Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2018-2019 and the related appropriation bills. It's always a pleasure to stand in this chamber and talk about another great budget that this government has delivered for the benefit of the Australian people. I'm very proud to see that our focus as a government with this budget is on assisting the Australian economy to build a stronger economy, because it's through a stronger economy, Deputy Speaker Gee, that we see the ability for people to get a job, to hold a job and to build wealth and prosperity for their families. But not only that; through doing that, we also receive as a government, through the hard work of Australians, individuals and business owners, the income tax revenue necessary to provide the services that we know that all Australians need and require. That is what is so important about this budget. It is built off the back of five years of hard work by coalition governments, which has seen over that time more than a million jobs created in our economy. Those jobs are only created in the economy because of confidence—confidence in the business sector to employ people and confidence in the community, to go out and take a risk where somebody might decide they no longer want to be an employee but that they want to go and start their own business and become self-employed—but it is only possible through a strong economy, and that is what's so important about what this government has been focusing on through successive budgets.

In 2017, we saw some 415,000 new jobs created across our economy. Importantly, in a period where we have seen growth in the number of part-time and casual jobs, three-quarters of those jobs created in 2017 were full-time jobs. That's 16 consecutive months of net job creation to January 2018—the longest positive run since records began. With this record jobs growth, the proportion of working-age Australians now dependent on welfare has fallen to the lowest level in over 25 years—as many have said in this place numerous times, the best form of welfare is a job. The reason for that is that it gives people self-confidence, worth and value. That flows through to their families and it also allows them to begin the process of accumulating wealth and prosperity for their families—though we hopefully see out that, when they're not on welfare, they have the opportunity for their children to see the importance, value and dignity of work. That teaches a future generation of those core, fundamental, underlying concepts that underpin our great society.

How is this strong economy achieved? It is achieved through a government that is focused on bringing the budget back into balance yet, at the same time, returning to hard-working Australians, both individuals and business-owners, taxes that we have received from them. It's because of this focus on the budget bottom line that we see the budget, which was handed down a couple of weeks ago, with the strongest budget bottom line since 2007. The budget will be brought back to balance in 2019-20 and net debt will fall by some $30 billion over the next four years. But, interestingly, the last time that a Labor government delivered a surplus was back in 1989.

The strong economy that we have seen created over the past five or six years ensures that we can guarantee services like the NDIS and Medicare and it has allowed the government to invest in nation-building infrastructure projects across this country—none more important from my perspective, to be somewhat parochial, than the M1 motorway in Logan and also on the Gold Coast. These investments create more job opportunities for all Australians and ensure that commuters in the communities of Logan, even southern Brisbane and also the northern Gold Coast, have the opportunity to get home safer and sooner. Not only that: it also creates the opportunity for the small to medium business owners in our community, whether they are tradesmen or have other service businesses, to be more productive in the day-to-day conduct of their business because they're not sitting in traffic jams on the M1.

Our strong economy is no stroke of luck. It is the result of years of hard work by the coalition government, backed by our commitment to lowering business taxes, regulations, fees and charges. I'd like to share that, in that period, since we got into government in 2013, the government's regulatory reform agenda has cut compliance costs for individual businesses and community organisations by almost $6 billion. The reduction in the regulatory burden on business is key to ensuring that business can focus on what it does best, and that is getting on with the business of business. Part of that getting on with the business of business is taking advantage of our international trade agreements. It's about employing people to provide the services that the customers of that business require. Part of this process has been through lowering our tax rates and making the system fairer and simpler, and in this budget we've seen that the tax relief plan is about encouraging and rewarding working Australians by making income tax lower, fairer and simpler. While those opposite have called it a cash handout, most people, including many in my electorate of Forde, have looked beyond that political spin to see it for what it is. It's a measure to ensure working Australians keep more of their hard earned income, because, at the end of the day, the revenue that we, as governments, receive comes from working Australians.

No-one should be punished for taking on extra shifts, earning overtime or being promoted which would result in them being pushed into a higher tax bracket, and that's where the measures outlined in the budget are so important. They will put an end to bracket creep for so many working Australians and they will allow them to keep the money in their pocket to pay the bills, save for their future or spend locally. In my electorate of Forde, the region of South-East Queensland has a wide range of diverse small businesses, service industries and hardworking families. Nearly 74,000 taxpayers there will stand to benefit from the low- and middle-income tax relief in the upcoming 2018-19 financial year.

The government's tax plan, like everything we've done over the last five or six years, is affordable, thought-out, and considered. We'll provide tax relief now for lower- and middle-income earners and, over time, provide a simpler and fairer tax system for all taxpayers because we need a system that keeps taxes under control so we can remain internationally competitive. We don't want a system that puts a greater burden on hardworking Australians. Having a lower, fairer tax system creates the incentive for people to build and grow wealth. The more the tax burden hurts individuals and businesses, the more it hurts our economy and the opportunity to create jobs. The coalition's tax relief measures will be implemented over seven years in three steps. I was pleased to see that that bill passed the House last week.

Importantly, I'd like to also touch on our energy policies. As we talk to people in our electorates on a day-to-day basis, we know that the cost of electricity is of enormous concern to many, many Australians. This is where the National Energy Guarantee and other measures we've put in place are seeking to put downward pressure on electricity prices in an effort to reduce that cost-of-living burden on families. As we stand here and discuss these appropriation bills, we can contrast our position on energy policy and seeking to still meet our Paris commitments while ensuring that at the same time energy is an affordable necessity of life for Australian families and, importantly, for Australian business. If Australian business costs continue to grow at a rate that is unmanageable, particularly in the energy sector, there will be a flow-on cost and risk to continued jobs growth. But those opposite have a very clear, stated policy of substantially increasing electricity prices because of their renewable energy policies. We know that that will add some $300 a year to household electricity bills than our policies would.

Another area where we're supporting Australian families is our childcare reforms, looking to make child care more affordable. Equally, our school funding reforms will provide record funding for schools across the country.

Importantly, one of the government's main priorities in this budget is to ensure that we keep Australians safe. It is a measure that should never be overlooked, and that is why we're investing another $294 million to make our airports safer and our borders stronger. In contrast, those opposite provide a risk to weakening our border protection measures. If we look back to what they did last time they were in government, we had more than 50,000 people arrive on more than 800 boats, costing taxpayers billions and billions of dollars.

It is through the programs and processes of this government, as outlined in this budget, that we see the opportunity for Australians to continue to grow and prosper. We are delivering through this budget tax relief to encourage and reward hardworking Australians. We're backing business to invest and create more jobs through the extension of the instant asset write-off, which we already did through the previous budget, lowering business tax rates. Those opposite are going to put them back up as part of their $200 million-plus tax grab. That is a fundamental difference between us on this side of the House and those on the other side. We are looking to reduce taxes, reduce the regulatory burden and create the opportunity for Australians to be the best that they can be. The only solution that those opposite have is to increase taxes that increase the cost of living.

We saw that even last week in the passage of the tax bills. Those opposite voted against part of the process, which would have resulted in Australians paying an extra $70 billion income tax over the next 10 years. I say to the Australian people: look not at what those opposite so; look at what they actually do. It is the same for us as a government. The things that we have done successively over the past five years through a series of budgets are now reflected in the current budget that we can work towards lowering taxes, reducing regulation and giving Australians the opportunity to grow and prosper for the future. I commend this bill will to the House.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was just saying to my colleague the member for Macquarie that I might take that speech, pop it on my iPad and file it under fiction, and should ever I need a sleeping tablet I'll try that speech first. At the last election, Labor called out the government for its plan to prioritise Medicare. Facts were revealed. The intent was clear. The secret task force had started its work. This was an attempt not just to privatise the core functions but to introduce co-payments and shift more costs to the private consumer. Australians were shocked. Labor members were not, because we remember the history of Medicare. The Whitlam government started to introduce it and the Fraser Liberal government got rid of it. The Hawke Labor government tried to introduce it and the Liberals fought it every step of the way, at election after election. Prime Minister Abbott came in and started to try and dismantle the notion of a universal, fully available public healthcare system, but we campaigned hard and we scared them off. The privatisation of public services is in the Liberal Party's DNA. It's part of why it exists. Nothing has really changed, and this con of a budget accelerates the P-word—privatisation. I'll focus first on Centrelink and touch later on the growing mess that is the visa-and-citizenship processing function in the Department of Home Affairs, or whatever they call it this week.

It's no understatement to say that millions and millions of Australians are fed up to the back teeth with the ever-worsening mess and service from Centrelink. The very name causes people to groan now, to shudder: 'Please, no, mum! Don't make me sit on the phone to Centrelink! I may die waiting.' Hours and hours and hours of people's lives are wasted on the phone trying to get basic things done. Last year we heard—this is for last year; we'll wait for the new figures out of Senate estimates—there were 55 million unanswered phone calls at Centrelink. The Abbott-Turnbull-Joyce-McCormack Liberal government just cut a further 1,280 jobs in this budget. That's on top of 5,000 jobs that have been cut from the Department of Human Services and Centrelink since they were elected five long years ago. This budget, sadly, continues the privatisation agenda.

To give them credit they're at least being upfront with this one, unlike with Medicare, and are not trying to hide it anymore. At least they put it in the budget papers and have stopped telling lies. But the people don't know the actual costs, of course. Last year, the first sign of this emerged. In the budget papers, buried on a page way up the back, was a mention of a trial of 250 jobs being outsourced to a call centre. It was a trial. The cost was listed as NFP—not for publication—it was a secret. I said at that time in my speech in the budget debate: 'What a load of BS. Privatisation has started.' I was screamed at by those in the chamber: 'You lie! You're exaggerate! It's not the case.' It turned out I was a prophet. This year they're ramping it up. Another thousand jobs have just been privatised to Serco. Let's google Serco. I did this morning, just to refresh my memory. It's astounding to see what comes up. Serco is a British based company, well known for snatching up any chunk of any public sector around the world that it can get its hands on for a tidy profit. It's become a byword in many countries for privatisation: immigration detention centres, prisons, the NDIA call centre, defence assets, Centrelink. Whatever, it will do it. In my view, companies like this expand like an organism, a parasite that feeds off the taxpayer. I quote from a gardening website:

Parasitic plants have the ultimate plant lifestyle. They get their food or water from another plant instead of making food or obtaining water on their own. The host does the heavy lifting and the parasite benefits.

In this case, the taxpayer, via the public, is the host, companies like Serco the parasite, offering cut-price services on the cheap, at least at first. But, of course, as we've seen this record, this movie, play over and over again worldwide, the truth is that, like most parasites, the ultimate aim is to suck the life out of the host and kill its capacity, because, over time, once the loss of capability in the public sector is complete, it's a seller's market and prices go up. At the core, this is driven by a mistaken ideological belief that the private sector is inherently more efficient—always more efficient, always better. It is also driven by the desire to transfer operational and political risk to the private sector and away from ministers. This is based on a prayer that these benefits then somehow will outweigh the profit margins.

The last five years in Britain are very instructive, and I encourage members interested in these matters to have a look at what's happening there. The warning signs for Australia and the path that the Liberal government is on with the increased privatisation of core public services are clear. The notion of 'too big to fail', which we've heard about in the banking sector, is now part of the common lexicon in Great Britain regarding these big service delivery companies that have hollowed out government departments and trashed their capability to deliver public services. It's openly talked about in the media, by government audit officers and by members of parliament across the spectrum. The recent collapse of Carillion in the UK meant that the government had no choice but to step in earlier this year with government-backed loans to contractors and suppliers because they simply couldn't do without this private company that had gone bust through bad management.

It's not just costs, though; it's issues like accountability. We've seen deaths in detention centres, loss of ministerial control, plausible deniability—'It's not me, it's the contractor; I'm not responsible for anything'—lack of transparency, not being subject to FOI, no public reporting and no transparency on multibillion-dollar contracts and the profit margins that are being made on them. The tax affairs are mysterious—opaque—to say the least. I've been raising the issue of why we can't require these contractors to disclose their domicile for tax purposes so that, if you're going to get a big government contract, a fat, juicy government contract, you've at least got to be up-front about where you pay tax and the taxpayer will be able to see that you actually pay some tax. Apparently that's too hard. Integrity is a big issue. There are no public sector values, no obligations and no code of conduct like those that have always applied to public services. We see the scandals, and the employment practices, as we're seeing with Serco and the call centres, are simply about cutting people's wages.

People are fed up with these as outcomes and sceptical about more privatisation. Survey after survey show it. We've seen criminal investigations in Great Britain into Serco and G4S, and five years ago the British National Audit Office raised concerns about major contractors. They explicitly queried whether this growth was in the public interest. I know the public interest for many is an old-fashioned concept. It's one I believe in. It is society and community deciding to do things collectively in the interests of the many not the few. Of course, there is a role for genuine niche contractors and consultants where we need that expertise and capability, but this odious ideology which underlies the large-scale privatisation of core public services is increasingly discredited, and the place it leads to is not somewhere we should go.

In Australia, this is driven in part by the abject nonsense under this government of arbitrary staffing caps for all government departments. What they did was they came in, they got elected and they said, 'I know; we're going to return to the glory days of the Howard era. We're going to impose random staff numbers, completely divorced from any assessment of capability or what a government agency may need to do for society. We're going to just put a staffing cap on, despite growth in population, demands and so on.' It's a blunt instrument, as the secretary of the Prime Minister's own department has described it, and it's a completely irrational method of resource allocation. So you're told you can't employ a public servant to do a job but you can employ a more expensive private contractor.

The ABS has finally told the truth to the Public Accounts and Audit Committee in the last couple of months. They admitted, in evidence, that the cost of a labour-hire ICT contractor—IT workers do computers, which is why the ABS needs them—is 200 per cent more than just employing that person as a public servant. The only reason they can't employ that person as a public servant, the only reason they're wasting taxpayers' money is that the government won't budge on the staffing cap. They said that this is going to be an increasing problem over the next few years. They're going to need to do more and they're going to need to waste more money on labour-hire contractors to privatise services because of this stupid ideology.

I think it's about time we pushed back hard not just against further privatisation. It's time for a debate on insourcing—having a look where things have gone too far, saying that, after three or four decades of this stuff, perhaps there are areas where we've gone too far and it makes economic and fiscal sense to rebuild public sector capability in the interests of not only costs but service, quality, integrity and so on.

There are two obvious examples I would raise, which have been well debated and ventilated time and time again—IT services and also engineering, particularly in the case of the states and territories. I've mentioned the ABS example, which puts numbers around it, but in ICT we've seen decades of outsourcing, no internal capability left, a litany of stuff-ups by government departments, time and time again, every time they try and do a big IT project—because, as someone said in the private sector to me, the problem with government departments now is that they're not an informed purchaser; they have no-one left who understands this stuff and knows whether they're buying $200 million of crap or not. That's a direct quote, and it's fair. In my view, great societies have great services. To do that, you need highly skilled, highly capable public servants—who knew?—people who can actually scope, administer, evaluate and deliver services. The government should stop this ideological tack and effort to privatise critical public services. It makes no meaningful contribution to improving service delivery in our society.

This budget ramps up the Liberal government's avoidance of scrutiny and its complete lack of integrity. I'll give a couple of examples. Surprisingly, shockingly, over the next four years this budget bakes in $26 million of cuts to ASIC's core operational funding. This is not the special projects stuff; this is the everyday core funding that the regulator of the financial and banking sector needs to do its job. You might think that's a 1 April joke coming in the context of the scandals emerging from the banking royal commission—the royal commission which the Prime Minister, the former investment banker himself, had to be dragged kicking and screaming to actually have. There is shocking evidence emerging of mismanagement, cultural programs and a failure of the regulator to act. There is scrutiny now on handshake deals. You commit a crime, you get found out and you get popped in a room where the regulator says: 'You've been a bit naughty there; let's negotiate a penalty.' And you say: 'I don't want to pay that much.' And they say: 'All right, what about a bit less?' You say: 'I don't want to pay that much.' They say: 'What about a bit less?' You say: 'All right, we'll cut a deal on that.' The regulator has been shown to have a lack of resources, yet the government is cutting funding to the banking and financial services regulator. You'd think even the boneheads in the government who put the budget together would realise this is not the time to cut the funding to ASIC.

But while they are on a roll, from the end of this year the budget also ends funding for the Serious Financial Crime Taskforce—just as the banking royal commission winds up! It's going to be magic: 'We'll have an election by then; we can go back to normal programming.' This is a task force consisting of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, the Australian Federal Police, ASIC and others investigating the most serious crimes in the financial sector. They've admitted they have 22 ongoing matters. They won't be wrapped up by the end of the year. Who knows what will happen? The government should send a leadership signal and a cultural signal to this sector right now that this stuff will not be tolerated and there is going to be a strong cop on the beat rather than cutting funding to ASIC and winding up the task force that is actually trying to do something about it.

