John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I continue from last night with my thanks to every member of our team who participated in the by-election. As every year, the local Young Liberals were the difference. One silver lining of the national spotlight on this campaign was it meant that Young Liberals came from all over the country. I was able to see that our young local volunteers are not unique in their impressive energy, commitment and intelligence. You all have brilliant futures ahead. Thank you to our Young Liberal dignitaries, including but no way limited to Cameron Dungar and Hugo Robinson. I will have more to say about other YL high flyers in the coming minutes. As always, I'm hugely grateful to our local Liberal Party leaders. Thank you to our local party chair, Mr Peter Graham OAM. Apologies that in the chaos of the weeks preceding the by-election I wasn't always in regular contact, as I should have been, but I look forward to working closely with you over the coming years.

As for other executives, James Wallace, Michael Evangelidis, Brigit Meney and Sarkis Yedelian, you have all been great supporters and friends in the time I've been representing Bennelong. It is a great pleasure to work alongside you. I'm also lucky to be joined by many wonderful Liberals who represent the area in Bennelong. At the state level there are four loyal, dedicated, talented state MPs who are all making sure Bennelong remains a vibrant, strong community. It was great to share street stalls with Dr Geoff Lee in the west and Anthony Roberts in the east, talking to the locals, and Damien Tudehope in Epping, who was a vital asset to our pre-poll there. He spent so much time rallying the troops. Of course there is my good friend and political mentor and big brother, Victor Dominello, who was regularly with me fighting for the community we love and getting real wins, like the commitment to save Blenheim Park from developers or the announcement of the transport interchange at Macquarie Park.

Locally our Liberal team is an incredible unit. They were there for me during the campaign and are always there for the people of Bennelong. Councillors Jordan Lane, Trenton Brown and Chris Moujalli are all new to the council, but have already left their mark and have proved to be a great asset to our community. Sarkis, on the other hand, is a stalwart of the local community and council. His help and advice was useful this year as it has been in every election. Thank you all so much for everything you did to help.

While I'm talking politically, I'd like to thank the many MPs, senators and ministers who made the effort to come to Bennelong and help out during the campaign. There are too many of you to name individually; however, I would like to single out my neighbours, who put in multiple long shifts for the cause. The members for Berowra, Bradfield, North Sydney and Reid all played critical roles on the ground. Thank you Craig, Julian, Paul and Trent. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my office, who by the rules of this place were forced to be passive spectators in this ordeal. I know it was a tough time for you and especially tough time for some of you. So I would like to extend my thanks to Frances, Daniel, Ursula, Brendan and Jonathan for your patience during this frustrating time.

Some of the most important volunteers are the booth captains. They find people to help, keep them energised and ensure that all voters are met with a smile and have the information they need to vote. The following people provided this service—apologies for the list, but to give each of you the individual praise you deserve would take too long and still do you a disservice: Krishnamurthy Ekambaran, Ujith Galhena, Bob Lawrence, Holly Dorber, Peter Small, Bill Tyrell, Michael Brereton, Scott Gumley, Councillor Ben Barrack, Natalie Ward, Elizabeth Frias, Phil Crealy, Mel Brown—congratulations on your engagement—Damien Pace, John Smibert, Hugo Robinson, De Yi Wu, Harry Coates, Nat Smith, Tim Millar, Steve Sim, Suzanne Fairhall, Tony Chappel, Hassib Elias and Sam Harma. Thank you all for the hard work in making this result possible.

There were some other volunteers who went above and beyond and deserve special mention. Councillor Craig Chung, the 'king' of Eastwood, has been a part of the Bennelong family for many years and has once again achieved great feats at the Eastwood booth. This year the Labor Party threw absolutely everything they had at this most critical of booths, focusing huge numbers there throughout the campaign and peddling falsehoods that did them a disservice. Craig stood tall through this and claimed a historic victory every bit as impressive as the 12 per cent swing he achieved in 2016.

John Bathgate, a former military man, is another committed local who threw his heart and soul into the campaign, taking time off from his job in a minister's office. The Leader of the House's loss was my gain. No job was too difficult, and he was a huge help to everyone in the campaign. Tim Burney Gibson is another ace who was essential to the campaign. He was on Army Reserve training when the campaign was announced, and we were concerned that he would not be there to help with the campaign. When he did rejoin us, he appeared at every street stall, train station and polling place and was once again a great supporter and dear friend.

The movement of 700 volunteers and the management of a campaign being watched by the whole country needs some steady hands at the tiller. I was fortunate to have a dedicated gang, seconded from all corners of the party, operating at the top of my campaign. At the very top of this impressive tree sat one dedicated local, Chris Stone. As a local, he's well aware of our achievements and well placed to lead the campaign. He was a committed and patient campaign director. Maintaining a five per cent margin was no mean feat and was only possible thanks to Chris's intelligent and dependable leadership. At his side, managing practical matters from the enormous to the minute, was Stuart Smith. Without him, many of the day-to-day actions that made up this great campaign would not have gone so smoothly, and many would not have gone at all. This campaign was his last with the party before moving on to greener pastures. Stuart, I hope I had nothing to do with your decision to move on. Thank you again for everything.

Every resident of Bennelong knows this by-election was not short on materials, which were delivered, posted and handed out by people by the thousands. Each one of these had to be designed, of course, and that is where the team of Lee Hamilton and Jamie Seckold did their excellent work creating everything physical and digital, making them some of the most read authors in Bennelong. Matt Edwards was our social media guy, who did great work curating social media and demanding everyone video my every move. Thanks Matt for your hard work in bringing my campaign into the 21st century.

We set new records in phone calls this election. At the same time as apologising to locals who felt overwhelmed, I would like to congratulate Kieran Douglas, who made these incredible numbers work and—despite what people may believe—ensured that people didn't get called multiple times a week. From federal headquarters we were lucky to pinch Luke Hughes. He made sure my life and diary were smoothly run throughout those chaotic weeks, but, more importantly, he never gave up smiling—an underrated trait when the going gets tough. Nick Westenberg gets points for frustrating the opposition the most with his infamous scratchie, which had the voters of Bennelong intrigued and impressed, while leaving the Labor candidate enraged and even litigious—a master stroke we will hopefully see in future campaigns. Thanks, Nick. Managing press was Ian Zakon, who was the first on the ground when the feathers started to fly back in November. Thank you for your guidance and patience in dealing with a self-confessed antipolitician.

Those committed people ran the show from headquarters, but it was the leaders of my ground team, who spent most of the long days with me, that I am most in debt to. Luke Nayna ran a tight ship from West Ryde, ensuring our volunteers were spread evenly across the electorate—all on message, full of energy and well aware of the photos they were allowed to appear in. Thank you all for your hard work and long hours. Manning every polling place in the face of huge union numbers and ensuring we outnumbered them on every corner was an incredible job. The credit goes to John Harris, who I also stole from a very lucky colleague. Your humour kept everyone going, and we were all in awe of the results that you pulled off.

A real highlight of the campaign was to be reunited with my old colleague Molly Hughes, who ensured we had people at pre-poll every day despite heatwaves, overwhelming numbers and a corrosive atmosphere from our opponents at the booth. To get everyone to volunteer for that was an incredible effort. Ensuring that we were stocked to capacity every day was also remarkable.

Easily the hardest working member of the campaign, bar none, was young Jacob Massina, who I first had the pleasure of encountering when he was a year 10 work experience student some years ago. It is impressive to see how you've grown, Jacob, and the energy with which you wrangled YLs, every activity under the sun, and kept running up to 15 hours a day. It was terrifying and inspiring. Thank you, Jacob.

Finally, thanks must go to the most patient and longest suffering member of my team, Alicia McCumstie. Alicia, you came to every event, every station, every stall—truly everything along the campaign trail. You were a constant pleasure to work with, at times my mother, my sister, my friend, and my singing partner in the car. Thank you, Alicia. Indeed, thank you to all my team and everyone who helped out in the campaign. I've been a part of a number of teams through my various careers, but the cohesion and tenacity of everyone involved formed this great team. I am grateful to you all.

Before I wrap up the list, there's one more group I need to thank—my family. No politician can get far without the support of their family. To my daughters, to my partner Deb, I'm sorry for the intrusion into private lives and trespass on your property by some members of the press. That is the end to my long list of thankyous for the campaign. Winning any election is never an individual effort. Without everyone who helped we wouldn't have had the resulted we enjoyed. Thank you all.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As millions of Australian families get the kids up, make the lunches, pack them off to school, and then trundle off to work today, working their guts out, some of them shiftworkers, away from their families in the afternoons and evenings, some of them workers who work on weekends, they are thrilled with the fact that the Turnbull government is trying to take away their penalty rates for being away from families and working on weekends. These families are struggling with the high cost of living, electricity prices going up and private health insurance premiums increasing above inflation levels on an annual basis now, with childcare costs recently increasing, the cost of education going up and of course the extreme cost of housing, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne markets. There are also the struggling pensioners who are finding it hard to put the air conditioner on in summer or the heater on in winter because they can't afford the increases in electricity prices. About 330,000 of these pensioners have lost their pension over the course of the last couple of years under this Turnbull government, and now the government is trying to take away their energy supplement. Then there are students who are facing cuts to TAFE colleges and dramatically increasing fees. There are universities that have had funding ripped away from them, which will no doubt be passed on to university students in the form of higher fees.

All of these hardworking Australians would be thrilled to know—very pleased to know—that the ABC has uncovered that about one in five Australian companies pay no company tax whatsoever in this country. Yes, that's right: 380 of Australia's largest companies pay absolutely no income tax at all—a big doughnut; a big fat zero. They include airlines, banks, financial service companies, mining, energy, clothing, steel, and telecommunications companies. There's even a condom manufacturer. That's rather appropriate, given what they've just done to the Australian taxpayer in paying no tax at all during the course of the last couple of years.

Given that these hardworking Australian PAYG taxpayers can't do what these big companies do—shift debts to other jurisdictions to avoid paying tax—they'd be very pleased to know that some of these companies have made an art form of it. I'm speaking of EnergyAustralia, which over the last 10 years—not just the last couple—has paid no company tax at all in this country. This is despite the fact that, when you look at the revenues, they have increased quite handsomely over the course of a few years—no doubt off the back of those skyrocketing electricity prices that hardworking families and pensioners have to pay on an annual basis.

In the almighty 'Up yours!' that's been given to the Australian taxpayer, some might ask why a company like Goldman Sachs, which employed none other than our illustrious Prime Minister in the past, would be rolling in funds from the New South Wales government that they've received over the last couple of years for advising on—yes, you guessed it—the sale of assets that are owned by the Australian taxpayer. Goldman Sachs recently received $16.5 million to advise the New South Wales government about the sale of WestConnex. They too are one of these companies that pay no company tax here in Australia. The approach of Goldman Sachs can be summed up not best by me but by a quote that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine: 'The great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.' That is a rather damning indictment upon some of these companies that we find today are paying absolutely no company tax at all here in Australia.

The hardworking Australian taxpayer would be extremely pleased to know as they go off to work today—after they've simmered down about the fact that these companies aren't paying any tax—that the Turnbull government think that these companies are doing it so tough that they want to give them a company tax cut. Yes, that's right—these companies that pay no tax whatsoever in Australia under corporations laws believe that they deserve a tax cut, and, yes, the Turnbull government is going to give them one. The Turnbull government believes that these companies do it so tough that they deserve a tax cut. This is despite the fact that 380 of these largest companies paid no tax at all over the course of the last couple of years. I kid you not; you can't make this stuff up! It's one of the greatest one-finger salutes to hardworking Australians that the Turnbull government has given them and a greater sop to their mates in big business that, despite the fact that 380 of these companies pay no tax, the Turnbull government is planning to give them a tax cut. What a disgrace! What a demonstration of just how out of touch this government has become.

Let's not forget the National Party in all of this. The National Party members, the MPs that predominantly sit over there, like to slink off back to their electorates and, when hardworking farmers and people on the land in Australia come up to them and complain about these sorts of things in the streets of Tamworth, Armidale and other rural and regional towns throughout the country, you find these National Party MPs will say: 'That's the Liberal Party. That's the Liberal Party philosophy. We don't believe in stuff like that. We don't vote for things like that.' But that's exactly what they do, because then they slink back into this chamber, put up their hand and vote for corporate tax cuts for some of these companies that are paying no tax whatsoever in Australia.

We're discussing here today the appropriation bills—the bills through which governments draw funds for the ordinary course of expenditure on government programs throughout the country. Labor of course has a principal policy of not withholding supply, unlike those opposite in Australian politics. But the fact is that this government has presided over, since they came to government in 2013, an increase in a budget deficit. The budget deficit is now $23.6 billion. What does this government want to do? They want to rip $65 billion over the next decade of revenue out of that budget to give these companies a tax cut, an ideological sop to their mates in big business. Labor won't cop it. We won't cop this argument about competitiveness and using the United States President's tax cuts as a justification for trying to say that Australia's biggest companies deserve a tax cut. We won't cop them trundling out the CEOs of these large corporations, many of whom, strikingly—it was revealed in papers today—pay no tax at all. But they trundle out these CEOs to immorally dangle this carrot of a prospective wage increase in front of Australian workers as a means of trying to convince them that these large corporations deserve a corporate tax cut in Australia at the moment.

The Australian people and the Australian Labor Party ain't buying it. We ain't buying these rubbish arguments that are being trotted out by this government and its representatives, and by some of the CEOs of these large multinational corporations. Labor will fight for a fairer taxation system, one that provides more equity in the system and seeks to curtail some of the excesses of particularly generous tax deductions that have existed and benefited wealthy Australians in the big end of town. I'm speaking, of course, of the current system of negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount that exists on the sale of investment properties. Only Labor is fair dinkum about reforming these outrageously generous—in fact, the largest in the world—tax deductions that exist for the sale and purchase of investment properties.

Labor will fight for decent jobs and for fair wages in this country, for the hardworking nurses and for people like childcare workers, of whom those opposite say, 'Yes, they work very hard and they deserve more money,' but oppose their fair work cases in the Fair Work Commission and the like. They rile against them when hardworking childcare workers dare to go on strike to try and boost their incomes to be paid fairly under the current industrial relations system. Those opposite also seek to restrict public sector workers every year to below-inflation annual wage increases.

The hypocrisy of this government is rather striking when it comes to this argument about corporate tax cuts. The thing that they fail to mention to the Australian taxpayer, of this whole argument about corporate tax cuts, is that the overwhelming beneficiaries of a company tax cut aren't Australians. They're foreigners. Because of the operation of dividend imputation in this country, the people who will benefit from these company tax cuts will be foreigners because of dividend imputation and franking credits that Australian shareholders receive for the fact that company tax is paid by the company—when they pay it. Let's face it, after the revelations today, a lot of them don't, but when they do pay it, if they pay a dividend, the shareholder gets a franking credit. So they don't pay any further tax because it's already been paid by the company. The overwhelming benefit of the reduction in tax, if there is one for corporations, will flow to foreign investors. So it's hardworking Australian workers, pensioners, and students that will pay for a tax cut for foreigners. Can you believe it? In an environment when families are struggling with the cost of living, they're restricting the pension and taking people off the pension, they're cutting funding for education services and making students pay more and this mob want to give a tax cut to foreigners.

As I said, Labor won't stand for it. We will fight this tax cut and we will get out there in the community and explain to the Australian public that it's unfair what this government is doing, and the only party in this parliament that's fair dinkum about ensuring that we rein in some of the excesses that exist in the taxation system in this country and that support fair and decent wages and jobs for hardworking Australians is the Australian Labor Party.

Chris Crewther (Dunkley, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I want to commend the Turnbull coalition government's commitment to fostering the opportunities and dreams of our young sports men and women. As well as the connectivity we've provided for the young people in my electorate of Dunkley, I have worked alongside the Minister for Health, my neighbour the member for Flinders, many local sporting clubs and community groups to advocate for and propose developments in Dunkley.

