Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] There's no bolder expression of what vision and priorities the government has for Australia than a budget. But when you look at this year's budget it reveals a government that stands for nothing. The Morrison government is bereft of ideas. It has no plans for the future. It's got no plan for early childhood education and care, no plan to fix Australia's broken aged-care system and ensure quality care for older Australians, no plan to create jobs and support jobseekers through the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. I could mention a myriad of other failings by this government, but I do have limited time today, so I'll focus on these areas, as well as the Morrison government's ongoing ideological attacks on the ABC.

This government cannot be trusted to steer Australia through the COVID-19 pandemic or out of the Morrison recession. This is a budget that leaves Australia in $1 trillion of debt for the first time in our nation's history, but with nothing to show for it. The hypocrisy of those opposite on fiscal management has been laid bare. Years ago they declared that Australia was in the midst of a debt and deficit disaster. If you mention debt and deficit now they run for cover. You don't see them for dust. Debt has more than tripled since they came to office. The 'back in black' mugs that celebrated their artificial surplus have vanished from the Liberal's merchandise store.

This is also a budget that delivers no plan for recovery from the Morrison recession—Australia's first recession in 30 years. Of course the government would like to blame this recession entirely on the COVID-19 pandemic, but they are nowhere near blameless for the dismal state of the economy. Australia went into the pandemic in a position of weakness, not strength. Before the pandemic hit, the Liberals and Nationals had already doubled government debt since coming to power. Australian workers were already experiencing wage growth at record lows. Households were already worse off than they were in 2013. Before the pandemic hit, business investment was down, consumer confidence was down and labour productivity was declining. So, on almost any measure, Australia's economy was weak under the management of this government before COVID-19 was even heard of.

There's no argument that the pandemic has been a significant economic challenge, but this does not give the government a free pass for their economic failings. Even in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, this government has failed to get its economic management right. Despite the Treasurer's pronouncement that 'Australians know that their government has their back,' millions of Australians have fallen through the gaps in economic support, especially with the JobKeeper scheme. This includes workers in charities, universities and the arts sector and many casual employees.

These gaps, combined with the rise in insecure work, have exacerbated the economic impact of the pandemic on Australians and undermined the health measures needed to keep us all safe. It's worth remembering, too, that the government only introduced a wage subsidy because of political pressure. It was Labor that initially called for a wage subsidy, and, at the time, the government ruled it out, only to backflip once again a few weeks later.

The one measure that the government have introduced to support jobs and the economic recovery, the JobMaker hiring credit, is not the saving grace they claim it to be. We heard those opposite proudly boasting that their scheme would create 450,000 jobs, but then, in estimates, Treasury officials confirmed that it would only create 45,000 jobs—one-tenth of the figure the government had initially claimed. When the JobMaker legislation was going through parliament, Labor tried to put in place protections that would stop employers from sacking workers and replacing them with cheaper, subsidised workers. But then, in a grubby deal, One Nation teamed up with the government to remove this safeguard, even though they had voted with Labor and the crossbench to maintain this protection the day before. Not only does this threaten the job security of every worker aged over 35; it also excludes over 900,000 people aged over 35 on unemployment benefits from the hiring subsidy. To illustrate this point, Labor produced 16 examples of job ads where employers were specifically advertising for employees that met the scheme's criteria, including a requirement that applicants are aged under 35.

We've warned the government that JobMaker does not go far enough in helping soften the blows from COVID-19 and that a lot more needs to be done. If the government are serious about creating jobs, they would do well to look at Labor's proposals, outlined by the Leader of the Opposition in his budget reply. Labor's Rewiring the Nation initiative would invest $20 billion to rebuild and modernise the energy grid. The blueprint for this has already been completed by the Australian Energy Market Operator and signed off by all governments. This will provide thousands of new construction jobs, particularly in regional Australia. We have also proposed a National Rail Manufacturing Plan, to have more trains built in Australia, boosting local jobs and industry. Our Defence Industry Development Strategy will leverage $270 billion in investment, develop sovereign industrial and research capabilities and build skills and expertise within the Australian workforce. We've also announced an Australian Skills Guarantee, ensuring one in 10 jobs on major Commonwealth projects will be given to apprentices, trainees or cadets. We've called on the government to deliver a plan to repair social housing—something we would do if we were in government right now. Around 25 per cent of Australia's social housing stock is in urgent need of repair and maintenance, and this plan would create jobs for local tradies.

If the Morrison government want to lift labour productivity and create jobs, they also need to address the ability of families to balance work and family responsibilities. As a former early childhood educator, I understand and value the quality of early childhood education and care, not just for helping parents to participate in the workforce but also for the incredible contribution it makes to early childhood learning and development.

