Joe Bullock (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have not had the opportunity to come fully to terms with all of the details contained in last night's budget, but at first glance it seems that Treasurer Hockey's second budget is on the up and up—spending up, deficit up, debt up. The government has given up. And, for them, the game is up. The bad news is that the budgetary position which Labor will inherit after the next election will be far worse than that bequeathed to the Liberals. While the deficit which this government confronted upon attaining office was the legacy of the heroic efforts of Wayne Swan in saving this country from the ravages of the global financial crisis, the deficit which we will inherit will simply be a tribute to this government's ineptitude and its lack of vision for Australia's future.

The most telling commentary on this budget is the cartoon in today's Australian of the artist Joe Hockey standing in front of a blank canvas entitled 'Reform'. In this budget, reform is missing. Policy is missing. But, remarkably, also missing is the debt and deficit disaster about which those opposite have been moaning non-stop since I arrived here. Magically, as the spending debt and deficit of this government rises and rises under its watch, talk of a deficit problem has disappeared. It would be no surprise if the next thing to disappear was our AAA credit rating—another gift of Labor to this government.

Today, all the talk is about trajectory. All I can see is a trajectory under this government leading straight downhill. This is a budget that is devoid of a vision and will take Australia nowhere. John Daley of the Grattan Institute is quoted as saying that 'This is a budget that relies on a drift back to surplus', relying on the economy growing as rosily as it predicts. The only credible path charted by this budget is a credible path for higher taxes, with the income tax bill on working people set to rise by 33 per cent between now and 2018-19. Income tax receipts will rise by seven per cent per annum over a period during which wages are forecast to rise by 2½ to three per cent per annum. This burden of higher taxes will particularly be felt by the 1.3 million workers earning between $30,000 and $37,000 a year, who will see their marginal tax rate jump by 14 per cent. These are my people: young full-time job assistants and senior part-timers; people with little money to spare who will be forced by bracket creep to do more than their fair share of heavy lifting to rescue the government from deficit. Once again, this government is placing the burden of budget repair on those who can least afford it. While their fundamental unfair bias remains unaltered, instead of a full frontal attack this year's budget mounts a more insidious attack by stealth, creeping deeper into the pockets of working people.

If the government has bet its future on an income tax led recovery, it needs to factor in more income earners. Predictably, the budget conjures up increased employment. Unemployment is forecast to fall from 6½ to 5¾ per cent. Frankly, I think this number was inserted simply to make the tax receipt numbers stack up rather than being based on any realistic assessment of the economy's capacity to grow employment. Significant employment growth from a government with no plan for jobs is baseless optimism. This is a government which destroyed our motor vehicle industry, a government with no plan for manufacturing, a government which cheers on attempts to reduce penalty rates and working conditions, a government in which the electorate can have no confidence when it comes to job creation. Their plan, such as it is, is to implement a small tax cut for small business, stand back, cross their fingers and hope. This may be a plan but it is only a plan to win the votes of small business people in what will prove to be a vain attempt to hold onto government.

Mr Deputy President, time is against me. I wanted to speak about the counterproductive disincentives to employers contributing to paid parental leave built into the government's long awaited but poorly executed paid parental leave plan. Instead, I will finish by referring to the fine assessment by my friend Senator Canavan of the government's linking of childcare funding to cuts to the family tax benefit. Senator Canavan said:

The system we are proposing massively penalises families where a parent stays home to look after children and we think it does not properly value the benefits of unpaid work.

I could not have said it better myself. A government that values people only in terms of their capacity to contribute through paid employment and cannot appreciate the value of the family— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.