Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A federal budget is more than just a financial statement. Any federal budget should be about national priorities, fairness and a better life for all Australians, whoever they are and wherever they live. As much as commentators might be captivated or captured by the budget's headline numbers, the most important focus of any budget must be how those big numbers and big changes affect people. I am proud of my community—of how we have faced the challenges and transformations of the last 30 years and how, as a community, we have decided it is our time to thrive. We are now well on the way to becoming the ninth-largest urban centre in Australia, with a population of nearly 400,000, including 21,000 local businesses, a university, major teaching hospitals and a growing number of new homes.

Like every other part of Australia, the Central Coast looks to the national government for a fair deal, and where there are special problems, such as those associated with rapid population growth, we expect that the Commonwealth will help in addressing special areas of difficulty or disadvantage. For much of the Central Coast, rapid population growth, the proximity to Sydney and its overheated property market, lack of infrastructure, long commutes, above-average rates of youth unemployment and relatively poor high school completion rates are enduring concerns. Those too ought to be a top priority for any government—state and federal, coalition or Labor. As my colleague the member for Macarthur remarked, this budget spruiks better times ahead whilst doing very little to assist their arrival. Yes, world economic conditions are expected to improve over the next year or two, and our domestic economy may benefit from that—let us hope so—but this budget does little to stimulate domestic growth.

Outside of reannouncing old programs or promising yet more feasibility studies, there is little new in this budget to address the chronic problems experienced in our regions. The housing policy unveiled on budget night is no more than a collection of rats and mice nibbling at the edges of real community concerns. Total business investment levels are flatlining and, worryingly, there is already some fall-off in housing construction and retail sales. The government seems disinterested in our burgeoning levels of private debt, which are being pushed to record levels by a combination of low interest rates and overly generous, and budget-draining, federal taxation concessions. Treasury, though, expects that private debt levels will rise further, notwithstanding its own seemingly optimistic predictions that wages growth will nearly double by 2020-21. Unemployment is expected to remain at around 5.5 per cent nationally, well into 2019. On the Treasury's own numbers, this government will have made no dent whatsoever in the unemployment rate.

Underemployment now stands at an all-time high, and the proportion of workers who have been continuously unemployed for longer than a year remains stubbornly high. Youth unemployment nationally for 15- to 24-year-olds is just over 13 per cent, higher than when Labor was last in office. In my community, where there are more limited job options for young people, youth unemployment remains at 16.6 per cent, several points above the national average.

Those with healthy memories will recall that, for much of the last 30 years, various coalition figures have argued for greater labour market flexibility. Many of their fellow travellers have been even bolder and called for cuts to real wages, the argument being that people were pricing themselves out of work. We hear less of that now. Wages, including minimum wages, have been growing slowly, and the wages share of the economy continues to slide, while the profit share continues to climb. Both those trends have accelerated in the last two years. Neither has produced a jobs bonanza.

What we now have is a harsher, less fair and less accountable labour market than the one I joined in the 1990s. It is a hard slog, and predatory training providers are not making it any easier. Maggie was 19 when she moved from the South Coast to the Central Coast. Maggie searched for months for work, sending hundreds of job applications. Separated from her friends and her old life, she was lonely, but, worst of all, her self-esteem suffered. One day, when browsing online for jobs, she was approached by Careers Australia. Almost unknowingly, she found herself signed up to a course. At the same time, she finally landed a job. She emailed the college to advise that she had no intention of undertaking the course and, when she did not get a response, she thought nothing more of it. That was until her first tax return came back with a notice of thousands of dollars of debt for a course she did not do.

I have also heard from Brendan, a keen musician who is vision impaired. He was enticed to study with Evocca College, but the coursework was clearly not designed for people with disability, and after a short period he withdrew from the course. Years later, he was shocked to discover that the experience had left him with a debt of $18,615.

Even those who completed their studies are adversely affected. The collapse of Evocca and, more recently, Careers Australia has left too many Central Coast students without a credible or complete qualification.

Penalty rates are under threat; the workforce is more casualised; and many, many more of those studying have taken up part-time jobs just to stay afloat. At the same time, student fees are being increased, and the threshold for the repayment of HECS-HELP debts is to be dropped to $42,000. Many young people just entering the labour market will find themselves struggling to meet these big new retrospective taxes. It is worth noting that in many cases students now pay up to 85 per cent of course fees. We have moved a long, long way from the days of free tertiary education under the Whitlam government or even the early years of HECS, when I was studying and the student contribution was on average about 20 per cent of course costs.

Nor have young people been the only ones caught in the crossfire. The decision to launch the umpteenth crackdown on welfare recipients will now be extended to older workers too. This too is based on the false premise that Australians are work shy. Over the last 30 years, we have seen massive increases in labour force participation amongst 55- to 59- and 60- to 64-year-olds. The numbers involved have almost doubled in the 60- to 64-year-old age group. Employment amongst young people has grown too because many of those studying are now also balancing work. We have close to the highest rate of unpaid overtime in the developed world.

But what we have seen from this is a redoubling of the populist rhetoric of so-called mutual obligation. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, and despite the cost to the budget of close to $900 million over the last three years alone, the government persists with schemes such as Work for the Dole and now proposes new job activity measures that have a poor track record here and elsewhere.

This government seems to have conveniently forgotten that its primary responsibility is to create the conditions in which employment will grow. There are presently around 750,000 Australians who are unemployed and a further million or so who want and need more hours. That compares with about 155,000 job vacancies. On those numbers alone, this government should stop blaming the victims and start worrying a bit more about how to create more employment opportunities here and now. That does not necessarily mean more job creation schemes, but it does mean paying closer attention to labour market weaknesses and identifying worthwhile infrastructure projects where population pressures are highest.

