Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Supply Bill (No. 1) 2016-17, Supply Bill (No. 2) 2016-17 and Supply (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2016-17. At the outset I make clear that the opposition will be supporting these bills; Labor will not block supply. But let us remember that the only reason these bills are necessary is the chaos and dysfunction of the Turnbull government—a government without a plan and without a clue, a government that had the Governor-General prorogue this parliament between elections for the first time in 40 years in order to bring us back here two weeks ago to fulfil its desire to create a trigger for a simultaneous dissolution. Yet instead of using that time to make progress on a range of legislation the government had us sit here for just two days, and now we find ourselves back here having to deal with a large number of bills that the government could easily have brought on two weeks ago. The truth is that when it comes to handling parliamentary business this government is at sea and adrift, and this has been their position in the Senate for the past two years.

But, of all the bills coming into the Senate this week, these supply bills are the greatest sign of a government in panic and a government that has hit the emergency button—not because it is running out of money but because the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, is running out of credibility with the Australian people. An election cannot come soon enough for Mr Turnbull. But to have an election before August this year he has to call a double dissolution. Well, we know he has the trigger he needs—and thanks to the support of the Australian Greens for his Senate voting changes he has the keys in the ignition. However, the timing set down in the Constitution stipulates that the writs cannot be issued less than six months before the expiry of the House, and, as such, as we all know, there is a deadline for Mr Turnbull of Wednesday 11 May.

There was, of course, one big problem: the budget was scheduled to be presented on Tuesday 10 May. Now, of course it is the government that sets the date of the budget. They propose the timing for the parliamentary sittings, and the chambers concur. That is what happened this year. But the unfortunate collision of dates, which has been known for 2½ years, is something that was apparently overlooked when the government proposed a sitting pattern in October of last year. Anyone who thinks this is part of a grand strategy: think again. This parliament would not have passed the appropriation bills in under a day, so here we are, faced with temporary supply bills to ensure the essential functions of government can continue. This package of bills is required to ensure the ordinary functions of government continue in the context of a double dissolution election, and funding is being provided to see the ordinary functions of government through to November, by which time, I hope, we will see a federal Labor government.

At the same time as the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, announced that he would be asking the Governor-General to prorogue parliament, he also announced he would be bringing the date of the budget forward one week from Tuesday, 10 May to Tuesday, 3 May. He made this announcement on Monday, 21 March 2016. We know this because the answer to my question on notice No. 3319 said this was the same day that the Secretary to the Treasury was informed that the budget would be delivered on 3 May; the same day he was told that the budget would be delivered a week earlier. I have been through a budget process a number of times and I know that the Secretary to the Treasury is a pretty integral person to the budget process, so I was most surprised to learn that the Secretary to the Treasury found out on the same day that the Prime Minister announced publicly that the budget would be brought forward a week from 10 May to 3 May 2016.

However, I was even more surprised when I read the second part of the response of the Minister representing the Treasurer to my question on notice. I asked:

(1) On what date, and at what time, was the Secretary to the Treasury first informed that the Budget would be delivered on 3 May 2016 and not 10 May 2016 as originally planned?

(2) Who advised the Secretary to the Treasury?

In response to the second question—that is, who advised the Secretary?—the answer was:

(3) The Secretary was advised through the Prime Minister's public statement on 21 March 2016.

The secretary was advised through the Prime Minister's public statement on 21 March 2016. It is one thing to be out of the loop, as the Treasurer himself was when he went on radio the morning of the announcement and confirmed, contrary to what the Prime Minister said later in the day, that the budget would be delivered on 10 May. He confirmed that just a few minutes before Mr Turnbull walked into the Prime Minister's courtyard and announced it would in fact be a week earlier. What the answer to my question on notice also suggests is that the Secretary to the Treasurer, Mr Fraser, was not even in the loop; there was not a loop to be in. We were told—the media was backgrounded—that this elaborate strategy had been in train for months; that the decision to prorogue parliament and bring the budget forward was a master stroke of Mr Turnbull's genius. But this answer tells us all we need to know: the budget timing was cooked up in the Prime Minister's office when Mr Turnbull, desperate to change the narrative away from his flailing government, made the desperate move to set up a double dissolution trigger that included shifting the budget, without even telling the Treasurer or the Secretary to the Treasury.

