Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think this is actually a very welcome debate for this chamber to have. Sometimes in this chamber we get caught up in an individual piece of legislation or the impact of an individual measure. We should do this as we scrutinise legislation, but sometimes we need to take a step back and ask: 'What is the discussion here about?' The question is fundamentally about the kind of Australia we want to be. What kind of a society do we want to be? What are the responsibilities different people have within that society?

Yes, there are issues relating to Australia's budget that need to be addressed. Do those issues amount to a budget emergency? No. Are they manageable? Yes. Do we have to look at spending and saving measures to address them? Of course. As it moves away from an expansionary phase—which we were in post-GFC to stimulate the economy— any prudent government should be looking at measures as the economy starts moving out of that phase to start reducing spending. No-one is objecting to that in principle, and in fact it is welcomed. The questions are: who is paying for it and how are they paying for it? Ultimately, that comes down to a set of priorities and a set of values.

There is a fundamental challenge at the heart of the Australian condition. Yes, on every socio-economic indicator we are getting wealthier—people are living longer, everyone's income scale is improving. If you look at every graph and study, you know that we are in the top two or three countries in the world in which to live. That is a good thing, but it does not tell the story of how much pressure everyone is under—and every family is under. Everyone is under an incredible amount of pressure—social pressure, financial pressure and time pressures. When you look at a budget and at these kinds of measures, you need to ask yourself the question: what can we be doing as a government, a parliament and a society to ease some of the pressures that people are under? What is our role?

There is a real debate we need to have around the issue of the quality of life and what the government of Australia can do and should be doing about the quality-of-life challenges people are facing. The reason I fundamentally disagree with huge elements of this bill is that it buys into the idea that we are going to be balancing the budget on the backs of people who are already doing it really tough. I do not object to the principle that something needs to happen from time to time, but you have to ask yourself about priorities. I cannot accept that we as a society and a nation should be looking to balance the budget on the backs of those who rely on welfare, who rely on the state or society and who are doing it so tough, while at the same time it is somehow appropriate for us to be looking at a paid parental leave scheme that is far too generous and geared towards some of the wealthiest in our society. The two measures are irreconcilable.

That is fundamentally the issue I have. It comes down to what the government says it wants its priorities to be. The priorities it is outlining in this legislation are the wrong priorities. Today the Financial Review has a front page story that claims that the Treasurer is walking away from a whole series of budget measures because of the lack of support in this chamber—that the government is looking at not introducing them and looking at doing a mini-budget of sorts as part of the MYEFO process later in the year. I hope that is true. I know the Treasurer went on the radio this morning to say it was unequivocally not true—that it was a lie and that he was proud of his budget.

The reason people on this side of the chamber do not support these measures is that they are bad. It is a bad measure to put a $7 tax on someone who goes to see a doctor. It is a bad measure to say, 'I am going to be pricing a generation of young people out of higher education.' It is a bad measure to be trying to introduce a bill like this on those who have the lowest income and are doing it so tough. It is a bad measure when you turn around and tell young people under 30 they have to wait six months to get welfare, when we know that youth unemployment is not only in double digits across the country but in particular regions well over 20 per cent.

These are bad budget measures. The Treasurer on radio this morning kept talking about how proud he was of them—how they were good measures and it was tough medicine. A notion has developed that the tougher, crueller, harsher, harder we are, the stronger the resolve of the government is. I say this to the Treasurer: 'If you are so proud of these budget measures, of these bills and of what you have proposed to the Australian people as part of your budget, then bring it on.' Bring the bills into this chamber, let us have the debate and let us see where the Australian public are going to line up, because they are not going to support you. I am bothered by the conflation between two separate arguments: one argument says we need to do something about fiscal discipline and the other says we need to do something about the budget emergency. Again, yes, we should be looking at measures that stop waste and mismanagement and we should always be looking at opportunities for trimming elements of government. We should always try to put ourselves in a sustainable position, but this is not the way to do it. It is not the way to do it, as Senator Polley said, on the backs of hard-working, struggling Australians. That is the easy way out. It is the easy way out to say, 'we are going to tackle those on welfare, and yet we are going to let some of the biggest, most powerful companies in Australia get away with a tax regime that has allowed them, internationally, to be able to run away from that regime'. Now—suddenly—the Treasurer has become a convert to the whole issue of multinational tax avoidance—when a couple of years ago he was actually voting against every proposal that was brought into the other place!

We have to ask ourselves: what kind of a society do we want to be? Who is it that we are responsible to? Surely, as a wealthy, middle-income nation, we can afford to make sure that those who are doing it tough and those who are struggling—those who rely on things like social security—are not the ones who are going to be paying for it. We need to make sure that we are not going to be a society that says yes to a Paid Parental Leave scheme which is unaffordable and which is skewed towards the wealthiest; that we are not going to be a society that turns its back for far too long on tax avoidance; that we are not going to be a society that says we will not look at things—like in super and in other areas—where we can actually consider raising revenue; and that we are not going to turn around and say: 'We are going to be a society that will achieve those kinds of economic objectives'—which are, in part, valid but have been exaggerated and blown out of proportion—'to achieve an ideological agenda, and we are going to achieve those objectives on the backs of some of those people that are really struggling.'

It comes down to this issue about the cost of living. I think, sometimes, people have misunderstood what the debate means. I believe that cost of living is one of the three key components to the big issue, which is quality of life. People are under cost-of-living pressures, they are under time pressures, and they are under social pressures. Cost of living is certainly a very large, if not the largest, component of that. But there is more to it, for us as a society. Acting Deputy President, I think you will find that the Australian public—the Australian people—want a welfare system that they can rely on. They want a safety net. They want measures out there which protect those who are on low incomes, and which protect those who are struggling. Part of what makes this country great—part of what makes us so proud to be part of this nation—is the fact that we have a society that will look out for those who are struggling. We have a society that will be there for those who are doing it tough. And part of that has been built around the welfare safety net. What worries me is that in all of these measures there is a fundamental attack on what it means to be Australian. There is a fundamental attack on the principles which underpin our social safety net—and that is what concerns me. That is what bothers me. It is about stating your priorities.

We have had the debate before, and we will have it again, about a government of broken promises; about a government who said before the election that there were not going to be cuts in areas like health and education; to the ABC and SBS—