Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the answers from government senators to questions about the budget—or should I say the lack of answers, which I am growing used to and I find quite disappointing. I would like to reiterate some comments that were made by my colleagues during the debate on motions to take note of answers yesterday. Labor has already stated that it will support the changes to tax and family payments that are contained within the budget. These are certainly long overdue and something that Labor has long supported. However, the government has forgotten many people in this budget. The government says that Labor is nitpicking and desperate because we draw attention to the areas that Mr Costello and Mr Howard have continued to ignore. If it is nitpicking to want to ensure that the truth is known about what is missing in this budget and who has been left out—and there are a great deal of them—then I guess we are.

Isn’t it funny that the Treasurer, Mr Costello, and the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, have spent the last few days selling the attributes of the budget, namely tax cuts? Mr Costello and Mr Howard are very quick to point out that they are handing out $39 billion in tax cuts. But the problem is that for the majority of people this will equate to less than $10 a week. Labor’s concern about this budget is the people that the government has forgotten—the people who will not benefit from the tax cuts, the people earning less than $10,000 a year, the people on disability support pensions and single parents.

The government has made much of the fact that it will create an extra 25,000 child-care places by 2009, bringing the total number in Australia to 700,000 by that year. But what about the affordability of child care? The government has also forgotten those people who are waiting to have their teeth fixed. There are more than 650,000 people in Australia currently waiting for dental care, and still the government has not reinstated the Commonwealth Dental Health Program. In this budget, the government has forgotten thousands of Australians, and the sad thing is that it is these forgotten people who need help most—which is in stark contrast to the comments of the previous speaker.

Furthermore, it is the poor, the people who are living on the poverty line, the single mothers, who have to make a choice between staying on benefits and surviving or going back to work, putting the kids in child care and working for absolutely nothing. In fact, women have almost been forgotten in this budget altogether. There are no incentives to improve pay equity. There are no solutions to better the quality of child care. There are no family-friendly work incentives such as those outlined in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission’s family provisions test case. There is no national plan to combat violence against women.

On top of that, there is no investment in skills or training. There is no plan for health care reform. There is no investment in the health care workforce to ensure that health care professionals are where they are needed most, such as in the regional areas of Tasmania. There is no plan to reform relationships between the Commonwealth and the states. But even for those whom the government would like us to believe they are helping—those people who will be fortunate enough to receive some kind of tax cut, no matter how small—daily life is still a struggle.

The government have made it no secret that they believe they are the reason for the low interest rates in this country. I would like the government to think about one point: why are Australians now so scared of interest rates? It is because they have stretched themselves so far to afford their mortgages, which are now at record highs. It is because the average person now has more personal debt than ever before. It is because the new IR laws threaten workers’ jobs, lower workers’ wages and terrorise their livelihoods. And it is because ever-increasing petrol prices and child-care costs and a rise in the cost of living keep everyone scared. All these factors combined mean that the average Australian is almost too scared to watch the news every morning for fear of the further hits they will receive at the hands of this government. The government remind us again and again of what a great deed they are doing by offering Australians tax cuts, but what use are these tax cuts to average Australians when it is a daily fight just to keep their heads above water?