune time to grant funding to the regulator to ensure the best practice research and design work is undertaken to inform the draft bill and ensure swift progress upon passage of the bill in transitioning to the new framework.

I want to end on a brighter note, and that is that the government provided $8.8 million to the SBS in the budget this year. I am very pleased to say that because it vindicates Labor's longstanding campaign, driven by this government, against the coalition's broken 2014 election promise of no cuts to the SBS, as well as then communication minister Turnbull's dud plan to increase advertising on the SBS to compensate for the cuts. We on this side of the House oppose the government's attempts to increase advertising limits on the SBS in 2015 and we made it very clear that we would oppose it again when it came up again in 2017. In March this year, the government quietly resurrected its plan to increase the amount of advertising on the SBS by introducing a bill to the parliament. The Prime Minister wanted SBS to double the amount of advertising it runs in prime time—a clear vindication of Labor being steadfast in our opposition to the SBS being forced to survive by increasing the amount of advertising. Rather than supporting a public broadcaster—bear in mind, this was on the back of a broken promise by then Prime Minister Abbott—this government simply sought to have the SBS increase advertising to the detriment of consumers. We are very pleased that we have been vindicated on that point.

Susan Lamb (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The long awaited 2017-18 budget that was passed by the Treasurer, Scott Morrison, earlier this month, is a budget that, despite claims frequently parroted by this government, is neither fair nor reasonable. I believe that the people of my electorate in Longman deserve fairness and I believe all Australian people deserve fairness, which is why I cannot stand by and passively let this government enact a poorly devised budget.

The Liberal-National Party like to think of themselves as the party of money management, but this could not be further from the truth. They have proven time and time again by short-sighted fiscal irresponsibility and mismanagement that either they have determined to widen the class divide through economic inequality or they really have no idea what they are doing. I will give them the benefit of the doubt here by citing Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. But neglect and misunderstanding is no excuse when it comes to a federal budget and to the livelihoods and futures of over 24 million people. One concept that the Liberal-National Treasurer seems never to have grasped with this budget is that budgets are about people. They are about their health, their education, their families, their welfare, their environment. And they are about their future.

It is often said that the reason we have a kangaroo and an emu on our coat of arms is that neither of these native animals can move backwards. But we, as a nation, cannot move forward without looking forward, something that those opposite just refuse to do. Instead, they resort to short-sightedness for the sake of political spin. Moving forward is about investing in long-term, high-quality infrastructure. Instead, when he was the minister for communications, the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, dismantle Labor's future-ready national broadband network and replaced it with an unquestionably inferior system. People in my electorate, many of whom are still suffering from this appalling decision, were hoping for some remedial measures in this budget, but they have been disappointed again.

Moving forward means that we are investing in education and in our children. It is most certainly not ripping $22 billion away from our schools' funding. It is not ripping away $22 billion that the LNP committed to when it promised each and every family and each and every student in my electorate a unity ticket to prior to the 2013 electorate. It promised to support the recommendations of the initial Gonski review, which promised real needs based funding.

You really move forward when you understand that quick fixes are very rarely the solution to something as complicated and as important as the national budget. The government have taken no real steps forward. They have kicked up their feet and called it a day. But on this side of the chamber I am happy to say that the Labor Party has not. We are fighting back against this budget. Some in the media have claimed that this current budget is a good budget, a Labor budget. Whilst I appreciate that they are using 'Labor budget' and 'good budget' equally, the budget that Treasurer Scott Morrison brought down at the beginning of May was not 'good' and, I can tell you now, it certainly was not 'Labor'. It is not hard to see why the media may have made this mistake though.

The Treasurer's address was filled with enough spin to make anybody dizzy, and his party's rhetoric has been guided by that centrifugal force. For example, earlier this month the members for Petrie and Dickson, two electorates that border mine, posted a video on Facebook. Like true champions of the people, they confidently spoke of the Bruce Highway and the Deception Bay overpass as a big win in the budget. However, what they did not mention was that this budget did not have any big wins for the Bruce Highway, nor did it have any wins for the Deception Bay overpass. In actuality, the money for these projects was previously allocated under another federal budget; it is not new money at all.

These are not some projects for which the member for Dickson and the member for Petrie fought valiantly to secure funding. They were funded a long time ago. The government had just let them fall by the wayside. Instead of actually doing something and taking action for once, it had let the funds just sit there. The people of the Moreton Bay region could already be benefiting from the upgrades to the Bruce Highway and the Deception Bay overpass were it not for the inaction of this government. This government realises that its budget is so full of holes and so devoid of true wins for our constituents that it has now resorted to shallow political spin. If one of the biggest wins that you can parade from your budget is not actually from your budget, then maybe it is just not a very good budget.

Now, I have to say, I do welcome the upgrades—of course I do. What I do not welcome, however, is the political sleight of hand that this government is using. It is dishonest and it shows a complete lack of respect for the Australian people. This is a government which has mishandled Australia's infrastructure time and time again, and the people of my electorate are suffering every single day because of it. The people of Longman have been denied quality infrastructure for years, and the government has done nowhere near enough to fix it.

