David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, overall this latest budget get an F for fail. Unfortunately, it is very inflationary, with increasing budgets. Increasing deficits that go for the next four years, in ever increasing amounts, mean interest rates will stay higher for longer. This is homegrown inflation. We see the latest inflation figures in the US going down, but I fear that our next lot will go up. The Treasurer has tried to ameliorate it by subsidising wages in selected industries, subsidising electricity and subsidising pet development projects. As well, the Treasurer is using his own estimated figures for inflation and interest rates that are at odds with the Reserve Bank's. Projections show a one-off windfall surplus followed, as I said, by a run of deficits.

Subsidising electricity bills as cost-of-living relief is a false concept. It's only adding to the cost embedded in our electricity system. It doesn't make the electricity cheap; it's just returning some of the taxpayer dollars that people have paid. It's money being taken from one pocket and turning up in the other.

Unfortunately, I don't think the Bureau of Statistics will net the subsidy off the real charged cost of electricity. That is a dream. There's no reform of our energy policy. We're persisting in trying to build with renewable, variably generated energy that is direct current as opposed to the constant alternating current that has stability and very low grid costs.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme, in particular, is unsustainable and, instead of addressing structural faults in the architecture of it, the government continues to pay up. The cost of it, in four years time, looks to be around $2 billion. It needs reform, and the government should start speaking to the states now because they have to agree to any changes. The governance was set up like that by Julia Gillard.

The budget does nothing to deal with inflation that's being driven by a huge growth in what are mainly temporary migrants. The trouble is that they end up being long-term temporary migrants. We had 572,000 people turn up last year, and I caught on the radio as I was driving along—I'll have to double check this, Madam Deputy Speaker—that 100,000 people arrived in this country in a month. That is tourists, temporary migrants and planned migrants. If that's repeated month after month, that's going to be 1.2 million. No wonder there's housing pressure! Everywhere you turn, whether it's in the country or the city, occupancy rates are at virtually a hundred per cent. With all that pent-up demand and spending from all those extra people, no wonder we've got inflation. We have had 33 boat arrivals since this government took over responsibility, yet in the budget there are funding cuts of $436 million over the forward estimates. I think that's a very bad move.

I'm disappointed there was no extra funds for regional communications. There was one bright spot—I'll give credit where credit's due—in the aged-care portfolio. There is $531 million for another 21,000 homecare spots, which are sorely needed everywhere, but we don't have the workforce to deliver those homecare packages. A lot of homecare and aged-care people are deserting aged-care and home care because they can get paid under legislated rates—12, 15 or even more—to go and work in the NDIS. And they wonder why it's going to be $62 billion! The payments for the services are just out of control, and we want it to be sustainable for constituents that need disability help, but we don't want it to bankrupt the nation.

There are many things in every budget. We want a budget that makes clarity about making all the aged-care providers financially viable. They are asking the extra funds. The one other good thing for my pensioners is the deeming rates are remaining low— (Time expired)