Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I seek leave to incorporate for the information of honourable senators the Leader of the Opposition’s response to the budget speech, given by Dr Nelson in the House of Representatives earlier this evening.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

Australians expected a lot with the election of a new government. Last year they listened to what the now Prime Minister and Treasurer had to say. They heard them say that they were going to be good economic managers. They heard them say that they would do something about grocery prices. They heard them say that they would do something about the price of petrol. They heard them say that they would do something about home interest rates. They heard a lot. Every Australian should now ask themselves this question: will this budget make it easier for me to keep my home, to fill my trolley with groceries, to put petrol in my car and to keep my job?

The Prime Minister and Treasurer have styled themselves as new Labor leaders, yet this is old Labor returning to haunt the Australian economic landscape again. This is an old-fashioned, high-taxing, high-spending Labor budget that seeks to punish those it does not like and discourage aspiration. The government promised to ease the pressure on working families but failed the very people they promised to help. How can any government boast of a budget that proposes to put 134,000 Australians into unemployment? Under the coalition it was ‘welfare to work’; under Labor, we are headed again on the road from work to welfare.

How can they boast of a budget that largely ignores the men and women whose sacrifices built this nation—seniors and retirees? How can they boast of a budget that not only leaves carers in the lurch but sells them down the river? Where were the incentives for small family business? Where was the emphasis on water, farmers and rural and regional Australians? This budget, like this government, puts media spin ahead of substance, bureaucratic doublespeak ahead of people and more than 100 reviews, inquiries and committees ahead of decisions. There is no substitute for a sound economic strategy—and Australians know it.

For months, the nervous man that is now Treasurer talked up an inflation genie as being out of the bottle. He spoke of an inflationary crisis. He darkly warned that deep funding cuts were needed. Yet he has delivered a budget that actually increases spending and increases taxes. Far from slaying inflation, this budgetary approach risks breathing new life into it. This budget will do little to reassure Australians nervous about whether this Treasurer and this government really understand what they are doing. In contrast, the Liberal and National parties have enormous demonstrated experience in keeping the Australian economy strong and competitive and in making sound judgements according to economic circumstances.

Since last November’s election, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have been more concerned with undermining and misrepresenting the Howard-Costello legacy than they have been focused on the economic challenges facing Australia. We should never forget that the leadership of the coalition of John Howard and Peter Costello enabled Australia to become a stronger, more prosperous country, more confident in itself and its place in the world.

Australia was a dramatically different place when the coalition came to office in 1996. Under Labor, Australia had emerged from oppressively high interest rates, the collapse of businesses and a recession that deeply scarred the nation. It was an Australia in which every parent feared for the future of their children. There was no talk of a skills crisis.

In its very first budget, the coalition faced a deficit of $10 billion and $96 billion in accumulated Labor debt. Last November, by contrast, we handed to the new Prime Minister and the new Treasurer an economy the envy of the world. There was no Commonwealth debt, surplus budgeting is now accepted as the norm and more than $60 billion was then invested in Australia’s future. During the 12 years the coalition was in government, everything that should be up—wages, economic growth and business and consumer confidence—was up while everything that should be down—inflation, interest rates and unemployment—was down. Under the coalition government Australians were able to get ahead.

This sound management and economic prosperity took place in the face of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, the US recession of 2001, the tech wreck, the SARS epidemic, the terrorist attacks of September 11 and in Bali and amidst the worst drought in 100 years. We took these challenges in our stride because we know that managing a trillion dollar economy is never easy.

The Labor Party steadfastly opposed every single coalition measure that was essential to getting Australia into the position that it found itself in in November last year. Before the election, the Prime Minister repeatedly styled himself as an economic conservative. Expensive advertisements, slick management, cardboard cut-outs and expensive suits do not make economic conservatives. It is deeply rooted in philosophical conviction and character.

Today Australians are not confident about our economy. Business and consumer confidence has plunged to record-breaking lows, despite the fundamentals still being strong. Retail sales have fallen, building approvals have fallen flat, house values have fallen in many suburbs and Australians are less confident both in the economy and in their government—all this before the global liquidity crisis is yet to fully wash through the Australian economy and Labor’s inflationary, job-destroying roll-back on workplace relations. Union bosses are back in town, and we have no confidence that this Prime Minister will be able to stand up to union intimidation. Why would he? After all, they invested so much money in getting him into government.