One example is the peninsula sports package, which has provided funding for numerous projects, including the newly-resurfaced Mornington netball courts, the brand new scoreboard for Lloyd Park in Langwarrin, an upcoming new hurdle shed in Ballam Park, funding for netball and other sports at Jubilee Park, an elite sports pathway program involving Peninsula Waves and others, lighting for the Frankston Dolphins Junior Football Club and a new athletics track for Mornington Little Athletics—just to name a few. We are investing in women's sport, funding female-friendly changing rooms and facilities, and funding solar installations for sporting and community groups, which also supports amateur community sport and assists those clubs with their running costs. Late last year, I officially opened the new Mornington Peninsula Hockey Centre synthetic pitch at Monash University's Peninsula campus, where I was told by players that the surface is world class and one of the best surfaces that they have ever played on. The Mornington Peninsula Hockey Centre has approximately 26,000 visitors every year between junior, senior, amateur and university club players and spectators.

The federal government also committed over $2 million to the upgrading of facilities at Civic Reserve in Mornington, following the 'where is our track' campaign by Mornington Little Athletics. This will deliver a new athletics track. In addition to that, we've been working with the member for Flinders to provide new soccer fields there, with an additional $1 million for the Mount Martha Soccer Club to relocate to Civic Reserve, providing further opportunities for the peninsula's junior players. Investment in sporting infrastructure is important for a number of factors. Aside from the obvious, attracting sporting talent to our communities and our sporting clubs, there are enormous benefits to residents' health for people of all ages keeping active. The peninsula sports package, worth over $6 million, will help our organisations cater for growing participation, particularly by women and young people, and support them in the construction and maintenance of infrastructure so that the clubs' funds can go towards training and other facilities for their members.

Being the youngest member of the House of Representatives, I am also particularly supportive of young people's participation in sport—the demand for which has been steadily increasing in recent times. Young people's involvement in sport helps their engagement in their communities. It links in with their education and work prospects and also prevents engagement in some of the negative things in our communities, such as drugs or crime. That's why the federally funded local drug action team in my electorate, for their first grant round, put forward a proposal to work with 95 peninsula sporting groups to help prevent alcohol and drug use. In Dunkley we are gaining a reputation as being an area that facilitates both families and young people in being not only a premier sporting region in both facilities and talent but also a community that wants to integrate people of all ages into what is a wonderful community.

As the federal member for Dunkley, I am committed to ensuring that our community has many opportunities and the resources to participate in sport at all levels. That's why, putting aside politics, I worked with different levels of government to advocate for the return of the Frankston Dolphins football club's VFL licence. This leads to the aspiration of young people participating in football, both women and men, who are aiming to go higher, whether from a junior club or a more senior club. I'm very pleased that they will be having their first game back in 2018, having had their VFL licence restored.

In addition, the federally funded Local Sporting Champions grants, available to Australian citizens between the ages of 12 and 18, who are travelling significant distances to compete in sport, are also very important. That is something that I have advocated for on behalf of a number of local residents. It is something the federal government contributes to ensure in a small way that Dunkley locals are able to participate in sporting competitions and potentially go on to elite competition in the future. The most recent grant round provided 13 young people in Dunkley with funding for them to travel interstate or internationally to competitions to represent their club, school or state. For example, Zac travelled to Western Australia to compete in basketball. Shayla and Shauna went to Western Australia to compete in hockey. Alana went to South Australia for soccer. Caleb and Rupert went to Queensland for rugby union. Hannah, Miles and Jordan went to South Australia for softball. Glenn went to New South Wales for orienteering. Chloe went to Western Australia for sailing and yachting. Monte went to South Australia for athletics. And Sophie also went to South Australia for touch rugby. Congratulations to all these participants, whom I know will go on to greater things.

While we work on our local sporting facilities—and we have a fantastic number of infrastructure projects underway—it is terrific that we are able to help young sporting men and women to pursue their goals at a higher level. Perhaps one day soon we'll see local sporting champions from other states travel to Dunkley to compete in competitions, for certainly we will have the facilities as well as the community optimism to host them.

Another point on this appropriations bill I wanted to speak about was some of the funding we've delivered locally for safety on roads in my electorate. Just recently, I went out to Two Bays Road in Mount Eliza, along with representatives from Mornington Peninsula Shire Council and others, to announce almost $2 million for the upgrading and widening of that road as well as a dedicated bike lane. This will be great for safety for local residents but also wonderful for road users and cyclists.

Another project that has been delivered recently through our Roads to Recovery funding is the upgrade of North Road in Langwarrin with $230,000 of federal funding. It upgraded North Road between Centre Road and Dandenong-Hastings Road. That is also a wonderful thing for improving road safety in that area. One of the things I was also proud to advocate for was the $280,000 federal funding towards the car park facility to provide safety for local students Mount Eliza. I'm very pleased that that project is now nearing completion. Advocacy around that project followed working with local community groups, local parents and others, particularly the Room to Move movement, which involved over 280 parents and others advocating for the urgent need for safety around the schools in that area in Mount Eliza. I'm very pleased to see that project around Nepean Highway and Canadian Bay Road now nearing completion.

Another project that I advocated for and achieved funding for was for the improvements to Barkly Street and Main Street in Mornington, which received $271,000 to upgrade the existing roundabout. Furthermore, we've also secured from the federal government an additional $104,000 for intersection improvement at Barkly Street and Tanti Avenue in Mornington to increase the radius of the roundabout's centre island to reduce the speed of approaching vehicles. In addition, last year I was also very pleased to go with the former minister to see some of the other developments we've achieved through our Roads to Recovery program. We achieved through the last round $1.1 million in funding for our local area for the Frankston City Council for improved construction of kerbs and channels and an asphalt overlay for driver safety at Fenton Crescent, Violet Street and Foot Street in Frankston and Frankston South.

These are some of the few things happening in my electorate I wanted to raise because road safety, for anyone in my electorate but in particular for young people and children using roads or cycling on those roads, is a very important thing. As the youngest MP, I want to support our young people to have a safe community to live in but also a community they can participate in, whether it's in sport or other activities, where they can achieve their dreams and aspirations. They can be involved in education. They can be involved in employment. As parents—as I know, being a parent of a young two-and-a-half-year-old daughter myself—parents want to achieve the best for their kids, and that's what I want to help achieve for the electors of Dunkley and their children. I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak today on this appropriation bill, and I look forward to working with my local community, the local community groups, sporting clubs and others, to advocate for further funding for things that are needed in my electorate, including infrastructure, road funding, sporting clubs, community groups and others, because that connectivity in the community is so important.

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, may I wish you and everyone else in the chamber today a Happy Valentine's Day. If only that love could travel across the Hay plain to my home state of South Australia. Two days ago in this place the Deputy Prime Minister, the member for New England, boasted about his government's generosity to infrastructure projects in South Australia. This was despite the fact that Commonwealth infrastructure grants to the state of South Australia will fall from $921.4 million in 2017-18 to $95.2 million by the time we get to 2020-21. That is a massive reduction in infrastructure funding for my home state of South Australia. Yet we see the government side and the Deputy Prime Minister twist it around, turn it around, package it and put a bow tie on it and tell us how great they are with their generosity to infrastructure projects in South Australia. When asked about the South Australian infrastructure budget, the Deputy Prime Minister began talking about Commonwealth investment in the defence industry. That has absolutely nothing to do with the infrastructure side of what he was asked the other day in question time. The reality is that there is a massive cut. It's dropping from $921.4 million down to $95.2 million.

When we were in government we saw some great projects taking place in South Australia. I was very honoured and proud, together with my colleague the member for Adelaide, to advocate and push for the Torrens to Torrens upgrade, which borders the two electorates of Hindmarsh and Adelaide. Many times we met with the Minister for Infrastructure at the time, Anthony Albanese, the member for Grayndler. To his credit, together with the state government, he entered into a partnership for a great infrastructure project that will actually take 15 minutes off for travellers from south to the north. That's 15 minutes every day each way. Imagine the three or four hours that those people will now be able to spend with their children at home, reading them their bedtime stories, spending more time with family. That is a project that really will make a difference, make the road safer, and has created hundreds and hundreds of jobs. That's ready to open soon. I'm sure the members opposite will want to take credit for that, even though we remember the former member for Boothby saying at the time that we shouldn't spend that money on that particular piece of infrastructure.

That's a little example of how they always came kicking and screaming to the table when we needed infrastructure in South Australia. I want to pay credit to the member for Grayndler for his great vision in pushing for this project together with the member for Adelaide and me. It has nearly come to fruition. It's nearly finished. You will see a great piece of work that goes through the electorate of Hindmarsh and the electorate of Adelaide.

We now have a $23.6 billion-dollar deficit, and the government wants to hand out $65 billion to Australia's biggest businesses, which have many shareholders who are overseas. A lot of those profits will be going overseas. Instead of putting $65 billion into really good projects that could create some jobs and get the economy going, we're giving $65 billion to some of the biggest multinational companies as a tax break. At the same time, your lowest paid income earners, workers, will get an increase in tax of approximately $350 per year. Where is the fairness in that, when you see massive cuts to big business, in terms of giving them handouts, and increases of $350 per year in the tax on your workers with the lowest income? There is no fairness in that. Maybe the Prime Minister and the ministers opposite might actually bother to visit South Australia and spend some time on the ground and see what's going on in South Australia. They would then appreciate it much more.

Despite the federal government abandoning South Australia—not just in infrastructure but in a whole range of other things—and the removal of funds from our state, the state Labor government, led by Premier Jay Weatherill, has done remarkably well. What we have seen since 2013 when the Abbott coalition came to power—and then the Turnbull government—is a $355 million shortfall for rail and roads in South Australia over the past three years. This is according to its own estimates. It didn't deliver what it promised. Straight after that 2013 election, we saw all the backflipping that took place—on everything, including the submarines, which the government did not wish to give to South Australia. Even though they made promise after promise at the 2013 election, they only came to the table when it was their jobs that were at risk, not what was for the betterment of South Australia. I am pleased that they are being built in South Australia, but, if it wasn't for those on the Labor side of this chamber and the workers down at ASC, this wouldn't have happened, because they were quite happily ready to wipe their hands of it and ensure it didn't come to Adelaide. The Abbott-Turnbull government have had a $355 million shortfall on rail and roads in South Australia over the last three years. It said it would commit $1.44 billion, and it has spent $1.08 billion in Adelaide. Where did that extra money go that was promised and never occurred?

As I said, the government also cut $3.6 million from road safety funding through the Black Spot Program, which is absolutely criminal, because the road safety Black Spot Program is for dangerous roads where tragedies or near tragedies have taken place. These are roads that need to be fixed, that need to be made safer, to make our transport drivers, families and the everyday public that use those roads safer, because these are spots where there are absolute dangers right now, and this money has been cut from South Australia. It's a program that's focused on saving lives. It is not an extra infrastructure spend just for the sake of it. It's a project that saves lives, and it is criminal to take that money away from it.

In addition, there has been a lack of investment by this government in manufacturing in my home state and other states around this country. Let's never forget the abandonment of South Australian manufacturing by this government. Under the leadership of prime ministers Abbott and Turnbull and the then Treasurer, who were all part of cabinet, Holden was unceremoniously chased out of the country. Those of us from South Australia will never forget the speech that the former Treasurer made in this place, basically goading them. A few days after that speech, an announcement was made by the CEO of General Motors Holden, Mr Devereux, saying that they would be leaving the country. Why do nations around the world support car manufacturing? We heard from the other side that we couldn't go on giving handouts to General Motors Holden. As I've said in this place before, every country that manufacturers vehicles has a subsidy for each assembly line worker on that production line, and there is a reason they do that. It is not just to hand out money to manufacturers; it's because they know that value-adding creates more jobs. For each assembly line worker, you're creating another 30 jobs out in the real world. That is real value-adding. It helps the economy. It creates jobs. That's why, all around the world, nations that produce motor vehicles subsidise their industry. They subsidise it because they know it helps the economy. It creates jobs, and the spin-off, in the return from taxes, far outweighs the amount they give.

The subsidy that we gave, when compared to that of other nations, was very minimal. I've looked at the figures of Japan, Korea, US, Germany that produce cars—their subsidies are much higher, and they do so because they are smart. They understand that each and every job they create in the manufacturing circle creates more jobs, and the spin-off helps the economy and the nation. We will not forget what they did to South Australia with GMH, where they basically said, 'There'll be no more subsidies.' This meant that GMH pulled out and went to another country that was more than willing to give subsidies, a smart country that understands creating an economy around the car industry. But, no, this government wanted to make additional dollars available in the budget at the expense of our South Australian working men and women. Again, the country has been left behind by policy decisions that are based on ideology and not the facts. I just explained some of those facts in the car manufacturing industries.

Another great example is Labor's superior future-proof fibre NBN that we were promoting in 2013. That was butchered by this government, but I'll get to that a bit later. So they've walked away from the car manufacturing industry and they've walked away from the national electricity grid. They've walked away from infrastructure and they've walked towards big businesses and multinational companies with overseas entities that have major shareholders, with their pockets open and their smiles a mile wide, with a $65 billion handout. That's the signature policy of this current government—a $65 billion handout to some of the biggest and richest multinationals in Australia.

In my electorate of Hindmarsh the demographics show that as one of the oldest electorates in age around the country with, at one stage, nearly 20 per cent of the electorate 65 and over. This brings me to pensioners and self-funded retirees, people who've worked all their lives, paid their taxes and built this nation—literally built the foundations that we stand on. What has this government done to make their lives easier or better in retirement? These are the people who, as I've said, have already contributed so much to Australian society and done so much for this nation. Let's not forget that Australia would not exist without those who came before us, those who sacrificed their lives—many of whom were veterans; they fought in wars—and some of whom are still alive today. In addition to our veterans, there are the men and women who literally built the buildings, the bridges, the airports and the infrastructure that we still use today.

How does the government look after those people? What do they do? From 2013 right through to today, to 2018, all we've seen is snip, snip, snip and cut, cut, cut for all those people who are now at retirement age. We've seen changes to deeming rates, for example. This is one of the only governments that's actually lowered the threshold. Usually, the threshold goes up with CPI. This is a government that lowered the threshold that kicked thousands of aged pensioners off the pension—people who'd worked hard and saved a little bit of money on the side to ensure that in retirement they could live comfortably, and this government has just pulled the rug from under their feet. They won't forget. They come to my electorate office regularly and tell me how upset they are by that government decision.

Again, pensioners who choose to go and live overseas—why not? They've worked all their life here. They've paid taxes. They've worked hard. They've contributed. It is their right to choose where they want to live when they're 65, yet we're seeing different cuts and different rates for people who decide to live overseas in their retirement and allowances that just do not keep up with the CPI and cuts made in that area. It's a little bit rich, isn't it, that we're giving out $65 billion to those top-end businesses and cutting from the people who built this country?

As politicians, we have a tribunal which awards pay rises for parliamentarians and senior public servants—and quite hefty ones, too, I've got to say. What do pensioners get? A CPI increase to keep things in check while costs explode around them, and we've seen energy costs rise. I talk to pensioners who are struggling to pay their electricity and gas bills. All this government can do is sit around and point the finger at state governments and a whole range of things. Instead of taking the bull by the horns and ensuring that we have a good national energy policy that creates competition and ensures that we lower prices, all they can do is point the finger at South Australia, Victoria and other places, wipe their hands of it and say, 'It's nothing to do with us.' It is something to do with us. This is a federal government. We can show some leadership and we can ensure that we do something about energy and the price rises of over 70 per cent in the last six years. You do that by ensuring that you have a national energy policy, something that's lacking in this government.

All we have is the National Party saying: 'We don't believe in climate change, and anything to do with renewables is not good; we're not interested.' We had the Treasurer come in with a hunk of coal and plonked it down to show how great coal is. This shows the way this person thinks. Sure, coal plays a role. But throughout the world there is billions and trillions of dollars being invested in renewables and new technologies that we're missing out on. There's a prediction of about $6 trillion within the Asian region over the next 10 years in the economy for renewables. We've sat back and all we can do is play politics with it, instead of ensuring that we have a good national policy on renewables that allows business to plan for the future so that we have more energy in the market to bring prices down. That's what a government should be doing. But, no—these guys just want to point the finger at different people.

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

It's a great privilege to be able to stand and speak on the appropriations bills. What Australians should be absolutely rock solid on, as we get closer to the next election, is that Australians will have a very clear choice as to who is best set to manage the economy—who is best set to manage jobs and growth for the future. During the course of this speech, I want to have a look at the coalition's track record and put that against those who sit on the opposite side of this chamber.