It comes amidst $205 million of cuts to the Australian Federal Police. Apparently the Prime Minister says that's not the case, yet you've got the Federal Police saying it is. I don't know who is lying now. We'll let the public work that out. There have been 4,000 staff cut from the ATO since this government was elected five long years ago, many of which, we have proven, have been replaced with short-term labour-hire contractors that actually cost more. This is not a cost-saving measure; it's an ideological attack because of those staff caps. And there has been no support for a national integrity commission.

Labor has committed to introduce a national integrity commission ensuring that the public sector, MPs and the Governor-General—everyone in the public sector—are subject to proper scrutiny. The Attorney-General finally fessed up last week in a letter he wrote back—an outbreak of honesty moment. He said, 'The government believes there is no persuasive evidence that we need this.' He used to say that he wasn't close minded. Now he says 'no persuasive evidence', so we presume he's now closed his mind. It's suggested by that letter that the government will therefore fall short of any anti-corruption body with broad-ranging powers. It's important to note that anti-corruption bodies are very different from fighting crime: they're proactive, they're investigative, they have compulsion and they provide a much stronger effect on the system of deterrence, as we've seen in the states and territories. Admittedly, there are flaws in some of the state and territory bodies, but I don't think anyone in the real world, in the general public, would say that they have not served an important purpose overall in flushing out corruption in the public sector and setting a better culture in deterrence. I think the case has been established on its merits and made quite thoughtfully by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Attorney-General. I also think it's a step—it's not sufficient but perhaps a necessary step—to starting to rebuild some of the public trust which has been lost in a damaging way between citizens, those elected to serve them and the public sector more broadly.

This is an issue for which I'd encourage the Liberal backbench to focus for once on something useful. I don't mean the member for Bennelong; I think his comments on cities, affordable housing and so on are laudable. But, instead of advocating for the watering down of legislation so the priority would be to let people say more racist stuff by weakening the Racial Discrimination Act or for burning coal—the Monash Forum shamefully appropriating the name of Sir General John Monash for purposes against the wishes of his family: burn coal, burn coal—perhaps this is something the Liberal backbench can focus on. Otherwise, Australians can rightfully ask, 'What have you got to hide?'

Ben Morton (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I've said in my maiden speech and in many contributions to this house since them, I'm in parliament to support those hardworking Australians that want to apply their effort and succeed. That's because I want to help build an Australia that empowers people, an Australia that rewards individual and community effort. I'm proud to be part of this government making sure that it manages taxpayers' money in a very disciplined way. This government has kept a tight rein on spending, which is forecast to grow by only 1.9 per cent, the lowest level of spending growth of any government in the last 50 years and half of the four per cent we inherited from Labor. The underlying catch balance is the best position we've seen since the Howard government's final budget. The deficit has halved in the past two years. The budget returns to balance in 2019-20, and since the 2016 election this government has legislated over $41 billion of budget repair measures.

With the financial leadership of the Prime Minister, Treasurer and Minister for Finance, the Australian economy continues to strengthen. Jobs are being created and investment is rising. Responsible economic management also has retained Australia's AAA credit rating. For the first time in a decade, the government is not borrowing to pay for essential services. The essentials Australians rely on, like Medicare, PBS medicines, the NDIS, school funding and hospital funding are all being funded sustainably. The government is funding priority nation-building infrastructure that busts congestion and makes our roads and communities safer. I'll have some more to say in relation to those important projects that affect my own electorate of Tangney.

But a balanced budget enables a government to provide responsible tax relief that backs businesses to invest and create jobs. The government has already legislated tax relief for Australian businesses with a turnover of under $50 million, taking their rates from 30 per cent to 27.5 per cent and eventually to 25 per cent. That's relief for around 3.3 million small and medium businesses, employing about 6.8 million Australians. We, the government, remain absolutely committed to extending tax relief to all businesses.

Small businesses in my electorate and around the nation have also benefited from the extension of the $20,000 instant asset write-off. Simpler BAS reporting is saving around 2.7 million small businesses an average of $590 a year. This government is backing businesses to invest and to create jobs.

But a balanced budget also enables the government to provide responsible tax relief to encourage hardworking Australians. There can be no doubt that this government believes in lower taxes: lower taxes for businesses and lower taxes for individuals who work hard do provide for themselves and their families. Taxpayers always know how to in spend their own money better than the big government. Australians need to feel confident that they can take on additional work, work extra hours and seek promotion knowing that their extra work will be rewarded in extra income and doesn't just go to the government in higher taxes.

The affordable plan of income tax relief passed by the House just a few days ago is proof that this government is backing those hardworking Australians. This is a plan that makes sure we give people immediate tax relief, that addresses bracket creep so people don't move into higher tax brackets and that makes our tax system fairer and simpler by removing altogether the 37 per cent marginal rate of tax. Importantly, this government's personal income tax plan will mean that 94 per cent of Australians will never pay more than 32.5 per cent as a marginal tax rate. Australians will know they can take on those extra hours, accept a promotion or start a business and do better for themselves, and be rewarded for that effort. This plan for income tax relief will fairly leave more of Australians' hard-earned income in their own pockets.

The alternative under Labor is always higher taxes. Labor describe lower taxes as a 'handout' or a 'giveaway' and quite shamelessly committed to $220 billion of higher taxes, not to mention Labor's $5 billion-a-year assault on the savings of self-funded retirees and older Australians. Labor are refusing to agree to all three stages and the full tax relief of $143.95 billion that is set out in this government's income tax plan. Labor's message to Australia is they want more of your hard-earned money to bank bracket creep and higher taxes because they can spend it better than you. Liberal governments will always look for ways to reduce the burden of tax on workers, families and businesses. Labor will always do the opposite.

Some of the best news around the budget is the creation of full-time jobs. One million jobs have been created since the coalition government was elected in 2013. One of the positive things about record jobs growth is the number of people who are getting off welfare and starting to earn a wage. Strengthening the economy along with the government's action to ensure welfare is well targeted have resulted in welfare dependency for working-age Australians falling to its lowest level in 25 years. In the three years to June 2017, the numbers of working-age Australians on income support fell by 140,000 people to 2.4 million. This represents a reduction of around $23 billion in future lifetime costs to the welfare system and the taxpayers that fund it.

However, welfare is still the largest component of government spending, with $176 billion estimated to be spent in the 2018-19 year. I'm the first to say that it's important that we have a strong safety net to support all Australians. The system must support our most vulnerable and those who are genuine in their need. But working-age welfare should not be taken for granted. As chair of the government's social services policy committee, I was pleased to work with Minister Porter and Minister Tudge, the former social services and human services ministers, and now Minister Tehan and Minister Keenan in these ministerial roles. They are dynamic ministers who are willing to trying new initiatives to get more Australians off welfare and into work, like the Cashless Debit Card. I remind members that this card doesn't change the amount of Centrelink a person receives but restricts their ability to purchase alcohol, drugs or use that money for gambling. This card makes lives better, and we are finding that in the trial communities. I personally visited Kununurra and Wyndham to see the results for myself and to talk with the individuals in those communities. The Goldfields in WA, Ceduna in South Australia and, hopefully, soon Bundaberg and Hervey Bay will benefit from this card.

Another initiative, the two-year trial of drug-testing for recipients of Newstart and youth allowance, is compassionate and will make sure that people who have drug problems and need support get the treatment they need to beat their drug addiction, because there will be additional support services funded with these trials. The new jobseeker payment will replace seven existing payments making our complex welfare system simpler. It will make clear what this payment is for, and assistance will always be there to help people into work. I always look for the best ways to support people on welfare, particularly where welfare dependency exists alongside harm relating to drug and alcohol abuse. This budget strengthens the government's commitment to jobseekers and people supported by the safety net as well as the taxpayers who make sure Australia is able to provide our generous welfare system.

While supporting taxpayers and jobseekers, the budget also delivers important local infrastructure and sport programs in my community. I was very pleased to see greater investment in sporting club infrastructure because participation in sport is vital for health and wellbeing and something that I'm very passionate about. Eighty-one per cent of Australian children are not meeting the recommended level of activity to stay healthy. One-quarter of children are overweight or obese. Encouraging young Australians to get more active is critical. This budget delivers $29.7 million for the sports infrastructure grants program. Local sporting clubs will share in grants of up to $500,000 for small- to medium-scale building projects or for improvements to existing and ageing facilities. This funding is the opportunity for clubs to kickstart their new builds or renovations and consider projects that they might not otherwise have been able to afford.

Our young athletes train so hard. Mums and dads volunteer a lot of their time managing teams, coaching, refereeing, doing rosters and running the canteen. But they need help with the big construction costs of courts, clubrooms, changerooms, new toilets and associated infrastructure. Smaller, Stronger Communities infrastructure grants are already having a huge impact in my community. With a team effort between federal grants, contributions from the clubs and local fundraising, we have upgraded clubrooms, renovated toilets and change rooms, purchased equipment for junior sporting clubs, and installed lighting, scoreboards, fences, new goals and even starting blocks for a pool. I'm glad to see the Stronger Communities program continue in this budget, because Stronger Communities and local sports infrastructure grants will kickstart many more builds and renovations in the electorate of Tangney and will help our clubs get more kids out there on the ovals and on the courts playing weekly team sport, as we hope they should.

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

And tennis.

Ben Morton (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And tennis—from the member for Bennelong.

The Willetton basketball stadium is very important to me. I'm sure many members are aware of the updates I've given to this House in relation to funding. There were plenty of nay-sayers along the journey, but there it is: $5.5 million of federal funding for the expansion of the Willetton basketball stadium, and that represents 50 per cent of the stadium expansion project. It was a special day when we made that announcement. There was a lot of excitement. This will mean four new indoor courts, new change rooms, meeting rooms, halls, offices and space for supporting health and allied health facilities. Those kids who are on the waiting list—150 or more of them—will now have an opportunity to play team sport that wasn't there because the infrastructure wasn't sufficient. I'm so pleased that we've been able to assist the Willetton basketball stadium. This is an association with over 300 teams and over 3,500 players, and it is supported by about 1,100 volunteers.

The federal funding is not the only funding. $2.2 million has been provided by the City of Canning and $1.5 million has been provided by the state government. Construction will get underway in the second half of this calendar year. The Local Sporting Champions grants are important, and I'm very pleased that there is an expansion of these grants in the budget. This is something that I've been campaigning for as a Western Australian member of parliament. There is a 56 per cent increase to this important program. That represents, on the existing funding models, 3,000 additional young athletes across Australia who will be able to receive federal government grants to support their attendance at their international or national competitions.

In Tangney, it's very popular. One of the recent rounds saw 53 applications for 22 grants. My job is to work with the minister to ensure that we can redirect some of that funding to make sure that it recognises the effort and energy that families go to to access these grants. When there is a sporting event in Sydney, for example, it costs somebody more to travel to that event if they're travelling from Perth or Cairns than if they were travelling from Canberra. This grants program should recognise those additional costs, and I'm sure many of the regional members of parliament in this House will support me in having that grant program readjusted to recognise those differences.

But what is really important for my electorate, the showcase, the show-stopper in the budget, is the funding there for row 8 and row 9. There is funding for infrastructure in this budget. There is actually $2.8 billion in new infrastructure funding for WA. As part of this budget, the government is working to reduce congestion to keep our roads safe and to help freight and people move from point A to point B. But what's important for my electorate is the $1.2 billion that is there in black and white, waiting on the state government to access those funds. Isn't it amazing? You have a situation where the federal government has allocated $1.2 billion worth of funding to a very important road project, yet the state government is refusing to access those funds. That would take 70,000-odd cars a day off Leach Highway in my electorate and over 7,000 trucks a day trying to access Fremantle port. This is also very important to the people of Fremantle, who are facing a by-election. They go into the by-election uncertain of whether or not federal Labor will keep that money there available for a future state government to construct the Roe 8 and Roe 9 projects.

This budget, in whole, continues this government's plan for a stronger economy. The government is funding priority nation-building infrastructure and guaranteeing essential services in a sustainable way. The funding's there to support our local community. I'm pleased to be part of a coalition government that's not only making important investments in our country but also managing taxpayers' money in a very disciplined way.

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

Colleagues, I rise today to speak about the 2018-19 budget, and in doing so will report on the findings of the Indi budget survey and the budget breakfasts, the impact of the budget on my community, and a call to action to do better in engaging and listening to regional community. I'd also like to welcome into the parliament colleagues and constituents from my electorate. Thank you very much for coming and giving us your time.

Over the past three weeks, 998 people answered my call to tell me what they thought of the budget—'What does it mean to you?'—through online surveys, postcards, listening posts, social media, Facebook, Twitter, emails, letters, supermarket conversations and focus groups. In Mansfield, Wangaratta, Wodonga and Benalla, 134 young people met with me, before they headed to school, university, TAFE and work, to give me their opinions. Thank you, Susila, Kirstin, Amanda, Laura, Jenny, Sal, Lana and Sheridan, for bringing together young people from your communities and your schools. And a special call-out to the schools: FCJ College Benalla, Benalla P-12 College, Mansfield Steiner School, Mansfield Secondary College, Galen Catholic College, Beechworth Secondary College, Mount Beauty Secondary College, Cathedral College Wangaratta, Wangaratta High School, Wodonga TAFE, Catholic College Wodonga, Wodonga Senior Secondary College, Wodonga Middle Years College, Victory Lutheran College and Tallangatta Secondary College.

Across my electorate, every local government was represented and responses were received from over 60 townships. Almost half of the respondents, 49.9 per cent, indicated they were female, 48.7 per cent were male, and 1.34 per cent chose not to identify. Most encouragingly, 19 per cent of the surveys were completed by those aged under 25. To these young people, I say thank you. Thank you for turning up, for having a voice and for making a very clear statement that young people are engaged in politics—they do care, they have a voice and they know that they're part of the solution.

So, to the findings of this mammoth exercise. There were five main concerns. In priority order, they were taxation, education and training, health and aged care, renewable energy and climate change, and social security services. On taxation: overwhelmingly, people were concerned that the tax measures were unfair and would lead to increased inequality. Tax reform, corporate tax or concerns with tax breaks for banks were listed by 23.6 per cent of people as their most important issue, and another 3.3 per cent listed increasing inequality stemming from tax changes as their biggest concern. Research shows that these concerns reflect the income and company turnover rates in Indi. 71.3 per cent of residents in my electorate earn below $52,000, and only six companies—two per cent—have a turnover of more than $50 million. What did my constituents tell me about taxes? One constituent wrote:

There should be no tax concessions for big business. This money can be better spent on education and hospitals/medicine and infrastructure. Low to middle income earners need relief not people earning over 100K. Small business needs the relief; it is hard enough to employ people as it is, so help is needed here - you cannot guarantee that big business such as the banks won't just pass it onto shareholders and they will be the only ones to benefit.

Another constituent, from Mount Beauty, said:

Flattening out our progressive tax rate so that minimum wage earners pay the same rate of tax as high-income earners up to $200,000 is patently unfair. This proposed change will lock in further inequality in the system for decades to come and this is at a time when income inequality is more pronounced than at any other time in living memory.

The second priority is education and training. A lack of funding in the budget for education and training closely followed taxation as a key concern. Young people in particular spoke of a lack of access for people wanting to pursue further training or tertiary education in regional Australia. And for those who want to travel for university or TAFE, there are financial barriers. Nearly one-quarter—23.7 per cent of respondents—listed education and training as the second-most-important issue. Eighty-one per cent of respondents ranked education and training as very important, and this was more than any other issue.

These survey results, as you would know from rural and regional Australia, Deputy Speaker Gee, are no surprise. Regional students remain under-represented in higher education institutions. Only 12.7 per cent are from inner regional areas and 12.5 per cent are from outer regional areas. The impact of this is that only six per cent of Indi residents have a tertiary degree, almost three times lower than the state average of 17.8 per cent, so we're starting way behind the eight ball. To quote from the survey:

Country students are at a distinct disadvantage compared to city students who can stay living at home. Not all courses are available in the country. Much higher living costs, stresses, need to work longer hours and therefore, less time to study. Some 'flow on' effects from this can be seen in less Medical specialists in the country areas.

I have another quote from Wodonga:

The quality of education I receive is important as it shapes my future and opportunities and as such, the government should ensure that every student should receive a world-class standard of education to maximise opportunities and help give students a future they are proud of.

