Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to put on the record my continuing concern at the deception that this government inflicts upon the Australian people with regard to their intentions with this budget. They try to dress it up as a budget for battlers—a budget for ordinary, hardworking Australians—when in reality this is a budget that seeks to continue their cosy arrangement with the top end of town and delivers big, big business benefits to the banks: $80 billion in a tax handout, $17 billion of which goes to the four big banks, which are the subject of the great work that's being done right now by the royal commission that the government continued to oppose for two years after Labor called for it.

Now, we have seen—and I have had the chance to participate in a short debate about this following question time today—the words of the government Senator Carr described today as: 'rhetorical illusion'. That's what they're practised at: rhetorical illusion. They're pretending that they're doing something and speaking as if they're doing something, when in fact they are not doing anything of benefit to the practical realities of ordinary, hardworking Australians.

I want to put on the record the impact—or, sadly, the lack of response—to the needs of the people on the great Central Coast, where I live. There is no better example of the problems with this budget than the government's complete failure to deliver for the people of Robertson on the New South Wales Central Coast. I think the most potent example of this budget's unfair intent is the lack of any new infrastructure money for roads or rail on the Central Coast. This is a pressing issue. Ask any coastie about the state of local roads and they'll tell you that their roads are the worst in New South Wales, especially in the area of the peninsula. Yet we have the local member, Ms Lucy Wicks, taking out full-page ads in the paper after five years, asking people to identify a road that has a problem. If, after five years in the parliament and driving around the Central Coast, Ms Wicks hasn't figured out that we need some road funding, it's a bit late now to be asking the community to identify the problems that she should have known about a long time ago. And it's even later today than it was yesterday, because there was no money in the budget for it, anyway. Not a single dollar in the budget is devoted to fixing a single road in Umina, Terrigal, Avoca, Macmasters Beach, Woy Woy, Bensville, Kincumber, Springfield or Gosford. All of them miss out. There is not a single dollar devoted to fixing the drainage or the kerbing or to building the pedestrian pathways that are so important to people on the Central Coast.

According to the government's own budget papers, they've decided that they want to fix something that matters to them. In addition to giving the $80 billion tax cut to big business and $17 billion to the banks, they've decided that they should invest $26 million in upgrading the Prime Minister's own department. But there is no money to upgrade infrastructure on the Central Coast—zero dollars for roads in Robertson.

There was also no investment in TAFE or job creation on the coast, despite our ongoing unemployment crisis and a doubling of young people's unemployment to over 17 per cent. Since Ms Wicks was elected in 2013 our unemployment rate has skyrocketed, higher than the state average; youth unemployment has doubled; enrolments in local TAFE have dropped by 63 per cent; and 120 TAFE jobs have been cut. This is a disaster for the people of the Central Coast, for young people and their families. This budget demonstrates that Ms Wicks, the current member for Robertson, under this Turnbull government, has absolutely given up on job creation and the fight to fix our local unemployment crisis.

This morning—this very morning—Ms Wicks was patting herself on the back for recycling another laundry list of broken promises that were reprinted in last night's budget. She promised $10 million to help deliver Gosford's long awaited world-class regional performing arts and cultural centre. She promised that in 2013. It's still not delivered. Three budgets ago she promised $7 million towards what was supposed to be an innovation centre. Now she's calling it a regional library. It's $7 million that hasn't been delivered since 2013, and now she's changing the purpose of it. Ms Wicks made another commitment in 2013: continuous mobile coverage on the trains and a New South Wales government business case to investigate faster rail to deliver for our hardworking communities. They are all on the never-never. They're typical of what's going on in this budget, which is for the big end of town and which negatively impacts the lives of Australians.