The previous speaker, in his contribution, spoke briefly about energy costs, reminding the Australian public of what those on the other side of this chamber did in the way of energy costs for pensioners and how tough it was on cost-of-living pressures. I'd remind the Australian public that the Australian Labor Party took great glee in putting a tax on energy. Everyone would remember the carbon tax: 10 per cent extra for pensioners, mums and dads and small businesses—no-one escaped it. We have a subtle difference between the policies of this side of the chamber and those of the other side. There is not a tax that those on the other side of the chamber will not run to with great gusto, as opposed to this side of the chamber, which is actively promoting jobs and growth through sound policy, which the Liberal Party has driven. Jobs and growth—no less than 400,000 jobs, in contrast to the number of jobs that were grown when Labor was last in power.

The coalition government is heading in the right direction. We're making gains that will ease cost-of-living pressures, help ensure jobs and jobs security and ensure that we can afford to deliver social services and support those who are most in need. That's what this government is about. It's not about the rhetoric, the grandstanding or the picketing. We're about getting on and doing it. Those on the other side will oppose this concept, but the best way you can help someone in need is to give them a job—give them a reason to get out of bed every morning, give them a purpose and give them the capacity to go and buy a car or a home. You can only do that when you are in employment and making a contribution to this nation. We, hand on heart, believe in that concept. The same cannot be said for those on the other side of the chamber.

A strong economy is the key to creating more and better-paid jobs. Jobs and growth—look at our record: 400,000 jobs. I have a graph in front of me. Between 2008 and 2013—it's in black and white, so I'm having trouble. I need the colour graph. Regardless, it shows that under Labor I think there were 150,000 jobs—

Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is it written in English?

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

Well, I did ask my office to send this down to me, and poor backbenchers don't have colour printers. Not to lose the point—under Labor I think there were about 200,000 jobs. This government has created 400,000 jobs—more than a 1,100 per week. Never before in history have we seen so many jobs created by some singular pieces of policy driven by the Turnbull government. It was the strongest calendar year growth on record. The Australian economy has created 1,100 economy jobs every single day.

Mr Hammond interjecting—

You should write that down, Member for Perth, and aspire, if you ever get into government, to match those contributions that we have made. We are very proud of it, and I would encourage every member of the government, whenever they walk into this chamber, to remind the Australian public of how proud we are of the work that we're doing in creating jobs and growth in this economy. The vast majority of these jobs have been full time. They're not trickery jobs like you will see in some Labor state governments. They'll just ramp up their public service and think that they're stimulating the economy. Most have been in the private sector, because we all know that the engine room of the economy is that small business sector. The number of new jobs created in this year represents nearly five times the jobs growth of the last year of the previous Labor government. That's an enormous contrast: five times the difference between our growth strategy and Labor's. Who is best set to manage the economy? Which side of the House is best set to look after your interests when you're looking at it through the prism of jobs growth and results on the ground? The decision for the Australian public is extremely clear. We are looking to build the economy with more and better paying jobs for Australians and locals in my electorate of Wright. This is why the business community is responding to the Liberal Party's policy. We have cut company taxes for 3.2 million small businesses and reduced the income tax of nearly 500,000 middle Australians.

Some of those on the other side, who have come up through the union ranks, who have never been in a business, scoff. They scoff about why you would give business a handout. Why would you give business a handout? But how is it that we're creating 400,000 jobs—1,100 every day last year, 2017? How are we creating those jobs? Because we're incentivising small business—3.2 million small businesses. We're doing it in a number of ways, and we're doing it through tax incentives. As part of the government's Enterprise Tax Plan, the company tax rate for small business has been cut to its lowest rate in 50 years, from 30 per cent down to 27.5 per cent for businesses with a turnover of up to $25 million this year, and for businesses with a turnover of up to $50 million for the years 2018-19.

What does that mean? If you have a business employing four or five or 10 people, and you reduce their company tax rate, what happens is that their net profit at the end of the year is greater. Those on the other side, as I heard when they were making contributions to this debate the other day, said, 'Business is there to make profit.' Whilst that is so true, business is also there to grow their business. The way that you grow your business, as an owner, and the way you reduce the amount of time you invest in your business, is to put more people on. As the wage pressures become greater and the staff look to move on for better opportunities, that is when wage growth comes. Both sides of the House are focused on wage growth. I will speak to that in due course. For unincorporated businesses with a turnover of less than $5 million, we've introduced a tax discount of eight per cent capped at $100,000. These changes will benefit 3.2 million businesses employing around 6.7 million Australians, including many small businesses in Wright, which will help them to invest and create more jobs.

So when we say 'jobs and growth', it is not just a slogan. The Australian public is going to hear a lot more about jobs and growth as we move into the next election phase. Labor's refusal to support lower taxes means Australian workers will be left behind on wage rises, as the jobs and the wage rises they should be getting are sent to the government in continued higher taxes and also go offshore.

We've seen in America the enthusiasm with which the markets have responded to their enthusiasm to reduce company tax rates. We have seen those in Singapore. We have seen those in the London. Their economies have flourished and prospered as a result of lower taxes.

More recently, in Sydney, we were very fortunate to host, as a nation, the Australian Economic Forum, the A50—50 being representative of 50 influential people from around the globe who have their fingerprints on the Australian economy. The Minister for Trade was there and spearheaded the message to the 20 investors from around the world, coupled with the 20 biggest companies of Australia that were in the room and 10 regulators and senior members of the Australian parliamentary landscape. There was a panel session in that room where the investors from around the world spoke wholeheartedly about the competition for their money. Australia is a net importer of finances. The investors sat in that room and said, 'If Australia does not become competitive with its tax rate, there are many other places around the planet where we can invest our money.'

Labor is holding this country to ransom. If we are looking at Australia to continue to be a net importer of finances, the way that we will remain competitive in the future is to reduce our company tax rate. Those on the other side say they will oppose that. Previously, before the legislation came before the House, virtually everyone from a financial position on the other side of the House indicated that that was a good thing and that in government that would be their policy. But, because we have come up with it, the class warfare ticket comes out from those on that side—that it's giving to the big banks and big business. If we do not, we will do not at our peril, and our nation will be poorer for it because we will not be able to attract the foreign investment that is needed. If those on the other side are suggesting that putting company tax rates down will not have a net benefit in trying to attract foreign investment, I challenge those on the other side to say to the Australian public that they are going to increase company taxes because increasing company taxes, by the same juxtaposed position, will not have an effect on company tax—and they know that is not the truth.

Each year since 2015, the coalition government has provided an instant asset write-off for small business—and hasn't that been a cracker! The small business sector has just loved it. Underpinning those 400,000 jobs—those 1,100 jobs every week—that instant asset write-off of $20,000 has been one of the valuable peak weapons in our arsenal for providing growth for the nation. In a nutshell, the instant asset write-off means that if you were to buy an asset for your business, valued at anything up to $20,000, such as office equipment—for example, new computers or new photocopiers—so that your administration can find efficiencies, historically, under the Australian Accounting Standards, you would depreciate those assets according to the depreciation schedule set for that product. I think computers are quite high. They might be 30 to 40 per cent or possibly 50 per cent. So you would amortise or depreciate that over a period of three years or the life expectancy of the product.

The instant asset tax write-off allows small businesses to claim the entire $20,000 back that year. It is an enormous stimulus to a small business. If a small business is able to reach out and claim that depreciation back in that first year, it means that business is going to reinvest that money back into their business. We are seeing firsthand that businesses are reinvesting that money back into their business, and they are reinvesting it by employing more people—and that's where those 1,100 jobs are coming from. That is where the record five times more than Labor's 400,000 jobs are coming from. They are coming from the very salient tax policies that this side of the House, the Liberal Party, has put in place—and that should never be jeopardised.

At the beginning of my speech I suggested that there will be a very clear choice as to who is best set to manage the economy as we move forward. Last year, around 300,000 small businesses accessed the instant asset write-off to invest in machinery and equipment and to help grow their businesses, including more than 2,500 in my electorate. Labor have not seen a tax that they would not run to and grasp with both hands. If Labor were to be trusted with the books, Australian households and businesses would be slapped with no less than a crushing $164 billion tax bill. Those on the other side would impose that on the Australian public with, firstly, Labor's housing tax at $20 billion. Then there's Labor's investment tax, estimated at around $13 billion—which is an increase in capital gains for assets by 50 per cent, by halving the capital gains tax discount. Then there's Labor's tax return of $1.5 billion, courtesy of Labor's proposal to slap a $3,000 cap on the amount that individuals can deduct for management; Labor's higher income tax at $22 billion; Labor's tax of $22 billion on families; Labor's tax of $25 billion on superannuation; the tradie tax, which will touch 800,000 tradies; and, finally, Labor's growth tax of $59 million. Winston Churchill once said that trying to tax the nation into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We've just heard from my colleague and friend the member for Wright, who said, 'Who is best set'—I think those were the words—'to look after Australia's economy?'

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

Jobs and growth!

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And jobs and growth—yes, the talking points have had a good working out today in this place. I do want to talk about who is best set to run the Australian economy in my opportunity of addressing the House about the bills before the House: Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2017-2018 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2017-2018. It enables me to place on record on behalf of the people of Oxley that they are worried about how this economy is running. They are worried about the future of our economic growth in this country and they are concerned, more importantly, about the standard of living as a result of the economic settings of this government. From where I sit and from those I represent, the time for excuses is over. The time for the blame game, which we've heard about from speaker after speaker today, is over. The time now is for this government, the Turnbull-Joyce—for the time being—government, to literally own up and start taking responsibility for the gigantic debt that they are building day by day, week by week.

This facade cannot continue any longer. We know that the Prime Minister is a master of shifting blame. When in doubt, he starts talking about the Leader of the Opposition and Labor, in question time after question time. There's never a narrative about what this government wants to achieve and never a narrative about the values that this government stands by. There's always one default: attack Labor. That's it. No ideas; no vision for this country.

We know that the government, every day of every month of the five years they've been in government, have been racking up the debt on the nation's credit card. Today, I'm asking them to take responsibility for it. Time and time again, we see the government looking to hop, skip and run away from the heavy burden that they are inflicting, not only on the people of the south-west of Brisbane, whom I proudly represent, but right across the country. No more finger pointing and no more what could have been or what should have been; just owning up to the here and now, which is what this government should be taking responsibility for. Instead of saying, 'We need leadership. I am a strong leader,' it's about time the Prime Minister came in here and started owning up to the facts. The narrative or the myth that the Liberal Party, or the Liberal-National Party—the coalition—are somehow superior economic managers when they are instead presiding over a record amount of growing debt—just as they have done for the last five years—needs to be put on the table. Gross debt has already crashed through half a trillion dollars on this government's watch, rising to at least 2027-28 when it will reach a new record high of just under $700 billion.

I can remember, before I was elected, seeing the language around 'debt and deficit emergencies'. I can remember 'debt trucks'. I can remember hearing, 'Under the coalition, debt will always be lower.' Well, it's not. In fact, it has gone through the roof. We know that net debt is also blowing out to reach new highs over the next three years. Despite the never-ending pile of growing debt, this government is hell-bent on its one signature policy. Debt is rising. It's going through the roof. It's the highest it has ever been in this country. We see the one silver lining that this government has of a $65 billion handout to big business. As we have seen, at all costs this is the prerogative and agenda of this government. But the truth is that the tax cuts for multinationals will never, ever deliver anywhere near enough bang for the $65 billion that we are giving away to large multinational companies. They will simply jeopardise budget repair and investment in the productivity capacity of our economy.

We are seeing in the tabloids day after day captains of industry, multibillionaires and multimillionaires demanding that they pay less tax and saying that somehow wages growth in this country will benefit, with no evidence to suggest that, apart from multimillionaires and billionaires saying that it will. But we know, in fact, the advice given by Treasury to the Treasurer shows any benefits of the $65 billion handout to big business are negligible at best and will not be felt for a very long time. The Treasury modelling indicates the tax cut will boost GDP by just one per cent in 20 years time. We are forgoing $65 billion of revenue. Big corporations and large multinationals get a tick, but there will be an average increase of just 0.05 per cent per year. In anyone's language—and we hear this a lot—this is the definition of trickle-down economics at its most ridiculous. It is a cash grab for the government's supporters in the big end of town in the largest proportions, but we see very little for every other ordinary Australian.

Today we see reports that company profit margins have risen to levels not seen since the early 2000s, but wages growth has been slower than at any other time since the 1960s. I will put it this way. Try coming to my electorate and going to the mighty Blue Fin Fishing Club or the Goodna RSL or maybe grabbing a coffee at the Coffee Club at the Forest Lake Shopping Centre and going up to people who I proudly represent and saying: 'We've got an economic plan and the plan is that we are going to give large multinational companies huge tax breaks to allow them to pay less tax. That is the people right at the top. We are going to give millionaires a tax break. But everyone else here sitting in this Coffee Club is going to have to pay more tax.' What sort of alternative universe are members of the government sitting in? If you go out into the communities that the members opposite represent, maybe they get a great reaction when they visit shopping centres and supermarkets and do street-corner meetings and turn around and say: 'Guess what? I have got great news for you. The largest companies in Australia which, as we are already seeing today, aren't paying their fair share of tax are going to be paying even less tax. For good measure, people on extremely high incomes will get a $16,500 tax break. But for everyone else here we're going to increase your taxation. That's for a family on $60,000 to $80,000.' I don't know if they are talking to the same people in the supermarkets, the coffee shops, the newsagents and the post office who come up to me and talk about the rising cost of living, the pressures of insecure work and the fact that they haven't had a wage increase. I don't get that reaction. I certainly do not hear that on the streets from the people I represent.

What have those opposite put on the table to pay for the $65 billion handout that will give an economic boost of just 0.05 per cent per year? How do we do this? Well, we make cuts to families through changes to family tax benefits and we make cuts to pensioners through scrapping the energy supplement. We make cuts to jobseekers, forcing them to wait for support from Newstart. We make cuts to young people by forcing them from Newstart onto youth allowance, and we make cuts to new parents and families through changes to early childhood payments.

Sadly, in my electorate of Oxley around one in four families will be worse off under this government's childcare proposals. But we know it doesn't stop there. As we know, through the media today, those opposite, representing the parliamentary friends group of payday lenders, aren't even interested in implementing commonsense reforms to protect vulnerable Australians. And I want to put this on the record, because it is a burning issue across my community. I know they are feeling the pressure, and I can see my friend the member for Perth and shadow minister for consumer affairs, who is really leading the charge on this to help the people who are feeling pressure—the 1.8 million families who are feeling financial distress.

We are seeing record numbers of people taking out payday loans. Why? Because of the facts that I spoke about earlier in my remarks today. Under this government, if you're doing well and you are earning a heap of money and you are a captain of industry or you're running a corporation, you do very well under this government. You do extremely well under this government. But if you're a pharmacy worker, a retail worker, a cleaner, a teacher's aide, a police officer or a nurse living in my electorate, you don't do so well under this government. In fact, you're going backwards.

So, regarding the real pressure for families, who are turning to payday lenders to make ends meet—the research is up, and we know that the government knows this as well. In fact, the minister for revenue endorsed a package of recommendations and delivered a draft bill to explain the government's agenda. From what we understand, it passed through the cabinet processes. Minister Keenan is at the table. He would have signed off on it. We know that this was approved and delivered by the then spokesman for the government, who said that this will be law by the end of the year. But what has happened? Nothing. The extreme right wing of those opposite, the economic rationalists, have got their hands on this to roll the minister for revenue. They've rolled her. We know that the parliamentary friends of payday lenders in this place have enormous sway. They've got the sway, but as for the consumers and the battlers who are being preyed upon by some of these practices: if members of the government think it's reasonable and fair for a low-income earner or a pensioner to have to spend over $3½ thousand on a fridge or a washing machine that should cost them a couple of hundred bucks, they are in fantasyland. They are so far beyond the realms of what is happening in the community.