One-fifth, or 20.24 per cent, of respondents listed health and aged care as their highest concern or second-most-important issue. Concerns centred on a lack of access and funding, specifically for aged and mental health care. A constituent from Wodonga says on mental health:

Such a common thing that occurs all the time, all around the world, to almost everyone and there needs to be awareness to the unavoidable issues in today's society that everyone faces at some point in his or her lives.

Sadly, the high rate of suicide in rural and regional Australia supports these words. As the Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health reported in April 2017:

In every state in Australia, the rate of suicide among those who live outside the greater capital cities is higher than that for residents that live within them, and the rate has risen much higher in rural areas over the period 2011-2015.

Caring for older people in our community with dignity and compassion is a significant issue for the 39 aged-care facilities in Indi. We know this, and again I quote:

Due to the cutbacks the government have implemented, many, particularly smaller facilities are operating at a loss or have very little financial buffer.

A constituent from Wodonga, who replied to the online survey, said:

We need to allow for equitable living for people with disabilities. This means affordable medication, access to services and well-funded mental health services. My clients need a paediatric appointment and assessment to access support funding and NDIS. But they can't afford a paediatrician appointment and are stuck.

While the pension and increase in the Newstart allowance and access to youth allowance for students moving to the city were core concerns, the overarching concern that the budget will lead to increased inequality and higher reliance on social security services is driven, in part, by personal circumstance. Low levels of personal and household income, as well as high rates of underemployment, all contribute to inequality.

In Indi, 92 per cent of residents earn below $91,000, and the average household income is $1,126. That's approximately 22 per cent lower than the national average. The rate of part-time workers is 33.6 per cent, which is higher than the national average of 32.4 per cent. So this speaks to a level of poverty. Dare I say, in my community, lack of money is certainly an inhibiter to advancement, but we are wealthy in so many other ways. The point I'm trying to make about these statistics is that my community actually understands how important taxation is—how important it is to actually understand that in rural and regional Australia, one size does not fit all. I'm not actually saying that poverty or low incomes lead to greater lack of community; it just expresses the inequality that my community recognises.

A constituent from Chiltern raised the decision not to increase the Newstart allowance as her single most important issue. She says:

It is impossible for those on it to live a satisfactory life—creates a class of people in perpetual poverty—makes one sad to be an Australian—that we treat people this way.

Another constituent, from Beechworth, said:

I am expected to live on approximately $700 a fortnight and actively job search. I work as a casual cleaner, but the government lets me have the first $100 then takes 50c in the $ off me! Some people can't even find menial work, I was lucky, so I have no idea how they manage to pay their rent. This is why homelessness is such an issue.

I understand these issues are not specific to only my community or only rural and regional Australia. But, for me, the impact of the government's health, taxation and education policies very often have a disproportional impact on regional Australia.

If I could reflect on the words of the Treasurer on budget night, he told us that the budget was about: 'A stronger economy. More jobs. Guaranteeing essential services. The Government living within its means.' He also told us Australians wanted to answer these three questions: '"What have you'—being the government—'achieved? What are you going to do now? What does it mean for me?"' Let me say that again: 'What does it mean for me?' It struck me that these questions are part of the problem. The answer to having a common wealth and strong, resilient communities in Australia doesn't only lie with government; it also lies with the community. Strong and resilient communities don't exist because of government programs only, but also because of community leadership, collaboration and a real and genuine commitment to make things better.

Every year that I've been in parliament, I've returned to my community post-budget for feedback, for advice and for solutions. This is how I investigate, how I measure and how I report back to parliament. But this process of engagement, community ownership and responsibility doesn't end with my actions. The next step I do is public the Indi budget report that will report back to my community, to the Prime Minister and to the leaders in this place on what I've heard. I also encourage communities to stand up and fight for their solutions. We call this type of engagement and responsibility the Indi way.

Clearly, it's not the only way. There are mechanisms and frameworks in place to help the government better understand the impact of decisions on rural and regional Australia and to work across portfolios to develop solutions that meet the needs of our communities. One such mechanism is the Regional Ministerial Taskforce. It was established by the government in 2017. We were told that a cross-portfolio task force was the best way to implement good regional policy. It was made up of cabinet ministers, and it would focus on closing the gap between the bush and the city in terms of health, education and infrastructure. But 14 months after it was established, we've yet to see a single report. I suspect its omission from Ministers McCormack and McVeigh's 2018 ministerial budget statement is a sign that we never will. How disappointing. There is nothing in this report, Regional Australia—A stronger economy delivering stronger regions, that tells us that the government has a plan or strategy for regional Australia. There is nothing in this that tells me that the government actually understands the statistics that I have brought to this parliament today.

Another technique that's available to the government is regional impact statements. They first appeared in 1988 as part of the cabinet process, and were designed to mitigate against negative impact to rural Australians. My concern is that this process of regional impact statement linked to cabinet papers is now falling short of the desired outcome. Consequently, I've called on the Australian National Audit Office to investigate.

In closing, Deputy Speaker, colleagues and members of my community, I say to those in my community: there is an absence of government solutions, an absence of recognition that one size does not fit all. But I say to my community: keep going, keep turning up, have your say, use your voice, form a group, create your own solutions and use your members of parliament to represent your concerns in parliament. And I say in closing to the government that the unit of measurement should not be: will someone be worse off? The unit of measurement should be: where is the benefit; where is the opportunity; and how can we support our communities to reach their potential?

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

Melbourne's population is growing by more than 2,400 people a week. Over the past year, more than 125,000 new people have called Melbourne home. That's more than saw the Western Bulldogs win the flag at the MCG in 2016. This made Melbourne the fastest-growing city in Australia, at 2.7 per cent, ahead of both Brisbane and Sydney, on two per cent each. And the fastest-growing area in the fastest-growing city in the country is the place that I represent, Melbourne's west. Three hundred and fifty-six thousand more people lived in Melbourne's west in 2016 than did in 1996. That's more than 17,000 new people each year, nearly 1,500 a month, every year, for 20 years. This growth is set to continue.

Our city is currently experiencing growing pains as a result, and it will only get worse without appropriate infrastructure investments in response. If you're an average driver in Melbourne's west, you have a 30 per cent chance of getting stuck in heavy traffic today. Infrastructure Australia estimates that traffic jams rob Melbourne of $3 billion each year. Without proper infrastructure investments, by 2031, Melbourne is set to be $9 billion a year poorer, every year.

To cope with this growth, we need to do things differently, to get smarter about the way that we do infrastructure investment. I've spoken a lot in this place about the need for better public transport infrastructure to cope with this demand in urban areas, but we also need to make investments in active transport infrastructure to reduce pressure on our roads and public transport networks during peak periods.

Good active transport infrastructure is about making it easier for anyone to choose to safely cycle or walk to work, school, TAFE, uni or whatever. It won't be the right option for every person for every trip, but more than one in two vehicle trips in Melbourne today are less than six kilometres in distance. With the right infrastructure, a trip like this would take just over 20 minutes on a bike. Many of these trips could be made on bikes, and every trip that is made on a bike frees up capacity on our roads and our public transport networks. That's why this is a serious, mainstream infrastructure issue that affects everyone in Melbourne and in Melbourne's west in particular.

It's not only about congestion either. Numerous studies show that cycling and increasing walkability decrease the risk of heart disease, cancer and general causes of death in our community, meaning that people live healthier and longer lives. Active transport also reduces pollution and increases an area's livability.

Despite these benefits, Melbourne's west has a relatively low active transport utilisation rate. This is because we don't have the same infrastructure as the rest of Melbourne. Our cyclists and our pedestrians are forced to compete with thousands of truck movements a day on our residential streets. In Brunswick, nearly one in five people cycle to work. In Footscray, it's just one in 20. Why do people cycle at nearly four times the rate in Brunswick, despite our suburbs being the same distance from the city? Why do people cycle at nearly three times the rate in Thornbury as in Newport, two suburbs of similar distance from the CBD? The answer is in infrastructure. People don't feel safe cycling without the right bike paths and barriers. Melbourne's west is still mourning the death of Arzu Baglar, who was tragically struck and killed by a truck whilst cycling to a friend's house in my electorate.

We need investment that increases bike safety and encourages more people to cycle. Just last month, Infrastructure Victoria's report showed that, in Sunshine alone in my electorate, there were around 20,000 daily trips that could happen through cycling or walking. We need federal government leadership to turn these potential active transport journeys into actual active transport journeys. However, this Abbott-Turnbull government doesn't believe in public transport and doesn't believe in active transport. We know this from its budget priorities. In this budget there is not a single dollar for active transport infrastructure—zip, nada, zero. A Shorten Labor government will make investment in cycling a mainstream infrastructure priority and find room in the budget for this infrastructure for Melbourne's west.

I thank everyone in my community who has contacted me about the latest scandalous cruelty against sheep on live export ships, revealed on 60 Minutes. The shocking footage broadcast on 60 Minutes is just the latest in a long line of similar incidents. Labor has been looking seriously at this problem for some time now. As the Leader of the Opposition said two weeks ago, the industry has had plenty of chances to clean up its act, and it's failed. The government has had plenty of chances to properly regulate, and it's failed—indeed, it's actively made things worse. This cruelty is the legacy of the member for New England's period as agriculture minister and the Prime Minister's failure to hold his Deputy Prime Minister accountable for his own portfolio. The Abbott-Turnbull government abolished Labor's Inspector General of Animal Welfare and Live Animal Exports. It abolished the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee. It defunded the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy. And it abolished the Office of Animal Welfare in the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources. The Abbott-Turnbull government slashed and burned regulatory oversight in this industry, which allowed the scandalous cruelties that we have seen to occur. That's why Labor announced that we will work with all those involved in the industry to plan for a future that doesn't rely on live sheep exports. The Turnbull government should be doing this right now.

Labor has been clear from the start that we don't think the inquiry that was initiated by the Minister for Agriculture into the live sheep trade during the northern summer would ever find that the trade would be sustainable in the long-term. The industry itself has conceded that it's not possible to guarantee that there will be no future events like those we saw on 60 Minutes. This is why Labor is committed to working with industry to plan for a future that doesn't rely on live sheep exports. The government should be doing the same. A transition plan would take a number of years but should take nothing like a decade. Labor will work with farmers, unions and business to develop a sustainable red-meat industry plan to assist sheep farmers during this transition. Labor's plan will lift farmer profits and add more value here in Australia to create more jobs in Australia—in fact, to create more jobs right along the supply chain. I thank everyone in my community who has contacted me on this issue for their advocacy and for the role that they have played in driving change for the better in our democracy.

One area of the government's budget that hasn't got much media coverage but deserves more is the budget's savage cuts to Australia's foreign aid budget. This budget cut another $140 million in aid from the Australian aid budget. The Abbott-Turnbull government has now slashed well over $11 billion from the Australian aid budget. The Lowy Institute calculates that since the member for Warringah became Prime Minister Australia's aid budget has been cut by a third. By some estimates, Australia is down to giving just 19 cents in every $100 of its national income in foreign aid. Australians think of ourselves as good global citizens with a good reputation overseas, but with these aid cuts we damage our credibility and our national reputation.

But it's the world's poor who are really hurt by these cuts. After the second round of aid cuts in 2015, Foreign Minister Bishop promised that there would be no more cuts to aid. We now know that she misled the poorest people in the world. In the budget papers, the Treasurer and the foreign minister heaped further fictions onto this deception. Page 103 of Budget Paper No. 2, under the title 'Maintaining the level of official development assistance', shows cuts of more than $140 million. Apparently, cutting Australian aid by $10 million, by $10 million, by $10 million and by $110 million in each of the next few years is maintaining the level of foreign aid. The real loser here, however, is not the government's credibility but, instead, some of the poorest people in the world. Foreign aid is one of the few areas where the decisions made in this place directly save people's lives. I've visited a women's refuge in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea and seen for myself the transformative impact of Australian aid. Seven in 10 women in Papua New Guinea suffer violence at the hands of men. Australian aid is making a difference to these people's lives. We support women's refuges, we support gender education and we support programs to change women's prospects in that society. These are the people who will suffer from these budget cuts. In his first speech to parliament, the Treasurer said that foreign aid was 'the Australian thing to do'. We don't get more un-Australian than these cuts. A Shorten Labor government will rebuild and grow the Australian aid program.

I want to talk in this debate a little bit about the shameful way that politics in Australia has been criminalised under the Abbott-Turnbull government and the way that institutions of our democracy are used to pursue criminal ends against participants in our political system. This trend started with the political stunt of the trade union royal commission. For 189 days, that royal commission wasted more than $40 million of taxpayers' money pursuing the government's political opponents, including the Leader of the Opposition. We know that it was a stunt because of the way that the long list of referrals from the commission have either collapsed or amounted to nothing. Apart from $46 million wasted, political opponents put in the dock and innocent families terrorised, what have we got from this exercise? There's been only one conviction resulting in a suspended sentence.

Recently, charges brought against Mr Setka and Mr Reardon from the CFMEU were sensationally dropped by the Director of Public Prosecutions. What made this even more spectacular was that they were dropped before the DPP had even finished calling evidence at a committal hearing. The result, after three years of legal battles, showed the anti-union royal commission was simply a figleaf for a political witch-hunt. The saga featured royal commissioners and Boral executives cosying up in court, and workplace bargaining being treated as a criminal matter. We saw a staged arrest of senior union officials in front of their distressed families and children. We've heard former Prime Minister Abbott and the former employment minister, Senator Abetz, were involved in the orchestration of these charges, conspiring with Boral accusers to smear political enemies. The co-opting of the Australian Federal Police by the Turnbull government's Registered Organisations Commission, stinks of hijacking the criminal justice system to attack political opponents. We all know the wrong person resigned in Minister Cash's office over the disgraceful leaks on the AFP's raid. The Abbott-Turnbull government cannot hide its attempts to criminalise politics behind a big whiteboard forever. Our democracy suffers when the institutions that the public relies on, institutions that are crucial for public faith in our democracy are weaponised and trashed in the name of short-term political tactics.

The contrast in this regard could not be sharper with the way that the Abbott-Turnbull government has dealt with the scandals in the Australian banking sector. For 600 days, Prime Minister Turnbull refused calls from across Australian society, including from the opposition, to establish a royal commission into activities in the Australian financial services sector, 600 days in which evidence heard by the royal commission showed that people were being fed dodgy financial advice, 600 days in which dead people were being charged fees for services that they never received, and 600 days in which one person, at least, lost a quarter of their super, and small businesses were crushed. At every point, Prime Minister Turnbull and the Treasurer ran a protection racket for the big banks on this issue. Today, they refuse to even say sorry to the thousands of Australians ripped off during the time that they rubbished the royal commission, calling it a 'populist whinge', a 'talk-fest', a 'thought bubble' and, when they were finally forced to admit the inevitable and establish a royal commission, 'regrettable'. Even today, the only recognition they can give to their delays in initiating the royal commission is to call it a 'political mistake'. They won't take accountability for the Australian consumers that suffered from this delay; all they would admit to is the political price that they themselves have paid.

After the evidence that we have heard before the banking royal commission, what is the government's response? It wants to reward the big banks of Australia for their behaviour with a $17 billion tax cut. This government is so out of touch; it's from another planet. Let's also compare the pair when it comes to the Abbott-Turnbull government's treatment of political opponents and the big end of town. After the trade union royal commission, union officials were arrested on criminal charges in front of their families—criminal charges, we have found, that were not sustainable in a court of law. Instead of being arrested, for those in a range of other sectors in the big end of town, accountability has not been delivered. We see this in the endemic wage theft in Australian workplaces. In workplaces across the country, temporary migrant workers are being exploited in the most reprehensible terms. We see frequent evidence of employers doctoring pay slips, of forging documents to disguise the theft of wages from everyday Australians. Yet, in these instances, we don't see police raids; we don't see executives arrested in front of their family. Indeed, when Fair Work took action against Caltex for the systemic wage theft occurring in their franchises, the time for the raids against Caltex was negotiated in advance with the Fair Work Commission.

This is a government that's hard on workers' advocates and soft on companies that steal the wages of Australians. Instead of fixating on its political opponents, the government has been asleep at the wheel on wage theft. The compensation bill for wage theft at the 7-Eleven franchising network has ticked over $110 million. Already wage theft claims have hit some of the biggest companies—Pizza Hut, Woolworths, Myer, Dominos, Coles, Caltex, Spotless and other cafe and farming businesses. This is a government that will trample the criminal justice system to get to its political enemies while turning a blind eye to people who are stealing from Australian workers.

Proceedings suspended from 13:30 to 16:01

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the appropriation bill and outline Labor's concerns in relation to the central plank of the government's plan to provide $80 billion by way of tax cuts to large corporations in the main. If you look at the breakdown of the $80 billion, well in excess of $75 billion will go to the very large corporations, many of which are multinational companies, and the big banks. Having calculated the proportion of money that would be provided by way of tax cuts, we know that that would ensure the big banks would receive $17 billion in tax cuts. It just so happens that that $17 billion shortfall, which we'd like to see go to schools, instead will be provided to those four banks.

