Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the matter of public importance introduced to this place by our colleague from Victoria, Senator Collins. She wishes us to discuss 'putting health and education ahead of a $7,000 a year tax cut for investment bankers and a $17 billion tax cut for the banks they work for'. What a pleasure it is to receive the opportunity to stand in this chamber and speak of the government's record and priorities. The Turnbull government is, in fact, the only side of politics that will fully fund the essential services that all Australians rely on. Only a growing economy that fuels growth and job creation, combined with prudent fiscal management, reining in the profligacy of Labor governments past, will ensure that essential services like education, Medicare, hospitals and the NDIS can be guaranteed.

The education reforms introduced by the coalition to this place—reforms that deliver record funding to schools year on year and that the Labor Party voted against—are in fact game changing. The coalition's Quality Schools reform delivers an additional $23.5 billion on top of the 2016 budget for Australian schools over the next decade. We'll ensure that the investment is distributed according to need, as originally envisaged by David Gonski's review of school funding in 2011. The coalition reforms ensure that students with the same need and within the same sector attract the same support from the Commonwealth government, regardless of where they live. These are real, committed dollars, needs based and fully funded.

The coalition has guaranteed Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme with legislation. They are guaranteed in legislation. It has established the Medicare Guarantee Fund to ensure the ongoing funding of these essential activities. Over 86 per cent of GP visits were bulk-billed last year—21 million more than in Labor's last year. Hospital funding is now at record levels, increasing from $13.3 billion in 2013-14 to a record $22.7 billion in 2020-21—that's a 70 per cent increase. After this date, with the coalition's new national hospitals agreement, the government has committed to an additional $30.2 billion in public hospital funding for 2020-21 to 2024-25, taking the overall investment during this period to $130.2 billion. This means more hospital services, more doctors and more nurses, with increased funding year on year for every state and territory.

For the 13 million Australians who rely on private health insurance, the coalition has taken steps to lower premium rises and to make private health insurance more affordable and easier to understand. Our No Jab, No Pay policy resulted in 210 extra children immunised in its first year, and 12 to 13-year-olds will now be immunised for HPV. To help the one-in-five Australians who have mental health problems, the coalition government has increased mental health funding to around $4.3 billion this year. The 2018 budget also includes $1.4 billion for new and amended listings to the PBS, including medicines to treat spinal muscular atrophy, breast cancer and relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. That is guaranteed. That is where the coalition's priorities lie. Of course, the coalition government is the only side of politics that can guarantee a fully-funded NDIS without more or punitive taxes.

That's what economic management and fiscal responsibility can do: more and better guaranteed essential services for all Australians without the burden of higher taxes. The electorates know it. They can feel it in their hip pockets. They can see it in the numbers of job ads. They can hear it when they talk to their friends, their neighbours and their workmates.

It's only Labor who have not so much a tin ear but have turned a blind eye to these facts. They are in denial. They are doing this because they're starting to doubt themselves. They're starting to doubt their own policies. Why aren't they resonating with Australian workers anymore? How could Labor be, potentially, the first party ever to lose a by-election to a government? What an awful, sick feeling that must be. Labor are starting to doubt their own rhetoric. Why do they sound so bitter? 'Why do we sound so bitter and envious of anybody that's had a go and done well? What base element of our nature is it that makes us want to slash the sickle of socialism through every tall poppy in the country?'

Most of all, Deputy President, you're starting to doubt your leader. We can see why you would do that. It's so easy to do. After all, it wasn't all that long ago that Mr Shorten himself believed in company taxes. We've heard the quotes over and over again in this chamber, from Mr Shorten himself, from Mr Bowen, from Mr Leigh, from Mr Hawke and from Mr Keating. There are a number of Labor ministers, past and present, who believe in the power of company tax cuts to reinvigorate an economy and help businesses grow, invest and employ.

Indeed, the seeds of doubt in Labor's political strategy have been sown for some time. And now they have moved inexorably beyond green shoots, well into discontent and the triffids of dissent and disloyalty. While Mr Shorten spent the weekend spewing forth invective at the members of the crossbench who supported leaving more money in Australians' hip pockets, the member for Grayndler was extolling the virtues of cooperation between companies, government and business. This is to his credit, that there is one respectable member of the Australian Labor Party who understands the business community's vital role in society.

Mr Albanese's Whitlam Oration implored his Labor colleagues:

… to engage constructively with business large and small.

He reminded his colleagues:

We respect and celebrate the importance of individual enterprise and the efforts and importance of the business community.

I'm not exactly sure who the member for Grayndler meant when he said 'we' in that sentence. Far from respecting the efforts and the enterprise of the business community, Mr Shorten continues to paint those hardworking business owners as pariahs. He has all but declared that should he become Prime Minister he will wage a war on business. Of course, we've seen that nowhere more effectively than today: the mistrust was amplified and justified today, topped off by the announcement that Mr Shorten will repeal the company tax cuts. He will roll back company tax cuts, and that decision did not go to caucus. It didn't go to shadow cabinet or to the Expenditure Review Committee. It was a captain's call. No wonder Labor are worried.

The opposition's hatred of banks is so convenient, yet so misguided. Of course, it is largely theatrical. Surely, Labor must know that the banks to which they refer are already Australia's four biggest payers of corporate tax—and this is well before the bank levy. Moreover, the banks employ more than 170,000 employees—170,000! The average bank teller earns $48,000, the average personal banker earns $55,000 and the average mortgage broker earns $59,000. This is not the top end of town and yet this is who Labor will punish. There are 170,000 of them, and Labor treats them like greedy crooks. Well, shame on them!

The opposition leader's wish is to have a class warfare election, where he pits one Australian against the other. Well, what disrespect and what disdain he must have for those he wishes to govern. But it applies equally to all of those opposite. Don't they feel grubby when they hear the lies they're told that they have to peddle? Don't they feel the shame when they're sent out time and time again, like some luckless boxer into the ring, with talking points which are fully loaded with personal insults—or worse, dripping with sneering derision towards hardworking Australians whose only crime is to have made good?

Labor may make hollow promises of more money for this and increased billions for that, but redistributing the wealth of others rather than growing the wealth for all is intellectually lazy and irresponsible in the extreme. It's no secret that Labor has no plan to grow the economy, no plan to increase wages and no plan to create jobs. Moreover, Labor has no shame. Where is the pride in the party it once was? Mr Shorten will lead this opposition from nowhere to obscurity because it has defenestrated its history, it has defenestrated its values and its credibility, and now it has thrown away its relevance to ordinary, aspirational Australians. It mystifies me!