My community needs a government that is committed to creating job opportunities, not a government that cares more about providing tax cuts for big business. Labor has always supported tax cuts for small businesses with a turnover of $2 million or less. Almost every business on the Central Coast, in my region, is in that category. But with this budget the government has confirmed it is committed to a company tax plan that will cost around $65 billion, which is money that could be invested in schools, hospitals and infrastructure and not just handed to overseas multinationals. Worse, the government is happy to allow a cut to penalty rates for around 15,000 Central Coast workers, who face a pay cut of up to $77 per week from 1 July. Cutting penalty rates when the Central Coast is already seeing a slowdown in wage growth is a reckless decision that will cut deep into family budgets and hurt our local economy. There is little evidence that cutting penalty rates will create the new jobs needed to offset the reduction in take-home pay and purchasing power lost to employees.

In the electorate of Dobell, around 62 per cent of people of working age did not complete high school. Of those, the number who left school to take up a trade is significantly higher than in other areas. In Dobell, 58.6 per cent of people have vocational education qualifications, compared to the national average of 46.7 per cent. But this pathway, learning a trade and getting a job, is not well supported by conservative governments at a federal or state level. Overall, this government has cut over $2.5 billion from skills and training, and Australia has shed 130,000 apprentices. In the last 12 months alone, trade apprentice commencements have dropped to 10.5 per cent.

The National Partnership Agreement on Skills Reform, funded and delivered by the former Labor government, provides vital funding to states and territories to support TAFE, apprenticeships and skills programs. The agreement expires on 30 June this year, and the Turnbull government's own budget papers show that there is nothing to replace it. This will mean a cut of over $500 million in TAFE, apprenticeships and skills every year. In New South Wales this means a cut of $165 million a year. This will have a direct impact on local students. Wyong TAFE has already seen a number of courses cut, including the HSC, and staff placed under enormous strain. TAFE must be protected. Labor will do so by returning TAFE to its place as the backbone of our skills and training, guaranteeing two-thirds of that public funding for TAFE. This is in line with a similar commitment made by Labor in New South Wales.

State and territory governments across the country would argue, and not always without just cause, that federal government cuts to health and education have forced harsh savings measures on their budgets. Under this government, New South Wales public hospitals are $630 million worse off. The New South Wales Liberal government is pursuing a public-private partnership for Wyong hospital, despite it being against the community's needs and wishes, and without their say in the future of our community hospital. The federal government has a direct stake in Wyong hospital. Last year, around $111 million in federal funding was provided to Central Coast Local Health District, yet, as we have seen this week, leaked official documents show the government's task force looked at a proposal to combine current Commonwealth funding into a single pool covering public and private hospitals. This would see funding provided by the Commonwealth for public hospitals decrease and funding for private hospitals increase. Would Wyong hospital be slated for privatisation if the federal government were committed to funding public hospitals properly?

Our community wants Wyong hospital to stay in public hands. Around 25,000 people have signed petitions and more than 2,000 people have attended rallies, candlelight vigils and public forums. I have received dozens of phone calls, emails and letters. I heard from Bill, who worked with the Ambulance Service of New South Wales for 18 years. Bill wrote:

This hospital in many ways was funded by the community through its efforts of fundraising over a long period of time, so it should stay in the hands of the government and not be privatised. People are not fools. Promises made in the beginning that there will be no or little change are rubbish. Private operators want huge profits to pay executives and shareholders. Let's not be fooled again.

Budgets do many things. They set priorities and coordinate policies. It seems unbelievable that no-one seems to have taken stock of how this budget will impact millennials. If you are in search of a failure of policy coordination, you need look no further than this budget's treatment of anyone aged 15 to 35. They have the highest rates of unemployment and underemployment. They have amongst the highest effective marginal tax rates, on account of the proposed increase to the Medicare levy and lowering the threshold for the repayment of student loans. They have the most rapidly falling rates of home ownership of any age group, combined with stagnant wage rates, high levels of casualisation, a Newstart allowance that remains highly inadequate and the umpteenth crackdown on unemployment benefits. If you are a millennial, you would have to start wondering if this budget were something that the Centrelink robo-debt computer dreamt up while it was enjoying some downtime.

There is a strong argument for reinstituting a budget statement for women. One for young people might not be a bad idea either. Saying a budget is fair does not make it so. Communities like mine deserve a fair budget. They deserve a budget that meets their needs. They deserve a budget that is in the interests of our community. I will stand for our community each and every day to fight these harsh cuts that affect our schools, our hospitals and young people's training.

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

I am quite saddened to speak on this budget. I did not become a member of parliament to watch our country push the pause button for as long as it has. There is a lot of work to be done. I was actually quite hopeful that we would see some of that begin in this budget, but, unfortunately, there is no vision in it. We have seen a lot of slogans in past budgets from the Liberal government. I suspect the most accurate description now is 'storyboards'—plans of how the government is going to sell itself as fair, as caring about education and as caring about health. When you strip away the glossy words and look at the reality, the vision is simply not there.

I ask myself: how long can this go on? I have said to this parliament before that when Prime Minister Turnbull first rolled Prime Minister Abbott I had a moment of hope that the pause that Australia had been in for so many years might be over and we might actually start dealing with the extraordinary challenges and opportunities that our country faces in the world as it is. It is extraordinary change. It is no less than an age change. There are massive opportunities and massive risks. We can already see that there will be great winners and great losers, and we cannot afford to let year after year go by without facing the reality of the modern world in this place. This budget does nothing for that. It has no vision. It does nothing to position Australia for the future. We must do that because every year we delay makes it harder for us to do that.

I used to make a chemistry joke among people who understood chemistry, and not everybody does. I used to refer to Prime Minister Abbott when he was opposition leader as a 'political halogen'. Halogens are the group of elements second from the right end. They are highly volatile. There is fluorine, bromine and chlorine. Fluorine is so volatile it cannot even be stored. It reacts with glass. They are so volatile. They are one electron short of stability. For that reason they bond with the first thing that comes along. When they do bond they cannot be moved. When fluorine bonds with carbon it makes Teflon, for example. It is so strong and it bonds so fast that you use it in the hottest parts of jet engines. Once it bonds nothing breaks it apart.