For that reason, we absolutely reject the priorities and the values of the Prime Minister and this government in terms of their focus on favouring those corporations in lieu of providing decent health and decent education in this nation—cuts to hospitals, cuts to schools and largesse to mates of the Prime Minister. He's always felt most comfortable in the boardrooms of Australia, not the workplaces. Being a former merchant banker, the Prime Minister would be on intimate terms with many of the chief executives of these banks and businesses. Clearly he needs to deliver to them, as he would see it. He argues that this is in keeping with trickle down economic theory—that is, provide the biggest tax cuts to big business by cutting funding to social services and it will trickle down, like some form of osmosis, to middle- and working-class families.

This economic theory has been discredited by every eminent economist across the world. It was rejected when it was introduced by the Reagan administration. It led to massive government debt because they did not fund the tax cuts. It impoverished services in health and education. We've seen that country, a great nation, now clearly not looking after its middle class. The middle class has been hollowed out. Real wages have fallen in very significant terms in the United States of America. And the rot started with the introduction of trickle down economic theory—propounded then by someone who was held to know something about economics, Milton Friedman. Well, his theory now has been discredited.

Indeed, it is that theory that the current President of the United States and the now Prime Minister of Australia want to do, which is to provide unfunded corporate tax cuts to big business, to multinational companies. Imagine this: we already know, given the amount of money that will be provided to multinational companies, that it immediately leaves our shores. That much is clear. Why should it be the case that the banks in this country receives such largesse given their conduct over the last number of years?

The royal commission has just started its examination of that industry, and the revelations, quite frankly, are astonishing. The victims of decisions by banks number into the thousands, if not tens and hundreds of thousands of people. Whether it be just a complete disregard for services, whether it's undermining insurance and not treating customers of insurance properly or whether it's robbing them by increasing fees without notice, there's a litany of sins by the banks, and yet this government, led by this former merchant banker, the Prime Minister, has sought to remove or transfer what should be going to hospitals and schools, to banks. That is quite shameful, and that's why we cannot abide that view.

At the same time all of this is happening, we're having a debate around providing largesse to the banks. We have, on 1 July this year, the second tranche of penalty-rate cuts taking effect. We saw the cuts to 700,000 workers' wages on 1 July last year. Retail and hospitality workers—some of the hardest-working, lowest-paid workers in this nation, who suffered real losses as a result—will now see on1 July this year, in just over a month, a further cut to their wages. As a result, the acute pressure on them to deal with cost-of-living pressures will be getting greater and greater and yet, of course, the Prime Minister turns his back on those workers. He has no empathy for those workers, no empathy for any working people in this country.

You see, the Prime Minister really hasn't ever financially struggled. You'd think the leader of this nation would have regard for its people. You'd think the leader of this nation—whatever his background—would actually take a keen interest in the needs and aspirations of working people. But not this Prime Minister. This Prime Minister's values are written in the budget papers. This Prime Minister's values are: look after the big end of town and turn your back on hardworking Australians. This Prime Minister has no empathy or concern or regard for the hardworking Australians that are in workplaces throughout this land and that's why he supports cuts to penalty rates, supports $80 billion worth of cuts to big business and, at the same time, cuts to health and education at a time when wage growth is at its lowest in more than 20 years. We're supposed to cop this.

Labor will not stand for this approach. Labor do not support and will never support such a remarkable largesse to big business. We look after middle-class and working-class families in this country. The backbone of our economy is working people—yes, working in businesses—and businesses too. But it doesn't mean you turn your back on working people, which has occurred here, and it's written in the budget for all to see.

As I was saying, on 1 July this year, there will be cuts to those 700,000 workers' wages at a time of low wage growth. There are now more applications being put forward to the Fair Work Commission. So along with retail and hospitality workers, hairdressers and beauticians' awards are being put forward for consideration for further cuts. All of us have visited hairdressers and barbers. They're not highly paid. In fact, for the amount of training they have to do, they're quite low-paid workers. And yet they're going to get—if the application is successful—a cut in their wages because there'll be a reduced penalty. We say: where are the priorities of this government when it can provide so much to those who need so little and, at the same time, cut real wages from people that are struggling to pay the energy bill or health costs or pay for school uniforms or school fees just to make ends meet, to put food on the table, to look after their family, to pay the mortgage, to pay the rent, to put petrol in the car?

Those basic essentials are under pressure, and the government's answer is to make it harder, not make it easier. I say people can outgrow their background and a true leader is empathetic to the needs of others and doesn't have to have a lived experience, but it would appear clear to me now that the Prime Minister has no empathy. He does not understand the challenges of millions of Australian workers that are dealing with these day-to-day pressures. If he was comfortable in the boardrooms, he feels awkward in the depots, offices and other workplaces where 12 million Australians work. And for that reason he should be censured and so too should be the government for its priorities.

Labor's plan is, of course, to be fiscally responsible, not provide an unfunded tax cut to the big end of town and actually provide greater tax relief for the majority of workers. It's true to say that, when wage growth is this flat and the government has no answers, at least providing a decent tax cut is some form of relief. But we'll need to do more if we're elected, and we will do more in government about rebalancing arrangements in the workplace. There are too many people marginalised in workplaces, not willing to speak up, whether it be on getting a pay rise or, even more importantly, health and safety issues in often dangerous workplaces. It worries Labor when people are injured or die at work, particularly if they've understood the risk and haven't felt comfortable enough or supported enough to raise concerns with their employer or others.

And so we say to the government: this budget is a budget that is, at its core, unfair and looks after the top one per cent. The Prime Minister would understand that because he is the top one per cent. The Prime Minister is at the top 0.1 per cent! Clearly, when he thinks about trickle-down economics and it working, he may well be right, because there are some winners with trickle-down economics. It's the top 1 per cent. They'll benefit. We know that without question. They'll benefit because we're going to raid the Treasury, we're going to raid taxpayers' piggy bank and we're going to give it over to big banks and multinational companies and then not have a whit of understanding as to how we're going to properly fund a first-class education system, fix up the complete debacle that is the NBN, and look after the health needs of Australians, look after people in aged care—the real pressing needs that exist, that families are struggling with: looking after older parents, looking after kids in child care, trying to find places and all of the difficulties that each family confronts.

And yet everywhere you look, it doesn't matter where, there just doesn't seem to be a role for this government just to lend a helping hand. Nobody wants a hand out; they want a helping hand. They expect their government to provide that form of support. We call ourselves the country of the fair go. We like to think of ourselves as having an egalitarian spirit. Well, it has to be manifest in the policies of the nation. It has to be clear within the budget that we care about working-class and middle-class people, not just those people who are associates of the Prime Minister, who work with the Prime Minister or socialise with the Prime Minister. It's clear to me that, if anything, this budget is honest to that extent, because it reflects the values and priorities of a Prime Minister who is, effectively, an elitist and, indeed, socially unable to empathise with the concerns of the overwhelming number of Australians who are struggling.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think the member for Gorton is reflecting on the Prime Minister, and I think it's out of order, really.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't think it is out of order, Mr Deputy Speaker Howarth, but I respect your ruling. I will say this, though: the budget will not pass in its form. If the government wants to do anything about providing tax relief, they should stop insisting on this most fanciful of notions that they're going to have some tax relief for the top end of wage earners in seven years. If they want to actually deal with tax relief for the bulk of Australian workers today, they need to negotiate with Labor and the crossbench and, in fact, they should listen to Labor and increase the tax relief for the bulk of Australian workers, which is what we're suggesting—that's what should happen here—instead of pretending that they've got some sort of plan that's so far off into the distance it's just some mythical nonsense that the Treasurer and the Prime Minister are inventing to try to save their scalps.

The fact is that they should listen to us when it comes to tax relief. They should listen to Labor when it comes to properly funding health in this country, looking after kids in this country so they have a first-class education and, indeed, looking after working people. They could start by actually introducing the bill in the House that would stop the penalty rates decision dead in its tracks so we would not see further cuts in real wages to retail and hospitality workers.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2018-2019, I wish to make a few remarks about the budget, and, in particular, I want to talk about tax. At the heart of this budget is what I'd call the Turnbull trickle-down trifecta—that is, massive tax cuts for the wealthy, very large tax cuts for large corporates and, of course, wage suppression for everybody else. At a time when global growth is closing in on four per cent—at least according to the latest OECD figures—in Australia, GDP growth is struggling to reach 2½ per cent. We've got the best global conditions in more than a decade, and this government is out there celebrating its enduring mediocrity. Over the last five years of Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull, real wages have flatlined.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, member for Lilley. That's twice now you've said 'the Turnbull trickle-down trifecta' and—

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I said 'Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull'.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You've been here since '93.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I said 'Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull'; is that correct?

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You've got to refer to members by their correct title. Those are not their correct titles.

An honourable member interjecting—

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can waste a bit more time if you like. Over the last five years, our two prime ministers have seen real wages flatlining. The cost of living has risen steeply, driven chiefly by health insurance, housing and energy prices, and Australians are suffering from precarious and insecure forms of work. We've got record high labour underutilisation and record levels of wage theft in our workforce. All of these things should be within the government's power to change, but not this government.

The Prime Minister gives the least to those who need it the most and the most to those who need it the least. The budget holds low- and middle-income Australians hostage to tax cuts for the top end of town while delivering $80 billion to big business, including a $17 billion gift to big banks, whose rank malpractice has been on disgusting display at the royal commission. Having been involved in a few budgets myself, I can attest that preparing budget documents means that you need to keep both eyes open: one eye on the global conditions and one on the great majority of Australians that you represent. But, looking over this year's budget, it's plain to see that the Prime Minister has kept one eye on the top end of town—high-income individuals and big companies—and the other eye entirely closed, meanwhile winking at the wealthy, who are the Liberal Party's natural constituency.

The personal income tax cuts in this budget are set to drive a steamroller right through Australia's progressive tax system. If the Turnbull government gets its way and if it's re-elected twice more, the tax cuts proposed in this budget will see someone on $41,000 a year and someone on $200,000 a year paying exactly the same marginal tax rate. Mr Turnbull, the Prime Minister, and Mr Morrison, the Treasurer, have a plan to impose regressive income tax cuts. Of course, it follows the same script that we've seen with the company tax cuts farce: throw a few crumbs to the many whilst hosting a feast for the few. This government is pitching personal income tax cuts in three stages but is refusing to split the bill. It's true that Labor supports the first stage of the personal income tax cuts because it delivers tax relief for true low- and middle-income earners. Australians on low and modest incomes are struggling. Labor will always deliver whatever tax relief it can to working Australians. The only group that doesn't seem to think that low- and middle-income earners need a hand are the Australian Greens.

Relative to the rest of the Turnbull government tax heist, Labor's bigger, better and fairer tax cut would deliver faster and deeper relief to 10 million Australians because our plan doesn't hold low- and middle-income earners hostage to the top end of town. We take a much harsher view of the second and third stages of the Turnbull government's income tax cuts, which are undiluted, vintage Turnbull trickle-down economics, as I said before. The Australian National University has concluded that these measures are targeted at lower and middle-income individuals, but, by the middle of the next decade, the measures are weighted towards higher income individuals. The government are still refusing to provide year-on-year costs of their tax plan. We know that the first two stages cost $102 billion and the third stage costs $40 billion, but all of the talk and analysis about their 10-year package only serves to obscure the fact that it's the second and third stages where the big year-on-year costs come into play.

In the later stages, the income tax steamroller really clicks into gear. The 37 per cent tax bracket—currently a pillar of our progressive tax system—applying to those on $80,000 through to $180,000 is bulldozed while the 32.5 per cent threshold is lifted to $200,000, helping an earner on this salary pay the same marginal rate of tax on $200,000 while earning five times what a low-income earner would receive. According to analysis by the Australia Institute, the top 20 per cent of income earners will get 80 per cent of the benefit of this income tax demolition job and the top 10 per cent will get half of the benefit. Meanwhile, 60 per cent of taxpayers—Australians on low and modest incomes—will see no change to their situation whatsoever, apart from reading ever more blatant misreporting from the government and its Murdoch allies that people on up to $200,000 are somehow middle-income earners. This is deeply, deeply misleading.

The average full-time worker in Australia is on $84,600. An ever-increasing number of Australians aren't even getting this much, nor are they in full-time work. A report from the Centre for Future Work released today reveals that, for the first time in recorded history, fewer than half of Australian workers are in permanent, full-time paid jobs with leave entitlements. While the Turnbull government might want to pretend that the average Australian household consists of a couple earning $120,000 per year per person, the stark reality for most Australian households is that most are struggling to accumulate $120,000 between them. On top of this, we've got gross misrepresentation of wage growth. The budget forecasts wage growth of 3½ per cent a year returning immediately and continuing for 10 years. It's bizarre! It goes without saying that the government has no plan to increase workers' wages or to improve conditions to vindicate such an optimistic forecast. Future wage rises are just supposed to appear out of nowhere while the government is out there actively working to suppress wages and conditions for workers across the country. The government is saying that wages are going to grow by 14 per cent over the next four years. Given that record, I can only see it getting up to argue against itself in the Fair Work Commission.

So let's be clear: wage growth is plummeting to record depths under this government. A worker starting a job today in the Prime Minister's Australia will, if they're lucky, be on exactly the same real wage as a worker who started a job on the same day that Mr Abbott became Prime Minister. During Labor's period of government, in which we created close to one million jobs—despite the worst global recession in 80 years—wages grew faster than inflation by a considerable margin. Someone who got a job on the first day of our government would, by the time Labor left office, be enjoying a wage that outstripped inflation by 3½ per cent. For the last five years of the Abbott and Turnbull governments, real wages have been just 0.15 per cent higher than inflation. Wage growth has been 23 times slower under the Abbott-Turnbull governments than under Labor. That is a terrible record.

Of course, that's before you get to what the government are doing with their company tax cuts. What started out as a $50 billion gift to some of the largest multinationals in the world is now costed at an estimated $80 billion. Now, $80 billion is a very big big-business tax cut, one-third of which goes to just 15 companies, $17 billion of which goes to the big banks. That is what I mean when I talk about the trickle-down trifecta: tax cuts for high-income earners; tax cuts for some of the very biggest companies in the world; wage suppression for everybody else. That's the Turnbull trifecta in this budget, at the very core of this budget.

Today in the House, in the context of tax, we had some discussion about tax avoidance and tax evasion. And it is true that, courtesy of legislation put forward by Labor, we now know the extent to which many large companies are avoiding their tax responsibilities. Indeed, a third pay no tax in any one year. We also know that big, respectable companies such as BHP and Rio have been aggressively avoiding and evading their tax responsibilities in our country.

Last week in the House, I said that BHP has hit new lows of corporate behaviour. In the Queensland Supreme Court, it has sought to suppress further evidence of tax evasion on royalties payable to the Queensland government. Last week, it was revealed that BHP received an updated $320 million assessment from the Queensland government for royalties evaded. BHP's evasion of state royalty payments through its transfer-pricing activities has robbed the governments of both Queensland and Western Australia. This matter has now been settled in the Queensland Supreme Court, and there is a confidential legal agreement as to the nature of the settlement.

Fortunately, this confidential agreement can't cover up the essential facts. Firstly, the Queensland government has included a provision in its budget for a successful outcome in this case to the tune of several hundreds of millions of dollars. Secondly, the confidential agreement signed yesterday between BHP and the Queensland government leaves the Queensland budget no worse off. So we can conclude that BHP has now conceded that its transfer-pricing activity is illegal. Today's settlement has significant implications, as BHP has been for some time in dispute with the Australian tax office for more than $1 billion for the use of its Singapore marketing hub to facilitate transfer pricing.

So, along with Rio, BHP is one of Australia's biggest tax dodgers, and there are now significant questions that must be answered by the BHP board. Firstly, who is going to accept responsibility for this unethical behaviour? Secondly, what action does the board intend to take to reassure the public that this behaviour will not be repeated? Thirdly, when is BHP going to come clean and say how much it owes the Western Australian government? Fourthly, when will it settle with the Australian tax office for its outstanding billion-dollar tax bill? Directors of big Australian companies are the first to put up their hands for Australia Day honours, but, if the directors of BHP continue to hide their behaviour behind a veil of legal secrecy, the public will be entitled to conclude that our 'Big Australian' is the dishonest Australian and that they should be the last in line for public recognition.

