Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think they are sitting on the government benches. It is worth making the point that this is about families and I will repeat the motion, which I think was a good move by Senator Fifield, to make the point. Our concern here is about:

The Gillard government's decision in this Budget to be tough on Australian families, rather than tough on itself with a new assault on families that are already struggling under cost of living pressures.

I must admit I found the whole effort of the Treasurer last night quite bemusing. He is happily admitting that we have a patchwork economy that is growing unevenly across the nation, and then he uses the current Labor mantra for why this would happen. Thank God in some ways, the Labor government must be saying, for the natural disasters that have affected my home state of Queensland and many other parts of Australia because it has allowed them to continue to mask the fact that the only thing that is prospering in this country right now is the mining industry and businesses associated with it. We do indeed have a patchwork economy. And perhaps the government might like to think a little bit about that and about how they might do something about it because this budget certainly is not the way of doing it.

Let us look at families and some of the budget measures that have come up. Families include people with mental health problems, they include people with disabilities, they include teenage mothers and their children, they include the vulnerable people who have been affected by floods and cyclones and other natural disasters, they affect fathers who are planning for paid parental leave, they affect people who own small businesses, and yet none of these areas have been helped in any way by the Labor government's budget and by the smoke and mirrors in it.

Let us start with mental health and the much-trumpeted $2.2 billion, shall we? There appears to be about $500 million of new spending in that. The rest of it has already been announced. It follows on very much from the pattern and the policy announced three weeks ago by the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, and our shadow minister for mental health, Senator Fierravanti-Wells. I might also make the point, perhaps for Senator Polley's edification, that when the current Leader of the Opposition was the minister for health Australia had a record national spend on mental health, the establishment of most of the policies that underpin the work that is going on in that area.

Let us look at that. Mental health, an extra $500 million or so over four years, and a desperate need. It is a good start, but it is just a bit of a start. Let us look too at the need to get disability support pensioners into work. Great idea, good idea, should be done. However, how are we proposing they get to work? I have received email after email in the past month, since these moves were mooted, saying, 'I'd love to work, but I can't get the care package I need to get someone to come here, give me a shower, get me dressed and give me breakfast in time to turn up to work at the starting time every day.' So we have the much-vaunted national disability insurance scheme, which of course is not even mentioned here because it is not even going to start in this forward estimates period. We already have the criticism of the current scheme saying it is underfunded, inequitable, it is not even a support scheme; it is just something that has been cobbled together. Yes, let us get disability support pensioners out to work, but let us put the supports in place that would give them the chance to take jobs by providing someone to assist them to get ready for work in a timely fashion. Let us put all of those support services out on the never-never, then whose fault will it be when this fails? It is yet another implementation problem that this government has.

We need to also look at the wonderful $200 million package for early intervention services. Now in the disability area, special education area, I think people are grateful for all of the crumbs they get. People are grateful for this, but $200 million over three years divided by 165,000 students—you come down to about $400 a year per student. This is to provide necessary early inter­ventions and specialist therapies. Has anyone tried to employ a speech pathologist recently? You will pay well over $100 or $150 for an hour's session. So $400 a year per student. It is a start, but it is just a start. It is not something that is going to assist families in any meaningful way. Let us look at the teenage mothers, shall we. I was most amused to hear an apologist for the Labor government on radio recently suggest that, if teenage mothers had problems getting child care locally so they could go to work, as this government wants them to, they could just drive to another childcare centre about 10 minutes away. We are talking about teenage mothers who own cars and who are going to drive to childcare centres? Yes, we are. Again, this government does not have a clue about the reality out there. I do not know many 16- or 17-year-old mothers who drive their own cars.

I said in my newsletter a little while ago that I am expecting a series of poorly thought through plans to take money from middle-income groups so that the government could then ineptly squander it somewhere in the vicinity of people in need. But I did get that wrong because it is not even being squandered ineptly in the area of people in need—it has not even been brought within the vicinity of the people who need it. Once again, we have ideological plans that have no chance of being able to be implemented because the government does not understand their audience and does not understand the practical needs of people.

We will have increases in the costs of petrol, electricity, groceries, health costs and mortgage costs brought on by the flood levy, the carbon tax and the mining tax. It will go on and on, yet this government is attempting to say that it is helping families. It is a nonsense.