We often say, with the Prime Minister being described as Mr Harbourside Mansion, and given all the trappings that go along with having millionaires running this country, that the government are not in touch with the community. I've witnessed that by listening to speeches from those opposite. But here is a bill, here is legislation to deal not with looking after the top end of town but with real people and real lives, and this government has signed up to it. They've agreed to it. They've signed on the dotted line and have said, 'This is a way forward to deal with these unscrupulous practices.' The minister for revenue has been delivered a report with 24 recommendations, with bipartisan support, as well as an exposure draft of a bill to set the record straight, to deal with all of this. So what has happened? What's the hold-up? That's the question we want to know the answer to, and we will continue to ask it. On this side of the chamber we stand for action. We stand for protection for vulnerable Australians. We're not going to stand by and do nothing. We hear often that we need bipartisanship: 'We want the opposition to work with us. Why won't you come in and join with us?' Well, we are joining with you. We are going to stand with you.

My question to the ministers at the table and the government members is: why aren't you standing by your own bill, which has been endorsed by the cabinet processes of this government? It has been ticked off by the cabinet, ticked off by a cabinet minister, the minister for revenue—who, I may add, was silenced by the Treasurer when I and the member for Perth asked basic questions about where the legislation is and why the government won't protect vulnerable Australians. She was muzzled. She was silenced. We haven't had an explanation as to why that was the case.

We know that this government is looking after one section of the community, but we know Bill Shorten and Labor will look after everyone else in the community as well. The Liberals were once known as the party of economic managers; we know that they've crumbled to be a party of handouts and hope and tax cuts and, simply, more talk of growth. While I'm talking about the tax cuts, where are they? What is the government's plan for delivering tax cuts? When this government gets into trouble and there are crises engulfing it—as we see on a weekly basis now, whether it be a dysfunctional Deputy Prime Minister or a backbench that is revolting against the government—we know that, when it comes to tough times and, in particular, when Australians are dealing with the very tight wages situation of record low wages growth and income inequality in Australia, this government has one trick: look after big business and then vaguely talk about tax cuts for everyone else.

We know that even small businesses are deserting the government in droves. The latest census business index confirms what we and business owners at the coalface have known for some time: the Prime Minister is nothing but hot air when it comes to backing small business. We know that, when it comes to delivering fairness, only this side of the chamber will deliver an economic plan to deliver that. (Time expired)

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

I rise today to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2017-18 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2017-18. I welcome the opportunity to inform the House about the nature of the Turnbull government's commitment to investment in nation-building infrastructure. I want to make three points in my remarks this morning. Firstly, we are seeing unprecedented levels of infrastructure investment by the Commonwealth government. Secondly, this substantial investment is driving economic growth; it's driving investment; it's driving employment outcomes. Thirdly, our program of infrastructure investment reflects key policy priorities of the Turnbull government, including increasing and improving productivity and efficiency in the Australian economy and finding a greater role for private investment and private capital in the infrastructure sector.

Let me turn to the unprecedented levels of infrastructure investment we are presently seeing. In the first budget given by the coalition government after coming to government, we promised that we would invest $50 billion in infrastructure by 2020-21. We are well on track to doing that. Let me take you through the actual spending levels over the past few years. In 2013-14 the total Commonwealth infrastructure spend was some $7.3 billion, in 2014-15 it was $6 billion, in 2015-16 it was almost $6 billion, and in 2016-17 it was more than $9 billion, whereas in 2012-13, the last full year of the previous Labor government, the amount spent on infrastructure by the Commonwealth was $4.5 billion, materially less than the kinds of numbers I've just been quoting.

If we look at the average annual spend on infrastructure across the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, the average Commonwealth spend on infrastructure across those years was just over $6 billion. By contrast, since 2013-14, under the coalition government, average Commonwealth infrastructure funding is around $8 billion a year. That is, on the one hand, $6 billion under Labor on average each year and, on the other hand, around $8 billion on average each year under the coalition. So do not be fooled by the ludicrous claims repeatedly made by the member for Grayndler that in some way the Turnbull government is spending less on infrastructure than was spent by the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, because the facts say precisely the opposite. The Turnbull government is spending more on infrastructure than the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government spent and, in fact, we are spending at record levels. In last year's budget we committed that, over the 10 years from 2017-18 to 2026-27, there will be $75 billion in infrastructure funding and financing across grants, equity investment and loan investment. Some of the highlights of that $75 billion spending will include a commitment to spend $10 billion over the next 10 years on the National Rail Program, a $9.4 billion equity investment in the massive Inland Rail project and a $5.3 billion equity investment in Western Sydney Airport.

So it's interesting to note that not only are we spending more—materially more—in absolute terms than the previous Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor government; it's also instructive to note that the share of total public infrastructure spending coming from the Commonwealth is materially higher now than it was in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. Under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, 24 per cent of total public infrastructure investment came from the Commonwealth. That figure now stands at 29.9 per cent.

Let me mention some of the major projects and classes of project that are being funded by the Turnbull government. The first class of project is major highways connecting or running from our capital cities. For example, there is a commitment to spend $6.7 billion towards a whole range of projects at various points along the Bruce Highway, which runs approximately 1,700 kilometres from Brisbane to Cairns. We're spending $5.6 billion to upgrade the Pacific Highway between Sydney and Brisbane so that by 2020 there will be four lanes all the way between our largest and third-largest cities.

We have committed $9.4 billion to Inland Rail. That will be an equity injection into the ARTC—the Australian Rail Track Corporation—to build a 2,000-kilometre inland rail route between Melbourne and Brisbane. That will allow rail freight to go between those two cities in 24 hours, much faster than the current times, and, in turn, will make rail freight a more attractive proposition compared to road freight and increase rail's mode share of the freight travelling between Melbourne and Brisbane. That's economically desirable. It's also desirable from a road safety perspective, as we shift some freight, which presently goes in trucks, onto rail.

One of the other major classes of project is the transformational investment we are making to build Western Sydney Airport. Due to be operational by the end of 2026, Western Sydney Airport will give Sydney much-needed additional aviation capacity. According to the joint study into the aviation needs of Sydney, which reported to the previous government in 2012, by 2027 there will be no additional slots available at Kingsford Smith Airport, and by the mid-2030s there will be no additional capacity. So it is vital for Sydney and vital for the nation that we have additional aviation capacity in Sydney, and the Turnbull government is getting on with delivering Western Sydney Airport to meet that objective.

A second benefit of Western Sydney Airport is that it will give the people of the rapidly growing Western Sydney area much better and more convenient access to air travel at an airport located within their community, rather than having to travel all the way across the Sydney metropolitan area to an airport located on the far-eastern fringe of the city. The third benefit of Western Sydney Airport is it will attract businesses and jobs to Western Sydney, an area where another one million people are expected to live over the next 20 years. It will support tens of thousands of jobs—some 11,000 anticipated direct and indirect jobs through the construction phase, and by 2031, five years after operations commence, there are expected to be around 28,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Let me mention just a few of the range of major projects presently underway within our capital cities: the $16.8 billion WestConnex motorway project in Sydney, a transformational project supported by the Turnbull government with a $1.5 billion grant and $2 billion concessional loan; major rail projects in Sydney like Sydney Metro City and Southwest with a $1.7 billion Commonwealth contribution; a $789 million Commonwealth contribution in Perth; the Monash Freeway and the M80 Ring Road in Melbourne, where the combined contribution by the Commonwealth is $1 billion; the enormous North-South Corridor set of projects—three projects, in Adelaide—with a total Commonwealth commitment of over $1.6 billion.

The second point I want to make to the House is that this unprecedented level of infrastructure investment is generating economic growth and creating investment and business opportunities. Interestingly, if you look at Australia's level of transport infrastructure investment and maintenance spending and compare it to other countries in OECD, looking at the 2014 data—which is the most recently published by the OECD—Australia's level of spending at 1.4 per cent of GDP was equal highest in the OECD.

Let me cite a recent report by BIS Oxford Economics which highlights the strong growth in publicly-funded engineering construction. The report says that in fiscal 2016 publicly funded engineering construction commencements was up 24 per cent and work done rose 11.3 per cent. The report observed the:

… pick-up in publicly funded work has been underwritten by the commonwealth government's Infrastructure Investment Program as well as strong growth in state government infrastructure programs.

The most direct effect of this investment is in employment outcomes. According to the economics team at the Commonwealth Bank, the lift in public infrastructure spending in fiscal 2018 will generate an extra 36,000 jobs in Australia. The same team finds that that lift in public infrastructure spending will directly add half a percentage point of GDP growth in fiscal 2018 and, including the multiplier effect, it puts the impact as high as 0.7 of a percentage point of GDP growth.

The Treasurer highlighted the impact of infrastructure investment when he recently announced the September quarter national accounts figures which found that:

New public final demand, across all levels of government, was up a solid 1.2 per cent in the quarter, to be 4.4 per cent higher through the year.

He noted that this growth was driven by government investment in building the capacity of our economy and our Defence Force. The total value of public and private construction work done in Australia increased by more than 15.7 per cent to a total of $61.8 billion—almost 30 per cent more than the same time last year.

The third point I want to make is that this unprecedented level of infrastructure investment is giving effect to key policy priorities of the Turnbull government, including driving productivity and efficiency in the Australian economy and finding a greater role for private capital in infrastructure.

Let me talk about the productivity consequences of the $5.6 billion I've mentioned that we're investing in the Pacific Highway. Already the journey time between Sydney and Brisbane is around an hour and a half less than it was before this massive program commenced. Heavy vehicles are saving a bit more—105 minutes. The total travel time saving will be 2½ hours when this massive project is complete or five hours on a return trip. The productivity benefits of that, with all the trucks going up and down the Pacific Highway between Sydney and Brisbane, are very, very significant.

In 2011, New South Wales Roads and Maritime Services commissioned an economic appraisal of the Pacific Highway upgrade program, including projects open since 1996, projects committed to completion by 2014 and remaining projects required to complete the duplication of the Pacific Highway. That appraisal found that the overall program would return $3.20 for every dollar invested. That is a very good rate of return, and it just demonstrates the productivity and efficiency benefits that are being secured through this unprecedented level of infrastructure investment being delivered by the Turnbull government.

One of the other policy priorities of the Turnbull government is maximising the role of the private sector in infrastructure investment. Let me mention that many of our major airports are of course now privately owned, including Brisbane Airport, which is investing some $1.3 billion in a new runway. It is private capital that is going to deliver public benefit with more capacity at Brisbane Airport, more flights and even better economic integration between Australia, Asia and other parts of the world, facilitated through flights taking off from and landing at Brisbane Airport. That capital cost is not required to be met by the taxpayer; it's met by the private owners of Brisbane Airport based upon their assessment of the fact that there is an economic return there. We are keen to encourage increased private sector involvement in infrastructure. Of course there will always be a strong role for government, but the more we can have private sector involvement, the more we can meet the large requirements for infrastructure that we face in our growing and prosperous country.

The points that I wish to make to the House this morning are that we are seeing unprecedented levels of infrastructure investment under the Turnbull government. That is generating economic growth, generating jobs and strengthening business opportunities. It reflects policy priorities, including driving productivity and efficiency in our economy and getting a greater involvement of private sector capital in the infrastructure sector.

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

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2017-2018 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2017-2018. The difference between the Turnbull-Joyce government's idea of a fair Australia and the Shorten-Plibersek-led Labor government's idea of a fair Australia is becoming more obvious and clearer day by day. The centrepiece of the 2017 Turnbull-Joyce budget is a $65 billion big business tax cut—a tax cut that will cost $15 billion a year by the end of the medium term. Think about that: a $15 billion tax giveaway annually.

It has been revealed in media reports today that Qantas has not paid any tax for almost 10 years—none, nada, zip. The tax rate for Qantas has been zero for most of the last decade. So if you believe the Turnbull-Joyce government's economic theory, the wages of Qantas employees would have correspondingly increased with this decrease in their tax rate, but the wages of most Qantas employees have barely kept pace with inflation. In fact, their wages have increased less than three per cent over the last decade—with one exception. The Qantas CEO's salary has almost doubled from an already lofty $12.9 million to a sky-high $24.6 million. So much for trickle-down economics! Within Qantas there is a serious drainage problem—some blockages.

We have a $65 billion tax cut for big business. It's not fair budget reform. A handout to big business when working Australians are reeling from cost-of-living pressures and record low wages growth is unfair and, dare I say, un-Australian. People in my electorate of Moreton are doing it tough. They want to see their wages increase. They want their cost-of-living pressures eased. They want their children to have a good education and they want affordable health care. That's what I'll be fighting for.

The Turnbull-Joyce government is making health care more expensive and less accessible for Australians. You cannot trust this government with health care. We know that. We've seen it over the last 40 years with conservative governments. The Turnbull-Joyce government is intent on cutting Medicare, cutting public hospitals and failing to stand up to big-profit health insurers. The out-of-pocket costs for people living on the south side have never been higher. The Turnbull-Joyce government has not dropped any part of their freeze on Medicare. The rebates for GPs, specialists and allied health services all remain frozen until 2020 even though the costs they experience are going up. The government is ripping $2.2 billion out of Medicare over the next four years. Before the last election, Prime Minister Turnbull promised Australians that they would not pay any more to see the doctor due to his freeze on Medicare. That was incorrect. Queenslanders are now paying about $7.50 extra to visit a GP. People in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia, Northern Territory and the ACT are all paying more to see a GP or a specialist.

I do acknowledge that Australia has a world-class healthcare system, but private health insurance plays an important role in making sure that everyone has access to the care they need. The premiums for private health insurance have increased 27 per cent since the Liberals were elected in September 2013. That is an average increase of $1,000 to the annual private health bill of Australian families—$1,000 extra that has to be found every year by families doing it tough. As a result, Australians are walking away from private health coverage. Coverage has dropped to the lowest level since 2011.

This is a crisis for our healthcare system, and the Turnbull-Joyce government is failing to address it. Once again we see where their priorities lie. The private health insurance industry raked in $1.8 billion in pre-tax profit last year, and the government gave the insurers $1 billion in savings. But the health insurers still increased the premiums of Australians by twice the CPI. This is unfair. Labor has a plan to stand up to private health insurers and shift the balance back to consumers, back to Australians, back to families who are doing it tough. Under Labor's plan, families would save $344 on their private health insurance.

Australia's public hospitals are the work horses of our health system. I say that as the son of a nurse. In my electorate of Moreton we have the QEII hospital and, right across the road, the PA hospital, servicing much of Queensland. I would also mention in passing the Sunnybank Private Hospital. The two public hospitals I mentioned are crucial in providing good health care to the people living on the south side. But last week we saw the Turnbull government try to lock in seven years of public hospital cuts. This is a government that fundamentally is not supportive of health.

Under the Turnbull government's watch, waiting times for elective surgery are the worst they have been since records have been kept. Patients requiring urgent medical attention are being left in the emergency departments of our hospitals longer. In the last financial year, only 66 per cent of urgent emergency department patients were seen within the recommended 30 minutes. More than 50 per cent of public hospital doctors are working unsafe hours, putting these doctors at significant risk of fatigue and burnout. The AMA has complained that:

The strain and pressure on our public hospitals is having a detrimental impact on the health of our doctors.

The Turnbull-Joyce government does not think that our public hospitals deserve to be funded. Instead, we have a Prime Minister who wants to give big business a $65 billion handout. Labor will always fight for health care. It is in our DNA. We believe fundamentally in health care.

In recent months, my office has received a number of phone calls and emails from Moreton locals wanting to know what is going on with the NBN, the largest infrastructure project in Australia's history—something kicked off under Labor. Under the last Labor government, every Australian was set to have access to internet speeds of 100 megabytes per second. Under the last Labor government all Australians in every electorate could easily go to the NBN's website and find out when the NBN rollout would begin in their suburb. For so many Moreton suburbs that was supposed to have already happened.

Putting aside the substantial delay and blowout in costs that occurred because of Prime Minister Turnbull's leadership, there's actually a more pressing problem for the people of Moreton. Well over 80 per cent of my electorate is set to receive a technology called 'hybrid fibre coaxial'. HFC is what the government likes to call a 'legacy' technology. If I can translate this for everyone to understand, it means old technology. HFC uses old cables built—and, in many cases, poorly maintained—by Telstra and Optus in the 1990s. In November last year my electorate, like the rest of the country, got the surprising news that there would be a pause in the HFC rollout and the NBN. That's right: the second-rate NBN coming to Moreton is being delayed further because Prime Minister Turnbull can't actually give us a technology that works. Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise, considering how terrible the Turnbull government's NBN policy has been.