Ensuring that tax evasion and aggressive tax minimisation are eliminated is absolutely essential to making sure that our budget and our economy are healthy, because, when people evade their tax, what they do is force up tax rates for other people—for small business, for working people—and money is ripped away from hospitals and schools. The opportunity cost of tax evasion is significant in the community. When some of Australia's most reputable and respected companies aggressively engage in the use of transfer pricing through, effectively, tax havens, they are dudding the country that has nourished them and nurtured them through their growth. This should not be tolerated any longer. It is time that corporate Australia put their hands up. When they have been responsible for such actions of profit-shifting and debt-dumping and successfully litigated and dealt with through the tax office and the courts, they should have the decency to say to the Australian people that this will not happen again. They should have the decency to put up their hand and say they got it wrong, and they should move on so that we can all work together to make our country bigger and better.

Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2018-2019, I take this opportunity to speak about something that I am very proud of: our side's plan for skills and training. Regretfully, I need to draw attention to the Turnbull government's shameful neglect of TAFE and the skills sector of our education system. In my electorate of Solomon, and in Darwin and Palmerston, the capital of Northern Australia, the cuts to Charles Darwin University are hurting this sector, I'm sad to say. But there is a light on the hill: the Labor Party and Labor leader Bill Shorten's announcement that a Labor government will scrap up-front fees for 100,000 TAFE students.

Of course, this is welcome news for my electorate of Solomon. We've got major projects in the Top End. However, some of those are winding down. As some of our skilled workers leave, we need to train our own people—our young Territorians—to meet a growing skills shortage. That will happen when Labor gets on those Treasury benches and starts developing northern Australia. We're going to need skilled workers. Labor's policy will open up access to TAFE and will make it easier for young Australians and young Territorians to gain valuable skills and education. Waiving up-front TAFE fees for 100,000 students will mean that many students will be able to attend TAFE without incurring any fees.

As part of a comprehensive plan to support TAFEs, vocational education and apprenticeships across our country, we will guarantee two-thirds of government vocational education and training funding goes to TAFE to ensure that quality learning and improved job opportunities are there for Australians. As I said, for my electorate that means that organisations and education facilities like Charles Darwin University will be invested in to train young Territorians. Labor will also invest $100 million in a building TAFE for the future fund to revitalise TAFE campuses and facilities in regional and outer metropolitan areas.

It gives me no satisfaction whatsoever to say that those opposite, the Liberal-National coalition, have cut $3 billion from skills, TAFE and apprenticeships funding since they came to office in 2013, with a further $270 million cut in the last budget. They've defunded and neglected TAFE and our apprenticeships system—a system that has for many, many years provided young Australians the training that they need to have the jobs that make our country run and that have built our country. Again, $3 billion has been cut from TAFE since 2013. In this year's budget, as I said, another $270 million was cut from apprenticeship funding over the next four years. Australia now has 140,000 fewer apprentices and trainees than it did when the Abbott and Turnbull governments were elected.

For TAFE and vocational education funding, the number of supported students is lower than it was a decade ago at the very time when we need more young Territorians, more young Australians, trained up for those jobs of the future. Between 2013 and 2016, the government funded hours of training delivered through TAFE collapsed by 30 per cent. In too many towns and regional centres across Australia, TAFE campuses have closed, courses have been scaled back and fees have increased.

My electorate of Solomon has seen a collapse in apprentice and trainee numbers since those opposite came to government. The number of apprentices and trainees in my electorate has declined by 30 per cent—that's three in ten fewer trainees and apprentices. It's now standing at just over 600 trainees and apprentices currently in training in my electorate. Right now, about 400 of those are at CDU and, as I mentioned, CDU has had its funding cut by a further $15 million and it's not helpful; in fact, it's shameful. It's betraying our young people, many of whom are leaving the Territory to seek opportunities elsewhere. In our electorate, the northern capital of Australia, we want them to stay. We need them to stay in Darwin and Palmerston to build our economy, to build the Territory's future and to build their own lives and families.

I met with some of these young men and women recently. I just want to mention a couple and the great work that's being done by people like Lee Darra at Charles Darwin University. As Lee rightfully says, 'We need to get more young kids off the couch, get the computer game controllers out of their hands, and get them on the tools, get them learning how the computers in modern-day motors work, not only so that they can find new jobs in the growing STEM sector, but also for the more advanced jobs in automotive engineering that there are these days.' And there are plenty of opportunities. I want to acknowledge a couple of those young lads that I met recently. They're doing their certificate III in automotive training with CDU. Lachie Durrington is doing his apprenticeship with Kmart Auto in Palmerston—well done, Kmart Auto, Palmerston. Joel Bernon is doing his apprenticeship with Bridge Toyota in Darwin—well done, Bridge Toyota. I go there because they're investing in these young men, giving them the training that they need and are partnered with Charles Darwin University. Those lads are nearly finished their cert III.

There's also a couple of trainees that are going through the VET in Schools program at Haileybury College. I also want to acknowledge the Nightcliff, Casuarina and Taminmin colleges that are offering the certificate I, or the 'taster' programs, to give them a taste what of it's like to start some certificate training in the hope they will go on and do their cert III and get out into the industry.

Today I co-hosted a lunch with Impex. Impex has had 500 or so trainees and apprentices go through that project site to date. This is one of the most advanced LNG facilities, a $40 billion project in Darwin. And what a great experience for those young Territorians to have those traineeships and apprenticeships out on site. I encourage Impex to continue to provide those opportunities for young Territorians to get a trade in order to get the jobs of the future in that massive industry.

I also want to give a big thumbs up and a shout-out to Engines Engineering, a great Territory company out at East Arm that are doing a fantastic job taking on young Territorians. So well done, Engines Engineering.

I also want to shout out to YouthWorX NT for their assistance and dedication to finding suitable pathways for young people in Darwin and Palmerston, particularly for young people who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Great work, YouthWorX NT. Likewise, when it comes to remote work, the not-for-profit Ironbark is doing fantastic outreach work with Charles Darwin University, particularly in civil construction. It is doing certificates in civil construction, which is really practical and is a fantastic qualification for people out in the remote areas of the Northern Territory to get, because they can maintain their own roads, their community roads. That is a fantastic assistance to those communities, because it allows them to get in and out, and that is going to allow more and more industries to start operating in those more remote areas of the Territory, which will lead to jobs for young Territorians. I also hear good things about McArthur River Mine and some of the things they're doing with their apprentices. I look forward to finding out a bit more and to talking to some apprentices at McArthur River Mine when I visit there soon.

The Territory and the Top End have a great future. There are great opportunities, but we need skilled workers. Neglecting training and defunding TAFE is short-sighted, and I very much hope that those opposite review those policies. They're not likely to get another budget, but if they were to, winding back those cuts to TAFE would be a good start. I don't want to belabour the point, but across the country there are 140,000 fewer apprentices and trainees, so there has been a significant decline, of 35 per cent.

I've touched on some of the things that Labor intends to do. We have a plan, and the reason we have a plan is that we value this sector. We think the VET sector—the TAFE institutions and institutions like CDU—is an important part of our education system. We'll work with the school systems to ensure that kids, as they go through school, don't think that the whole reason they're at school is just to get into university. We understand that STEM, jobs of the future and a whole number of trades need people who have university qualifications. We understand that. But we also respect and value the VET and TAFE trainers who are skilling up working Australians every day for similar jobs, jobs that we need, jobs that might be in aged care, in automotive or in civil construction—jobs that we're going to need into the future. When you value something you invest in it, and that's what we'll do. We'll guarantee that two out of three public vocational education dollars go to providers like CDU in my electorate and TAFEs around the country. We'll waive the up-front fees for 100,000 students to attend TAFE. We'll invest $100 million in modernising TAFE facilities around the country. We'll ensure that one in every 10 jobs on Commonwealth priority projects are filled by Australian apprentices. We'll provide 10,000 pre-apprenticeship programs for young people who want to learn a trade. We'll provide 20,000 adult apprentice programs for older workers who want to or need to retrain. We'll also establish a national commission of review into post-secondary education within the first 100 days of government. That's a plan. We value TAFE, trade training, those who provide the training and our young people and people in transition who need that training.

Labor's plan has a budget impact of $473 million over the forward estimates, and $708 million over the medium term. But we will prioritise those budget measures. We will, because we value it. We value this training. We value it more than giving $17 billion to the banks. I personally believe we've got enough bankers and there will always be enough people to find their way into that area of work. But it doesn't grow a country. It doesn't grow a nation. The young men and women of Australia who don't choose to or want to get a hands-on trade need to be supported. We'll do that in government by doing those things that I mentioned before. We'll have an inquiry into post-secondary education, and we'll make sure that young Territorians and young Australians that want to go and get a trade aren't left behind.

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

I rise to speak and make a contribution to the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2018-19. In doing so, I want to voice the concern my constituents have about the government's budget and budgets of the past. This budget, in the view of my community, fails the fairness test and it fails the fiscal responsibility test. It effectively fails middle Australia. It also fails the most vulnerable in my community.

I'll go to one issue that I spoke about in quite a bit of detail last year, and that is that the government is still pursuing measures that will force people to work until 70 years of age. In my electorate, I have people who are engaged in a number of blue-collar jobs—tradies and hospitality staff. I also have nurses and teachers. I have aged-care workers. If you know anything about care aged-care work, you know that the work that they do is very important and very difficult work. These are jobs that are physically and also emotionally very demanding.

I spoke against these measures last year, and I'll speak against them this year as well. The budget is also maintaining and pursuing measures to axe the energy supplement of $14 a fortnight for single pensioners. I have 16,128 pensioners in my electorate, and that's more than 15,000 elderly and vulnerable Australians that will be impacted adversely as a result of these measures, especially as we approach the coming winter. It's always an issue, in particular, during the winter. This budget still has a freeze on Medicare for specialist visits. In my electorate, those sorts of freezes adversely affect the health and wellbeing of my community.

My communities have already suffered at the hands of many previous budget measures. They are trying to balance the rising cost of living. Many of them, a large number of them, are employed in insecure work, and a large number of them are unable to afford housing. So they do wonder why the Prime Minister has chosen to prioritise big business and the banks by giving those institutions a $80 billion tax handout, when their own middle Australia—my constituents—need all the assistance that they can get. A Shorten Labor government won't do this. We won't, because we understand what the Australian community needs, and what it needs in order to help advance itself. Labor's approach to the budget offers a fairer and more responsible alternative, fairer to middle Australia and to our most vulnerable, and more responsible when it comes to budget repair.

We have a plan, a real plan, to see working Australia genuinely get ahead. Our plan will see those who earn up to $125,000 a year paying less tax than they would under the government's proposed tax cuts. That's going to make a huge difference to my constituents who will be among the four million Australians who will get a tax cut of $928 a year—money that they desperately need and money that reflects the Labor Party's priorities. We are prioritising the welfare of middle Australians.

The governments' narrative around the $70 billion tax cut goes along the lines that company tax cuts will by definition enable investment, create more jobs, produce more productivity and lead to wage increases. Well, the people in my electorate don't subscribe to trickle-down economics. They don't subscribe to it because we have a history of big companies abandoning our area—big companies such as Pacific Brands, Yakka and Dunlop. These big employers who took their business offshore in pursuit of greater profit, complaining the Australian labour market was too expensive for them, left thousands of people in my electorate in the lurch, without employment prospects. Also in this mix is the car industry. Ford, a big employer in my electorate, was ditched by this government. So you'll have to forgive my community if they don't believe subscribe to the so-called goodwill of companies to trickle prosperity down to them.

In my electorate, I have a huge number of refugees who have come here in recent years from Syria and Iraq. These people cannot find employment. It is not because they don't want to; it is because they happen to be in a very unusual place. Many of them are highly qualified but their skills are not recognised here. I have spoken about this many times before. They want to make a contribution but they have to suffer the indignity of having Job Network providers who are totally useless in responding to their needs. So their prospects for employment are not enhanced under this government's watch.

Manufacturing and innovation are key to not only Australia's future but also the future of the northern suburbs of Melbourne, where my electorate of Calwell is. Yesterday, Dulux officially opened a paint plant at the Merrifield Business Park in Mickleham, very strongly supported by the Victorian Labor government. In opening this plant in my electorate, Dulux has created 60 local jobs, which for us is a significant number of prospective jobs.

The government, in attempting to amend the research and development tax incentive in an effort to better target it, has turned the offsets into a disincentive. Research and development are fundamental to innovation, advancing manufacturing and creating jobs. Currently companies can claim 8.5 percentage points above the company tax rate for their R&D expenditure up to $100 million. The new amendments will introduce progressive rates for the incentive, affecting companies with an aggregated annual turnover of more than $20 million. These rates will be tied to the amount the company spends on R&D as a proportion of total expenditure. These changes will do the opposite of incentivising companies to invest in Australia. Most established Australian companies spend less than two per cent of their expenditure on R&D. This is because they committed to investing in local jobs, local resources and other local businesses. The rate of their incentive will go from 8.5 per cent to four per cent. Under these changes, Dulux, which has just opened up a plant in my electorate, could lose around $100,000 each year. So, to keep other aspects of their business here, companies will likely decrease their R&D, spend more and more, and either pay someone else to do it or move R&D offshore, therefore depleting Australia of its intellectual capital as well.

Our country was built by strong, established businesses providing stable and decent jobs. Our future depends on workers finding the same security in Australian businesses as our industries advance. Small to medium enterprises in my electorate are leading in innovation and manufacturing, particularly food manufacturing. They are desperately trying to create jobs for our local community and I'm wondering why they're not given enough assistance from this government. Of course, one of their biggest problems, as everyone in this chamber would know, is the high cost of energy. I have some users facing high energy costs in my electorate. They are actually suffering and struggling to stay afloat.

Recently I spoke about car manufacturing, but I also want to speak on behalf of my constituents who own local car repair businesses in my electorate. They are absolutely thrilled that Labor is supporting legislation that will force car manufacturers to share their data with small businesses and loosen the stranglehold they have on the car service and repair market. In February, I visited the family business of Damien and Debbie Theuma of Active Motor Repairs in Craigieburn. They and other business owners detailed the difficulties they were facing with the advent of car dealerships monopolising the repair and warranty market. The lack of data sharing, in particular, has affected their businesses and highlighted the importance of legislating a mandatory code for data sharing. Business owners like Damien and Debbie feel that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission inquiry's report into the car retailing industry, which was released in December 2017, should be adopted in its entirety. In short, the report concluded that vehicle manufacturers who sell into the Australian market limit access to service and repair information for independent repairers. The report also found that this created an artificial monopoly and allowed manufacturers to inflate the mark-ups on servicing and repairs. Laws in the USA and the EU prevent this abuse of market power.

The ACCC's report concluded that independent repairers were experiencing issues gaining access to technical information needed to repair and service new cars. Access to technical information held by car manufacturers was becoming increasingly important as repairing and servicing new cars relies on access to electronic information and data produced by car manufacturers. Car manufacturers had previously committed to providing independent repairers with the same access to technical information as the manufacturers' authorised dealers on commercially fair and reasonable terms. However, the ACCC discovered problems with the detail and time lines of the technical information given. The ACCC considered that independent repairers having access to this technical information was important to ensure competition and, ultimately, to benefit consumers. The ACCC proposed a mandatory scheme for car manufacturers to share technical information. The mandatory code recommendation is supported by Labor and all the independent repairer associations; the consumer bodies; the auto associations, including the NRMA and the RACQ; the insurance industry the new car dealers association; and all the major auto repair chains—for example, Kmart Tyre and Auto Service, Repco Authorised Car Service and Bridgestone.

I wrote to the Treasurer on behalf of my constituents, detailing my support for the independent car repairers. In April, the Treasurer wrote back saying that the market study would 'inform the government's further consideration of these important issues'. While the government and the Treasurer are considering what to do, Labor has acted and come out in support of small businesses and their need to access data to ensure their survival. Under a Labor government, car manufacturers would be required to share information about their vehicles with every Australian mechanic. Australia-wide, this means a boost of 23,000 independent mechanics and will allow car owners more choice when it comes to servicing and repairing their vehicles. We will stick up for small business, for Aussie trades, and keeping the costs of living down for families, as Labor leader, Bill Shorten, has said.

Independent mechanics have been going to the wall while the Turnbull government sits on its hands. There is no reason that this reform shouldn't be implemented immediately, in particular in the car repair sector, which traditionally attracts lots of young people, particularly young men, with apprenticeships and pathways for job opportunities into the future. It is an absolute disgrace that this government can sit on its hands while local car repairers face the prospect of being put out of business by car manufacturers who are behaving in a way that my constituents are right about.