Under Labor there is little opportunity for Australians to get ahead. This underwhelming budget is one of lost opportunity. The Prime Minister and Treasurer have presented their high-taxing budget as one that fights inflation. While no-one should deny that there is an inflationary challenge to be managed, there is no crisis. The last Labor government ran inflation in excess of six per cent a year for six years and it peaked at 8.3 per cent. Inflation is currently running at 4.25 per cent and is forecast to fall.

We have never subscribed to the Treasurer’s assertion that an inflation ‘crisis’ justifies savage budget cuts at a time of significant domestic and global economic uncertainty. We do not support higher taxes and higher spending. For all his talk of slaying some dragon, the Treasurer has breathed new life into inflation with a budget that delivers something Australians have not known in Commonwealth budgets in recent years: tax increases. The government has perpetrated a fraud on the Australian people.

Preliminary calculations indicate that the budget will increase the CPI by up to 0.4 per cent. The price of alcohol is up. The price of cars is up. The price of groceries will be pressured in part from higher taxes on trucks. The passenger movement charge is up. Taxes on software are up. And workers are about to have the Treasurer bite into their hard-earned money with a tax on canteen meal cards.

And health insurance premiums will increase with measures that will see a so-far confirmed figure of half a million Australians—mainly young people—drop private health insurance, leaving families, retirees and pensioners to pay even higher premiums to keep their private health insurance. We will stand up for private health insurance. We have always stood up for people with private health insurance and we will continue to do so. We will oppose this measure.

These are real price increases and they will cut into household budgets of real Australians, many of whom can least afford to pay it. These price increases could also mean higher interest rates. Far from reducing spending and putting downward pressure on inflation, this budget increases spending. The Treasurer has not, as he says, ‘taken the axe to irresponsible spending’. He has merely taken a sledgehammer to people the Labor Party does not like and ignored others—seniors, carers, small business, and rural and regional communities.

The government has cut $15.2 billion from programs, but then it has added $30 billion in new Labor spending programs, so net spending will increase by almost $15 billion over the forward estimates. The government has not paid for this new spending with cuts. The government has instead chosen to impose taxes and increase revenues that will raise $19.7 billion over the next five years. Far from reducing taxes to encourage incentive and workforce participation, this budget increases taxes. The total tax take will increase over this year alone by $15.7 billion. That is a 5.2 per cent increase in taxation in one single year. This is a high-taxing, high-spending Labor government.

As for the income tax cuts announced by the Treasurer on Tuesday night, bear in mind that these are the coalition tax cuts copied by the new Treasurer. He no longer, however, has a straight A student in the form of Peter Costello to copy. As such, Australians have seen the last tax cut that they will see for some time. This budget confirms that Labor stands for higher taxes, whereas the coalition stands for lower taxes. Even after the income tax cuts, the total income tax take from Australians will increase by $42.8 billion, or 21 per cent, over the next four years.

Tax relief not only provides practical help for families; it also rewards hard work and self-sacrifice. It can also help tackle inflation by removing pressure for wage claims while encouraging people into work. The Treasurer demonstrated his lack of commitment to tax relief in January, when he called for an end to the Howard government policy of returning excess budget surpluses as tax cuts. The Reserve Bank, he warned, had been allowed to shoulder too much responsibility for controlling inflation with interest rate rises. If the coalition tax relief delivered in this budget reduces inflation by promoting participation, encourages skill development and keeps wage pressures under control, as Labor accepts, doesn’t that argument also apply to future tax relief? Clearly the Treasurer does not believe his own argument.

Labor is giving us something with one hand and taking it back with the other—and not just through knee-jerk measures, such as the new Tarago tax on cars or the $1 slug on responsible Australians who happen to enjoy a pre-mixed Bundy and coke or a scotch and dry. We know that, as incomes rise over time and workers move into higher tax brackets, the value of today’s tax cuts will be eroded in the future. Economists call it ‘bracket creep’. We call it tax increases on the sly. There must be a commitment to future tax relief. Alcohol abuse is a problem—it is a real problem—not only confined to some young people but spread right across society. I spent much of my medical life seeing its human consequences. I am also a parent.