The introduction of HFC has been of great concern for people in my electorate, and very few of them have actually been able to get connected so far. Lack of access to broadband for local homes and businesses has reached crisis point. Feedback from local residents and businesses has been loud and clear—the substandard copper NBN rollout is simply unacceptable in 2018. Moreton locals have told me about their terrible internet connections and how it's affecting their everyday lives. Richard, who manages a business in Acacia Ridge, contacted my office following a horror experience on the NBN. His business is heavily reliant on internet connectivity, and NBN problems seriously damage his operation. Neil in Tarragindi told me his daughter is doing a summer semester at university to help her get ahead in her degree and eventually her career, but she can't access her work or submit her assignments over the network because it is unreliable. This is in 2018 in an inner-city electorate. Unfortunately, these stories from locals that I have shared are not surprising, and that's not the end of it. I could give you many more examples.

In August the Senate heard that the HFC cabling had 50 times more network downtime than fibre connections. Mr Turnbull's NBN is a joke. It needs to be fixed. This government needs to do something about it. The costs have blown out under the Turnbull-Joyce government and so too has the time frame for its delivery. The fact is this: under Labor, all of Moreton was scheduled to get world-class fibre-to-the-premises NBN, delivering superfast internet speeds using fibre optic cable to every home, every school and every business. This would mean superfast internet supporting future curriculum resources and benefiting education for our kids and schools. A modern network with 21st century technology is the key to preparing students for the jobs of tomorrow with digital learning and online research and collaboration—the hallmarks of many future careers.

Also we know that fast and reliable connectivity is going to be essential for the jobs of the future. We know that. But more pressing are the advantages for local small businesses that should be available to them right now. The NBN will enable businesses to access markets well beyond their current reach, helping them grow from small businesses to medium-sized and then bigger. I know local businesses in my electorate demand more fibre, the modern and reliable technology to set them up to compete and succeed on a larger scale. They've told me this election after election and meeting after meeting. I'll do everything I can to fight for more fibre in Moreton. Fibre is the technology. I ask everyone who has written to me or called me, frustrated about their terrible internet, to join me in the fight. Let's get the best possible NBN rollout for our local suburbs. Let's fight for more fibre.

As a former teacher and the parent of a high school student and a primary student, education is very important to me and to my family. Education is important to every one of my constituents—their own education, their children's education and the education of all those who provide services in our community. Tragically, the Turnbull-Joyce government is ripping funds out of the schools that need them most. Eighty-six per cent of the cuts will actually be to public schools. Low-fee Catholic schools will get 12 per cent of the cuts, and independent schools—including some elite, high-fee-paying schools—will get a cut of just two per cent. Compare that—86 per cent cut to public schools, 12 per cent cut to Catholic schools and two per cent cut to the rest. In my electorate of Moreton, $15 million will be ripped from public schools and $8.6 million will be ripped from Catholic schools. These cuts will mean fewer teachers, less one-on-one attention for children and less help with the basics of reading, writing and maths.

I was at an event in Parliament House last night for the Parliamentary Friends of Australian Books and Writers. I am a co-chair of this group. The theme for our event was education. Professor John Hattie spoke at the event about his work around how children learn. He spoke of the importance of positive teacher-student interaction for effective teaching. Teachers are crucial to the education a child receives. Fewer teachers will have a dramatic impact on the quality of teaching and education and, therefore, outcomes. At the same time that the Turnbull-Joyce government is ripping money out of our schools, it's making life easier for big business and millionaires by giving them tax cuts. This is short-sighted. Investing in our schools will benefit everyone in the long run.

In January I had the pleasure of visiting Sunnybank Hills State School with the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Tanya Plibersek. Sunnybank Hills State School has nearly 1,400 students. That probably makes it one of the biggest P-to-6 schools in the country, but it's an outstanding example of government provided education. On our tour we visited year 1 and year 5 classes to see their robotics and coding courses. I learnt things about coding from kids in grade 1! As coding and robotics will be critical for the jobs of the future, it's important that they learn this stuff early at our schools.

We also visited a prep class to see the innovative phonics program that is used to help children from non-English-speaking backgrounds to get up to speed and then get ahead. This genuine needs based funding at Sunnybank Hills State School means these prep kids are getting really intensive one-on-one help. In fact, we were in the prep classroom looking at groups of five or six children being taught by one teacher. This start will stay with these children throughout their whole schooling. It will provide a firm foundation from which they can springboard into lots of opportunities.

But Prime Minister Turnbull has made his choice. He wants a $65 billion tax giveaway for multinationals, big banks and wealthy companies, while slashing $17 billion from schools. What does this mean for Sunnybank Hills State School? It means a cut of $1 million over the next two years alone—and other schools in my electorate will suffer a similar fate. All the school programs we visited at Sunnybank Hills State School could be at risk.

Labor will restore the funding to schools that Prime Minister Turnbull is cutting. This means that we'll put back the $1 million cut from Sunnybank Hills State School and ensure these essential learning programs, which are so important, can continue for our kids. Labor believes in fairness. We believe in everybody having a fair go. Labor believes in everybody being able to achieve their potential. That's what I'll be fighting for as the member for Moreton.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's always a great pleasure to follow my good friend the member for Moreton. He's a great local member and a great fighter for the Labor cause. But, tragically, he's terrible at squash! He cannot win a game on the squash courts—and it's important that the country knows that fact. Even someone like me, who suffered from asthma in my childhood, can beat him. But it's about asthma that I want to talk.

Asthma is a really serious condition. I shouldn't make jokes at the member for Moreton's expense, and I shouldn't introduce this subject with such levity, because asthma is a very serious disease and a very serious issue. I suffered from it in my childhood, and there were numerous times my mum had to take me to the women's and children's hospital. I think she still carries a lot of trauma from those visits because they were very serious.

Asthma Australia have pointed out that one in nine Australians has asthma. It hospitalises 39,500 people a year and results in 419 deaths each year. That is a very, very serious problem for not just the individuals concerned and their families but also our hospital system because every one of those attendances in an emergency ward obviously consumes valuable health resources, valuable time and valuable funding, which our hospitals could put to other uses were those attendance numbers reduced in some way.

We know that children under 14 represent 52 per cent of those asthma hospitalisations. So it's absolutely critical that we have a national organisation—Asthma Australia, in this case—that can train and educate people to learn how to monitor their asthma, to prevent flare-ups, to prevent hospitalisations and ultimately to prevent deaths. That's why it's so concerning that this government cut funding to Asthma Australia in 2017 by 57 per cent. That is a cut of $4.73 million over three years. That is a very, very serious cut to a very, very important organisation.

Of course, those cuts are not really a saving to the government or to the taxpayer because, if people don't manage their asthma—or any chronic disease—properly, we know what happens. We get more attendances in emergency departments. We get more attendances in hospital. And a hospitalisation in acute care costs infinitely more than prevention does. This would seem to me to be a very foolish way of trying to manage the Commonwealth budget or manage state budgets. It's a very silly way to manage taxpayers' resources, because what you might save in the Commonwealth budget will be more than consumed through increased attendance at hospitals.

Of course, it makes a mockery of the Asthma Strategy 2018 that the government came out with earlier this year, committing $1 million over two years for school and youth programs. On one hand they cut; on the other hand they give. It's this sort of pea and thimble trick in health that does not save a single dollar, does not help families, does not help communities and doesn't help doctors, nurses and those in our emergency wards; it just creates confusion and makes it hard for organisations to operate. Of course, it can potentially cause desperate problems out there in the community. I don't want to slam into the government or harangue them; I just want them to fix what is a pretty simple thing to fix. It's not a great amount of money in the context of the health budget, and it's certainly not a great amount of money in the context of a Commonwealth budget, but it has a very real effect for families, children, sufferers of asthma and, more importantly, our emergency wards, which are obviously under pressure and which we are trying to better manage. I think the government should reconsider the cuts to Asthma Australia.

The other issue I want to raise is that of the GST. I know the GST concerns Western Australians greatly. I know that it's a hot topic in Western Australia. My great-grandfather and grandfather were both Western Australians, so I think I was educated somewhat about the mindset. Interestingly, my great-grandfather was a personal friend of Charles Court—I was shocked to find that out. It's interesting, because Western Australia, South Australia and other small states used to be on a unity ticket about horizontal fiscal equalisation. For years and years and years we were the recipients of funds that were allocated from New South Wales and Victoria. That was for good reason: we were larger states with small populations and we needed to develop this massive continent. That's why we have what is a very fair system, a system that has been developed over time in order to make sure Western Australians, South Australians, Tasmanians and New South Welshman are all treated in roughly the same way in terms of services. That's important because we're all one country. We're very, very fortunate to have a continent to ourselves, not to have divisions based on geography or separatist elements in our country. We're extraordinarily lucky that we live in a country where we are bound by this national ethos.

The GST and its allocations are very, very important issues. Of course, there seem to be mixed messages coming out of the government. On one hand we have the Treasurer telling the country that the GST allocation system is broken, is a mess that has to be fixed. He sent the Productivity Commission in to do a report, and those reports are very serious indeed for South Australia, because they propose $600 million in cuts. These are serious budget cuts to South Australia's GST allocation. They have a terrible consequence for the number of doctors and nurses in EDs, the number of teachers in schools or the number of police out on the streets. They have terrible consequences for the services provided. On the other hand we have two cabinet ministers, Minister Birmingham and Minister Pyne, saying, 'Nothing to see here.' In fact, in the Adelaide Advertiser on 7 February, Senator Birmingham said, 'Right now there's no proposal for change and nothing for people to fight over.' That is a strange thing to say when the Treasurer, on the other hand, said:

The PC inquiry has already demonstrated in its interim report that the system is broken and needs a real fix.

It's very interesting to see how different MPs have responded to this. We have Minister Pyne saying there's no policy to change things. We have Steven Marshall out there saying he would oppose any change to the GST carve-up. Then we have the Liberal backbench, who certainly seem to think that there's something going on in terms of South Australia's GST allocations. We've got the member for Boothby saying she would fight for a 'fair deal' for South Australia and she would fight 'to protect the state's interests'. We've got Tony Pasin, the member for Barker, who's a parliamentary neighbour of mine in South Australia, who said:

Any attempt to undermine this principle will be met with a fierce fight from me and, I would expect, every other South Australian in Federal Parliament …

So he's there saying that he would fight a fierce fight on that principle. He makes the same point I do about services in South Australia. We've got the newly-minted South Australian Liberal senator, Lucy Gichuhi, saying that she had concerns and that if such a change were pursued there'd need to be a cushion for South Australia for a possible impact. That's a different thing. However, she has said:

South Australia continues to suffer from challenging socioeconomic issues such as a high unemployment rate, a low workforce participation rate, an ageing population … among other things.

Rowan Ramsey, my colleague from Grey, seems to raise the white flag, although he does say: 'I will resist change until I'm sure SA's interests are protected.' That's less of a fierce fight than the member for Boothby and the member for Barker.

What this article shows is that there is an intention, a proposal, to change the GST allocations across this country, and the Treasurer has made it plain that he's going to take this to cabinet, but only after the South Australian election. What they're trying to do is, frankly, what they've done on shipbuilding, Holden and a whole range of issues that concern South Australia. They want to have a go at us; they want to have a crack at us—unfairly so. They maligned our shipbuilding industry. They maligned the car industry. They maligned South Australia's abilities and role as a state. But they don't quite have the courage to do it before a state election. They don't quite have the courage to do it when votes are on the line, so what we will find is that, after this state election, a horrible proposition will be made by this government regarding GST allocations to South Australia—and, probably, to Tasmania and the Northern Territory—without any capacity for South Australians to resist it.

If that's the government's grand political plan, I think it's going to go about as well as every other grand political plan they've had in South Australia. Let's not be under any illusions about it, because the Adelaide Advertiser again reported, just this week on 13 February, in an article entitled 'GST black hole worth billions, report shows'. The article said that we will be $2 billion poorer if this carve-up is in place over the next five years. That will have a devastating effect on South Australia, and it is manifestly unfair. It is manifestly out of character with the way we have conducted ourselves as a country. The way we have conducted ourselves as a country is to say: we will have the same supports, the same level of services, the same ideas about education and health, no matter where you live. And, of course, that is most important for those who live outside our capital cities, because they are particularly vulnerable to cuts in services. The further away you get from the Commonwealth government office in Sydney the worse off you might be under such a proposition, and that is just not right. It won't help Western Australians. Those West Australians who live in rural centres relied on this system for years and years in the postwar situation. It allowed us to develop our great minerals industry in Western Australia, and it's allowing us to develop a great minerals industry in South Australia.

So I urge the government to take a longer view of this, not to jump to conclusions, not to embark on a course of action that will undermine the federation—a very important idea of a fair go, of equality, of the fact that we won't have a situation like they have in America, where there are some very great differences in wealth, in education, in social outcomes, in health outcomes and in employment outcomes from one end of the country to the other. It doesn't help outlying states; they're the ones which suffer. It doesn't help people in rural communities; they're the ones who suffer. They don't get a fairer go, if you look at those systems. What happens is that the big cities and the places that generate great wealth—which tend to be cities in this modern economy—are where wealth ends up residing, and that growth has this accelerating effect.

So, let's not embrace the worst ideas that operate in the United States of America, in their great union. Let's keep the spirit, the justification and the fairness that's inherent in an Australian federation—the idea that we should all be equal, that we should all give each other a fair go. I'd urge this government to back off their terrible plans to rip off South Australians to the tune of $2 billion.

Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No 3) 2017-18 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2017-18. Unlike some others, Labor is always committed to supporting supply, and for that reason I support these two bills. But please do not mistake my support of these appropriation bills in any way to be an endorsement of the government's fiscal policy. Do not mistake this support as an endorsement of the financial pain inflicted on families, workers, students and pensioners by this government—because it is not.

Every day the impact of this government's cruel cuts on everyday Australians is being felt in households across the country. They have cut to the bone of some of the institutions and services that make this country one of the best in the world—universities, schools, the public healthcare system. We have witnessed an attack on higher education by this government, where $2.2 billion in uni cuts has meant that 10,000 university places this year will go unfunded. We have witnessed this government introduce an unfair funding regime that cuts $17 billion from schools, hitting public schools the hardest. 'Not a dollar difference,' they cried at the 2013 election. It turns out that it's a $17 billion difference. And we've witnessed this government wallop vocational education and TAFE, with a whopping $3 billion ripped from their funding.

Unfortunately it does not stop there. We have watched this government stand by as private health insurance premiums have skyrocketed by 27 per cent since the Liberals were elected in 2013. We've watched as this government, through its four-year freeze on Medicare, has ripped $2.2 billion in addition to the money already sucked from Australians who are in need of health care. These cuts are hurting people. These cuts are a heavy burden for families to carry, because people still need to go to the doctor, to school, to TAFE and to university. This government has the gall to say that these cuts are necessary while at the same time throwing a lazy $65 billion bonus to the big end of town. What a nerve! It's irresponsible, and it's an outrage.

On 2 July last year nearly 10,000 people in my electorate of Brand, through no fault of their own and with no renegotiation of their conditions, had their pay slashed when their penalty rates were cut. They didn't work fewer hours. They didn't change the work they were doing or the days on which they were doing it. These retail, pharmacy and hospitality workers—nearly one in seven workers in the cities of Kwinana and Rockingham—were just collateral damage for this government. Instead of sticking up for low-paid workers, instead of protecting workers' pay and conditions, this mean government failed to do the right thing for working Australians and to join with Labor to protect the penalty rates of 700,000 workers across this country.

But that is what we get when we have before us a government that does not understand that losing $77 per week from a pay packet hurts families, that it hurts the community. We have before us a government that made the decision to ignore the burden these penalty rate cuts would place on those who could least afford it and instead chose to bestow a $65 billion tax cut bonus on those who do not need it. This government does not protect workers. Its Jobs and Growth slogans are just hollow words for the thousands of people across Brand and the rest of the country who are doing it tough.

A couple of weeks ago, some disturbing figures came across my desk—the January illion bankruptcy analysis from an illion data and analytics media release, summarising their findings of Australian household financial health across the country. More than 32,000 Australians went bankrupt in 2017. That's a 6.1 per cent aggregate increase across recent years, and it follows on from a 4.7 per cent rise in 2016. These figures paint a devastating picture of how people are faring under this government. They show us how desperate people are. They show us that people are struggling to get by. Don't take my word for it. The author of the bankruptcy analysis—illion CEO, Simon Bligh—has said:

Consumer debt levels are rising steadily in Australia as a result of record mortgages and a surge in everyday essentials such as utilities, petrol and healthcare. These factors, combined with weak wage growth, are putting pressure on the wallets of Australians.