Corporate culture does not take into consideration the needs of people and does not put the needs of people ahead of its profit-making culture. That is why my constituents do not subscribe to the trickle-down theory, that is why they oppose the corporate tax cuts, and that is why this government's priority is all wrong. It's all wrong in relation to the people that I represent who need assistance from the government in order to be able to meet the cost of living, find jobs and get on with living their lives and supporting their families, their children and their neighbourhoods.

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

I stand here today in this place to take the fight for my community straight to the Turnbull government. There is not one thing in the budget for Townsville—no funding for Townsville's long-term water security and no funding for our energy infrastructure. This is a slap in the face for the people in my electorate of Herbert, especially given that our electricity bills have been skyrocketing under the Turnbull government.

There's no funding for the Townsville Port Expansion Project. This is essential infrastructure, especially given that, in the very near future, our fuel will be shipped in dual hull ships that cannot access our port. Our fuel will sail straight past Townsville to the south and then be loaded onto trucks and sent back to Townsville along the Bruce Highway. This will result in more maintenance for the Bruce Highway and a higher cost of fuel, which is already expensive in my community.

In fact, there is not one single extra new dollar for infrastructure in this budget for Townsville—not one cent. Townsville has received a nothing budget announcement. This is a budget that has simply been repackaged, keeping the cuts from the previous budgets reworded and presented with a very nice bow on top. The Turnbull government is a government of cuts. The only thing that this budget delivers is cut after cut after cut. There was $9 million cut to Townsville Health and Hospital Service; $40.7 million cut from veterans' allied and dental health services; $36 million cut from James Cook University; $38 million from Central Queensland University; and $14.8 million cut from Townsville schools.

Then, of course, there is the biggest cut of all, which happens to be an $80 billion tax cut to big business and the banks. After the devastation and poor practice that has been revealed in the royal commission into banking, the Turnbull government actually has the gall to give big banks more than $17 billion in tax cuts. That seems typical of LNP priorities. This government would rather give billions of dollars in tax cuts to the same big banks that have behaved badly, as we have witnessed in the royal commission. The same banks tried to evict a blind pensioner from her home; falsely filled out their customers' forms over 350 times, including on life insurance policies, charged people they knew to be deceased for financial advice, sometimes up to 10 years after they passed away; manipulated kids' bank accounts to gain millions in bonuses; advised an elderly widow to put her life savings in to a complicated investment account when she initially came in for a term deposit; and changed nearly 16,000 customer fees for no service for years and then lied to the regulator more than 20 times regarding this, in what can only be described as attempts to cover their tracks. We know there is still more to be uncovered. Yet, given all of this, the Turnbull government still wants to give big banks $17 billion in tax cuts. This is nothing short of rewarding appalling behaviour. Turnbull backs the banks not people. He puts profits before people. He puts top hats before hard hats. More importantly, he puts his job before Townsville jobs.

Townsville knows that these cuts means more job losses. Jobs, workers, families, pensioners and veterans have all suffered under consecutive LNP governments. When Labor left federal government in 2013, Townsville's unemployment rate was lower than both the state and national averages. Now Townsville's unemployment rate is higher than the state average and almost double that of the national average. Townsville's unemployment has almost doubled under the Abbott-Turnbull governments. Under the previous Labor government, manufacturing in Townsville soared. When Labor left federal government in 2013, more than 8,400 people were employed in the manufacturing industry, but under the Abbott-Turnbull governments manufacturing has nosedived, with job losses of more than 3,000. The manufacturing industry made up eight per cent of our local employment. Under the decimation of the coalition governments, manufacturing, jobs and industry have spiralled down to 4.9 per cent. These were good-quality jobs, and now they are gone under the Abbott-Turnbull governments.

There has been the complete and utter decimation of our construction industry. The Townsville Workforce Report January 2018, commissioned by recruitment firm TP Human Capital, showed that Townsville had 442 fewer construction industry business registrations last year compared with 2012. That's a drop of 15.7 per cent. That's more jobs gone from Townsville under the Abbott-Turnbull governments. Then there is the retail industry. The retail industry is often a very good yardstick that one can use to measure how the local economy is thriving. That same Townsville workforce reportindicates that Townsville is not thriving. There was also a loss of 153 retail business registrations in the same period between 2012 and 2017. That's a fall of 17 per cent. That's more jobs gone. And let's not forget the coalition government job cuts to the public sector. One hundred and ten ATO jobs have gone. Fifty defence jobs have gone. Forty aviation jobs at No. 38 Squadron have gone. Nineteen CSIRO jobs have gone. The coalition is a government of job cuts.

Then there's the LNP's track record for our veterans. Townsville is the largest garrison city in Australia, and I am proud to represent a strong and vibrant defence community. I am passionate about supporting our veterans because they have fought for the freedoms that we enjoy in this great country today. But they also deserve the support that they need when they return home. However, sadly, this is not the case under the Abbott-Turnbull governments. First, there were the cuts to the pay of our defence personnel. This was completely inexplicable, especially when the LNP government was sending our service men and women into harm's way whilst at the same time forcing the ADF to take a real pay cut. However, Labor stood by our defence personnel and fought against those wage cuts. Then there is the $40.7 million cut to veterans' allied and dental health services and the freeze to the repatriation medical fees scheme, which is creating a reduction in access to critical medical services for our veterans. They are not even delivering on their own commitments. In 2006, the Turnbull government said that they would establish a DVA mefloquine support team to assist our serving and ex-serving ADF community with mefloquine-related claims, and in 2018 our defence community and their families are still waiting. When asked at Senate estimates about the minister's dedicated team, DVA confirmed that there was no dedicated team and that, rather, this was spread across a handful of DVA staff who deal with a range of issues at any one time. This is shameful, disgraceful and frustrating for our veterans.

Another issue of major concern for veterans in my electorate of Herbert is that of transitional employment. Transitional employment issues can impact severely on a veteran's mental health if they are unable to secure employment. Given the significance of this issue, I was very disappointed to find that the Turnbull government has only committed $8.3 million over four years for veterans' employment, which pales in comparison to Labor's $121 million program. If the Turnbull government had matched Labor's commitment, I would have extended my sincere congratulations, but this difference in funding can only indicate a difference in priorities. Labor will put our veterans first. Labor have our priorities right. We are putting people first. We are prioritising health, education, pensioners, workers, families, aged-care facilities, and veterans before an $80 billion tax cut for big business and the banks.

More importantly, Labor is prioritising Townsville. Labor will fund $100 million towards Townsville's long-term water security. Labor will fund $200 million towards energy infrastructure in the form of hydropower on the Burdekin Falls Dam. Labor will fund $75 million towards Townsville's port expansion project. This investment alone will return more than $580 million to our local economy. Labor will fund the Townsville Health and Hospital Service. Labor will fund our schools with proper, needs based funding. Labor will fund our regional universities, James Cook University and Central Queensland University. Labor will deliver a fairer taxation reform.

We believe in supporting workers and families, not big businesses and the banks. The median weekly personal income in Herbert is $672. Under Labor, a person receiving $672 in Herbert will be $350 better off, and that is $150 more than the Turnbull government's plan. Families will also be much better off. The median weekly family income in Herbert is $1,640. Under Labor, families in Herbert will be $928 better off. That is more than $398 better than the Turnbull government's plan.

It is very clear that a federal Labor budget is the only winner for the people in my electorate of Herbert. These are all Labor priorities, because these priorities put people first. Labor has always been committed to a fair go for all citizens, and we will continue to be committed to a fair go for all citizens. That's exactly what a Labor budget will do for Australia, and particularly for the people in my electorate of Herbert.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to stand up and speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2018-2019, and I'm pleased to stand up and point out some of the very significant flaws that we see in this bill. These appropriation bills continue to lock in some of the worst features of previous budgets from this Turnbull-Abbott government.

These appropriations bills—this budget—still continues to rely on cuts to the pension, to increasing the pension age to 70, one of the oldest in the world. There's a continued commitment to taking $14 a fortnight away from pensioners. We know that energy costs are through the roof but, of course, this government wants to take away the energy supplement from pensioners. The $715 million of cuts to hospitals are still there. The $40 million cut from allied health services for veterans is just an extraordinary little nugget of cruelty in this budget. $40 million is not a great deal in the size of the federal budget, but to take that money away from veterans who rely on this service to have their teeth seen to just shows the cheapness and the meanness, and how out of touch this government is.

Of course, there's the $83 million cut from the ABC. This is a government that will take any opportunity it can to shut down dissent, criticism or even scrutiny of its own agenda or claims. The ABC are copping it once again. And Medicare is still frozen for specialists. We will see, of course, more and more stories about continuing increases in out-of-pocket expenses for patients struggling to afford to see a specialist.

Yes, there are some tax cuts in this budget. We are very pleased to support the early years—the immediate tax cuts offered from 1 July this year—but we are very troubled by a long-term trajectory that takes tax cuts out beyond—it's assuming that Malcolm Turnbull's got a longevity that I'm not even sure that the Deputy Speaker would imagine he has.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member should refer to other members by their correct titles.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When it comes to tax cuts promised into the never-never, we are very concerned that a nurse on $41,000 will be paying the same rate of tax as a doctor on $200,000 a year. It just hardly seems fair to be doing that. And of course there is the $80 billion of big business tax cuts that continue to haunt us.

There's no action on debt, and that is really one of the most extraordinary things about this budget for a government that claimed in opposition to be riding in with the fire engine to put out the fire and that drove the debt truck around the country. It is pretty extraordinary that net debt this year is double what it was when the Liberals came to office. Gross debt has crashed through half a trillion dollars. It's pretty handy that the government was able to do a deal with the Greens political party to get rid of the debt cap; otherwise, they'd have to return to the parliament again and again to explain why net debt's doubled and why gross debt's crashed through half a trillion dollars and will remain over half a trillion dollars for every year over the next decade.

Of course, Labor will achieve a budget surplus in the same year as the government. Because we are not giving away $80 billion in big-business tax cuts, because we're not giving tax cuts to people on more than $180,000 a year and because we've made very tough decisions around negative gearing, capital gains tax, family trusts, high-end superannuation concessions and multinational tax, we are able to see bigger surpluses than the government over coming years. So we're able to have a bigger tax cut for low- and middle-income earners. In fact, we're almost doubling the tax cut for low- and middle-income earners—about 10 million working Australians. We're able to protect the services that Australians rely on: a great education system for their kids, strong health care, aged care, child care and making sure that we're continuing to build the productivity-enhancing infrastructure that makes our cities and regions more liveable. We're able to do all of that, give bigger tax cuts and have stronger surpluses because we're not spraying around tax concessions to the big end of town as this government insists on doing.

To turn specifically to the education areas in this budget: of course we continue to see a $17 billion cut to schools baked into this budget. I think it does tell you all you need to know about the priorities of this government that the $17 billion cut from schools is the same amount that the big banks will get in tax cuts because of the big-business tax cuts. So you can spend $17 billion giving our kids a better future, investing in our nation to make sure that we develop the intellectual skills in our people, to make sure that we are a prosperous and successful nation in the future—you could do that one on the one hand if you had $17 billion to spend—or you could just give it to the big banks and spray it around as executive bonuses and dividends to overseas shareholders. We know which side of that choice we are on. We know which side the government's on too.

We also see locked in the inequitable funding formula that gives a maximum of 20 per cent of the schooling resource standard—the cost of educating a child—to kids in public schools. It is 20 per cent of the schooling resource standard if you're educating a child in a public school and 80 per cent if you're educating a child in a non-government school. Why you would think for a moment that this is a sector-blind approach, as the Prime Minister keeps saying, is just absolutely impossible to understand. This approach could not be more sectors-specific than it is. One school system gets 20 per cent of the cost of educating a child, and another school system gets 80 per cent of the cost of educating a child. That's not sector-blind. That is absolutely as sector-specific as it possibly could be.

We also see in this budget the continued cuts to public schools, which educate 74 per cent of students with disabilities, 82 per cent of kids from the bottom quarter of socioeconomic advantage and 84 per cent of Indigenous children. But it's not just the public schools that have suffered. The Catholic sector are particularly incensed about the billions of dollars of cuts that they are facing because of these changes.

We see the government talking about the Gonski report mark 2, which is supposed to look at how money should be spent within the schooling system. I thought it was very instructive that we heard from Mark Scott today, the Director-General of the New South Wales Department of Education. He said: 'Yes, great idea; let's do more of this one-on-one individual programming for individual kids. But it will cost more. It will be expensive.' We're very happy to see a number of these recommendations. In fact, they reflect Labor policy with the national agreements that we had when we were last in government—agreements that were dispensed with by the previous Minister for Education, the member for Sturt, who said they were simply red tape. Well, they've been resurrected in this Gonski report—and Mark Scott has agreed that many of them are a good idea, but they'll need extra funding.

This government has cut $17 billion—and even agreeing with things like the evidence institute, which would do more education research and promulgate that research into our schools to make sure we were using the best and newest available information to teach our kids well. They've agreed that that's a good idea. Labor's got $280 million on the table for an evidence institute for schools. Guess how much the government's got on the table for an evidence institute for schools? A big fat zero. It's all very good to say the ideas are great, but if you're cutting funding to our schools at the same time, it's very difficult to see how these ideas might be implemented. There's no extra money in this budget for the ideas that are raised in the second Gonski report. In fact, the only thing in the budget are the baked-in cuts—$17 billion cut from schools.

Turning to TAFE and universities, since the election of this government we've seen more than $3 billion cut from TAFE skills and apprenticeships. The National Partnership Agreement on Training Places for Single Parents has been cut. There has been a cut to workplace English language and literacy programs. We have seen the Apprenticeship to Business Owner program cut. Productive Ageing through Community Education has been cut. The Australian Apprenticeships Access program has been cut. I think it tells you all you need to know about the education minister that he said TAFE education was about 'basket weaving and essential oils'. These are the sorts of programs that they're cutting—workplace English language and literacy programs and the Apprenticeship to Business Owner program, which I would have thought would be right up the government's alley.

This budget cuts a further $270 million from TAFE. On top of all the cuts we've already seen, on top of the fact that we've got 140,000 fewer apprentices and trainees than when the Liberals came into office, we're now seeing an extra $270 million cut from TAFE over the next four years. The Skilling Australians Fund, from last year's budget, was set to be $1.47 billion over four years. In this budget it is $1.42 billion. We've also seen TAFEs closing right around Australia—in regional centres like Dapto, in New South Wales; Ithaca, in Queensland; Newport, in Victoria; and in Petersham West and Crows Nest, in New South Wales. Courses have been scaled back, fees have increased and we continue to see skills shortages. We see professions on the skills shortage list that have been there for five years—the whole time this government's been in power. People could have been trained if we had a properly resourced TAFE and vocational education sector.

Labor, in contrast, has promised to scrap up-front fees for 100,000 TAFE students who choose to learn the skills that Australia needs. We've said that two out of every three Commonwealth dollars will go to TAFE. We've promised to provide 10,000 pre-apprentice places for young people who want to learn a trade and 20,000 adult apprenticeships for older workers who want to retrain. And we've said we'll invest $100 million in modernising TAFE facilities around the country.

We also see in this budget the locking in of cuts to universities. Of course, some of these cuts were made just before Christmas, in the mid-year economic and fiscal update, in a way that prevented the cuts coming before the parliament. They were able to sneak $2.2 billion of cuts in through the back door, which shows that the Liberals absolutely don't care that hundreds of thousands of Australians who have the desire and the competency to go to university will actually miss out. We think that that is wrong. It's wrong for those individuals, and it's absolutely wrong for our nation. As the world becomes more complex and as work becomes more complex, we want more of our young people to have a TAFE or a university education after school. We want more of our people who've been in the workforce for many years to retrain. Because the world of work is changing so quickly, people will have to upgrade their skills throughout their working lives.

Modelling by the Mitchell Institute shows that our commitment to uncap university places will mean that almost 200,000 more Australians will benefit from our plan over 12 years. When we previously uncapped university places, it meant that, by 2016—as this government's effectively reintroduced caps—the number of students from poorer backgrounds was up by 55 per cent, Indigenous student numbers had jumped by 89 per cent, enrolments by students with a disability had more than doubled and enrolments by students from country areas had grown by 48 per cent.

In a nutshell, I'd say that this is a budget that fails Australia when it comes to education. When it comes to school education, TAFE education and university education, there is nothing in this budget but baked-in old cuts and further new cuts. It's short-sighted because it robs our people of a chance at an education, and it's short-sighted because it robs our nation of our future prosperity.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business (House)) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I warn the chamber that this speech will not be nearly as coherent as what you've just heard. I plan to take full advantage of the fact that the relevance rule is completely disregarded during appropriations debates. I have four different speeches that I've been wanting to deliver, and I'm just going to do one after the other with absolutely no segue. To anyone who tries to string it together in a coherent way in the years to come, I wish you well.