According to the government, the principal cause and the source of binge drinking is the so-called ‘alcopops’ or ‘ready to drinks’. A whopping 70 per cent excise increase, we have been told, would make significant inroads into binge drinking. The evidence does not support the government’s assertion—in fact, quite the contrary. The National Drug Strategy household survey confirms binge drinking by young women since 2001 has actually declined and alcohol abstinence in this group has increased. So the Prime Minister has told Australians that they have got to pay $3.1 billion more in tax on one alcohol product to deal with binge drinking. Any parent, let alone a health economist, will confirm that, if you jack up the price of alcohol in isolation from other measures, kids will simply move to another form of alcohol or a drug.

The budget confirms that after its tax increase the government expects consumption of these products to grow at a rate of some 10 per cent per year compounding. This is nothing more than a tax binge falsely presented to Australians as something that it is not, and that is why we are angry about it. We will oppose it. A real strategy to deal with alcohol abuse and antisocial behaviour demands an integration of education, prevention, policing, media, appropriate pricing measures and parenting where it involves young people. I will convene a national forum of alcohol specialists, educators, police, parents where expertise in their field is involved, and those who have expertise in related fields to develop a truly integrated approach to what is an undeniable problem. This will involve more substance than style.

Before the election, the Prime Minister led the Australian public to believe that he would do something about the price of petrol. He has done nothing of substance. Watching petrol prices does not bring them down. Australians may not have expected a silver bullet in the case of petrol, but they sure as hell deserve a government that does more than fire blanks. In 2001, when the price of petrol spiked sharply, we took the view that a strong budget allowed for some tangible relief. Petrol indexation was abolished. Petrol is now 17.7c per litre less than it would otherwise have been. The coalition did that.

Petrol is now hurting Australians in every walk of life and in every part of the nation. There is only one way that an Australian government can actually do anything decisive about the price of petrol and that is to cut taxes. So, tonight, I propose a cut in fuel excise of 5c a litre. This is a modest but meaningful way of helping all Australians—families, small businesses, pensioners and working people—so dependant on their cars. Ninety per cent of Australian households have a car. Right now, they all need help—real help. The coalition believes it responsible and fair to return a further $1.8 billion back to hardworking everyday Australians in the form of a 5c a litre reduction in the fuel excise.

By lowering the price of petrol and the cost of transporting goods, this 13 per cent reduction in petrol excise will also have a modest, but measurable downward impact on inflation. This is in stark contrast to the tax increases under Labor which, as I have outlined, will have an impact on the CPI upwards of 0.4 per cent. The coalition is serious about reducing price and inflation pressures. Labor talks; the coalition acts. This is a real tax cut in the best traditions of the Liberal and National parties.

It was the Keating Labor government that put 5c onto the excise in 1993. We opposed it. I challenge the Rudd Labor government to help us take it out in 2008. This is not a review, it is not a committee, it is not a summit, it is not an idea to have a meeting—it is a decision. It is decisive action.

Small family businesses are the backbone of the nation. Indeed, it is one of the pillars of Liberal belief—men and women taking a risk, borrowing money to create or buy a small business and employing other Australians. Few things are more important to our way of life and our future prosperity. Get the conditions right for small business and employment will flourish and businesses will grow. We believe in encouraging and rewarding hard work. The tax system should not stifle innovation and Australians who are prepared to have a go.

Therefore, we are announcing tonight a major reduction in capital gains tax for small business. The current 15-year rule with respect to waiving capital gains tax on the sale of a small business entity on retirement from age 55 was an incentive to small business introduced by the coalition in government. To further encourage small business men and women to invest in establishing or taking over a small business, the coalition will introduce a five-year rule for capital gains tax on sale of the business for retirement. After owning and operating a small business for five years, we believe you should be entitled to capital gains tax relief should you sell your business for retirement. You will be rewarded, as you should, for your hard work, determination and sacrifice.