I'm not an economist, I admit, but it would not take an economist to work out that cutting wages and increasing the costs of health care and education at a time of high underemployment will put people under financial pressure. And it is very worrying that the age at which the extreme end of financial distress is affecting people is falling. The average age of those declaring bankruptcy is falling fast, from nearly 48 years of age in 2013 to just over 40 years of age at the end of 2017. How proud the Prime Minister and this government must be to know that their legacy for the country involves presiding over an ever-lowering of the age at which people file for bankruptcy. Jobs and growth? I don't think so.

The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook confirms that the top end of town—the millionaires and the banks—will enjoy generous tax breaks. It also confirms that those who can least afford it will carry the burden of the government's budget's failure and attacks on essential services. That is something that I and many members here see daily. The suburb of Baldivis in my electorate of Brand is in the very unenviable position of having the highest concentration of personal insolvencies in 2017. The figure of 103 personal insolvencies is 10 per cent higher than the next-highest suburb. I ask the government to think about the impact this has on communities. We are talking about 103 families living under a cloud of debt and fear and despair. This is a dark reality lived out across the country, one that drives vulnerable people and desperate families into sickening arrangements with unscrupulous payday lenders. We know that 650,000 financially stressed households in this country have a payday loan. These loans are mostly last-resort situations for people who have exhausted all financial options. But when the loans and leases mean that hard-up families are having to pay interest rates of more than 800 per cent, and where they end up paying more than $3,000 for a household appliance, like a washing machine, that originally cost $350, there is an obvious problem that needs fixing.

Why has the government been sitting on a report on the payday loans industry instead of taking a stand against these ruthless lenders? What is it about this government that it not only prescribes its own cuts to services and budgets but also stands by idly as struggling households are bled dry by unscrupulous payday lenders? Fortunately, Labor will take action. I welcome the imminent introduction of a private member's bill by the member for Perth that will seek to enact the very legislation the government prepared last year to address the insidious practice of loan sharks that prey on vulnerable Australians.

The small amount credit contract and consumer lease reforms are admirable. In October 2017, the government released an exposure draft on this legislation to enact the recommendations of the SACC review and promised that a bill would enter parliament by the end of last year. But times change quickly with this government. Since the reshuffle of 17 December these reforms now fall to the member for Deakin to implement, and they are going nowhere. The minister for revenue has been rolled by the parliamentary friends of payday lenders, and that is a crying shame for Australian consumers. Make no mistake: this bill is identical to the government's exposure draft in every way, word for word. The SACC bill is government policy and, by all reports, the words of this bill have been approved and gone through all cabinet processes. So why do they not bring on the bill themselves? Why do they not support it? There are no excuses. This bill is their bill. It's very obvious to all Australians: this government looks after the top end of town and has little care for vulnerable consumers in this country. I would like to thank my friends and colleagues the members for Oxley and Perth for their tremendous efforts in the community and in this place in advancing the reforms that will put a stop to predatory payday lending and protect Australians, because the government sure wasn't going to do anything.

I would like to reflect for a moment on unemployment. Unemployment in my electorate of Brand rose from 6.7 per cent in June 2013 to 9.8 per cent in June 2017. This is an unacceptable rise of more than three per cent in four years. In the south of the electorate, the suburb of Port Kennedy has experienced a rise in unemployment from 7.6 per cent in the September quarter of 2016 to 8.2 per cent a year later in September 2017. In the west of my electorate, the suburb of Rockingham has experienced a rise in unemployment from 12.6 in the September quarter 2016 to 13.6 per cent in the September quarter of last year. And, in the north of Brand, the suburb of Parmelia near Kwinana has shocking figures: from 17.6 per cent unemployment in the 2016 September quarter to a whopping 18.9 per cent a year later.

We're still waiting on that 'jobs and growth' promise the Prime Minister likes to talk about. We are waiting for that to eventuate in Brand, and with the growing unemployment figures comes growing mortgage stress. With the 1.1 million underemployed Australians comes mortgage stress, and with the increased cost of living and stagnant wages comes mortgage stress. One in four households with a mortgage does not have enough money to pay their mortgage repayments and living expenses. Still, those opposite are not satisfied. No, they are not—not when they have more cuts to inflict.

They are still pursuing the energy supplement or, rather, ditching the supplement, which would leave pensioners $366 a year worse off. Why stop there? Why not make people work to the age of 70 before being eligible for an age pension? I honestly despair at what callous measures this government might think up next. These cuts, we are all told, are necessary and are being done in the name of budget repair but, I ask, what is actually being achieved by these cuts, apart from pain?

It has been said, and is worth saying again: the midyear budget update figures are not good. The deficit this year is eight times higher than the government said it would be in 2014 at $23.6 billion—and that's up from $2.8 billion. Gross debt is on the way up already, smashing the half a trillion dollar mark, and record net debt will hit new highs in the coming three years.

Australia is in need of a different fiscal policy; the current one is not working. Australia is in need of a new government; the current one has proved that it is not up for the task. We have policies that will improve the budget and will do so fairly and responsibly. Instead of squeezing people until they hurt, there are tens of billions of dollars in fair budget repair measures. Do not ask those who are doing it toughest, those who are the most vulnerable in our communities, to bear the brunt of unfair, harsh measures.

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

It is always interesting to get up in parliament to talk about the federal budget and Tasmania. It's nice to remind members in this place that Tasmania exists, when it comes to the federal budget. Earlier this week, Tasmanians tried to get an answer out of the infrastructure minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, about projects that are locked in for our state. He mentioned agricultural irrigation—a Labor project. He mentioned the Midland Highway—another Labor project. And then he mentioned Inland Rail. Well, unless the Deputy Prime Minister has figured out a way to get a rail line across Bass Strait, while still calling it 'inland rail', I can only imagine that the Deputy Prime Minister has some secret plan to build an inland rail system actually in Tasmania that does a choo-choo circuit of the island. All aboard the 'Barnaby Express'! It would no doubt, like the Deputy Prime Minister, cost a lot of money, go around in circles, make a lot of noise but eventually not achieve very much at all.

Tasmanian members of this House well recall the dim, dark day of last year's federal budget—the so-called infrastructure budget, in which not one significant new infrastructure project was announced for Tasmania—$74 billion for projects across the rest of the country but nothing beyond previously announced projects for Tasmania. If there were any one thing that this government could do to demonstrate its contempt for Tasmanians in recent memory, that was it.

Tasmania has a number of infrastructure projects that could benefit our state economy. Take, for example, the Bridgewater Bridge—a 70-year-old bridge that has been lined up for decades for an upgrade, which is getting increasingly more urgent as the industrial sector and population grow around the Brighton area in my electorate. The current old bridge carries, on average, 18,500 vehicles per day and it locks down into a bottleneck of two lanes. It is a lifting bridge. Boats have to go past every now and then, so it has to lift and vehicles stop, but the heritage lifting mechanism is wearing down and subject to breakdown. Let's face it, things have come a long way since the 1940 build date. So, a new replacement bridge has been on the drawing board for years, but there has been no substantive action by this government to make it happen.

There are the possible upgrades to the Tasman Highway along the east coast of my electorate. It is affectionately known as the 'Great Eastern Drive'. It's fair to say the views are great and so are the communities along the way, but the road itself could not be described as great. It's a winding road with most of it being one lane each way, carrying increasing numbers of tourism traffic.

Arthur Highway on the Tasman Peninsula, which connects the town of Sorell to Port Arthur, is one of the busiest tourism destinations in the country. Sure, it is a state government road, but the state Liberal government has been so inept that it has failed to ensure this road can accommodate its growing traffic needs. And there's the Bass Highway in the north of my electorate, especially the stretch between Hadspen and Deloraine, which could do with additional lanes.

There is a dam or two on the East Coast that could be funded to improve water security. There are the facilities at Mount Field and Ben Lomond to give tourists a better skiing experience or the footy oval at Boyer, the sportsgrounds at Longford. The list goes on. There are many, many infrastructure projects in my electorate alone, let alone the rest of Tasmania, that could have been funded by this government in the so-called infrastructure budget but were not. This minister, this Treasurer, could have nominated any one of these projects. Instead, what we had the other day from the Deputy Prime Minister was the mythical inland rail, which, of course, is going nowhere near Tasmania.

But, of course, this government's Tasmanian failures are not just in infrastructure. In 2015 the Senate held an inquiry into biosecurity in Australia, chaired by Tasmanian Senator Anne Urquhart. It red-flagged, amongst the 26 recommendations, federal funding cuts to biosecurity, which have led to cuts in frontline staffing and less money for research and prevention. Fast forward to 2018 and we now have a fruit fly crisis in Tasmania where 18 cases of flies and larvae have been discovered in Flinders in the north of the state. We've never had fruit fly before, but, since biosecurity cuts came in under state and federal Liberal governments, it has emerged for the first time in Tasmania, putting at risk a $200 million fruit and vegetable industry and the reputation of Tasmania as a clean, green agricultural state. These are the real, practical effects of cuts to biosecurity.

There's not just fruit fly; we've had the POMS outbreak—Pacific oyster mortality syndrome. We don't blame the government for the outbreak. It's a natural virus that comes down from the East Coast as the waters are naturally warming. But, if we had better biosecurity in place and the Liberal government in Tasmania and the Liberal government in Canberra took biosecurity more seriously, perhaps it could have been arrested earlier, instead of seeing the outbreak occur and oyster farmers in Tasmania pay the price. There is a clear need to increase federal and state oversight of biosecurity related issues that have the potential to ruin multimillion-dollar industries and impact thousands of people.

Farmers in Tasmania are demanding that information that has been posted about fruit fly and the exclusion zones be made available on the front page of the newspapers, included in mail-outs and texted to people in the area using the emergency text systems in place. They make these requests because they know that, if people don't know what the exclusion zones are and how important they are, people will unwittingly take infected fruit out of the exclusion zone and spread the disease. The government needs to get serious about doing this. Farmers want to take an eradication approach to these matters, not a management approach—not: 'Oh, well, it's here now; throw up your hands and surrender and just live with it.' Farmers want these issues eradicated. That means that the federal government and the government in Tasmania need to get much more serious about this issue.

Many farmers in Tasmania are from generations of a family working on the land. The impact of Taiwan and China putting a halt to hard-won trading deals, hard-won fruit deals, has a huge impact on employment and cash flow, and, once you have lost those customers, it is hard to get them back. The $1 million cut to Biosecurity Tasmania three years ago—which has been found in leaked documents—had an immediate and catastrophic effect on the Tasmanian market. So it is a series of biosecurity issues. These are not isolated incidents; it is a pattern of behaviour. It is complacency and arrogance.

Tasmania is in an education crisis, with $68 million ripped from Tasmanian schools over the next two years. That had been previously budgeted. The money was there. The money was available and it has been ripped back. The Tasmanian Treasurer will not fight for this funding. In fact, he denies that there has been any loss. What else would he say with his Liberal mates here in Canberra? Just imagine the difference $68 million would make: more resources, more teachers, more science, more coding, specialist teachers, smaller classrooms and more pathways for Tasmanian kids, who are already behind the eight ball compared to kids on the mainland, to open the door to a life of opportunity.

Last year, The Mercury newspaper surveyed the public about the Tasmania that kids wanted to live in. The common theme to emerge from responses was the need to place a greater value on education and, in particular, an emphasis on completing year 12. Tasmanian people believe that improving Tasmania's educational opportunities will be the key to sharing the state's wealth more fairly, but that is going to be very difficult to achieve with the education cuts that this government has introduced. Tasmanians also rated as very important improving digital connectivity—it was rated as very important by 40 per cent of respondents—and lifting the minimum wage was rated as very important by 33 per cent.

Lyons, my electorate, lags behind the Australian average when it comes to education at every level. Only 10.9 per cent identify as having post-school qualifications, compared to 22 per cent being the Australian average. Of people aged 15 and over in Lyons, 9.6 per cent reported completing year 12 as their highest level of education, 19 per cent completed a certificate III or IV and only 7.5 per cent completed an advanced diploma or diploma. Across the board, these figures lag well behind the mainland—and the figures are not going to improve with the funding cuts introduced by this government.

So it follows that Lyons, my electorate, sits in a challenging place for finding a job. According to the latest census, 14½ thousand people reported being in the labour force in the week before census night in Lyons. Of these, 52.7 per cent were employed full time, 34.3 per cent were employed part time and 6.3 per cent were unemployed. Now, 6.3 per cent doesn't sound bad, until you go into the regions. There is 24 per cent youth unemployment in places like Sorell. It's a patchwork outcome of unemployment in my electorate.

The vocational educational system is also in crisis. After years of neglect and the opening to unscrupulous VET industry training companies who popped up to take advantage of the open market, this government is madly scrambling to get the sector under control. There are still plenty of people in my electorate and my state paying off dodgy certifications that they didn't get to complete after the closure of some of these dodgy operators. Telstra's 2016 Digital inclusion report revealed that Tasmania hits the bottom of the list when it comes to digital literacy. This all comes back to this government's sense of priorities. Tasmania just isn't a priority for this government. In digital literacy, Tasmania falls way behind. With virtually no investment from either the federal or the state government, a very dodgy NBN rollout—it's way behind schedule and way above cost—and under-resourced regional schools, Tasmanian kids are simply falling behind, and they're going to find it much harder to catch up.

I think the general perception that if you can use a phone and get on Facebook then you are digitally okay needs sorting out. The internet and good broadband means much more than that. The internet's not just some toy to watch movies on or to play games on. It's an essential economic business tool. It's an essential educational tool. Increasingly it will be an essential medical tool, and for that you need good bandwidth, of which there's far too little in my electorate. Industry expert William Kestin from TasICT presented evidence to the Joint Standing Committee on the NBN last year showcasing the incredible gap between the delivery of the NBN in Tasmania and people understanding how to use the NBN. He recommended that Tasmania start including digital and coding training from kinder upwards—something Labor wants to do in government: increase the level of digital literacy by getting the kids involved, learning coding in schools. That is something this government could learn.

The government has not jumped on this at a federal level or at a state Liberal level. But additional resourcing from a Rebecca White Labor government—Rebecca White's the opposition leader in Tasmania—should she win will come from prioritising bridging education gaps and building skills from birth up. Tasmania needs a comprehensive plan to address the gaps in education and training—one that will address, in the long term, strategies to create a learning state with real outcomes.

Finally, and certainly not least, I come to health. So much has been said about health in this place, and the crisis Tasmania is facing in health. We are in absolute crisis in Tasmania. Ambulance ramping is out of control. Rebecca White, the opposition leader, has been posting photos just in the past couple of days about the level of ambulance ramping at Royal Hobart, and it's scary to see. The ambulances are down the ramp and on the road. That's real patients in real ambulances waiting just to be admitted to hospital. A Rebecca White Labor government will introduce $560 million into the health budget in Tasmania and put 500 more health workers into Tasmania, and that's a hell of a lot more than this government is doing for Tasmania. I certainly urge everybody to consider voting '1' Rebecca White.

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

The two appropriation bills that we have before us in the House provide appropriations from the consolidated revenue fund for the annual services of the government for the remainder of 2017-18 and facilitate implementation of a number of 2017-18 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, or MYEFO, measures. A total of around $1.5 billion is sought for the remainder of the 2017-18 financial year. These amounts are already incorporated into the budget bottom line as presented in the 2017-18 MYEFO. The Labor Party will support supply, but I don't think we can let the opportunity pass to examine in some detail the priorities of this government as demonstrated by its budget.

What this budget delivers is tax handouts for multinationals and millionaires whilst hurting every Australian family in the name of discredited trickle-down economics and, all the while, peddling the distortion that Australia's corporate tax rate is internationally uncompetitive. It demonstrates a clear lack of vision and highlights just how out of touch Prime Minister Turnbull and the Liberals are with everyday Australians.