I will start with a message that I would have delivered next week were parliament sitting—but it won't be, so I will offer the message now and distribute it later. Of course, while parliament's not sitting will be the end of the period of Ramadan and the celebration of Eid al-Fitr. On behalf of federal Labor, I would like to extend my best wishes to all Muslim communities in Australia and around the world that are celebrating the end of a month of fasting and the beginning of Eid al-Fitr. The announcement of Eid al-Fitr is made at the sighting of the crescent moon, an Islamic tradition which was used to identify the new month in the Islamic calendar. It marks the end of a month which many thousands of Australians have dedicated to fasting, praying and performing acts of charity. While technically, I suppose, there are some parallels with my own tradition of Lent, I think it's fair to say that my tradition has no understanding of fasting when compared to the fasting that takes place during the blessed month of Ramadan.

Preparations for Eid al-Fitr begin well before the sighting of the moon, with decorations going up in homes, on shopfronts and at local mosques. The sweet aroma of the traditional shortbreads, ma'amoul, fills homes and streets the nights before as families and friends unite for a final iftar, a final breaking of the fast, and gather to share the last Ramadan prayers and blessings. Celebrations begin at dawn, with traditional prayers at the local mosque, and are followed by the visiting of families, friends and communities, sharing the stories of the month that passed and the blessings of the year to come. Whenever I go down to celebrate with so many friends at the end of Ramadan, I always park many, many blocks away. There's this wonderful period before dawn of people walking and the group gradually getting larger and larger as you get closer. That journey towards the gathering is a beautiful part for me every time we get to Eid al-Fitr.

One of the nicest things about the celebration is the sense of unity and happiness shared amongst Muslims from various cultural backgrounds. Colourful displays of new garments are paraded, and the exuberant faces of the children fill the space as they collect money and gifts. The celebration of Eid al-Fitr, like the celebrations we mark from around the world throughout the year, is a great example of how strong and successful modern multicultural Australia is, and how our Australian story is built on the experiences of communities from around the world. To everyone celebrating, Eid Mubarak.

I want to let the House know about a wonderful victory for a school only a few blocks from where I live, Punchbowl Boys High. There is a band competition running in New South Wales for high school bands, known as YouthRock, and this year Punchbowl Boys' High won. I'm tremendously proud of them. The band members are Lucas Tekii, Yoosuf Mohamed, Eliata Ulutui, Wilkinson Papalii-Afoa, Theodore Crysma Tavete, and Micah Papalii-Tulanai. They're a great band. They're a band that has been kind enough to allow me to jam with them. I've turned up at the school with a guitar, and they've been kind enough to allow me to jam with them. They are known as the 320—that's the name of their band. There's a thing where on the one hand you have three fingers, and on the other you have two, and you're photographed. For those wondering about the mystery of how a band becomes 320, 320 it's the room number of the music room at Punchbowl Boys High. They have been writing originals for some time. One of their songs which was actually played on ABC Radio today is 'My Way', which, for members who might be concerned, is not the Frank Sinatra version but an original by themselves. To their music teacher, Michael White, I extend congratulations. They are a group of young men of great talent. We wish them well, and I hope that they're well on the way to adding their music to what forms the soundtrack of our nation.

Shortly before the change of government back in 2013, the Live Music Office was established. There was a reason we established the Live Music Office: for a long time in the arts there was a view that popular music didn't really need government support because it is so commercial and has been able to very much look after itself. However, there are some challenges that have been emerging over the years. The business model that Australian popular music has largely been built on has been changing fundamentally. The shift from purchasing of albums—I'll admit, I still purchase vinyl, but many people don't—to the purchasing of downloads and streaming has meant a significant difference in how bands earn their money.

At the same time, there's been a rapid decline in the number of venues available for them. The bands that many of the members of this place grew up with worked a pub circuit. In evidence that was given in New South Wales only yesterday, Isabella Manfredi from The Preatures—spelt the way you spell 'creatures', not with any other meaning—listed off a series of venues that were important to her band in Sydney when they were getting started. Having gone through the list of the venues—she went through Drummoyne RSL, Spectrum, Q Bar, Deans, Candy's Apartment, Bar Me, Flinders Bar, World Bar, The Gaelic, The Hopetoun, The Sandringham, The Lizard Lounge, The Standard, The Hi-Fi, Oxford Art Factory, The Lansdowne and Club 77—only two of them still exist as live music venues. This is a challenge that's happening around the country. There's a series of issues that have caused this. Ultimately our music industry has challenges now that are different to what it used to have. Some of those are caused by government policy and some of those need to be facilitated and improved through government policy.

I want to make sure that Australian music always forms the soundtrack to our lives. I want the next generation to grow up with Australian music. I want all of us to grow old with Australian music. That means we need to make sure that the entire ecosystem around our music industry survives. A whole lot of the forms of revenue that used to be there for bands are not there at the moment, and we can't just say, 'Okay, we need to have the big venues where someone's playing for 10,000.' That would be like saying, 'The only athletes we need to look after are the Australian Olympic team.' Cultural activity like popular music is the same as any area of excellence. You need your community level that people come through—where they grow, where they practise, where they play again and again—and 200 gigs later they're playing to very large venues. That is what needs to be possible.

The Live Music Office, since it was established, has been making sure there is a body to deliver on that. The guaranteed funding that we had put in place continued for the contracted period that we had left, but after the initial three-year funding, which was provided until 2016, the Live Music Office subsequently received project funding from the Australia Council, which has now run out. With APRA AMCOS, it then delivered further financial support. The Live Music Office matters. It might not matter if you didn't mind what came on on the radio—if you didn't mind that all the songs people are hearing have American accents and if you didn't mind that the places being sung about are on the other side of the planet—but, if we want Australian stories and Australian imagination and Australian voices to be what we get to hear as the soundtrack to our lives, then backing the Live Music Office is something that needs to happen. The government has still baulked at providing continued funding for them, and I would simply urge the government in the strongest terms. This doesn't need to be political. In fact, it would be bizarre for anyone to say only one side of politics supports popular music. When Rock The House is on, I see members of parliament from both sides all going up to enjoy the popular music. Those artists don't come here simply to entertain us; they come to make sure that we hear them—that we hear them about copyright, that we hear them about venues, that we hear them about making sure the entire ecology that makes for a viable, strong, resilient music industry is always there—and the Live Music Office is a critical part of that.

There is a final thing I want to say a few words about. I want to advise the House why it is that on so many occasions I stand up and make speeches about the different celebrations that are being enjoyed around Australia. Sometimes they're faith based; sometimes they're culturally based. Sometimes they're about my faith; sometimes they're about the faiths of others. Whenever I put one of those speeches up on social media, if it's a message about, for example, Ramadan, Holi or a series of different celebrations, it's interesting that I'll straightaway get the comments: 'I didn't hear you mention Christmas in that speech. Why don't you ever say anything about Christmas and Easter?' Then, at Christmas and Easter time, when I put up messages about those celebrations—and with Easter I often have to put up two because of the different Orthodox dates—the message that comes back is: 'How dare you try to impose your faith on me?' I think we all need to understand that Australia is a nation of 24 million stories and they're all as Australian as each other. They come in two broad forms: either stories that have always, ever since the first sunrise, had their heritage on this land or stories that, at some point, have come here through immigration. But they're all Australian.

I'll always resist being told, 'Instead of saying "Happy Christmas!" you should say "Happy holidays!"' If what someone is celebrating is a holiday, then I'm really happy for them to wish me a happy holiday, if that's what matters to them. If what matters to them is that they're celebrating Hanukkah and they want to wish me a 'Happy Hanukkah!' I think that's great and I'll wish them a 'Happy Christmas!' And when we have carols in my local area at Wiley Park, the place will be full of people. And from the way that they are dressed when they come to those carols, it's pretty obvious they're from a range of different faiths.

Last Saturday night, for the first time, we closed Howden Street in Lakemba during Ramadan, and the street was packed. There were plenty of people there who were there to eat the different food from different cultures and plenty of those people had not been fasting all day—me included—but they'd come because that sense of invitation we offer to each other is itself part of being Australian. Since I issued the invitation for people to come down to Lakemba any time of night during Ramadan, I have seen one other member there—I won't give him up—from the other side of politics. He was there on a private basis, but he came. The invitation was real.

What I'd encourage everybody to think about is we either end up with all the different cultures and become a nation where we tell some people they don't belong or we go down even the American path of assimilation, where you often don't wish anybody a happy anything other than 'Happy Holidays!' because you don't want to offend. There is no offence in generosity. There is no offence in embracing each other's celebrations. Those of us who don't have a First Nations background here on this land still appreciate the welcome to country. All of us can take the goodwill of a Christmas message, of an Eid message, of a Hanukkah message, of a Dipawali message and, with that, build that sense, not of a soup—where everything is pureed and where all the ingredients come out tasting the same—but of a salad, where every ingredient keeps its identity. Together we form a flavour that's distinctively, uniquely and proudly Australian.

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

I rise tonight to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2018-2019 that provides appropriations from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the annual services of the government for 2017-18 and for the remainder of 2018-19. I want to talk about how the budget affects my local electorate in Holt and some other issues. The local residents in Holt, in my experience and that of my staff, need financial relief given the very low wage growth that we've had over a number of years, the continued rise in the cost-of-living expenses and cuts to penalty rates. And they also are in urgent need of new infrastructure to keep pace with the rapidly growing population in the outer south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

The City of Casey, as of the end of 2017, had a population of 327,380 people. I'm sure it's well into the 330,000s now. In another 20 years, its size will be past Canberra's, basically. It's one of the fastest-growing areas of Australia. It's an area that, regardless of how it's portrayed in the press, offers, I think, a lot of hope for the future of our country. I'll be talking a bit further about how we can assist those many young families who have shifted into the area to make a life not only for themselves and their families but for their family's families, and talk about how they are portrayed and about how the real contribution that hardworking families in the outer suburbs make to our country's future should be appropriately recognised. I think the member for Werriwa has an outer suburban constituency as well, so she would well know what I'm talking about. Before I amplify that particular discussion point, we on this side certainly believe that more funding should have been committed to the City of Casey region. Some ideas include the duplication of Thomsons Road between Cranbourne and Clyde, and also an idea that I had that we had secured opposition support for prior to the last election, which was an overpass on the intersection of Thomsons Road and Western Port Highway. The budget delivered by the government does not invest in much needed infrastructure projects like that and other projects in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and in my area. The government certainly hasn't delivered in areas like protecting pensioners. It's cut the energy supplement, costing pensioners $14 a fortnight. It also has failed to deliver in areas such as education in schools and cuts to TAFE.

One contrast I would make is what the Andrews Labor government has achieved in Victoria, particularly in the infrastructure area, in the past 3½ years. Since being elected in November 2014, the Andrews Labor government has invested more than $48 billion to build the schools, the hospitals, the roads and the public transport system our state needs. Construction work completed in Victoria is up 6.5 per cent in the March quarter, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, compared with the national average of just 0.2 per cent. As a result, more than 320,000 jobs have been created since the Andrews Victorian Labor government came to office. Business owners said to me for a long time before the election of the Andrews state Labor government that they wanted a government that invested in infrastructure, roads, construction and rail. With that investment, as testified by the figure of $48 billion, there are a lot of cranes, Deputy Speaker Kevin Andrews, as you would know, in the sky in Victoria. That's always a good sign. There is a lot of road and rail work being done and a lot of hospitals are being built. The Casey Hospital, for example, is very close to where I live. It's adjacent to my constituency, as it currently stands, with perhaps some alterations to occur in the future. The Andrews Labor government has made a very substantial investment there.

When people drive on the roads that are being widened, such as the Monash Freeway, or they travel on sky rail, particularly around the Cranbourne area, or they see the extension of the Narre-Cranbourne Road, TAFEs being built and expanded like the Chisholm Institute of TAFE, and the Casey Hospital—and that is a very, very large building that is offering excellent service to a growing community, one of the fastest-growing areas in Australia—they know that the state government is investing in essential infrastructure: road infrastructure, rail infrastructure and what I call medical infrastructure.

The other thing I want to compliment the Andrews government on is the number of new schools that have been opened in our area. It is amazing to see the number of almost high-tech schools that are catering to the growing community that we have in our region. I believe that the Andrews government has made a commitment for another three schools just in that growth corridor, approximate to where I represent. That is a government that really is reacting to the needs of the community. The sense that I get when speaking to people about the Andrews government—in contrast to what, I regret to say, the Turnbull government has been doing in the south-east in terms of investment in infrastructure—is that Daniel Andrews is getting things done. Certainly, when you look at the hospitals, the roads and the new schools, you can see a lot of work being done. People believe that this government is investing in them and their future. I'd like to commend the government. I hope that the Andrews Labor government is re-elected, particularly on the basis of all the fine work that it's done for the outer suburbs. I respectfully draw your attention, as a comparison, to the investment that we've seen by the Turnbull government. As an example, there has been very little investment in contrast to the splendid new series of wards that have been built at the Casey Hospital.

We have been meeting. Ever since I shifted into the region in 1996, there has been a discussion about a second airport in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, as you would know. A consortium has been working with the Andrews Labor government to finally, after many, many years, potentially invest in an airport after the appropriate environmental impact statements have been made so that the growth corridor would not be adversely affected by the creation of a second airport. But I think we are very close. My understanding is that that consortium has been supported by the Andrews government, and that is something. I do support this second airport with the proviso that those appropriate environmental impact statements are taken into account and the flight paths of what would be Melbourne's second major airport do not adversely affect pockets in some of the growth belt suburbs. I do completely support that. There would be a thousand jobs.

The potential here is this: we will have a second major airport and potentially an airport that could rival Tullamarine down the track—and we're talking about the next 40 or 50 years. This will transform the south-eastern region of Melbourne. And the investment, as I understand it, having spoken to the consortium concerned, is somewhere in the order of about $7 billion. But my point is that I'm not aware of the engagement with the federal government with respect to that, and that's a disappointment. These matters need to be negotiated with both the state government of Premier Andrews, which has been supportive, and the federal government, and, from my understanding, that sort of engagement has not happened. I think that's a bad thing when this federal government's touting a lot of the work and a lot of the investment it has made. It could have made, for example, the overpass investment on the corner of Thompsons Road and Western Port Highway. It did not.

We took, as I said, to the last election a $65 million commitment, as I understand it, to actually help the state government construct that overpass. The state government is widening Thompsons Road. It's put Skyrail over Thompsons Road. It's an important east-west feeder and connector and it's of critical significance in feeding traffic into, particularly, EastLink as well, taking traffic from Frankston almost all the way up to Berwick. It needs that sort of investment and that commitment, and that affects marginal seats like Dunkley and places like that, so you would think that a government that did have some measure of concern about its seats would do that.

We certainly did not have that bipartisan support that I would have expected at the last federal election, but we will obviously be speaking to our relevant shadow ministers to talk about, prior to the next election, how they can assist as they have in the past. I can recall, as an example, that prior to the 2007 election the federal government was not investing in part of one of the rural and regional development funding programs for a water-harvesting facility at Casey ARC. I understand that, finally, just prior to the election the then Howard government was prepared to invest, I think, a million dollars. We had our shadow minister, who was Anthony Albanese, that came down. We made a $5 million investment. We have invested. I'd like to point out also what we have done as well.

We invested, particularly during the global financial crisis during the Rudd-Gillard prime ministerships, over $10 million in the City of Casey in emergency funding to ensure that jobs were generating. There is a very fine state-standard athletics track that was funded to the tune of, I think, about $9 million post around the 2009-10 period due to the rural regional infrastructure funding.

Why do I raise this? Because, even with the $10 million that was given by the Abbott government for Bunjil Place, which is a significant, region-leading, $125 million investment by the state government, we cannot access funding anymore through that program line. It's changed from the National Stronger Regions Fund to the Building Better Regions Fund. That's great. We can say to people, 'We invested $10 million,' but, when we have significant other projects that are desperately needed, there is no funding opportunity for us to pursue that.

Cranbourne East is the fastest-growing area in Australia. To say to them that it's okay to fund the regions, but you don't have a discrete outer region funding mechanism, as was used by the previous Abbott government to get the City of Casey the $10 million, is completely unsatisfactory. Tell that to the people who wait in a kilometre-long queue on Clyde Road every morning, when they're coming to work and trying to connect to the Monash Freeway. That is completely unacceptable.

