Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator Moore, I move:

That the order of business for consideration today be as follows:

(a) general business notice of motion no.241 standing in the name of Senator Moore relating to the 2014-15 Budget; and

(b) orders of the day relating to government documents

Question agreed to.

I know you do not want me to speak on this. I can understand why, too. I rise in support of this motion by Senator Moore. It is a very good motion. The government has delivered a budget of broken promises and twisted priorities. The facts are as plain as day. The states know it. The public know it. The government backbenchers know it. I even think that the cabinet ministers know it, and the Treasurer certainly knows it.

The extraordinary transformation of the Prime Minister from conviction politician to hollow man is now complete. You really only have to go as far as today to see that. Today their spokesman on economic affairs, their spokesman on the budget, the guy who smokes the big cigar—not a question. Instead, we got industrial relations from Senator Abetz—I do not blame Senator Abetz for this. I think that they are running away from their own budget. Quite frankly, I do not blame you from running away from your own budget, because it is a shocker.

Budgets are about choices and priorities. They show you the character of the government and tell you volumes about the people they care about and the people they do not. The budget handed out on Tuesday is heartless. It is economically irrational and it is not the budget of a responsible government. It is not even the budget this government promised before the election.

The budget delivers more money to well-off Australians and hits up lower- and middle-income families to foot the bill. For a government that promised to tackle costs of living, they have only worked to increase pressures on Australian families through a new GP tax and jacking up the price of petrol at the bowser.

It is a budget of broken promises. Let us look at the scoreboard: they said no cuts to health and no cuts to education—broken. The budget cuts $80 billion from schools and hospitals, and just listen to the state premiers yelling about this. 'No new taxes and tax cuts, not tax increases' was the their mantra before the election—broken. The budget will do both—targeting lower- and middle-income families—and Mr Joe Hockey has admitted this himself. If anyone wants to check on that, watch the 7.30 Report.

They said no change to pensions—smashed, broken. The budget has cuts to pensions and changes to make Australians work longer. They said no increases to university fees—broken. The budget delivers higher university fees for students and their families.

The budget is simply bad economics. You can see that in the commentary from the economists themselves. Replacing efficient taxes such as the rent tax, the minerals rent resources tax and carbon tax with inefficient taxes is bad economics.

Reserve Bank governors can be subtle over time, but I think Governor Stevens was being very blunt in his last report on the economy when he listed subdued public spending as a risk to the economy. This is political language but it was a stark warning to this government to be careful. He sent a warning straight to the government about the damage they would do to the economy with misplaced austerity measures. Cuts to direct spending like the cuts to schools and health take money directly out of the economy. These schools and hospitals buy goods and services and, if you reduce the money going to education and health, then you will damage this economy. That is why the states are yelling so loudly. They know how the impacts will be fed through into their state systems.

This is not just an attack on schools and hospitals though; it attacks the whole economy. The cuts to pensioners, students and Newstart recipients are again misplaced. These groups spend most of their essential money on goods and services. Most of this money goes straight into the economy, straight to shopkeepers, small businesses. Taking from those who can least afford it, it will not then go back into economy through small business. So it is not an attack just simply on pensioners; again, it is an attack against the whole economy.

You wonder how much this government dislikes pensioners, students, health and hospitals. But, again, they also were once champions, they said, of small business but they will rip small business apart because, where people spend in small business, it will not follow through in this economy.

In a similar way, the cuts to family benefits take money away from families—at the highest, the costs of shoes and clothing for kids. Again, for small businesses, the most affected are those from whom the money has disappeared but, where they then spend it will also have a downstream impact on people you once upon time called your own.

It is not just simply an attack on families though. As I have said, you are attacking the whole economy. The GP payment again is a cruel and twisted priority. A $7 payment may not seem a lot to members in this place but it hurts those who are most vulnerable. A $7 charge does not hurt the healthy; it hurts those with chronic health issues, those on low incomes and those people who work on hourly wages. These groups already pay dearly for medical care. Even if they can find a bulk-billing doctor, they bear the costs of taking time off work, the costs of transport and of the little hidden costs that add up associated with visiting a doctor. This government wants to whack them with another $7.

