Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to bring the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2012-2013 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2012-2103 to a close. I thank all senators for their contribution to the debate. These bills seek authority from the parliament for the additional expenditure of moneys from the consolidated revenue fund to meet requirements that have arisen since the last budget. The total additional appropriation being sought through these bills this year is just over $1.27 billion.

I would like to respond to some of the remarks made in the debate on these bills. First in relation to the spending associated with this bill, I note that, notwithstanding the contribution particularly of coalition senators that they want to stop spending, they did not actually indicate on which aspect of these bills they did not agree with expenditure. I refer to the fact, for example, that a significant component of the spend includes additional childcare payments, support for the childcare system program and increased demand for the Jobs, Education and Training Child Care Fee Assistance Program and the family day care program. The bill also appropriates additional moneys for the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations to support increased claims for assistance under the General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme. It also appropriates moneys for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, which I thought the coalition were in fact supporting. This is the difficulty with the coalition's position on this bill and generally: they talk tough about savings, but they never actually tell Australians the truth about what their position is on those.