Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on this day after the disastrous budget this government has brought down. What a budget of deception, continuing the terrible form that we saw from them last year. While promising less tax and fewer taxes they have delivered 17 new taxes. Minister Cormann had the gall to stand up in this place today and bald-facedly say zero. I will mention just two, because I do not want to spend too much time on it

There is a new import tax—cost-recovery for licensing import processing. There is a new citizenship tax—cost-recovery for citizenship and increased visa application charges. Those are just two of the 17 that it seems the Minister for Finance has forgotten he okayed in the new budget. They promised less debt and what they delivered in this budget is $12.5 billion of new debt. They have done so much damage to economic and business confidence since they got into government. They have driven confidence through the floor, they have driven unemployment through the roof and they have managed in one year to double the deficit, from $17 billion to $35 billion, yet they continue to stand there and pretend they are great economic managers.

Senator Canavan says we want to talk about last year's budget. We do, because they want everybody to forget that they have still got those savings that they wanted to bank from last year. One-hundred-thousand-dollar degrees remain in their budget calculations; $57 billion in cuts from last year remain in their budget; $30 billion in cuts to education remain. The budget this year retains the very same stench of unfairness that every Australian detected when the government put their budget out last year as well. It is clear that Mr Abbott has simply not learnt from last year's budget. This is the same style. It oozes unfairness. It operates like this government: on a platform of unfairness and misrepresentation.

With regard to health and the appalling attempt at not answering the question that we saw from the minister today, we are seeing a government that simply does not understand the investment in health that is the right of Australians. Last night, in addition to the $57 billion that they cut out last year, they added another $2 billion. Just last weekend, the health minister was promising Australia that the Abbott government would sink its teeth into dental reform, promising $200 million in spending, but the only thing that we can see in this budget that the minister has sunk her teeth into is Australian kids—stealing $125.6 million out of the next four years from Labor's scheme that provided millions of children with dental care through Medicare. That is what is wrong with this government. Look at the policy that they choose to inflict on the nation. They take to children's dental health and they take $125 million out of it. It is a budget that is short-sighted in so many ways. It threatens the future of Australia's health system and it entrenches the fundamental unfairness of this government's very first disastrous budget.

Close to $1 billion is going to be cut from programs that fund preventative health care, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and mental health and other crucial health programs. Literally thousands of organisations around the country that do vital work, caring for Australia's most at risk and vulnerable people, will be left reeling from this further assault on their core funding. What have they cut overnight that they want to run away from and hide from? I mentioned the $125 million from the Child Dental Benefits Schedule. There is $144.6 million from the MBS. There is the appalling response we had from the Minister for Veterans' Affairs. He did not even seem to know that he had cut $70 million from the Department of Veterans' Affairs dental and allied health payments. There is $214 million from e-health and not a single dollar is allocated beyond 2018. There is a bit of a pattern. This government seems to have funded a few things for two years. The science that underpins the policymaking that leads to preventative health does not end in two years. Programs that deserve funding should be funded into the long term. They have cut $252 million from PBS listed drugs. They have cut $72.5 million from health workforce scholarships, wrecking the very fabric of prevention and good health. This Abbott government has gutted Medicare since coming to office. The budget that we saw last night inflicts further damage. The GP tax, no matter what they say, remains. It is just thinly veiled in a freeze on indexation. As every day passes, the people of Australia are seeing more and more. This government cannot be trusted and they have slashed the opportunities for Australia with this budget. (Time expired)