I used to watch Tony Abbott as opposition leader and then as Prime Minister cling to something—the idea that debt was bad, for example. Once he had bonded to that he was so fixed nothing would move him. I used to refer to him as a 'political halogen'. People got it, strangely enough. The minute I called the government of the day a halogen, people who understood chemistry got it, so accurate I think was that description.

The government we have now is not a halogen. I think it has moved one step further to the right, and it is now in the noble gas territory. Noble gases are completely opposite to halogens. They are completely stable. Nothing changes them. Nothing touches them. They are called noble gases for a reason. They exist as one atom at a time; they are monoatomic. They are extraordinarily stable things: nothing touches them. When I look at this budget, that is what I see. I see a government that are untouched by what happens around them, that are untouched by the furnace that young people face—the combination of unaffordable housing, a declining job market, an extraordinarily rapidly changing world, climate change—and we have a government that do not seem to notice. They are the gas that you put in the light bulb, because when you heat something up to an extraordinary level they do not care, they do not give a stuff, they do not react—they just sit there like a noble gas. So we have gone from halogens a step to the right to noble gases.

I will talk through some of the things that are happening in the world today in our communities in Australia that this government does not seem to notice. Before I do that, I am going to talk about one of the biggest ideological bombs that the Abbott-Turnbull government has had for a long time and which they now seem to have ignored. That is debt. The Abbott government fixed on debt as bad and spoke about it every day. Joe Hockey, the then Treasurer, came out prior to his first budget, made a few increases to expenditure and then projected what would happen if the entire parliament went to sleep until 2026 and said, 'Oh, terrible! The debt will be $680 billion.' I remember it because it was a quite precise figure: $680 billion, how terrible this would be. For week after week, year after year, we heard the cry of 'Debt, terrible! Debt, terrible!' from this halogen who had bonded to the notion that all debt is bad.

Now we have a quiet increasing of the debt ceiling to $600 billion by this government. It did not take until 2026, which is what Tony Abbott said it would take for the Labor debt to reach $680 billion. We have quietly increased the debt ceiling now to $600 billion, because we are going to go over it very soon. Yet where is the response from this government to what everybody sees is a growing problem, everybody except the government, who are now silent on it? Certainly, they are approaching the dreadful peak that they thought Labor would reach if we all went to sleep for 10 years, but they are reaching it about five years earlier, and suddenly it is not a problem. The flame does not matter. The AAA credit rating? Not a problem; nothing touches us. They are the noble gas of economists: nothing touches them. It is extraordinary.

It was the same with the bank levy. When Labor introduced a levy one-tenth the size, in response to a request from the Governor of the Reserve Bank that we do that to improve financial stability in the sector—it was going into a financial stability fund—the cries from the then opposition as they bonded to that notion that this was an increase in tax, the cries from the parliament that we were trousering the pensioners' money, that we were sticking our hands in the pockets of pensioners, the outcry from that was phenomenal. It was going to destroy the world, so firm were they in their conviction, the halogen Abbott government. Now it is 10 times the size, but it is not actually going to affect anything. It is just going to raise money for the government. It is not going to affect anything. They are untouched by the consequences of this. They are untouched by whether it will be passed on. Suddenly it is 10 times the size—just like the debt is so much greater—but certainly it is not a problem, because they have moved to the right. They have moved into the field of noble gases and nothing touches them. They are just sitting there—no problem at all.

Jobs and growth: they latched onto that phrase like it would never be broken. Jobs and growth are two really good words, by the way, which we actually do need. We do need jobs and growth. There are good words, a good objective.

Where are they now? Where are even those words now, let alone the policy? We have record underemployment. We have fewer hours worked per Australian than in longer than living memory. We have higher rates of casualisation and insecure work. We have record slow wages growth. But it is: 'Oh, no problem. It doesn't touch us. It doesn't touch the government. No problem. No need to address it. No need to do anything.' Show me anything in this budget which is actually about growing jobs. We know it is not, because the budget papers show that there are nearly 100,000 fewer jobs forecast for this year compared to the last budget. Not only have they stopped talking about jobs and growth; they have stopped doing anything about jobs and growth, and they are openly predicting fewer jobs in the coming years—and there is not a word. They are untouched by that. They are untouched by the consequences of that out in the community.

There is a consequence. There are people who are having the Bunsen burner held to them. They are losing their jobs. They are working fewer hours. They are not getting pay rises. They are suffering cost-of-living pressures. And from the government there is nothing. There is nothing there. There is no narrative. There is not even a storyboard for jobs and growth anymore. There is nothing. It does not touch them. There is no jobs plan at all—none.

On taxes: under the Abbott government, tax was bad. Labor was the party of taxes. Anytime Labor got in, Labor was going to raise taxes, but the Liberal government never did that. They never did that. Their firmness, their conviction, that they simply would never raise taxes because Liberal governments did not do that—that is gone. Suddenly we have $21 billion in new taxes—$21 billion in new taxes—from the government, which now have a tax-to-GDP ratio at one of the highest levels we have seen in living memory. It is quite extraordinary. It is going up and up and up. Again, it does not touch them. This dreadful thing called tax, for them a year ago, would destroy the whole world if you increased it. Suddenly there is $21 billion more of it. Suddenly, there are no consequences for what they do. It seems that there are no consequences even if you increase the tax for the lowest paid through the Medicare levy. There seem to be no consequences for the government. They are completely untouched.

On housing affordability: the median house price reached a billion dollars in my electorate last year—a billion dollars in my electorate. Let us be honest about this. Even if state governments and federal governments got together and managed to do things that took the heat out of the housing market—if they took the heat out of it and stopped it from rising as fast—how many decades would it be before a person on the median wage, around $70,000, could buy a house anywhere near where they work in Western Sydney? It would be decades. And where were the government on this? 'Nothing to do with us. Housing affordability? We've got a few little things, but essentially it's a state matter, nothing to do with us. It doesn't touch us.' There are people out there suffering rental stress at higher levels than we have seen in decades, and the government are untouched by it. They are not out of touch; they are untouched by any of the consequences of their actions or their lack of action.