We know those opposite don't appreciate the value of child care. It's why various government frontbenchers have described subsidised early childhood education and care as 'a money pit' and 'communism', and one particularly backward senator in this place called it 'the hand of government reaching in and taking away our children's youth'. This attitude goes some way to explaining why the government introduced a childcare fee system that left one in four families worse off, and why Australians pay some of the highest childcare fees in the world.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government were very proud to trumpet their temporary free childcare policy, but it was never properly funded. It put many providers at risk of closure, and it closed the door on a number of childcare places for many families. And, if that weren't bad enough, the government broke their promise to early childhood educators and ended their eligibility for JobKeeper payment before any other profession.

In contrast to those opposite, we understand the value of subsidised quality early childhood education. We understand the big difference it will make to helping millions of Australians enter the workforce, particularly those who want to take up new job opportunities and increase their hours as Australia recovers from the recession. We know that child care helps women in particular with workforce participation, which is important, given women have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. And that's why a Labor government would scrap the childcare subsidy cap, a cap that would see some women losing money by taking on additional hours of work. Labor would also increase the maximum childcare subsidy to 90 per cent, which will cut costs to 97 per cent of all families in the system.

While budgets are an important mechanism for creating jobs and driving economic prosperity, they're also a means by which governments look after their most vulnerable citizens. Older Australians deserve a secure and dignified retirement. Of all the failures of this government, there's few so monumental and so tragic as the disastrous failures in aged care. In September it was revealed that 50,000 Australians in residential aged care were abused each year. I've got to say that, when I heard that, I felt physically ill. The aged-care royal commission heard that one in five aged-care residents was receiving substandard care. Complaints about aged care doubled in one year to 8,000, yet the Morrison government has failed to properly resource the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to handle those complaints, and more than 110,000 calls to the My Aged Care hotline went unanswered over the past three years. There are 102,000 Australians on the waiting list for home-care packages, and 30,000 Australians were moved into residential aged care prematurely over the last three years because they couldn't get their home-care package soon enough. Another 30,000 died over the past three years while waiting for their approved home-care package. This year's budget provides funding for another 23,000 home-care packages, which is not nearly enough to address even the backlog. Only 2,000 of these are level 4 packages—the ones which provide for the highest level of care—and the number of people waiting for a level 4 package is close to 16,000, or around eight times that number.

One of the most tragic outcomes of the government's failure in aged care is that three-quarters of COVID-19 deaths have occurred in that sector. To date, there have been 685 COVID-19 deaths in aged care. And the aged-care royal commission has directly attributed this to the Morrison government's failure to plan properly for a COVID-19 outbreak in aged care. And they've already pointed out this tragedy could've been prevented had the government acted upon previous aged-care reviews and addressed persistent problems in the sector. There are about a dozen reports into aged care, containing about 150 recommendations that the government have done nothing on. They haven't acted on them.

A final failing of this year's budget that I would like to mention is that it locks in existing cuts to the ABC. Calling this a failure is too kind to this government, given their approach to the ABC is more of a deliberate ideological attack. Those opposite, we know, have never liked or supported Australia's independent public broadcaster. If there's one thing they hate, it's being subjected to independent public scrutiny. That's why they continue to attack Australia's public broadcaster, undermine its independence and cut its funding. We know that they would privatise the ABC if they had the chance, but they can't, because Australians love and value their ABC and wouldn't have a bar of it. Survey after survey has shown, overwhelmingly, the support for and trust in the ABC, even from coalition voters.

So, instead of doing away with the public broadcaster holus-bolus, the Libs and the Nats chip away at the ABC bit by bit. The Prime Minister has the hide to deny that there have been cuts to the ABC, but previous years' budget papers have specifically referred to 'savings'. ABC Managing Director David Anderson confirmed the cuts in addressing a Senate estimates hearing in March. He said:

… the ABC will have to absorb cumulative budget cuts that amount to $105.9 million per annum by the time we reach the 2022 financial year.

In New Zealand they added money to the public broadcaster through COVID because they understood that most people would listen to or watch their public broadcaster. I just don't understand how, in Australia, the Morrison government and previous governments can be so pig-headed about funding cuts to the ABC. Since the horror Abbott government budget of 2014, the ABC has suffered cumulative cuts of $783 million, despite Mr Abbott having promised no cuts to the ABC the day before the 2013 election.

The Press Council's founder, Ranald Macdonald, said in an opinion piece that this year's budget delivers a further $67 million in cuts on top of the $87 million in cuts delivered by the government's three-year funding freeze. On 29 June, the ABC's Media Watch outlined the full impact of the cuts so far. They explained that shows like Four Corners, Media Watch, Australian Story and Foreign Correspondent would have to cut the number of episodes made and would have less money to travel to produce episodes. They said 74 jobs would be lost from ABC News and a further 53 jobs from the Entertainment & Specialist team, impacting dramas, kids programs and shows such as Gruen, The Weekly and Mad as Hell. (Time expired)