Finally, they are doing something about a highway, but we are still waiting to hear what will be done for our communications infrastructure like the mobile phone towers that provide cellular service right across the country. In my electorate there are a number of mobile black spot sites that desperately need addressing. People in a lot of these areas, which are not very far from Brisbane CBD—actually they are less than about an hour away—receive no signal at all to their mobile phones.

It is 2017, and technology that was popularised back in the 1990s has barely reached Longman. The government had a Mobile Black Spot Program in place to ensure that areas all around Australia that had this issue would be upgraded and be able to receive cellular service. The final round of funding for that program has just been announced, and it seems that a number of areas—again, in my electorate—have been forgotten, despite my having raised this a number of times in parliament since being elected. There was no new money for this program in the 2017-18 budget, so it looks as if the government has just thrown in the towel.

We expect it though, because we know just how little this government cares about communications infrastructure. It was most evident when Labor's National Broadband Network was personally dismantled by the current Prime Minister for nothing short of some political gain. Instead of delivering what could have been the largest, most ambitious infrastructure project that our country has ever seen, providing high-speed, reliable internet to every household, Australians have been subjected to what can only be described as a dismal, dismal failure.

All those years ago we had Prime Minister Turnbull promising that every single home would be connected by 2016. Do you remember that? That was last year. It is nearing the end of the second quarter of 2017, and there are countless homes and countless businesses in the electorate of Longman that are still waiting to be connected. But, thanks to the government's mishandling of the NBN rollout, in many cases the houses that are yet to be connected are actually the lucky ones. Let me tell you: the ones that have not been connected are the lucky ones, because I have heard in countless horror stories from residents and small businesses operating out of my electorate of their struggles when connecting to the NBN. For many, connecting to the NBN has left them with a line that is less reliable than the one they had in the days of dial-up.

We live in a society where, whether you like it or not, a fast and reliable internet connection is absolutely imperative for many people's day-to-day lives, and the success of nearly every small business in today's modern economy is reliant on a fast and dependable internet connection. Not all that long ago I hosted a roundtable in my electorate with a number of local small businesses. Each and every one of them was able to share a way in which this shoddy NBN had set their businesses back.

As I have mentioned in this chamber before, the story from this discussion that stood out for me was of a retirement home on the passage side of Bribie Island. They lost all connectivity when they were apparently upgraded—and I use that term very loosely—to the NBN. They lost all connectivity to the internet and all connectivity to their landline. For a business in the aged care sector this can easily be a matter of life and death. A resident may need medication. They may need to get in contact with an ambulance. Without easy access to a landline phone or the internet they might not be able to get the services they need in time.

But we all know that this government is not one to offer much support to people when it comes to their health. Labor believes that affordable access to high-quality health care is a fundamental human right. This government does not tend to agree, though. In his budget speech the Treasurer boasted that his government was lifting the Medicare freeze. Actually, you probably could have heard the exasperated sigh of 'finally' collectively being spoken by the Australian people—except that it was not 'finally'. His health budget was full of smoke and mirrors. There are still some years to wait before that freeze is fully lifted.

The bulk-billing incentives for GPs will be indexed from 1 July this year. That is not too long to wait, and I will happily concede that. But when there is a wait until 1 July 2018 for the indexation of just a standard consultation, and until 1 July 2019 for specialist procedures and allied health services, the government's budget really tends to lose its shine. When you realise that there is a further wait until 2020 for even more crucial services, it is evident just how little this government really thinks about supporting our health care. Vital services like pregnancy support and mental health care will have to wait over three years for their indexation date. That is over three years for people who need pre-pregnancy support or mental health plans. This means that, despite Malcolm Turnbull and his spin, they are still cutting $2.2 billion over four years. The average personal median income in my electorate is pretty low—it is about $500 a week. There are a lot of people living in Longman who suffer from heath issues. These people need their freeze lifted, and they should not have to wait for years for this to happen.

You may have also heard that the government's secret hospitals task force has come to light in the last couple of days—the very, very secret task force—

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Susan Lamb (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hear this interjection. Does it not exist? Stand up for it—does it not exist? It does exist. At first glance you may think, 'Finally this government is doing something for our health care.' But, as with most of the Turnbull government's initiatives, what may sound good on the surface is truly anything but. This task force is not about hearing from all manner of stakeholders to deliver what is best for Australian people; this task force is another way for the government to outsource public hospital discussion to private interests. If you look at the list of participants from this secret task force, you will notice people from all manner of private organisations. What you will not see are people from public hospitals. You will not see consumers on this task force and you will not see people from the state health departments on this task force. What you will see is Prime Minister Turnbull selling off health care, and selling off the livelihoods of Australian people, right to the highest bidder.

I ask you: how could anybody refer to this vicious budget as a Labor budget? It is absolutely not. Labor is the party that sought to implement the National Broadband Network to deliver fast, high-speed internet connection to every single Australian household. Labor is the party that introduced Medicare—the equitable healthcare system which is the absolute envy of countless other nations. Labor is the party of looking forward and taking risks to ensure that Australia thrives now and long into the future—long after any of our current members here have retired. What Labor is not is a party that plays to the self-serving, closed-minded interests of corporate friends. It is not a party that turns its back on its constituents. We are not a party that would ever deliver an atrocious budget like the one that has just been handed down.

Debate adjourned.