The cost of living is going up. The cost-of-living pressures are amazing, yet what do they do? They cut, because there are no consequences for the government. They do not see any consequences. It is as if what happens out there because of their actions does not actually matter. A family on $65,000 will pay $325 more in tax in two years time. Changes to family tax benefit A will mean that a family with an income of $80,000 will lose nearly $730 per child. Axing the energy supplement for pensioners and people with disability will cut $14 a fortnight, or $365 a year, from single pensioners. These are not small numbers if your earnings are $400 or $500 a week or less, which many are. These are not small numbers. Fourteen dollars a fortnight is not a small number if you are on Newstart. It is not a small number. There are consequences for these decisions.

And there are consequences in education. In this year's budget we have seen another $600 million cut from TAFE. We have had $3.8 billion cut from universities and $22 billion cut from schools. We already have 130,000 fewer apprenticeships and traineeships than when the Liberals were elected. Again, are they touched by this? Do they show concern? Do they have anything to say about this? No. What they have is a storyboard—a storyboard that says, 'We're increasing the funding to schools.' Well, they can only call it an increase because they cut it first. If you cut $30 billion from schools and then you put some more back in, you can claim an increase and do a nice storyboard and hold it up. It is a storyboard. It is not the truth. It is a marketing exercise. That is all it is. All we are getting from this government is a marketing exercise.

'We care about health. We're going to unfreeze the rebate, which we put on four years ago,' but not for a few more years—they do not tell you that. 'We're funding infrastructure'—actually, less than it was funded, but it makes a nice storyboard. There is no reality and no vision. It is a government that does not see the consequences of what it does. It does not see the consequences of its lack of action in these areas. It is really letting this country down. We face a time in the world when governments have to act and respond. Governments have to prepare our country to make the changes that it is going to need to make at the end of one age and the beginning of a new one. This government is ill equipped to do so, in terms of both its capacity and its caring. This country deserves much, much more.

Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make my contribution to the debate on the appropriation bill (No. 1) 2017-2018 and related bills. This is my first budget as the member for Werriwa, and I rise today to speak to you about how the 2017 budget will impact my constituents in south-west Sydney. Overall, this is an unfair budget that delivers tax handouts for multinationals and millionaires while hurting every Australian family. People in Werriwa are often doing it tough. We have above-average unemployment, lower than average incomes and long commutes for workers to job centres across Sydney. This budget is so unjust because it places the greatest burden on those who can least afford it at a time when cost of living continues to rise unabated. This budget attacks those initiatives that are designed to reduce inequality and help those most in need: Medicare, social security, education, housing affordability, jobs and infrastructure. Today I want to outline how this government's cuts in each of these areas will affect my constituents.

This year's budget included an announcement that the Medicare freeze will remain in place across the health system. This means that Australians will have to wait more than 12 months for relief, and some will be left waiting more than two years for the freeze on specialist procedures and allied health services to be lifted. This includes GP and specialist consultations, which are frozen till 2018; specialist procedures, which are frozen till July 2019; and allied health services, including psychologists and social workers, which remain frozen until July 2019. For people in my electorate, already struggling to make ends meet, the continuing freeze on Medicare services means there are fewer bulk-billing doctors and specialists available. This puts further strain on household budgets and means people avoid visiting the doctor. It also means that many people who cannot afford doctors' fees are forced into overcrowded waiting rooms in emergency departments in our public hospitals—departments that have already been neglected for too long by the O'Farrell, Baird and Berejiklian New South Wales governments. It is not enough for the Liberals simply to place the provision of universal health care on the backburner so that big business can get a tax cut that will never trickle down to our workers.

The 2017 budget also attacks those people receiving social security benefits. Not only does the budget maintain the pension age at 70, which is the oldest pension age in the developed world; the Liberals are also axing the energy supplement to new pensioners, including people with a disability, carers and Newstart recipients. That means, for single pensioners, a cut of $14.10 per fortnight or $365 per annum, and it leaves couples $21.20 a fortnight worse off, which equates to $550 a year. A cut of $14.10 per fortnight may seem modest to some, but it fails to take into consideration just how tough it is to make ends meet on a pension when rent and energy costs keep rising. Average rents in Werriwa have increased from $310 a week in 2011 to an average of $370 a week in 2016. That is a 16 per cent increase. The budget introduced new cuts to the family tax benefit, which will leave another 100,000 Australians worse off, while delivering tax cuts to companies and to big business.

Perhaps the biggest impact from the budget in my electorate will be the cuts to needs based funding proposed by the Liberals. The importance of education in an electorate with a higher than average unemployment rate cannot be overstated. The extra funding provided by Labor has already delivered tangible benefits to the schools in my area. This includes Lurnea High School, my alma mater, where Labor's needs based funding has delivered a speech pathologist to ensure that students beginning year 7 are not left behind compared to their peers. However, this budget will unbelievably cut nearly $1½ million in funding from Lurnea High School in 2018-19. Who is going to explain to these kids who were benefiting so greatly from the speech pathologists, extra teachers and support that, as a country, we felt it was more important to cut the tax of giant multinationals than help the children of migrants receive a proper education that will provide untold benefits to that child, their family and our society broadly?

The $22 billion cut from schools will hit classrooms across my electorate, with seven schools losing over $1 million in 2018-19. They include Ashcroft High School, Bonnyrigg Heights Public School, Casula High School, Cecil Hills High School, James Busby High School, Lurnea High School, Lurnea Public School and Miller Technology High School. They will all lose funding, from $914,000 up to $1,464,000, over that time. This list is just the start. Every single school in Werriwa loses out under these cuts to education, with a total amount of funding cuts in my electorate of over $28 million. In case you missed it, the Liberals are cutting $28,263,169 from Werriwa's public schools.

Despite these staggering numbers, it is the human cost that really worries me the most. This means that targeted literacy and numeracy programs and one-on-one support for students in the upper years of high school will have to go. It also means that principals will be forced to choose between funding individual support for students with a disability or funding a speech pathologist to help children who are lacking. What do they cut? It will leave poor and disadvantaged communities, like some of the areas I represent, without resourcing to give children a decent, proper and equitable education. Whether they live in those poor and disadvantaged communities or in Wentworth Point, we need to give kids in Werriwa the same opportunity.

