Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is hard to know where to start. Let me begin by refuting this rubbish from across the chamber about the budget crisis. Everything they have done, every bad decision they have made has been constructed around this falsehood that there is some kind of budget crisis. There is not. We have debt that we can manage, and we have debt that we can manage because we created a stimulus package to make sure jobs were not lost during the global financial crisis. What the Liberal Party and the coalition government cannot cope with is that we were enormously successful in achieving our goals and now we find ourselves in here being lectured to by people peddling misinformation about the state of the budget.

On the back of that, they have constructed a budget which cuts the heart out of so many things that Australians value, so many things that Australians understand form part of what it is to live in a society that is both civil and fair. One of the things that is civil and fair about Australian society is that we value the work of our public servants in general terms, and yet what they are getting from this government is a blanket cut to a basic wage increase that covers their cost-of-living expenses—the CPI. What we know from this government, and I would like to refer to a statement put out by my colleagues, is that the Prime Minister stated in parliament last week:

I can assure members opposite that no-one in the public sector will be getting a better deal than our Defence Force personnel …

What that tells me is this government are prepared to do a despicable thing, such as withholding budgeted wage increases for our ADF, so that they can justify holding back, unfairly, Commonwealth public servants' wage increases. There is a pattern of behaviour here, and it is appalling. I know, as its representative, that the ACT probably has the highest ratio of both Defence Force personnel and Commonwealth public servants. And I know that these people were both outraged and shattered, if they were in fact Liberal Party supporters, because they did not expect such appalling treatment from the party that they voted for.

In relation to the Defence Force wage increase, we heard today that Minister Johnston is going to pursue the activities in relation to his junior minister, who was apparently incredibly dismissive and rude to the petitioners who went to him to express their outrage regarding the Defence Force wage cut. I am pleased to hear the minister is going to pursue this—or at least he said he would—and provide some kind of retribution for the petitioners who basically came out of that meeting and said about the government, and I quoted this during question time, that it was 'arrogant, ill-informed and self-centred'. This is not language used very often by petitioners trying to lobby a government or advocate for a certain point of view. It is an extremely harsh criticism, but I think it is a fair criticism, of a government that has lost its way.

Today, we have seen a long list of things that the defence minister and the Abbott government need to address. The Defence Force pay issue is a critical one. I do not believe that concessions delivered in relation to the Christmas allowances go far enough in any way to resolve the complaint of the Defence Force. Everybody needs to have a living wage. As I have said in this place previously, to attack our Defence Force personnel in the way that they have with this unfair wage cut, despite a previously budgeted full wage increase, is one of the most disappointing and disturbing features of this government's decision-making to date.

Finally, I would like to draw people's attention to the fact that there is an obvious link, which has now been put into the public domain by the government, with the Commonwealth Public Service wage claims. I know the CPSU is locked into processes and disputes to pursue its members' interests, and I wish it all the best with that. We have suffered long and hard under a coalition government here in the ACT. I have strong memories— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.