A RAND Corporation report showed that the result of cost sharing reduced the number of 'medically effective' visits to the doctor, and of course the most worrying statistics in this is that the decrease was especially true for children. The government is also cutting $338 million from preventative health, and $3 million will be cut from the anti-smoking campaigns. This government is also abolishing the National Preventive Health Agency.

In using this example of how short-sighted this government is, any budget savings from these health measures will be short-term That is typical of the short-sighted mess that this budget is. The long-term effects are more expensive. Care for chronic diseases and serious suffering of all Australians is where the long-term impact will hurt the economy even more. But, most importantly, it will hurt those people with those chronic diseases and those people suffering because they will be dissuaded from going to the doctor early and those opportunities to utilise preventative health will have been taken away. This government increases health care costs down the track. What they have done is deferred health care costs by trying to be smart and take away essential work in preventative health. It does not work, will not work and it is short-sighted.

I would welcome increased spending on medical research, but it should not come at the expense of the most vulnerable in our community. Medical research is not an issue to be traded for health access for the most vulnerable. Mr Abbott wants to tax the sick through the GP tax to pay for the fund. But look at what this government has already done in this area. In MYEFO they ripped $74.9 million from the Australian Research Council. They took money from the independent body that determines what research is best for Australia to pursue and what will get the best outcomes.

The Treasurer said yesterday, 'We need well-funded universities that are attracting the best in the world.' I agree with that. It is probably the only thing I agree with in the Treasurer statement. But Mr Hockey is undermining the ability of Australian universities to attract the best and brightest. How? Future Fellowships, started under Labor, attracts and retains the best and brightest midcareer researchers. This fellowship has been continued, which is a positive development, but they have changed it. They have sneakily change the eligibility so no bright foreign researchers can be attracted to Australia with the scheme. The Treasurer expressed an aspiration to have one Australian university in the top 20 in the world. But can I remind the Treasurer that he doesn't have to be parochial about it. You don't have to be parochial to attract the best and brightest.

We are now approaching the centenary of our first Nobel Prize winners, William Henry and William Lawrence Bragg. William Bragg was British and was attracted to Adelaide to be a professor and researcher. The work was crucial to understanding X-ray crystallography, an essential tool in the biology and physics of today. We were not being parochial when we attracted the William Henry Bragg to Adelaide. Imagine today. He would be turned away on the doorstep. He would not get a fellowship. The list goes on for our Nobel Prize winners: Bernard Katz, born in Germany; Brian Schmidt, born in America. I don't think we can afford to be parochial. Science doesn't have borders. Science stretches out across the world. What we have got is a narrow-minded, parochial government in place. The Medical Research Future Fund will be administered in the same way the Future Fund is managed. That is the claim. Quite frankly, I hope they heed the lessons of the Future Fund and clean up their high internal spending, including thousands and thousands of dollars on a Christmas party at a Melbourne to burlesque bar. I would hope they would not follow down that track.

Turning to other parts of how this budget has missed the mark, running through this budget are outdated ideas. It seems to suggest that the states should be set adrift. I thought we were a federation. When my home state of Queensland was hit by successive floods and cyclones, including Cyclone Yasi, in the summer of natural disasters in 2011, the Labor federal government did not throw its hands up and cast Queensland adrift. What it did to was look at how it could assist Queensland. We didn't do what education minister Christopher Pyne did last night and attack the Queensland government for not being adult enough. We recognised that we are a nation and that we have to work in partnership with state governments to deliver outcomes for all Australians. Floods and cyclones do not see state borders. Recovering and rebuilding is a shared responsibility and one that Labor happily took on in office. The then federal government invested over $8 billion in rebuilding Queensland after 2011. It has been money well and wisely spent. Labor put in place unprecedented checks and balances on the expenditure of federal taxpayer funds in the reconstruction effort. We created the first ever Australian Government Reconstruction Inspectorate to apply a value-for-money test for rebuilding projects. Chaired by former New South Wales Liberal Premier and federal finance minister Mr John Fahey, the inspectorate has been working to extract value for money. I would ask senators to have a look at the report by the Reconstruction Inspectorate, where Mr Fahey writes in his letter to the now Prime Minister, Mr Abbott:

Processes developed by the Commonwealth and Queensland governments have resulted in $1.7 billion of ineligible costs or withdrawn claims being excluded from reconstruction projects to date.

