Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition will not be supporting the suspension of standing orders. We acknowledge that the budget is an important document and should allow, through the procedures of the Senate, for appropriate debate and discussion, but I agree with the Leader of the Government—this morning is not the appropriate time for that debate. The budget was handed down last night. The Leader of the Opposition will make a formal reply on Thursday evening, as is established practice across the parliament. There are also a variety of ways by which members and senators can raise concerns about the budget, debate the budget and draw attention to particular elements of the budget that they may be concerned about. Those are well known—question time, the MPI and senators' statements. In the next couple of weeks we will have estimates, which will allow a thorough examination of the budget, and then we will have the debate on the bills when they come for debate as well.

So there are many ways that we will debate the key issues in the budget, and Labor will certainly be engaging in that very vigorously. There are concerns that we have raised overnight about the tax cuts for millionaires whilst having a tax hike for every working Australian. We are concerned that those who can afford to contribute are getting a tax break, while those who are doing it pretty tough—I think we have all acknowledged that—are having to pay more. So there are really big, national debates that we need to be talking about through this budget. We know that there are hidden nasties in this budget that may not have formed part of the Treasurer's speech last night but will be examined closely over the next few days, including keeping the pension age at 70, new cuts to family payments and to veterans health and the abolition of the energy supplement. At the same time the government is trying to say that pensioners are getting a better deal through a one-off payment, but not saying that they are actually going to lose substantial amounts—four times as much—through the abolition of the energy supplement.

So there are very specific details of this budget which we need to go through and examine closely, but I am not entirely clear why the Greens have chosen this mechanism today, when we have a full program in front of us. We have already had a truncated week, in the sense that we did not have Monday to deal with legislation. There is not a lot of time to progress through the program that is already before us. We have two sitting weeks in June to deal with a lot of legislation, so any attempt to have a long debate on the budget that was handed down last night, prior to a formal response from the Leader of the Opposition, seems to me to be merely attempting to frustrate the program rather than engage in legitimate and detailed discussions on last night's budget. For those reasons, Labor will not be supporting the Greens today.

We would encourage them to use the other established mechanisms in the Senate to raise their concerns and to do so today if they choose to. But the program in front of us this morning, including the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Youth Jobs Path: Prepare, Trial, Hire) Bill 2016, followed by the Native Title Amendment (Indigenous Land Use Agreements) Bill 2017 and several other bills, only really gives about 2½ hours for the legislation program this morning. I am not discounting the need to debate the budget or the fact that those questions need to be considered and are of national importance. I know there will be areas where we will agree with the Greens on concerns and areas we do not, but this morning is not the right time for that. We need to get to the program and allow the other established ways for discussing, examining and debating the budget to be observed.