The Liberals and the Greens, of course, were not satisfied with cutting funding to public schools, so they have ensured the Catholic parish schools will also face significant funding cuts. Last night I visited a forum of Catholic schools in my electorate. Over 200 teachers, parents and school leaders were there expressing their concerns about the changes to needs based funding for the Catholic systemic system. I thank Mark Turkington and his team for their warm welcome and insights into their school model. This is a system that has, by investing its funding as a sector, improved year 3 NAPLAN results for students exponentially over the last 10 years and improved results for HSC students over the same 10 years, from approximately 30 per cent of students receiving band 5 and 6 results to 75 per cent receiving band 5 and 6 results in 2016.

The Catholic school system also supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students with scholarships and supports many students with special needs. Students and teachers are concerned that they are being penalised, despite delivering a value-for-money education system which continues to deliver exceptional results. The take-out message from the meeting was the need to retain the right to distribute funds based on need to the students who require them. This is a process that has been working exceptionally well, as exemplified by the continuing improvement and great results across both primary schools and high schools in the Catholic system, especially in Werriwa. Both the Sydney Catholic schools and the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong have warned that the cuts may force them to raise fees and, in some cases, close schools, further disadvantaging students throughout my electorate who are being educated by the Catholic system. I will continue to oppose the education cuts being proposed by this government, as they will never be tolerable to me or the people I represent.

Another major issue for young people and families in my electorate is that of housing affordability, yet the package proposed by this budget is a complete sham. The only measures proposed by the Liberals in the budget will not impact the key drivers of housing affordability, which are generous tax concessions, such as negative gearing and capital gains tax exemptions, given to investors. Their proposal to allow salary sacrificing into super to allow first home buyers to save a deposit risks stimulating further demand, which will ultimately drive house prices higher. The first home saver packages also fail to take into account the possibility of an economic downturn, which could see a first home buyer lose a substantial amount of their savings. Whilst the more volatile investments in superannuation funds are less problematic when the investment is made for the long term, such as 20 or 30 years, first home buyers could be cheated out of their savings if there is a significant equities market downturn prior to the withdrawal of their additional savings.

Labor is the only party with a plan to increase affordable housing and tackle the demand issues associated with these generous tax concessions. This budget does little to address the substantive issues that are creating the housing affordability crisis across Sydney, something that is particularly acute in my electorate, where many young families come to settle down. Ten years ago, workers on an average wage could save for a house deposit in six years; now it takes them over 10 years. For young people, the situation is made even worse when you consider that a recent university graduate earning about $50,000 a year will be looking at $1,250 more in Medicare and HELP repayments. Add on the rise in childcare costs, and that means that entering the housing market is getting further and further away.

The issue of infrastructure is not unique to my electorate, but the site of the second airport at Badgerys Creek is. Whilst the airport promises to bring new jobs and investments to my area of Sydney, which has long been neglected, the airport will not benefit local residents if it is built without appropriate infrastructure in place from the day it opens. The airport is projected to service five million passengers a year at its opening, which will double within the first five years of operation. Without alternative mass-transport options, this is simply going to result in more cars on local roads. That is why the Labor Party has committed to building rail to the airport from day one. Without this, our roads will simply become more congested, making it harder for people to go about their daily lives. An airport without a rail line will also restrict the economic benefits of the airport, and businesses will be less likely to invest.

I also note the emphasis that has been placed on the funding allocation in this budget to progress work on a rail link to Tullamarine, in Melbourne. The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport identifies that corridor as one of the most heavily congested in Melbourne, stating that the congestion is 'reducing the amenity, liveability and commuter experience of the surrounding suburbs'. That is a good justification for a project well overdue. However, if things are that bad because the transport infrastructure was not in place early, why are we repeating the same mistakes for Western Sydney?

Unfortunately, planning is not the government's strength, and now the cost of the short-sighted way they have approached things is becoming apparent to the public. Just ask constituents living in Long Point, who continue to wait, without an internet connection, for national broadband that they were told would be connected in March this year. Nobody can tell them when it will now be connected.

The people of Werriwa are also rightly concerned about jobs. We already have above-average unemployment, and there are 100,000 fewer jobs in the Australian economy right now than at last year's budget. Weaker growth and fewer jobs mean more Australians cannot find enough work to make ends meet, let alone consider saving for a house deposit. People living and working in my electorate have seen no real wages growth but will pay $300 more in taxes. Saying that this budget is fair is cold comfort for them when they hear that people earning over $1 million will receive a tax cut of $16,400 a year. The pay cut does not include the amount that they will lose when penalty rates are cut from 1 July. Police, nurses, baristas and any other shiftworkers in my electorate stand to lose $77 in take-home pay. That means, of course, that there is less money to spend in businesses across the region and elsewhere, further hurting my electorate. Nothing in this budget delivers good jobs right now, when they are needed, and as this government has no plan for jobs I am not sure when they will come.

Finally, the people of Werriwa deserve better than what has been delivered by this budget. They deserve proper funding of Medicare services; they deserve a pension that does not force them into poverty; they deserve a chance to buy a house for a price that will not cripple the family budget for ever, one that is in an area with decent infrastructure and public transport; and, most of all, they deserve a properly resourced schools system that gives their children the best start in life, the best chance for good jobs for their future and their children's future.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government likes to talk the talk on infrastructure, but it does not seem to be walking the walk? Yesterday, the member for Grayndler, in an excellent speech on infrastructure, gave the minister credit for his chutzpah, his cheek, in talking about infrastructure. He said in here that Victoria is getting 8 cents in every dollar in the national infrastructure budget, when we have zero dollars this year, zero next year, zero the year after, zero the year after that, and zero the year after that, right through to 2021. The member for Grayndler argued that this budget means that the minister came in here to speak about Victorian infrastructure without there being any content to what he was saying, or without any real contribution. The member for Grayndler pointed out that this is a budget that cuts $1.6 billion from infrastructure investment this year. It is a budget in which it was said it would be $9.2 billion, but instead it is $7.6 billion. After that it falls off the cliff. It cuts out $7.4 billion in actual infrastructure investment over the forward estimates, down to $4.2 billion. That is why the peak body Infrastructure Partnerships Australia says, 'The budget confirms the cut to real budgeted capital funding to its lowest level in more than a decade, using a mix of underspend, re-profiling and narrative to cover this substantial drop in real capital expenditure.'

