Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to provide a contribution to this matter of public importance. Senator Joyce, as you leave the chamber, I am not sure if that was a speech on the budget or a pre-selection speech: 'Why you should vote for me to contest the House of Representatives seats.' But, based on that performance, I think Tony Windsor will outstrip your knowledge of the economy any day.

I have great pleasure, actually, in standing up and speaking about last night's budget. That is particularly true if you come from the Northern Territory and you have had Indigenous people at the heart of your constituency—but I will get to that in a few minutes. We know, of course, the theme of budget this year—and you have heard Wayne Swan say it over and over again—is about a smarter, stronger and fairer future. This is a budget that puts jobs and growth front and centre, but it is more than that. It is much more than that. It not only sets out a pathway to the surplus. I think I saw the Prime Minister say today, in a transcript: 'Let's be honest about this; we were planning to have a surplus this year.' But some of the honesty that we have accepted, and some of the reality that the coalition will not accept, is that the income and the revenue we were expecting were not there.

What this budget does is make smart investments for our future—investments that Labor governments make. We will always act responsibly. We always prioritise jobs and the economy, but we are also known as a party that has put in place some of the great social infrastructure and stepping stones of our time. So let us have a look at what we have achieved. We have got a budget based on targeted and responsible decisions, made in line, as I said, with our Labor values. We have a clear choice in this budget between protecting jobs and making smart investments for the future or just taking an axe to the economy, making savage cuts to basic services, which is what those opposite in the coalition would want to do, and returning the budget to surplus a little faster. We have decided to do the former and not the latter. This budget is about ensuring that we do create a fairer and more prosperous Australia for our future, for our kids. In painting the picture of how we arrived at where we were last night, let us have a look at our record.

Going back to the global financial crisis, we did get the big calls right to support jobs and growth. I have travelled overseas many times since the global financial crisis, and this country is certainly doing far better than any other. Senator Joyce mentioned Mr Chaney's reference to Ireland. I was in Ireland last year, and the one thing that people kept saying to me was, 'How is it that you notch up 21 consecutive years of growth and consecutive years of growth in Australia since the global financial crisis?' Why is it that there are so many young people in Ireland who are floundering to get a job, so they are coming out to Australia to do six or 12 months work? If you want to make reference to Ireland, have a look at what is really happening. People are turning to and looking at our economy and at our unemployment rate and our jobs growth rate and the way we support jobs through our economy. They are travelling out here to provide themselves with that opportunity—an opportunity they do not get back in Ireland.

We have an economy that is 13 per cent larger and an unemployment rate of 5.6 per cent. A 5.6 per cent unemployment rate would be the envy of many countries around this world. We have got solid growth and we have contained inflation; in fact, only a few days ago we saw interest rates drop once again. Since coming to office we have created 90,000 jobs. We have got a gold-plated AAA rating. So those opposite cannot stand here and lecture us about the economy and about what we have and have not done. If you look at our track record, you will see how well we have handled the economy since 2008. We have had a Treasurer who has been recognised around the world as being one of the best and finest to handle the books during the global financial crisis, and he continues to do so.

I want to talk about the signature pieces in this budget—building on Medicare, building on superannuation and building on the fact that we floated the dollar. Now we have got two more signature pieces that we can put the Labor brand to, including disability—anyone, anytime. How are we going to pay for that? By attaching it to the Medicare levy. I personally think it is a great long-term, sustainable way to go. I could walk out of here tonight and—God forbid—be struck by a car and need to rely on this scheme myself. You never know what is going to happen to you. I hear that so often from people I meet who have a disability—people who are not necessarily born with a disability but who have attained a disability through a workplace accident or a car accident, and they have got nowhere to go. My grandfather was struck by a truck in Bega four decades ago. It turned his life around, simply because he struggled to pay for the outcomes of his disability.

I want to commend the coalition for coming on board. I want to commend the Northern Territory government for signing up to the trial site in the Barkly region and for signing up to the NDIS last Saturday so that 7,000 Territorians can now benefit from it. How can you back away from this in the budget? How can you not support such a massive social infrastructure reform in this country?

It is the same with schools, under the National Plan for School Improvement. The massive increase that will be given to schools through the Gonski reforms will have untold benefits for each and every child in every classroom around this country and for every teacher and every specialist. Every outcome that we want to see improved will be improved because we are going to invest in education. I am disappointed to see the Northern Territory government not coming on board with that. Peter Chandler, the new Northern Territory Minister for Education, can see the reality and the benefits of Gonski, but we have a chief minister who wants to put a spanner in the works and halt those negotiations. I am hoping that we will continue to press with them the urgency of signing up to Gonski.

The budget contains $70 million for the Palmerston hospital and we had offered the Northern Territory government about $38 million for the new children's wing, to refurbish the paediatric ward at RDH. Both of those moneys are conditional, of course, on the Northern Territory government putting forward some of their own contribution. Yesterday, in handing down their budget, the Northern Territory government said no to both of those things. Go figure that. Go figure why you would not want to put money towards a new Palmerston hospital that would service more than 40,000 people, why you would not come to the party with $40 million to match our $70 million to get that hospital up and running. They have decided to waste $5 million on doing another scoping study. There is already a scoping study. It is in somebody’s filing cabinet in the Northern Territory. It was done by the previous Labor government. That is how we came up with the plan to build a hospital in the first place. There was a scoping study; it has been done. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. People, particularly Territorians, are sick of governments reinventing the wheel and writing reports for the sake of reports, having consultancies for the sake of consultancies. The work has been done. I am bitterly disappointed that the Northern Territory government did not make a commitment of $40 million yesterday to get that hospital up and running. In this budget we see $1.6 billion in funding towards improved health, education and other essential services, welfare reform, recognition and advocacy for Indigenous people and a big boost to their Indigenous languages and arts. Of course, this is part of our $3.4 billion package for the Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory.

This is a 10-year funding commitment. The $1.6 billion is part of that commitment. This is finally us as a government saying, 'We are not going to dribble out money to you every year or every three years. We are actually going to give you 10 years of guaranteed certainty so you can employ Indigenous people, train Indigenous people, write your strategic plan, implement it, review it and in fact have time to write another one.' This is a great budget for people in the Northern Territory, particularly if you are Indigenous. This is the budget that finally puts in place our commitment to a ten-year plan for your stronger future to ensure that we do actually match what we want to do with the rhetoric. This is now the money for you to start closing the gap and to put in place those programs, those employment outcomes, those job opportunities so that Indigenous people can finally relax and say—(Time expired)