The inspectorate have saved the Commonwealth about $1.7 billion in what would have been wasted funds. That is good, diligent and careful work by the inspectorate. I congratulate them on the work that they have been tasked to do and have performed well.

Queensland has been no stranger to flooding since 2011. As many senators would know, the floods of 2013 hit South-East Queensland badly. Since January this year there have been an additional seven new natural disasters declared in Queensland alone. These new events will come with another need to fund the response under the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements. This is on top of the $4.8 billion still to be spent on the natural disasters. The budget papers show this is flowing through from 2015-16, because it does take time for repairs to be effected and for the money to be spent.

So it is disappointing to see the funding for the Reconstruction Inspectorate runs out in July next year, a full year before funding is due to be completed. This is assuming that the funding rolls out on time and no new natural disasters occur that will draw on Commonwealth funds. It seems a mismatch, quite a foolish prediction to have made. The inspectorate is driving value for money, yet this government is going to let it lapse and fall into disuse. On one hand, the inspectorate has continued to work diligently to save the Commonwealth money. But this government, showing the twisted priorities of Mr Tony Abbott's budget, is going to cut it out. Where it saves money, it is going to remove it.

This comes on top of the Abbott government's broken promises to regional Australia. Only two weeks before the budget, Mr Warren Truss said, 'To ignore regional Australia's need for investment and growth is to turn our backs on the opportunities for the future.' Two weeks later, and the Abbott government has savaged local government by ripping $1 billion in funding from local government. By cutting into the financial assistance grants local governments rely on, the consequences are that there will be less money for roads and for services. It is a cruel hoax that Mr Warren Truss has played on regional Australia, and particularly on local councils. At the same time, the Commonwealth costs will increase by scrapping the Reconstruction Inspectorate—dumb move, can I say.

The government is cutting support to lower the cost-of-living pressures on households. Labor knows the acute pressures on households in flood-prone areas. They find it tough to get good insurance to cover them. In government, led by Mr Bill Shorten, we developed a standard definition of 'flood'. We rolled out a key fact sheet, a one-page plain English document for consumers, and a flood data portal. Crucially, we also established the first ever National Insurance Affordability Initiative, initially funded for up to $100 million. This was to invest in flood mitigation projects that would put downward pressure on insurance premiums, helping households with their cost of living. Mitigation works to reduce insurance premiums. Average insurance premiums in Roma at the time when we implemented the system nearby were about $3,000. At Charleville, which has a flood levee now, the premiums are about one third of that amount because we acted to ensure that we could work with local government, drive down the cost of insurance and build levees to prevent flooding. In this budget, though, $83 million has been cut from flood mitigation projects, including the entirety of the offer to New South Wales—again, pretty dumb politics by this government.

They are cutting money. They could have saved money. They could relieve some of the burden on households, but instead they drive the costs up. They let insurance premiums continue to rise where they could have used $83 million to drive insurance prices down to truly help householders. There are plenty of worthwhile projects ready to go. These include Rockhampton and initial projects in Ipswich and Goodna in my home state. I have no doubt there are some in New South Wales. There is now no new money allocated to Western Sydney. Shame on this government. Where they do have an opportunity, they miss it. The government's twisted priorities have meant that, instead of investing money that would help residents in those areas with the cost of living, there is now no relief for those high insurance claims. This is a government that is missing the point when it comes to how you help those people. You can actually do both. You can save money and help people. You can save money by investing in flood mitigation. You can save money by driving down insurance costs for households. (Time expired)