Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to contribute to this debate on the budget. This year's budget is a desperate and failing attempt by the government to pull the wool over the eyes of all Australians. After the ongoing debacle of his first disastrous budget, Prime Minister Abbott has added a glossy sheen to this budget. The one and only reason for that is to secure his own job. It only takes one look past the glossy sheen of the sweetener incentives to realise that this budget is no better than the last one. It is short-sighted, it is unfair and it is spending far more money than it is actually saving.

The 2015-16 federal budget shows that the coalition government is spending more than it is saving in every year of the forward estimates, totalling over $9 billion. The alleged budget crisis that those on the other side have banged on about for the last 20 months is nothing but propaganda. This budget has government spending at a hefty 25.9 per cent of GDP. Even at the end of the forward estimates in 2018-19 government spending is expected to remain as high as 25.3 per cent of GDP. In the final full year of the former Labor government, 2012-13, the ratio was 24.1 per cent and the average for the Labor government as a whole was 24.9 per cent of GDP. In no year, including the end of the forward estimates, will the Abbott government spend below the average of the previous Labor government. This makes their claims of a budget emergency laughable. I did laugh earlier on when Senator McGrath claimed that this budget is just the next step in the long-term economic plan for the country. While those on that side might try to promote their alleged superior economic credentials, there is no hiding from the fact that the Abbott government is indeed one of the biggest spending governments of recent times.

While they are spending up big, the government has no qualms about ripping money from health and education across the nation. Despite the Prime Minister's 2013 election promise of no cuts to health, this week's budget saw a further $2 billion ripped from the sector. In just 20 months the man who promised no cuts to health has delivered a reduction of a total of almost $60 billion. This budget is short-sighted, it threatens the future of Australia's health system and it entrenches the fundamental unfairness of the government's first disastrous budget. Rather than contributing to Australia's health system, the Prime Minister is cutting close to $1 billion from programs that fund measures such as preventative health care, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, mental health and other crucial health programs. 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 assault on their core funding. This year's budget has also cut $125 million from the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, $144.6 million from the MBS including halving the amount paid for child health assessments, $69.6 million from Department of Veterans' Affairs dental and allied health payments, $214 million from eHealth and with not a single dollar allocated beyond 2018, $252.2 million from PBS-listed drugs and $72.5 million from health workforce scholarships.

In addition to these new cuts the budget does nothing to reverse the $1.3 billion increase to the price of medicines, the millions of dollars being added to out-of-pocket costs through unfair changes to the Medicare safety nets or the indexation freeze on GP fees that will attack Medicare and will have an even greater impact than the initial proposal for a GP tax. In my home state of South Australia, this year's budget confirms that almost $300 million in cuts to the state's hospitals will come into play. South Australia's federal government hospital funding will be inadequate to meet the demand for hospital services and will inevitably lead to a blow-out in emergency department waiting times and elective surgery waiting times, contributing to poorer health outcomes for Australians. The Abbott government has also gutted Medicare since coming to office and this budget only inflicts further damage. If the government gets its way Medicare will be nothing more than a residual safety net and not the universal health insurance scheme that it was intended to be when it was established by the Whitlam Labor government.

The health sector was not the only victim in the budget this week. Prime Minister Abbott and the Liberal-National coalition have failed Australian students, universities and researchers by recommitting to the unfair and discriminatory plan for $100,000 degrees. The budget confirms the Prime Minister's intention to cut funding for undergraduate student places by 20 per cent, costing universities about $3 billion over the current forward estimates. The budget also slashes $263 million from university research above and beyond the $430 million that was ripped out from research, equity and reward funding last year. Labor senators want to encourage our young people to be the best that they can be and if they choose to further their tertiary studies we would like them to be able to do so. With the government's fee deregulation and $100,000 degrees, students are going to have less opportunity than ever to further their education. My constituents, particularly those living in regional South Australia, overwhelmingly oppose university deregulation and university cuts but this year's budget proves that the Abbott government has not listened and has not learned. Unfortunately the budget also proved that under the Prime Minister's watch students that graduate are increasingly struggling to find any type of full-time employment. Under this government, according to its own figures, one in every three university graduates by 2016-17 will be unable to find full-time work four months after graduating. That is an appalling prospect for a wealthy nation such as Australia.

While I am talking about cuts and the damaging effects of the government's second budget, I cannot go past the impact of the cuts the Abbott government has made to the foreign aid sector. The coalition government has repeatedly cut overseas development aid from its budget since it came to office in 2013, with a $1 billion reduction announced in the overall aid budget late last year. Overseas development aid contributions will be reduced by a further $3.7 billion over the next three years, severing Australia's proven foreign aid programs and reducing our capacity to alleviate poverty and to build prosperity, stability and security in our region. Additionally, the government budget cuts include dropping our aid for sub-Saharan Africa from $186.9 million to $93.9 million and almost halving our Indonesian aid budget, which will lead to damaged relations with our neighbouring country. Mr Abbott's government has inflicted the single biggest cut to aid spending since our overseas development aid program began. With a further $2.7 billion of cuts forecast for the next two years, women and children in particular will continue to suffer. In a year where natural disasters have been so prevalent, I am appalled that the government continues to inflict such cuts on poorer nations in our region.

Closer to home, I was horrified to note that this year's budget entirely fails the fairness test and the future test for Australian women. This year's budget cuts paid parental leave for 80,000 women, childcare support for mums and family payments for families. Significantly, in the fiasco that has been Mr Abbott's paid parental leave scheme, he first ruled it out entirely, then he devised his signature gold-plated plan, only to backflip again to now labelling expectant and new mothers as 'rorters' of the system. This budget will reduce access to paid parental leave from July 2016. It is estimated that this will affect up to 46 per cent of new mothers. So many people in this nation fought so hard to ensure that women had access to paid parental leave from their employer—I acknowledge the work of Senator Bullock's union, the SDA, and of all the trade unions in Australia in the fight for paid parental leave—and now, if the Prime Minister gets his way, women may no longer be able to access the government parental leave scheme. These changes are effectively limiting paid parental leave to 18 weeks for many people. If this government gets its way, 80,000 women will lose up to $11½ thousand from paid parental leave because of the government cuts. What this means in real life, for mothers and their babies, is that those new mums will have less time to spend with their newborn babies at home. That is what this government's new policy is. That is exactly what this Prime Minister has done, in the most extraordinary of political and policy backflips that I have seen.

Rather than prioritising the advancement and empowerment of women in today's society, Mr Abbott and the coalition have reiterated their total disregard for women. This budget has shown that Tony Abbott's interest in addressing gender inequality is directly correlated to its political benefit for him. Australian women deserve better than a self-serving government desperate to save its own skin and a minister for women who is most definitely not desperate to improve or address gender inequality.

In a year where, shockingly, 36 women have been killed in domestic violence incidents already, this year's budget does absolutely nothing to address violence against women. Domestic violence is the leading preventable cause of death for women under 45. The budget has failed to reverse cuts to legal services and community support services that assist women suffering domestic violence and has failed to implement any new initiatives to assist in stemming the growing epidemic that is domestic violence.

I ask: how can this Prime Minister be believed by anyone in this country ever again? He has no shred of credibility when it comes to supporting women, students, pensioners or Australian families. He has not been transparent and he has again broken his promises to Australians. Spending is up, taxes are up, deficits are up and unemployment is up. This is yet another bad budget for Australia and the Prime Minister needs to stop focusing on his own job and start focusing on what is best for the people of Australia.