The constituents in my electorate of Bass have little interest in the Prime Minister's $65 billion tax cut for big business in that they cannot see any connection between giving big business a tax cut and the claim of more jobs or increased jobs in the electorate of Bass. What they are concerned with is the day-to-day cost of living, paying their bills and having opportunities for them and their families to get ahead. What they also see, in contrast to what the government trumpets in its economic plan based around tax cuts for big business, is a government that fails to stand up for those who have lost part of their income through cuts to penalty rates. They see a government that does not stand up for our maritime workers, for example, or, in the face of the outsourcing of Australian jobs and the destruction of our car industry, for our manufacturing workers. They see a government that does not stand up for the individual.

Budgets are about making choices, and you can see what choices this government makes, writ large, in the budget and its so-called economic plan. The government underinvests in education whilst claiming the implementation of Gonski. It claims record investment in health care whilst negotiating long-term funding agreements that see more and more money being ripped from our public hospitals. It also fails to understand that investment in our universities and in technical and further education will drive economic growth. That investment would also drive future employment, supporting healthy communities where working-class and middle-class Australians—middle Australia—can aspire to home ownership and a decent standard of living.

The government continually seeks to justify the increase in taxes for ordinary Australians on the basis that the NDIS was not properly funded, despite the evidence within the budget papers that establishes otherwise. In any event, why should anyone accept the word of the government as to whether the NDIS was funded or not, when this government of no ideas and no-hopers proposes an unfunded $65 billion handout to big business as the central plank of their economic plan? This economic plan increases the tax burden on low- and middle-income earners whilst reducing the corporate tax rate, without regard to the average corporate tax rate paid or, indeed, the effective corporate tax rate, which is amongst the lowest in the world. This approach is economic vandalism.

This is the same government that spoke of a debt and deficit disaster, that sought to penalise young people by refusing access to Centrelink benefits for six months of each year. However, it's failed to do anything that is fiscally prudent to reduce the deficit and our national debt, whilst at the same time it's proposing to hand out tax cuts. Labor in contrast has proposed responsible savings that significantly improve the budget over the medium term, including ensuring that multinationals pay their fair share. We have also ensured that reforms to negative gearing and capital gains tax will address not only housing affordability but also the budget bottom line.

Finally, reforms to the taxation of trusts are long overdue. We on this side of the House know that it's possible to use trust structures in a manner that reduces the tax burden of high-income earners. The government must surely know that reform in this area is necessary to ensure fairness within our income tax system, but it refuses to do anything meaningful to ensure taxation compliance.

We on this side of the House know that investment in education drives economic growth and, in particular, is instrumental in combatting disadvantage. Economic analysis undertaken for the university sector suggests that the mere presence of more university graduates in an economy drives increases in wages for non-university graduates. In other words, at its most basic, the presence of more university graduates within an economy is likely to be a positive influence on the local economy. This has direct relevance in my home state of Tasmania. Federal, state and local government have recognised and supported the University of Tasmania's transformation project, which is not just an infrastructure project; more importantly, it's also tasked with improving the presence of university graduates within the Tasmanian community and the associated beneficial effects on the Tasmania economy. The Liberals' response, despite their welcome investment in the University of Tasmania transformation project, is to cut funding to the university sector. Students are also being saddled with a higher debt associated with higher education.

We know that investment in public education produces significant benefits for our wider communities. Time and again, whilst door-knocking, I had useful conversations with constituents about the importance of ongoing investment in education. Every parent knows that investment in education produces a benefit for that person's child or children. Every person should know that investment in education produces general benefits for our community in a very real sense. Every person needs to be comforted that investment in the education of a child living over the road is of real benefit to the local community. The child next door receiving a good education means that that person is likely to receive the best possible opportunity in life in order to obtain employment and play a fulfilling role in society. In this respect, there is a direct connection between investment in education, education outcomes and community benefits, but in Tasmania the state Liberals are also missing in action on education. We also know, for example, from experience in the United States and elsewhere, that programs like Justice Reinvestment and programs designed to divert offenders or those most likely to offend from the justice system have a heavy reliance on education. Just as the social determinants apply to predicting health outcomes, so too does educational attainment have a linkage with offending, incarceration rates and more general disadvantage. Choices were made by this government to favour $65 billion worth of tax cuts rather than additional investment in universities and TAFE.

This government speaks about record investment in infrastructure, but its actions in advancing infrastructure projects demonstrate either extraordinary cynicism or, in the alternative, breathtaking incompetence. Either the government promises record expenditure on infrastructure projects and deliberately constrains expenditure on that infrastructure or, in the alternative, it is so incompetent that it is unable to plan and deliver the infrastructure spend provided for in the budget. We recently had the absurd sight of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Transport responding to a question as to the underspending on infrastructure in the state of Tasmania, but making reference to Inland Rail, the Badgerys Creek Airport and other projects outside Tasmania. It also goes to show how ineffective the state Liberal government is in arguing the case for Tasmanian infrastructure. What Tasmanian projects the minister ultimately referred to were projects announced and commenced under the former Labor government.

This side of the House understands the importance of our public health system. The government protests that it supports Medicare, but this is like the very worst friend that any person could have, the friend who promises support but runs away at crunch time. This government extended the former Labor government's Medicare freeze beyond its original end date and as a result has made it more and more difficult for GPs to rely upon the Medicare rebate to bulk-bill. My community suffers from significant disadvantage. It is not possible for GPs in my electorate to maintain bulk-billing rates. I have consulted extensively in my electorate about the effect of the rebate freeze. There is no doubt that this government's cynical unfreezing of the Medicare rebate is more about appearances and less about providing practical relief to people seeking to access GPs. It's also significant to note that the program of unfreezing the Medicare rebate is extremely limited in scope, again failing to provide practical relief to people that need to consult their GP on a regular basis. This most affects the elderly or people with chronic medical conditions. Many constituents speak to me of the practical problem of trying to afford to pay the gap charged by a GP in maintaining their health. Sometimes it is impossible without accessing the public health system—in this case our overburdened emergency departments, which have been abandoned by the Tasmanian Liberals.

I congratulate the government for using our Labor commitment to fund the University of Tasmania transformation project as the central plank of the Launceston City Deal. I have spoken in this place about the potential of the Launceston City Deal and the fact that Labor will hold federal, state and local government, as well as the University of Tasmania, to the promises made which underpinned the City Deal. It is vitally important, nevertheless, that we consider the northern suburbs of Launceston and the redevelopment of the Newnham campus of the University of Tasmania. The Australian Maritime College, Australia's peak maritime training college, will remain at Newnham. There is great potential for Newnham to be redeveloped with a focus on advancement in research, the liveability of our city of Launceston and top-quality town planning principles so as to enhance Mowbray and Newnham and not diminish the present university campus at Mowbray. It is certain that the commitments made on a bipartisan basis to the development of Launceston need to be bold in realising the potential of our city not just for the university but with a focus on the liveability of our city, its heritage past, top-quality tourism, commercial development and the creation of a vibrant CBD and surrounds.

Above all, people within my electorate have a right to expect that we in this place do our best to create the conditions for the delivery of decent and secure well-paid work, particularly for those who may have been excluded from the benefits associated with the transformation of the Australian economy. The Liberals' insistence that tax cuts will facilitate increases in wages are hollow words, without positive leadership to support an increase in wages either at a state or federal level. Cuts to penalty rates send a message that corporate profits are more important than a wage earner's ability to support their family and that person's ability to make a decent contribution to our communities. Whilst at the time it was claimed that cuts to penalty rates would facilitate an increase in employment, there is little evidence that that is in fact the case.

There is much to be positive about for the future of Northern Tasmania around not only the implementation of the city deal but also significant private investment led by entrepreneurs like Josef Chromy, Errol Stewart and others. There are innovative businesses and service providers who time and time again demonstrate that innovation underpins much of what we do in Northern Tasmania. There are also tourism industry legends and icons like Stillwater restaurant, The Black Cow, Me Wah Restaurant and others in addition to the thriving food and tourism scene in southern Tasmania. It was wonderful to see a recent tweet by Nigella Lawson from one of my local restaurants, The Black Cow, singing the praises of the staff and experience at that restaurant.

This government lacks a vision for the future other than the hollow catchphrases of 'jobs and growth' and 'trickle-down economics'. Australia deserves better. Australians deserve better. They deserve better and well-paid jobs, secure employment, the opportunity to live fulfilling lives, decent education, health care and aged care. That vision is total lacking in the Treasurer's budget. That vision is not expressed when we turn up here to question time day after day. The Prime Minister keeps talking about an economic plan for the future which they are delivering. They keep talking about jobs, but they're not delivering higher living standards for anybody. The feedback we continually hear when we communicate with our constituents is all about the increased pressures from the cost of living and all about the fact that people cannot access decent healthcare. In my home state of Tasmania, much of the blame for that lies with the incompetent state Liberal government. But this federal government needs to own up to the fact that it has cut billions of dollars from the healthcare system, billions of dollars that would support ready access to our healthcare system.

Finally, I'm a very strong believer in investment and continued investment in our education system. Areas like Tasmania, which lag in economic terms behind the rest of Australia, really will benefit from continued and sustained investment in our education system and in our university sector.

Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to bring attention to a diabolical state of affairs that, at this point in time, affects over 650,000 Australians who are vulnerable: those who are crippled financially by an ever-present debt spiral that they simply do not have the capacity to crawl out of. The reason they are stuck in that debt spiral under insidious and crippling circumstances relates to a largely unregulated area of finance and lending commonly known as payday loans and rent-to-buy schemes. They are finance arrangements that are commonly called small amount credit contracts, or SACCs. Quite frankly, what we have seen from this government in relation to its inability to do anything meaningful about reform in this area is disgraceful. The government got off to a promising start on the back of Labor's good work in putting regulation and restraint around this area—firstly in 2009, and then, secondly, in 2012, in relation to the National Consumer Credit Protection Act. It was a very good start. It put some efficacy into the area to make sure that the mercenary sharks who were preying upon vulnerable consumers in the payday loan and rent-to-buy space were reined in somewhat.

One of the things that was built into those reforms in 2012 made sure that the industry was the subject of a regular review. That was the SACC review. The SACC review was implemented back in 2015, and the industry was covered very well by those in charge of the review. They reported back to government in March 2016. Understandably, these things take some time, and there is no criticism of the steps the government took at that point. The Minister for Revenue and Financial Services—by that stage, Minister O'Dwyer—had conduct of these reforms. In November 2016, to her credit, she published a comprehensive analysis from the government of the 22 reforms that were recommended in this small-credit space in order to make sure the balance was maintained between those who desperately need credit at short notice and those who wanted to provide it.

Make no mistake, this is not a situation where Labor says that the industry should be shut down. We acknowledge, more than most, because we see it time and again, that struggling families and single-parent families—which I'll come to a little bit later on—who are working really hard to make ends meet and watching every dollar count, do have unforeseen problems that require ready access to finance quickly. Try telling a family of five or a single mum with five kids whose washing machine has blown up and who simply has no money to go and buy another one. There needs to be some form of credit available to make sure that the household can continue. The same goes for fridges. Perhaps we can park tellies and other bits and pieces, but we certainly do not shy away from the need to provide lending facilities in this area.

Again, to her credit, the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services published a very comprehensive statement on 28 November 2016, and it is important to record for posterity that Minister O'Dwyer made it very clear that the government supported the vast majority of recommendations in part or in full. The press release from 28 November goes on to make it explicit which recommendations the government was prepared to support. They were: retaining existing price caps on SACCs, extending the SACC protected earnings amount requirement to all consumers and lowering it to 10 per cent of the consumer's net income, introducing a cap on total payments of a consumer lease which is equal to the base price of the good plus four per cent of the price per month, and introducing a protected earnings amount requirement for consumer lease providers—again, of 10 per cent of the net income for all consumers—equivalent but separate to the requirements of SACCs. We have small-amount credit contracts on one side and rent-to-buy or consumer leases on the other. These reforms are designed to capture both.

So it was made very clear back in November 2016 where the government intends to go. We had stumble after stumble in 2017, and the community, quite frankly, were misled by this government in relation to the progress that was being made converting that government position into legislation. On 28 February 2017, Minister O'Dwyer on Lateline confirmed that 'there is no delay in enforcing these recommendations as legislation is being drafted as we speak'. That wasn't true. The reason we know that wasn't true is that Senator Gallagher, doing brilliant work in that other place in her capacity as shadow minister for financial services, asked in estimates whether the drafting had started for the credit card and small amount credit contract reforms. The Treasury official on 1 March 2017 said:

We are not currently drafting that legislation.

So we have absolutely nothing insofar as March 2017 goes. But, again, we get to a point, under Minister McCormack, as he then was, the minister for small business. Why this reform hasn't gone to the current minister for small business is for reasons that will be abundantly clear. Quite frankly, you can say a lot of things about the minister for small business at the moment in relation to his position on penalty rates, but the one thing we know about Minister Laundy is that he would not crack and he would probably back-sack, which is more than you can say for the assistant minister in charge of these reforms.

Minister McCormack released the draft legislation on 23 October 2017 under very prescriptive terms. He said that the consultation window for the legislation was open for two weeks. He also said in his release of 23 October 2017:

The Government will introduce legislation this year to implement the SACC and consumer lease reforms.

It could not be clearer.

The legislation was the subject of supportive submissions from the Consumer Action Law Centre as the peak body for other affected consumer groups. But then the reshuffle occurred. After that point in time, we know that Assistant Minister Sukkar appears to have carriage of this so-called legislation, presumably reporting to the Treasurer. But it gets worse, because we have seen absolutely no form of action from this government to take clear steps to implement this legislation—legislation which has bipartisan support.

Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta—and I am sure you are not Robinson Crusoe—when you go out into your electorate, your constituents will tell you, as they tell me and those on the other side, 'You know what you guys need? You just need a little bit of bipartisanship. You need to show us that you can find common ground and something to put through parliament that you all agree on.' I'm sure we all share those kinds of conversations. Guess what? That's what we had here, and yet we see the inexorable creep from those on the other side who want to backtrack on SAC, so much so that we see the 'parliamentary friends of payday lenders' being formed to lobby the Treasurer in order to pretend that these reforms do not exist—to just make them all go away. We take this opportunity today to say that that will not happen.

We will take every step available to make sure that that does not happen, and here's how. There are always parts of legislation and reform at the edges which could be refined and improved. But this is a circumstance where we have a consultation period for all sides of over two years—lines in the sand being drawn on both sides and a clear demonstration of bipartisanship. We get so far as to have draft legislation that has been through the government's cabinet process. It's been approved by government, and it's just being hidden away as if it doesn't exist. Well, here's what we have done as of today. We have said, 'Look, if you don't do it, we will. If you don't back SACC, we will. If you won't stare down your conservative backbench, we will. And what the Labor Party has done is what the government should have done the entire time, but for one of two things. It is absolute incoherent paralysis that surrounds them, because they are so engulfed in scandal, so engulfed in distraction, so engulfed in division that they cannot do their job. All they need to do is back SACC, and they have failed to do it.

There is another plausible excuse, which is that it has finally happened, and we finally have exhibit A, in black and white: the relentless pressure applied by the conservative rump of this backbench on those more moderate, sensible forces on the government side. We have it in black and white. We have clear supporting statements from the minister for revenue, the then minister for small business, saying that this should be implemented without delay. Yet there is no sign of it from them over there, so we've done it. We have introduced a private member's bill in the National Consumer Credit Protection Amendment (Small Amount Credit Contracts and Consumer Leases Reforms) Bill 2018 that matches—word for word, sentence for sentence, full stop for full stop, comma for comma—the draft legislation produced by this government.

So, the government has a choice, and it is a fork in the road of integrity for this government. Do they support their own bill in this place, or will they find a reason to kick it off to the long grass? And that can mean only one thing. It can mean only that those far right conservative forces have won. It can mean only that the Prime Minister is completely devoid of any authority whatsoever in relation to how his government runs and what agenda it purports to control. It can mean only that we will fail to see any meaningful progress whatsoever from this government in relation to truly protecting vulnerable consumers. To those 650,000 Australians who are hopelessly trapped in a debt spiral as a result of mercenary predatory sharks, all I can do is apologise for the failures of this government to take any meaningful steps when we got so close to actually making sure that there are responsible reforms in this area. It is a symptom of a sick government, it is a symptom of a lack of reform, and it has to stop now.

Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2017-2018 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2017-2018, which the Labor Party has publicly committed to supporting, as convention would require. I speak here to support these bills because, let's face it, $1.5 billion in proposed appropriations that these two bills address is, for this Turnbull-Joyce government, the equivalent of some small change down the back of the lounge, a few bob in the central console of the car or maybe an extra coffee. But, where I come from, $1.5 billion—with a 'b'—is not small change. It's not funny money that can change hands with a mere formality such as this. It's a mind-boggling sum—more than a lotto win of your dreams. This kind of money can build region-shaping infrastructure, fund life-saving research and even get a contaminated community off their contaminated land—but I digress.

In the real world, which is where I reside with my constituents in the electorate of Paterson, you'll find many middle- and lower-income Australians, people in towns such as Kurri Kurri, Raymond Terrace, Maitland and Williamtown. There are hospitality workers, skilled tradespeople, entrepreneurs and innovators, Defence personnel, retail employees, nurses, teachers, farmers and police. There are elderly people and there are unemployed people, and there are jobseekers and there are those who have given up seeking. Yes, I'm talking about middle Australia—real Australia, if you like—as opposed to unreal Australia where the wages and the privilege are beyond the reach of most. Perhaps you've heard of us, real Australia.

I have no doubt that the hardworking people whom I represent will struggle to accept the fact that this parliament is approving revenue for this government to put into play a number of its economic and fiscal outlook measures—measures such as a $65 billion tax cut for multinational companies and banks and measures such as deliberately misleading the Australian people about the impacts of abolishing negative gearing. In essence, we stand here in this parliament today, rubber stamping the Turnbull government's priorities—conservative policies from a conservative government whose only priority is to look after the top end of town, while people in electorates such as mine foot the bill.

Middle Australia, real Australia—you've heard of us, no doubt, Mr Deputy Speaker Irons—is the place where some workers are up to $70 a week worse off because their penalty rates have been cut. It's a place where the casualisation of the workforce is rife. It's the place where taxes on workers are rising. It's the place where unfair dismissal laws in many workplaces are non-existent or unworkable. It's the place where there's high unemployment and chronic underemployment. It's the place where wages have grown just two per cent in the past year, while energy prices have skyrocketed by 22 per cent. It's the place where universities and their students have lost funding and, for many, a tertiary education is becoming a financial impossibility. My colleagues and I have risen to speak about these matters on numerous occasions. We railed against this Prime Minister's decision to slice the pay packets of some of our most low-paid and vulnerable workers by abolishing penalty rates. We've decried the Turnbull government's lack of a national energy policy and the effect this has had on the hip pockets of our constituents.

I want to digress for just a moment and retell a story. Over the break I had to go and have a blood test and the pathology nurse, as she took my blood, said 'Gee, it's going to be a hot one tomorrow, Meryl. They're saying it could get to 47.' She said, 'The problem is I'm on my own and I honestly don't know if I can afford to put on the air-conditioner.' This is not someone who's wasted money or is at the lower end of the income scale; this is someone who has a good job and is hardworking, on her feet for all those hours a day extracting blood from those of us who need to have a blood test, and she says: 'I just don't know if I can afford to put the air-conditioner on'—on a day when it's going to be 47 degrees! Where are we? We are in Australia in 2018, and I truly cannot fathom that a hardworking person has to even have that thought process.

In this very room, I've also shared the heartbreaking accounts of elderly people going to bed with the sun in winter to avoid turning on the heat, and putting themselves at risk of deadly heat stroke, again to avoid turning on the air-conditioner. I ask you, Mr Deputy Speaker: why does this Prime Minister doggedly pursue the abolition of the energy supplement which put up to $366 a year back into pensioners' pockets? Extreme cold and heat kill. In the year 2018, exposure is entirely avoidable—and this policy is cruel to the point of neglect. How many families could enjoy air-conditioning without the stress of bill shock for $1.5 billion?

How many young and predominantly female hospitality and retail workers could receive penalty rates for $1.5 billion? How much support could be provided for tertiary students? I am aware that part of this appropriation bill is destined for the Department of Education and Training—and that is fantastic—but how much of it will actually reach the educators and the students? They're the people who really need this sort of money. It will be very little, I think. While $69 million will go to the Australian National University for a super computer, where's the justice? Where's the parity? Why must money be ripped from the pockets and pay packets of the hardworking people of the regions to fund big business tax cuts and elite wage earners? Those who are least able to afford it are being whacked with the burden of this Turnbull government's budget failures. It's the hallmark of Liberal national governments and it's one of the great many reasons I'm proud to stand on this side of the House to represent the workers of this nation and, most of all, to represent the people of Paterson.

While convention dictates that we must support the $1.5 billion appropriation from the Consolidated Revenue Fund, I must again underline that the worthy people in my community could make great use of those kinds of funds. The lower Hunter has a deep and indelible tie to agriculture. In fact, this Friday night, the Hunter River Agricultural & Horticultural Society will open its 156th show. While we celebrate this bond with the land, we are this year in mourning as well. Much of my electorate of Paterson and indeed the Hunter Valley is in the grip of a diabolical yet hyperlocalised drought. Over the Christmas season we had day after day of 40-degree-plus temperatures. In fact, a number of days were over 45! It is just indescribable how hot that is. You don't even want to go outside because it feels as though every breath you take in is just a blast of hot air. It's almost like a hair dryer.

On the land, many dams are dry. The mighty Hunter, Paterson and Williams rivers are dwindling and full of salt. The earth itself is powder. Any moisture has long been stripped away by the baking heat and arid conditions. According to the Bureau of Meteorology, Maitland has recorded its driest January since 1932. I was born in the electorate, and it's as dry as I've ever seen it. This doesn't just impact the horticultural offerings at the Maitland show and people's front lawns; this is about people's livelihoods. It's the difference between keeping valuable breeding stock or flogging it at market rather than forking out tens of thousands of dollars for feed. It's the difference between a profitable harvest and watching the topsoil blow away. I'd like you to consider how much difference $1.5 billion could make to the farming families who are now at the mercy of these unprecedented weather patterns and global warming. Generations of history are at stake. Mental health is also a concern.

The Maitland Mercuryis a fantastic local publication that serves my community. It's banded together with its sister Fairfax publications, the Newcastle Herald, The Singleton Argus and the Hunter Valley News, to reveal the terrible hardships being experienced by drought affected farmers in our area. I commend the Newcastle and Hunter Fairfax group for this series and, in particular, the journalist Belinda-Jane Davis—good on you, Belinda! She's been a staunch advocate for our community and for those who live on the land. Not surprisingly, Fairfax reveals that farmers are saying the Turnbull government's version of 'help' in these dire circumstances is falling short of the mark. These people don't want financial advice or debt restructuring services. If they wanted a low-interest loan like that being offered, they would think about going to a bank. But the last thing many of them want is to go into debt to stay afloat, and a household allowance feels too much like a handout for many of these proud people who are already reeling psychologically.

The pressures in my farming community are so great that Hunter New England Health experts are expressing deep concern for landholders. As Rural Adversity Mental Health Program coordinator Sarah Green told Fairfax media:

If you’ve got a shop in town you can escape it for a period of time. For farmers, they can't. They're sitting there looking at brown dirt day in and day out praying for rain. So many farmers I speak to have a big debrief about what's going on but then they say "but mate, I'll be right when it rains". I have to sit there and say: "It’s about being alright when it's not raining".

I tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, it's not raining. The paddocks aren't just dry—they're scorched. They literally crunch under your feet. There is no subsoil moisture at all. The timing of this diabolical dry is even more devastating for the community of Maitland, where there has been a movement, spear-headed by our city's 2018 Citizen of the Year Amorelle Dempster, to reconnect the city to its agricultural roots. In 2016, Amorelle and the slow food movement volunteers of the Hunter Valley came to the rescue of farmers whose acres of pumpkins were destined to be ploughed into the ground. They took those pumpkins to a pop-up stall in Maitland's main street, High Street. Council supported the initiative, the media took up the campaign, and the community came and bought hundreds of tonnes of pumpkins, which I was happy to stand beside Amorelle and sell. Farmers put money in their pockets instead of ploughing pumpkins, and essentially dollars, back into the earth.

This rescue mission was the genesis of the Hunter's own produce markets. Today, there are regular markets in Maitland's CBD, in the levee, which provide farmers with a food hub that does not rely on the traditional distribution network. Food miles have been stripped back to a bare minimum and primary producers have diversified their crops to allow them to sell directly to consumers at a fair price. The movement has even seen new farmers join the ranks and younger members of the farming families make a choice to return to the land. Our diabolical dry now puts this world-leading venture at risk. Not only are the markets facing the very real risk of not having enough fresh produce to proceed; the farmers themselves are at risk of being chased off their land. I ask you, what could be done with $1.5 billion? How many farmers, families and communities could be supported through this terrible time?

But let's really lift the lid off this. Let's come back to the Turnbull government's tax handouts for the top end of town, which will put $65 billion into the coffers of multinational companies and banks. I ask you: was it in the interest of real Australians? Is it really tax breaks for the top end of town? Is it really fair to have tax breaks for the top end of town while our most vulnerable are forced to carry the can? Is it really fair to rip away funding and support from students and universities? Is it really right to axe penalty rates, ditch the pensioners' energy supplement and increase the pension age to 70? I think not.

The Turnbull government is manifestly out of touch with real Australia. Let me tell you: real Australia is hurting and they won't forgive this government. They will remember the hurt and that feeling when the electricity bill comes in, thinking, 'How am I going to pay it? How is this going to pass? How can I provide all the things I want to provide for my family?' And more to the point: What's wrong with me? Why haven't I been able to earn the big dollars like these people that are being handed tax breaks can? Where have I gone wrong in life? Why doesn't my government do more for me? Why does it have to be so hard to try and bring up a family?' These are the real questions. 'Why can't I afford to do the things that I want to do?' These are actually the real questions that people in real Australia are asking every day. They are the questions they so desperately want answered by the likes of us here in this place. The policies that they need crafted by the clever people who we do need to celebrate—where are these good policies? They're certainly not coming out of this government. I really do hope that this side of the House is given the opportunity to put in place some of the policies that we have that I think will answer the questions of real Australia.

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

I'm pleased to rise to speak on the appropriation bills. For those playing at home, this gives all members of the House an opportunity to look at the government's priorities as expressed through its budget processes. It allows us to stand here and represent the electorates that put us in this place and look through that local lens on this government's priorities. I'm pleased to follow the member for Paterson who, like me, was born and raised in her electorate and speaks proudly and loudly for the people that she represents.

One of the priorities that I'd like to talk about today that this government has got completely wrong is housing affordability. What we've seen from this government is an absolute drought in terms of ideas about how to tackle housing affordability. In question time they'll ask whether there are other ways, or is there an alternative for this? In housing affordability there's a clear alternative. There is the absolute lack of action from this government compared to the work that's been done in policy in this space by those on this side of the chamber. In my community, we've just ticked over 250,000 residents in the City of Wyndham. That makes us larger in population terms than the City of Greater Geelong. That has been the back end of 20 years of sustained and dramatic growth. As you can imagine, the housing industry is fairly important in my neck of the woods. It employs a lot of people locally.

I am really proud to say that the Labor Party's policy around housing affordability, the changes that the Labor Party would make in relation to the taxation provisions, will not impact on new housing stock. This is a critical fact that people need to understand, particularly if they've been listening to those opposite suggesting that Labor's policies will make housing prices go up on one day and the next day arguing they'll make housing prices drop dramatically. Labor is proposing fair changes that will mean that, when young people in my electorate go to buy a first home, they will not be bidding against somebody investing in their sixth property. But it won't put a brake on new housing stock because that will still attract those tax concessions.

Labor's approach is logical. It is also indicative of how serious this government is in tackling housing affordability. This side of the House is about fairness. We understand electorates like Lalor because we represent them. We understand when people sit with us and tell us that they're worried that their children won't be able to afford to buy a home. In modern Australia it seems to be the most desirable thing; it seems to be more desirable than it's been since 1920 that people be able to buy their own home. It's about security. Working-class people seek security. Low- and middle-income families want the security of owning their own home, and Labor's about ensuring that that is possible in modern Australia.

The other area that shows us a really strong contrast between the government and the opposition is energy prices. In my electorate, as in most electorates, we are feeling the heat when it comes to energy prices. No-one is safe when it comes to skyrocketing electricity and gas bills. Local residents, small and large businesses alike are all struggling because of unsustainable increases in the cost of electricity and gas. I've spoken many times in the House about the direct effects felt by businesses and residents in my community, and I'll take this opportunity to do so again. Manufacturing businesses like Miltech Martin Bright and Victoria Wool Processors, among others, have spoken to me and to the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, about these issues. I spoke last week about Andrew's Choice smokehouse, who are looking at a 130 per cent increase that they've signed to in their new contract. It is verging on the point where energy is costing business more than labour, more than the people who work in these companies. This government needs to address this issue. They need to be taking action, not having cups of tea, not having hard chats with the industry, but taking action, using the federal levers to ensure that we have certainty in this space. We know that some of that's going to be about renewable energy. We know some of that is going to be about certainty for investors in renewable energy. We know that some of that's about pulling the federal triggers around national interest when it comes to gas pricing. But it is all important, and this bill obviously demonstrates that the government has failed to do all these things once again.

There's another area that I raised in August last year. I moved a private member's motion around the failings in the retirement village sector. The motion received bipartisan support. Members in this place, from both sides of the chamber, were calling for a national approach to address concerns about 100-page contracts that were very difficult to understand, about a lack of consumer protections, about complaint resolution procedures. We know that COAG met on these issues, yet we've still had no action in this space.

The only thing I can report to the House in terms of what has happened here is that the Retirement Living Council has released a draft code of conduct, perhaps in response to some of the controversy around retirement villages that was raised in August last year. If you remember, the ABC was very interested in this. A light was shone on some very shoddy practices, particularly highlighting those in Victoria. In the electorate of Lalor we have 10 retirement villages, and that number is growing. An area that is seen to be affordable is obviously a place where retirement villages are going to be established.

So, since that controversy we've had a draft code of conduct. Now, I have heard from the Consumer Action Law Centre in the last week, and I'd like to thank them for the work they've done in following up on these issues and keeping a light shining in this space. They've done a bit of a review of this code of conduct, and I want to put this into the public record. They're not impressed, as it's plain to see:

Overall, the Code has a disproportionate focus on promoting industry interests and fails to address the harm caused by bad practices in the retirement industry. Much of the Code reads as a public relations exercise without genuine regard given to how resident outcomes might be improved or measured. Importantly, it fails to address key resident concerns, which include:

…   …   …

• lack of mandatory training and qualification standards;

• inadequate skills and poor attitude of management;

• problems with maintenance including delays, poor quality work and lack of clarity about responsibilities; and

• lack of resident consultation and limited opportunities to participate in village/park decision making.

This code of conduct is driven by the industry in response, I believe, to the controversy. But it's important to note here that we've seen no action from the government, and, going on the Consumer Action Law Centre's appraisal of that code of conduct, we're not in for any good news soon. I raise this because it's an important issue in my electorate. I call on the government to address these issues as soon as they practically can, because although the controversy may be off our television screens it is certainly not off the agenda—and certainly not off the agenda in the communities that I represent.

Another area that's been attracting a little bit of attention of late is payday lending. Vulnerable Australian families are being taken advantage of by payday lenders; 650,000 financially stressed households are now paying payday loans. I don't have an electorate-by-electorate breakdown, but I can only imagine that many of these will live in my electorate. These people are paying interest rates of up to 800 per cent. For example, for a clothes dryer, which retails at $345, families are paying back over $3,000. That is equal to an interest rate of 884 per cent. This needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. I note the work of my colleagues on this side of the House in the last few weeks in raising this issue. I note, too, that the government had made recommendations about this. They had made some decisions. They had had a look at this. Yet here we are, two years later, and they have failed to act. Two years ago the review of the small amount credit contract laws was released. The government is yet to introduce legislation that would clean up this industry, taking advantage of vulnerable families. And I say that because many of those families will be in my electorate.

This is an area where this government needs to act with a sense of urgency. It is an area where businesses are taking advantage of vulnerable people, offering them a quick fix with a big price tag in the longer run. The government must introduce legislation, and if they will not then on this side of the House we will take action.

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

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.