The former Prime Minister the member for Warringah talked about wanting to be known as the infrastructure Prime Minister. He failed, instead being known as a failed Prime Minister. The current Prime Minister and his Treasurer are now holding the purse strings and are continuing the Abbott-Hockey tradition by cutting $1.6 billion off total infrastructure spending in this financial year alone, as the member for Grayndler said. From there it only gets worse. Over the next four years it plunges to $4.2 billion, in 2020-21. This will be the lowest level of infrastructure spending in more than 10 years.

On 11 May I spoke in the House on the Turnbull government's apparent vendetta against Victoria when it comes to federal transport infrastructure spending. Since the budget, the unfair allocation of funds from the Sydney-centric government of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer has become even more apparent. It is no wonder the Victorian Treasurer, Mr Tim Pallas, said in an article entitled 'Turnbull Government's infrastructure spending short-changes Victorians'—which has been strongly supported by the Herald Sun newspaper, which is not necessarily a friend of the opposition:

At Budget estimates this week, the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development confirmed that the federal Budget did not include a single extra dollar for Victorian infrastructure. This is despite Morrison claiming he'd made $1 billion available for regional rail and infrastructure projects in Victoria.

This is a terrible situation, where we have 37 per cent of national migration coming to Victoria. Victoria has 25 per cent of the Australian population and Melbourne is moving towards being the biggest city. If you stand on a crowded tram or train in Melbourne you will think very fondly—not—of the current government. Perhaps it is why it looks very unlikely that the current government will win any support in Victoria. Commuters are being encouraged to come to Victoria. There are lots of economic prospects there, but we are being deliberately short-changed on infrastructure spending by the current federal government, and you can tell it as the population grows in Melbourne. There is a lot of expenditure by the state government on removing level crossings, improving the rail service and the tram service. As the city grows to more than four million people, of course we have got to have more public transport, but we cannot do it without federal government support.

I applaud the Victorian government's decision to sell the Port of Melbourne, particularly since it was done with some sensitivity to overseas strategic interests. They managed to get $9.7 billion for the sale of the Port of Melbourne, and the Victorian government is ploughing that back, as it should, into public infrastructure, and in south-east Melbourne people can tell. It has been very intensive in some areas around some stations, but those level crossings have been removed. I can tell, you for instance, that the McKinnon shopping centre has been absolutely transformed. Not only has it given a great boost to local traders but traffic and trains move quicker and more efficiently—that is the whole idea of spending money on public infrastructure by the Victorian government. It is underlined by the transformation of that very important Frankston line from the city down to the far south-east.

In the year leading up to 2016, the Bureau of Statistics estimate that a third of Australia's population growth has settled in Melbourne. Currently, Victoria's share of interstate international migration is 37 per cent. Given Victoria's population growth—some people would call it an explosion—it would be reasonable to expect that a fair share of Commonwealth infrastructure funding would match this clear need for transport options to keep pace with population. The Victorian government, as I said, has done its part: fifty dangerous level crossings are being removed; they are widening the Tullamarine, Monash, Westgate and Western Ring Road freeways; and building the Westgate tunnels linking the Port of Melbourne to the freeway system—a very important thing in my area. Most importantly, we want to extend the Melbourne Metro Rail project with $2.9 million of tunnels and five new stations. This is where the federal government should be coming in, and this is what we are not getting.

This is Australia's biggest city. We are not talking about the future, like the Deputy Prime Minister talks about the Inland Rail boosting inland cities which may be a worthy project in itself; we are talking about the here and now, with Australia's biggest city being completely underdone by this government. They will pay the political price for it, as they should.

According to its own budget papers in the Infrastructure Investment Program and the amount allocated under 'Victorian Infrastructure Investments', the amount of federal funds allocated to Victoria in 2016-17 is, as the member for Grayndler said, zero; for 2018-19, zero; and for 2019-20, zero. And, in news that will probably not surprise anyone: for 2021, it is, again, zero. The Turnbull government, in its budget, raises infrastructure funding projects that have Commonwealth funding attached. However, these are for projects that have already been funded. There is no new funding at all for Victoria, with the Commonwealth rivers of gold all running to Sydney it would seem. New South Wales is served up a healthy 39 per cent slice of the infrastructure spending pie.

It is not our fault in Victoria that successive New South Wales governments—including, I might say, the hopeless Carr Labor government—failed to spend money on infrastructure in New South Wales. We have been spending it through the years as population has increased, and Victorians should not be penalised for the incompetence of the New South Wales state governments, and now their allies in the Liberal federal government are trying to make up for the incompetence of their state colleagues. To its credit and despite the Turnbull government all but starving the state of funding, Victoria has continued with its ambitious infrastructure agenda, planning for our population to reach eight million by 2040.

Public Transport Victoria's annual report shows that, over the financial year ending 2016, passengers on Melbourne's V/Line grew by an amazing 19.4 per cent in one year, while trams saw a passenger increase of 12 per cent. I know the most popular tram route in Australia runs through my electorate: route 96, which is like a ring-road, or ring-tram-track, which goes from one side of Melbourne Ports right across the member for Melbourne's electorate, linking people through the CBD right across the city.

Public Transport Victoria projects an increase in public transport users by 2050 of 80 per cent. These levels of passenger growth are simply unsustainable without huge investment in the state's transport infrastructure, something that the current federal government refuses to address. The Prime Minister, under pressure on this issue, told David Koch on Sunrise that he 'loved Melbourne' and he 'loved trams'. However, these are hollow words when he refuses to put his money where his mouth is and fund either. Days before the federal budget, we even saw the Victorian opposition leader, Matthew Guy, forced into the admission that his federal Liberal counterpart was leaving Victorians stranded on transport infrastructure spending.