I will now return to the contents of the bill. As I mentioned, the continuation of supply in these bills is being provided to see the ordinary functions of government through to November. They provide five-twelfths of the year's appropriation, approximately, for government entities, a standard equation based on the 12 months of the fiscal year. The exceptions to this are the Australian Electoral Commission and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. They have to conduct, obviously, the federal election and the census respectively.

It is important to note that the appropriations in these bills do not contain any 2016-17 budget measures, and I thank the Minister for Finance for that fact and for communicating this to us. As these bills presume the rolling forward of the budget bottom line from this financial year to the next, they also assume the budget bottom line as it currently stands at the 2015-16 MYEFO. The MYEFO includes the impacts of measures which have not passed the parliament but still remain on the books. These include cutting $30 billion from schools, a plan to increase the cost of medicine for everybody by increasing the co-payments as part of the PBS, a plan to have the world's oldest pension age by increasing the pension age to 70, calling parents rorters and double-dippers through changes to the PPL scheme, cutting bulk-billing incentives for diagnostic imaging and pathology services, making young jobseekers wait four weeks before receiving income support, cutting the pension to 190,000 pensioners through the plan to limit overseas travel for pensioners—something that will hit migrant pensioners the hardest—and to not mention the fact that, under this government and under this government alone, the deficit doubled between the 2014 and 2015 budgets and increased again in the 2015-16 Midyear Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

Next financial year, net debt is estimated to be $100 billion higher than it was at the 2013 federal election. Net debt increased from $217.3 billion in the 2013 pre-election fiscal outlook, prepared by Finance and Treasury, to $316.5 billion in the Midyear Economic and Fiscal Outlook presented in 2015-16 for the 2016-17 financial year. Spending today is at the levels it was during the GFC and, under the Minister for Finance, who we must remember has held the portfolio since day 1 of the Abbott government, spending has hit 25.9 per cent of GDP and spending as a percentage of GDP is, on average, higher under the Abbott-Turnbull government than it was under Labor. I will say that again: spending as a percentage of GDP, on average, is higher under this government, the Abbott-Turnbull government, than it was under the Labor government. So, when the government seeks to lecture the Senate about fiscal responsibility, bear in mind that they have presided over a doubling of the deficit, higher spending on average than Labor in government and higher levels of net debt.

The scrutiny of the nation will not be on these bills today. That is because today is budget day, with the appropriation bills to be presented to the parliament later tonight. We already know that this budget will look after high-income earners and big business while costing Australian families more with cuts to schools and hospitals. Mr Turnbull and Mr Morrison have choice in this budget, and we know they will always choose the top end of town over Australian families. Rather than consider Labor's sensible policies, Mr Turnbull is giving a double tax cut to people who earn the most whilst cutting services to every family who relies on schools and hospitals. The Prime Minister would rather provide tax support for property speculators buying their 10th investment property than backing reforms to make housing more affordable. The difference between the Labor Party and the Liberal Party could not be starker. We will put people first. The Liberals will look after high-income earners and the big end of town.

We are dealing with the supply bills to enable essential government services to continue whilst Australians go to the polls. Make no mistake: this election will be a contest between the Labor Party, which puts people first, and the Liberal Party, which will always look to vested interests. The Liberal government has and will increase the cost of everything with its cuts to family payments, cuts to Medicare and cuts to penalty rates. Labor will be supporting the bills because we will not block supply, but the Australian people know that, when it comes to the election, it is only Labor which will stand up for middle- and working-class families and it is only Labor which will put people first.