I note that the member for Jagajaga is in the chamber. One of the signature achievements of the Keating prime ministership in particular was the Building Better Cities program. I think it was administered by Brian Howe. It was an inspired program. It was a program that was meant for the outer suburbs, to make our cities more livable and more equitable. They were the two terms used. Time after time you would come across projects across the city—these community-building projects. You would see these great projects—project after project—across the country. Myuna Farm in the suburb of Doveton was one and I think there was another project funded in the city of Elizabeth in South Australia. The feedback that we got was that they were projects that were needed by the community. That $816 million between 1991 and 1996 is a heck of a lot more money now. I represent the fastest-growing suburb, Cranbourne East and I contrast that funding with the level of funding that has been put in with the federal government investment in Cranbourne East now, which is about 0.0 dollars. That doesn't make people happy when they're waiting for half an hour to get onto the Monash Freeway, but it's also about more schools. It's about community based facilities. It's an amazing community, badly portrayed, I might say, by articles in The Age. The fact is when people go out there to make a life for themselves with their families, they shouldn't be written about pejoratively, as they were in The Age saying this area has become a large slum because it doesn't have the social infrastructure. The social infrastructure's not being there is the responsibility of governments that allowed that work to happen. It is our responsibility to provide the social infrastructure for these people in areas such as mental health and a whole range of other areas.

In concluding—I could go on and on, but I won't for the wellbeing of this chamber—the Andrews government has made significant investments in the outer suburbs. The Turnbull government needs to do this and it needs to do it soon.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Disability and Carers (House)) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is the fifth Abbott-Turnbull budget. In every single budget from this conservative government there have been cuts to the age pension, cuts to Newstart, cuts to hospitals and schools, an increase in the pension age to 70 and now in this budget the latest proposal: a flattening of the income tax system that will see inequality get worse in this country. It's very clear that with this budget the Prime Minister wants people to forget its five-year catalogue of cuts, cuts that define this government and have defined this government since the horror budget of 2014.

The Prime Minister would of course like to go to the next election having whitewashed the terrible cuts of the last five years. I say to him and to all of the Liberal and National party members that over the last month or so I've done a number of very large pension forums, particularly in Perth—I did five very well attended pension forums there—and more recently in Tasmania and down in Frankston, in Victoria. Pensioners have not forgotten what this government wants to do to them. They understand the implications of the government's desire to increase the age-pension age to 70. I should say to anybody who's listening that this isn't some policy change that's off on the never-never. People who turn 60 from this July will have to work longer because of Mr Turnbull's plan to increase the pension age to 70. It's not something that's just going to affect people who are in their 40s or their 50s; it's actually going to start affecting people who turn 60 very, very soon.

Australians also haven't forgotten what this government wants to do to the energy supplement. For the information of those opposite, who I'm sure would like to forget that this is what they have already voted for twice and that the government has it in this budget again, they want to axe the energy supplement. This is worth $14 a fortnight for single pensioners and $8.80 a fortnight for people on Newstart. Very vulnerable people who find themselves out of work and need to rely on Newstart will face a cut to Newstart as a result of this government's budget. This is a cut in this budget. Of course, it has been a cut in previous budgets. The government has so far been unable to get this through the parliament, but it is in this budget. This government is determined to see a cut to the pension, with the abolition of the energy supplement, and a cut to Newstart. Labor will continue to strongly oppose this very significant cut.

We hear the government boast every day about the number of jobs that have been created. But what they don't tell us, what isn't said every day but Australians understand, is that there are about one million people in our country who are underemployed. That is on top of the people who are unemployed. According to the Australian Council of Social Service, 730,000 children are living in poverty. And another fact that never crosses the lips of those opposite is that nearly half the number of people on Newstart, nearly half the number of people on unemployment benefits, are unemployed for more than a year. Long-term unemployment in this country is getting worse and this government is doing absolutely nothing about it.

Inequality in this country is at a 75-year high. This isn't the 'jobs and growth' story that you hear from the Prime Minister every day, but these are the facts. It is a fact of life for millions of Australians who are really doing it very tough under this government. It is not what our country should be like. It certainly is time that we gave these people and families a much better shot at a decent life. One of the important ways in which Labor wants to address this fundamental inequity in our country is to make sure those people who are struggling can get the skills that they need to get the jobs that they want. We want to improve their capacity to get a TAFE qualification. Labor, in government, would scrap up-front fees for around 100,000 TAFE students and also spend $100 million upgrading our TAFEs around the country.

It is also why Labor is determined to seriously invest in our schools. This government made huge cuts to school funding back in the 2014 budget. Labor has promised to put into our schools over the next 10 years the $17 billion that is needed and, in particular, make sure that those areas in our country that are very disadvantaged are able to deliver great educational opportunities for our children. That includes areas like Doveton, in Victoria, which is not far from the member for Bruce's electorate. It has a fantastic primary and secondary school delivering 'Our Place', a model of education and support for families that is really turning those families around. But it costs money. You actually need to spend the extra money to make sure that those schools can deliver to those families, children and young people. Labor, of course, is determined to improve access to universities, with 200,000 extra places at our universities, and provide additional funding for hospitals to completely reverse the coalition's cuts. All of these initiatives that Labor would put in place are about investing in our people and also making sure that we protect people when they fall on hard times. By contrast, what we see in this budget is a plan by the Liberals that favours the well off and will worsen inequality.

I want to talk about tax, because that is the starkest demonstration in this budget of how this government will, in fact, increase inequality in our country. How we raise the money that we need for our schools and hospitals and to have a decent safety net determines whether or not we have a fair society. There's been some excellent analysis done at ANU, NATSEM and the Grattan Institute, and all have pointed out that this government's tax cuts are deliberately designed to deliver the biggest gains to those people who need them least in our community. These are the facts: about 60 per cent of the benefit of the government's tax changes would go to the wealthiest 20 per cent in this country. Just today, in Senate estimates, the secretary of Treasury said that a worker on $80,000 a year would receive a tax cut worth $540 a year by the end of the government's seven-year plan, whereas someone earning $200,000 a year would get a tax cut of $7,225 dollars a year. If you want a demonstration of how this government's going to increase inequality, that is it in a nutshell.

By contrast, Labor will deliver much fairer tax cuts for 10 million working Australians and for those people who really need it most. Of course, we can afford to deliver these fairer and larger tax cuts for low- and middle-income earners because we are prepared to make some very, very significant and progressive changes to the tax system, with reforms to negative gearing, capital gains tax, discounts, family trusts, and dividend imputation. Of course, all are opposed by the conservatives because they want to keep the benefits of those tax-avoidance mechanisms going to the top end of town.

Of course, it's not just about tax. We understand that, in addition to tax cuts, we need to make sure that we protect people's penalty rates. Those opposite, of course, have sat by while people's penalty rates have been lost. One of the most significant changes in this budget is this government's decision to flatten our tax system, meaning that somebody earning $40,000 a year and somebody earning $200,000 a year will be in the same tax bracket. Now, how on earth could that be fair? As we have said time and time again, we certainly do not want to see an $80 billion handout to big business, especially when $17 billion of it is going to the big banks.

I want to finish by talking about something that's very dear to my heart, and that is, of course, the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I'm very glad to see that the government has finally come to acknowledge that the National Disability Insurance Scheme is, and always has been, fully funded, even though this lot opposite have spent years undermining the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The government has tried to say that people have to put up with cuts to family tax benefits, cuts to the energy supplement, cuts to Newstart, cuts to pensions and cuts to paid parental leave—all of these cuts were used as excuses; they were apparently needed to fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Of course, last year, the Treasurer said with great fanfare that we needed a tax rise on the lowest-income people in the country to fund the NDIS. All of this was false. People with disability were used as a political football. It was a complete and utter disgrace on the part of both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. Playing politics with people with disability, holding people with disability to ransom in this way, must never happen again. It is now time for all of us to focus on making sure that the NDIS actually fulfils the promise that I would hope we all have see in it, which is to improve the lives of people with disability.

We are all getting hundreds and hundreds of calls from people who feel let down and frustrated with the rollout of the NDIS. People want this government and this minister to step up and actually fix the problems with the NDIS. They don't want them blaming people with disability; they actually want the problems fixed. Let's get it back on track. Fix the ICT system. Don't treat it like a big bureaucracy which is driving people to enormous frustration. We all want a people-centred organisation. It has to actually be about helping people with disability and their families to lead the lives that they want for themselves—a life of independence, if possible, so people are able to work, have fun, live in the community and have a decent home. That's the promise of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It's a promise that Labor is absolutely determined to see delivered, and this government should do likewise.

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

I rise to make my contribution to the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2018-2019 and the related bills and to add the voice of my community, which would have liked to have seen a fairer budget which addressed the needs of people all over our electorate—people who tell me every day they're struggling with higher costs, electricity bills, lack of parking, traffic jams, high childcare costs and cuts to school, TAFE and university. Yet, instead of addressing the concerns of the people in my electorate, this budget continues with a handout to big business and the big banks. The residents in my electorate of Werriwa have suffered thanks to the government's ideological war against Medicare and public health care. The Liberals have cut from Medicare and hospitals every year since the 2014 budget. The assault has continued in this budget, which cuts $2.8 billion from hospitals between the next election and 2025. Under this government, the national average waiting time for elective surgery is the longest on record, the number of people presenting at emergency departments is the highest on record, and the number of hospital beds available for elderly Australians is the lowest on record.

This crisis was felt on a local level with the debacle around the closure and reopening of two after-hours GP clinics in my electorate. In mid-December, with zero public consultation, it was announced that after-hours GP clinics at Liverpool and Campbelltown hospitals would be closing on New Year's Eve and in early January. Following an outcry from the community and pressure from me and the member for Macarthur, they announced in March that they would reopen the after-hours clinics. Both are now well away from the hospitals they had been connected to. The connection of the two clinics to their respective hospitals had helped ease the pressure on the emergency departments located there. Worse still, the new Liverpool clinic had moved out of the Liverpool CBD and across the Georges River to the suburb of Moorebank, into an area not easily accessible by public transport for the people of my electorate.

The importance of easing the pressure on emergency departments can't be overstated. There were 7.8 million emergency department presentations in 2016-17—one million more than five years ago. This level of growth is putting our hospitals and their staff under immense pressure. They need more funding to keep up. People living in south-west Sydney have been hit particularly hard by this. Hospitals like Liverpool are dealing with this increase and the increases that come with ageing populations, as well as with the huge growth in population from Sydney's south-west suburban fringes. Hospitals like Liverpool will benefit from Labor's alternative budget through a $2.8 billion better hospitals fund. As a result of this, hospitals like Liverpool will have more doctors, nurses, health staff and beds in the emergency departments. This is important. This is needed. And this will make a real difference in the lives of ordinary Australians. Unfortunately, this government is giving an $80 billion handout to big business and the banks instead of funding health. We don't need a tax giveaway to the banks. We need to get people off long waiting lists for hip operations, knee replacements and cataract removal.

With the 2018 budget, the Turnbull government has locked in huge education cuts, using them to pay for the tax handouts to big business, cutting $17 billion for schools and giving $17 billion to big banks, and we've seen from the royal commission they don't need it. In the strange world that this government inhabits, banking executives have been hauled before a royal commission and seem to be more deserving of a handout than the kids in my electorate, who have all the talent and potential in the world but not enough resources at their local school to realise that potential.

I believe Australian families would prefer their taxes going to schools, universities and TAFE, and not big business. But, sadly, TAFE is also having its funding slashed as a result of this budget and the New South Wales state Liberal government. With an extra $270 million cut from TAFE and training, this allows for more than $3 billion in cuts since the government came to power in 2013. Australia now has 140,000 fewer apprentices than we did when the Liberals were first elected.

South-west Sydney is a rapidly growing area. With the construction of Badgery's Creek Airport, there are great opportunities for work for local people. I want the young and the unemployed of Werriwa to benefit from this growth. Unfortunately, this government's war on vocational education means that tomorrow's carpenters, plumbers and bricklayers who build the infrastructure in growth areas won't come locally, but may have to come from foreign worker visa holders. This skills shortage is wholly manufactured by this government, which does not see the purpose of a strong TAFE system, and which has set out to dismantle it at every opportunity. The community thinks otherwise, and so do we on our side of the House.

A Shorten Labor government will scrap up-front fees for 100,000 TAFE students who choose to learn the skills that Australia needs. Despite high unemployment in some areas, workers can't learn the skills that industries are crying out for, and that we have shortages—like carpenters, bricklayers, bakers or pastry chefs. The TAFE system has proved itself over and over again to be the best place for young Australians to develop these skills, and it's Labor's policy to scrap the up-front fees, making it easier for Australians to get the skills they need for a trade, a traineeship, and then a quality job.

But we won't just stop there. Labor will invest $100 million in modernising TAFE facilities around the country. We'll guarantee at least two out of three Commonwealth training dollars goes to TAFE. We'll ensure one in every 10 jobs in the Commonwealth priority projects are filled by Australian apprentices. We'll provide 10,000 pre-apprentice programs from young people who want to learn a trade, and 20,000 adult apprentice programs for older workers who need to retrain. Labor will abolish the Prime Minister's unfair cap on university student places, meaning the number of Australians getting an education at university will soar to around 200,000, undoing the government's $2.2 billion cut from universities last December.

Ninety per cent of the jobs created in the coming years will need a university or TAFE qualification. We recognise this. We will invest in education. For all the government's bluster in the lead-up to the budget, you would be forgiven for thinking that, despite this budget's many failings, there would at least be some much-needed infrastructure proposals, and some much-needed proposals that would help build our nation. Unfortunately, the budget included no new money for infrastructure. Every project announced in the budget was funded from previous allocations. There are no plans to lift investment over years and years of cuts. It is another hoax.

Government infrastructure grants to the states, in fact, will fall over each of the next four years—from the promised $8 billion in 2017-18 to $4.5 billion in 2021-22. Commonwealth infrastructure investment over the next decade will fall from 0.4 per cent of GDP to 0.2 per cent. This is a worry for all Australians, but particularly for people living in the outer suburbs of rapidly expanding cities like Melbourne and my home town of Sydney. While the Prime Minister has been making promises over the last six months, the budget wrongly does not seem to be doing anything to actually bring these promises to fruition.

In March, there was much fanfare as the Western Sydney City Deal was announced, and there was an announcement by the Prime Minister that there would be a rail line to Badgerys Creek airport. But the budget includes no money to build this railway line, just $50 million to prepare a business case. With the airport set to open in 2026, we really need to start building the airport line soon. This isn't good enough, but it is what we've come to expect. In this government's first four budgets, investment was $4.7 billion less than was promised.

In Werriwa, residents are all too familiar with this under-investment. Commuter car parks are full by 7:00 am. If you're lucky enough to find a park, the trains are overcrowded. If you drive, the roads are congested. People are being pushed further and further away from the major employment and transport hubs because of the cost of housing. Only 30 per cent of the people who live in the Liverpool local government area also work in it. Seventy per cent of working people who live in my electorate drive to work and only 12 per cent use public transport. Sixty-nine per cent of the journeys on the M5 experience delays, and trains from Liverpool to Central take close to double the time in peak hour than they did in 1975—the journey took 37 minutes in 1975 but now, if you're lucky, it's 63 minutes. Aside from Leppington and Edmondson Park stations, which opened in 2015, and Holsworthy, which opened in 1987, every other train station in my region was opened in the 19th century. South-west Sydney demands real infrastructure spending for real projects. The government has failed us, just like it has on many other things. Labor has shown itself to be the party that will address Australia's infrastructure needs and make meeting the needs of my growing community a major priority.

If you need any further evidence that this is an unfair budget full of hoaxes, look no further than aged care. The government trumpeted 14,000 new in-home aged-care packages over the next four years—3,500 a year. While any increase is welcome, 14,000 is far from adequate; it's merely a drop in the ocean. As of December last year, waiting lists sat at 105,000, and grew by 20,000 in the last six months of 2017 alone. Almost 82,000 of those people waiting have high needs, many with dementia. The government refuses to give us more up-to-date figures. Given our ageing population, the waiting lists will then no doubt continue to grow, and the crisis in aged care will become more acute year after year. Although welcome, 3,500 additional aged-care packages a year are simply not enough. How will the government fund these additional packages? It seems by taking it out of residential care. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer are performing a deception, moving money from A to B. And while older Australians are still waiting in care, the government is unable to find any additional funding to address the waiting lists of over 100,000. But it has managed to find the $80 billion tax cut for big business and $17 billion for the big banks.

Budgets are always about choices. What is concerning for me is this budget does not choose the people of my electorate or of Australia. It continues with tax cuts for corporate Australia when it should be supporting students at school, TAFE or university. It should support health care and our older Australians. It should provide infrastructure to make people's lives more bearable. The choices should be fairer and take into account all of us, particularly those in my electorate.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It being approximately 6:30 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 192(b). The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.