Earlier this month, I held a press conference with Labor shadow transport minister Anthony Albanese at the proposed Domain interchange of trams and trains—with a large shopping centre South Korean-style, three storeys down, underneath it—to highlight the unfairness of Mr Turnbull's lack of support for our great state. The member for Grayndler put it quite simply: the Prime Minister does visit Melbourne. When he visits, he takes selfies on trains and on trams. What Victorians want is for him to fund trains and trams, not to take selfies on them. The member for Grayndler is a New South Welshman, and he is taking a more objective view of how our national infrastructure ought to be spent. This was the contract underlying Federation: that all states would be treated fairly and be given a fair amount of the national tax-take for infrastructure. This is persistently disadvantaging Victorians, who make up 25 per cent of the population and the fastest growing state. Victoria is the state that is standing up and taking responsibility for 37 per cent of national and interstate immigration. We just want, as a former Prime Minister used to say, a fair suck of the sauce bottle. It is not fair that Victorians are being so short-changed—

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, he was imitating Bazza McKenzie! Some people were trying to humanise him by making him use sayings that appealed to the average Australian.

Anyhow, the federal government still owes Victorians $1.45 billion under the coalition's own asset recycling scheme after the lease of the Port of Melbourne. Because the Victorian government managed to get more money from the lease—$9.7 billion rather than the projected $6.5 billion—it was penalised by the current federal government and did not get the asset recycling money that is mandated to come to state governments that sell infrastructure and redeploy it for good infrastructure uses. There is an incentive offered by the federal government that was not fulfilled for that extra portion of the sale price that Victoria got.

Infrastructure spending futureproofs our nation on population growth and provides employment for thousands. I remember when the Prime Minister used to say 'jobs and growth' all the time. Now it is abundantly clear that he has abandoned that strategy. Sydney is a wonderful city, and New South Wales is a great state. It is silly to have interstate rivalries that go back to Federation. But people in Victoria will naturally feel this rivalry if we are getting eight per cent of expenditure when we have 25 per cent of Australia's population and 37 per cent of national migration coming to Melbourne. We are a very cosmopolitan city. People are willing to stand up; it does not concern them at all. But we want a fair slice of the national tax pie. This current federal government is undermining the contract implicit in Federation. Australia is the nation of the fair go. Victorians just want a fair go on infrastructure.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise and talk on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018 and the related bills. In particular, I would like to acknowledge my Senate colleagues—Senator Xenophon, Senator Griff and Senator Kakoschke-Moore—for the collective effort that the Nick Xenophon Team has made to negotiate and lobby particularly hard for specific measures to be included in this budget. And to outline those specific measures that the Nick Xenophon Team negotiated for, I am pleased that we have secured $100 million for the advanced manufacturing growth fund targeting South Australia and Victoria to assist with the industrial transition and transformation of our two great manufacturing states in this nation.

While Australia has shifted towards a more service centred economy, the Nick Xenophon Team has not given up on the critical role that manufacturing, particularly advanced manufacturing, plays in the heart of our Australian economy. This fund will provide $47.5 million over two years for grants to South Australian and Victorian manufacturers to undertake capital upgrades that make their businesses more competitive. It will provide $24 million over two years for advanced manufacturing research projects that stimulate the development of new products and manufacturing methods. It will provide $13.5 million over five years to reduce tariffs on imported vehicles and components to boost design and engineering activities for the development of global platform vehicles, and will provide $10 million over two years for two advanced manufacturing innovation labs that will test new manufacturing products and services and will build the capabilities of manufacturing businesses. Finally, this funding will provide $5 million over two years for student research scholarships to ensure that Australia maintains a pool of automotive design engineers for its automotive components businesses to draw upon. These measures will reinvigorate the innovation and design prowess for which Australian manufacturing been known in the past. It will help to support and create real 21st-century jobs in Australian advanced manufacturing.

Sadly, the end of Australia's car manufacturing will happen this October, with the last Holdens rolling off the production line. With that closure, the work at the advanced manufacturing growth fund will become even more critical. However, the Nick Xenophon Team recognises that this is just the beginning of a journey that Australian manufacturing must take, and we will continue to advocate for the government to adopt an integrated and collaborative model for the manufacturing sector, which creates active partnerships between industry and engineering universities, their research teams and of course Australian manufacturing businesses.

I am proud that our team was able to advocate for the reinstatement of the apprenticeship mentoring program. We secured $60 million of funding, which will provide 45,000 apprentices with valuable mentoring to support them to complete their apprenticeships—their qualifications. Past mentoring programs have improved completion rates from around 50 per cent to an impressive 91 per cent. My Senate colleague, Senator Griff, incisively highlighted that axing the program in 2014 was a 'dumb choice'. As Senator Xenophon further commented, it was 'the worst form of false economy', because we saw plummeting apprenticeship rates. The decline of group training for apprentices, coupled with less training done by trades schools, the person-to-person contact for apprentices meant that it was very hard for them to see the light at the end of the tunnel of their apprenticeship. This mentoring will provide great support. It will help businesses. It is a win for businesses and a win for young people.

A budget measure that is very close to my heart—and one that will greatly support regional South Australia and my electorate of Mayo and one that I personally fought very hard for—is the reinstatement of the supplementary road funding for South Australia. Again, this was cut in the 2014 budget. South Australia has 11.8 per cent of the local road network nationally. We have 7.1 per cent of Australia's population but we were only receiving around five per cent of the nation's road funding. The resumption of the supplementary road funding for South Australia is a big win. It is worth $40 million to my state over the next two years. This will help bring back some equity to our local roads. In my electorate I have the following councils: Adelaide Hills, Mount Barker, Victor Harbor, Yankalilla, Kangaroo Island, the Barossa, Alexandrina, and the city of Onkaparinga. They will use this money on their 5,500 kilometres of local road networks that are in my electorate.

