Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Cyber Security and Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Canberra was kicked in the guts by the Turnbull government in last year's budget. We received a paltry and insulting 0.004 per cent of the infrastructure spend—a mere $3 million from $75 billion. And, to add insult to injury, we were presented with nothing but cuts. It was a budget for our nation's capital with nothing but cuts: cuts to the Public Service, in the thousands; cuts to our national institutions; cuts to our schools, in the millions; cuts to our hospitals; and cuts to our universities. There were cuts of more than 2,150 jobs from the Public Service, 14 per cent of staff from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and 20 per cent of staff from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

These cuts are not just numbers. They are cuts to the people of my community—people with mortgages, people with rent, people with car loans, people with medical expenses, people with families and people with bills to pay. These are people who are used to bracing themselves whenever a coalition government releases a budget. We saw it in the nineties under the Howard government. Once again, we're bracing ourselves for tonight's budget, and once again I'm begging the Turnbull government—please, no more cuts to Canberra! End the sustained attack on— (Time expired)

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With the federal budget being delivered tonight, I would like to place on record the importance of maintaining financial assistance grants to local government authorities across Australia, in particular in my electorate where the funding is used to deliver community facilities, upgrade local roads, minimise traffic congestion and improve road safety. During the 2017-18 year, the City of Joondalup received financial assistance grants from the federal government totalling $5.4 million, which included $3.2 million in general purpose funding and $2.1 million for local roads. Similarly, the City of Wanneroo received $3.8 million in general purpose funding and $2.9 million for local roads, totalling $6.6 million in the 2017-18 year. It is important that a strong level of federal funding to support local government is maintained in the current budget to deliver services and amenities for local ratepayers.

I wish to thank the Prime Minister for visiting Perth last week and announcing a $3.2 billion infrastructure package for Western Australia to partially alleviate the inequity in GST distribution for our state. This positive outcome has been achieved through the advocacy of Western Australian members and senators.