The Nick Xenophon Team has also argued and fought very hard for the solar thermal plant in Port Augusta, and through our negotiations with government we have secured a $100 million equity loan to help get this project off the ground. The project is a win-win—for the environment, for advanced manufacturing and for jobs in regional Australia. The current projections are that it will create just over 1,000 jobs in the construction phase and a further 3,000 jobs through the multiplier effect. It is a sign of the possibilities for both South Australia and Australia and a sign that the legacy of the coal-fired power plant in Port Augusta can be transformed through solar technology. It will power, I believe, over 100,000 homes, so this is incredibly exciting.

Another exciting announcement in the budget is for proton therapy. This was something that we advocated very strongly for. With our support, South Australia will receive the first proton therapy unit in the Southern Hemisphere. This will be at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, known as SAMHRI. As I said, it will be the only unit in the Southern Hemisphere, and it will assist people who are undergoing advanced cancer treatments with highly targeted, high-energy proton beams. Currently, people needing this treatment are flying to other parts of the world. This will assist greatly not just the people who will be working there, in the extra jobs from it, but children who are undergoing treatment for rare cancers, cancers in the spine and cancers close to the heart and lungs. This will save lives and is a tremendous part of the budget. We are very, very excited about the $68 million that was announced.

I would like to talk about something that my colleague Senator Skye Kakoschke-Moore has been advocating for tirelessly, and that is to assist Defence Force members who are victims of sexual and physical abuse. I commend the energy of Skye Kakoschke-Moore in advocating for victims of sexual and physical abuse in the Australian Defence Force. Her efforts have secured $30 million for the Defence Force Ombudsman to continue the fund that was previously set up by the Defence Abuse Response Task Force. The extension of this fund will allow victims of abuse who missed the arbitrary cut-off dates to apply for compensation. Money alone will not make up for the horrendous acts of sexual and physical violence against them that these Defence Force victims experienced, but it will go partially to redress and provide formal recognition of the wrongs that were perpetrated.

Another great win for South Australia and for Australia has been supporting nuclear test veterans. Senator Xenophon has long been a campaigner for nuclear test veterans, those who were at Maralinga, Montebello or Emu Field—those who were in the presence of nuclear tests—as well as those veterans who served in post-World War II occupation forces in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The culmination of Senator Xenophon's tireless advocacy for these veterans has meant that these veterans will now receive the gold card, finally reversing the burden of proof that they have struggled against for years in paying their medical bills. This measure is worth $139 million, and it is long overdue. I wish to personally thank the government and Senator Xenophon for working on this and particularly my colleague for not giving up the fight. These veterans were exposed to nuclear radiation, and at last they now have some meaningful support with the gold card.

Community radio is very close to my heart because when I was in my twenties I was actually on community radio for years, and it provided me with a great deal of confidence. I do not think I would be in this place if it were not for community radio. We had a great win for community radio in the budget. Funding is now going to support those 600 Australians who are employed by community radio and also the 20,000 volunteers who are connected with community radio. If you are in an electorate in regional Australia, you know that community radio is the lifeblood of your community. This is an excellent training ground for young talent. The $6.1 million that has been allocated to community radio over the next two years is an excellent spend by government.

With respect to the legislation, obviously we are still going through it line by line, detail by detail, as the measures come through the parliament. Of course there are a number of things that are not in plain view. There are a number of cuts, so we need to look very carefully at it.

We are very supportive, however, of the government's bank levy. We support this additional contribution from Australia's most profitable sector and feel that the bank levy will go a long way towards assisting budget repair, but it should be applied not only to the major banks but also to international banks. Why should major foreign banks be exempt from this levy? I have heard the argument that foreign banks provide more competition to the Australian market; however, the super profits currently enjoyed by Australia's financial and banking sector are so enticing for foreign competitors that they will not be deterred by a level playing field. This levy should also apply to major foreign banks that operate in Australia. That is only fair. As someone who, alongside my Senate colleagues, has spoken to so many victims of financial malpractice, I believe that there needs to be a compensation scheme from the funding that could come from these foreign banks. It will be around $800 million over the forward estimates, which could provide a last-resort compensation scheme for victims of such financial mismanagement and fraud.

Lastly, I would like to talk about infrastructure. The federal government has touted their budget as a nation-building budget and as an infrastructure budget. I would like to know why the federal government does not consider South Australia to be part of its infrastructure nation. Why were we forgotten? Of the $70+ billion headline spend over the next 10 years, South Australia will receive just $3.1 billion. This is less than our population's share, and none of it is new funding for new projects. South Australians appear to be the forgotten people. How ironic that the federal coalition government has forgotten us! We are getting neither the infrastructure share nor the rail that we deserve. Australian steelmakers are an obvious place to start. The new Commonwealth Procurement Rules negotiated with government by the Nick Xenophon Team came into effect on 1 March. The new rules will apply to government tenders over $4 million and will go some way towards ensuring that the local social, environmental and economic benefits from Commonwealth procurement will assist South Australia; however, much more needs to be done.

This government is failing older Australians. Despite the massive increase in demand due to the rapidly ageing population, there appear to be no new policies to meet the rising need for aged care residential places. Worse still, the Aged Care Financing Authority has concluded that we are providing only enough funding for half the required number of places. There are no new measures for in-home care and support. These are issues that I, as part of the Nick Xenophon Team, will be strongly advocating for in the months ahead. I would also like to say I am deeply concerned about the cuts that are going to happen to volunteer management: 10 out of the 12 volunteer management groups in South Australia will cease to operate. This is just over $500,000 worth of funding. This provides $5 million into our economy just in South Australia, $290 million nationally, and is being cut. It beggars belief.

In conclusion, if I were a student, I would give this budget a B minus. On its report card I would say it has made great strides since the 2014 budget, but that there is still significant room for improvement. We will work together with government, as we always have, from the sensible centre. We will work tirelessly and constructively with government, and with all of the other parties that are in this great place, for the benefit of our country. We never oppose things for political gain, we base ourselves on evidence, not ideology, and we look forward to working with government for the betterment of all Australians.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.