Education is our future. The centralised fund proposed by Labor for school infrastructure cannot replace ‘parent power’. Parent groups and school principals will always know what their school needs much better than a clipboard-carrying bureaucrat who turns up from a centralised education department. The government has scrapped our Investing in Our Schools Program. These direct grants to schools made a big difference to improved buildings, classrooms, playgrounds and upgraded technology. The coalition will reinstate it. We will get them moving again. The government speaks of a so-called ‘education revolution’ in delivering more computers to schools, while ignoring the added costs to parents and schools of connection, of maintenance and of training.

The single most important influence in the life of a child, apart from a parent, is their teacher. But no teacher can teach what they do not know. The standard of teacher training in Australia must be improved. It is unacceptably low. Higher standards in universities mean higher standards in classrooms. In this, we are failing. The coalition commits to education reform, so essential to our economic and social development. The coalition will require a number of conditions on Australian universities before they receive a dollar in public funding if they are training teachers. Entry scores to undergraduate teaching degrees at Australian universities are embarrassingly and pathetically low. The minimum university entrance score must be higher for entry to an education degree and will be formally set as a condition of funding.

Science, humanities and social science departments will be required to set and/or accredit relevant course content and assessment in education faculties. All trainee teachers will be taught how to teach children to read using proven techniques, including phonics based instruction. They must also be taught and assessed in basic sciences, mathematics, English and history. University education faculties will be required to appoint high-quality classroom teachers to their academic staff as tutors and lecturers. We need more classroom teachers teaching in our universities and less social engineers. This will assist in lifting the status of teaching as a profession and it will bring a greater practical focus to the training of teachers. To attract our best graduates into teaching, we must provide quality teachers with access to increased pay. Like any other profession, teachers should be rewarded and recognised on merit, as assessed by their peers. Better teachers deserve better pay. There can be no place for mediocrity when it comes to the future of the nation’s teachers, yet that is tolerated in too many of our teacher training institutions. This is an education revolution.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly told the House that he would reduce the financial stress of carers by providing them with ongoing secure support. The budget has failed carers. The carers bonus, introduced by the Howard government, is only being paid this year because the Labor government was shamed into action. Devastatingly for carers, however, there is no commitment in the budget papers to pay it in future years. These men and women, these carers, are the window into our humanity. Their work is done on behalf of all Australians. What modest support they receive from government should be recognised as a wage that saves Australian taxpayers in the order of $30 billion a year. Tonight, I give all Australian carers my commitment that we will use the government’s inquiry to ensure equitable funding to carers in reflection of the work that they do on our behalf.

Australian seniors feel let down that the federal budget does very little to ease their cost-of-living pressures when they have done so much to build this country. That is why we will not support Labor’s changes to the income test for the Commonwealth seniors health card, which will leave thousands of seniors without a health card when they need it most.

In addressing the future and the course of our nation, we need to identify and respond effectively to five key challenges. The first is the prosperity of our nation. How can we hand to the next generation a level of prosperity of which we can be proud and in which they can have confidence? This will mean taxation reform—not just simplification but lower taxes overall—and we have already begun that process. Further, how can we prosper when this budget cuts investment in research and development and swings cuts through the CSIRO?

The second challenge that we face is that of the Federation. It is very important for every one of us to ask ourselves in this the 21st century: how can we make the Federation work more effectively for our country in the interest of Australians? It will require all of us, in a mature and sober way, to examine the constitutional arrangements and responsibilities of the three tiers of government—who is responsible for what, how the money is raised and then how it is distributed.

The third challenge is that of the environment. We, as Australians and as global citizens, need to begin to live on environmental interest instead of environmental capital. It is time that we focused on water and food security as much as on anything else. Further, Australia alone cannot solve climate change, but we can do enormous environmental and economic damage to our future if we get this wrong.

The fourth challenge for us in our future is that of the security of our nation—the defence and protection not only of our country but of, increasingly, our people, our interests and the values for which we stand throughout the world.

The fifth challenge is to ensure that we are a cohesive society—to make sure that we see drug use, alcohol abuse and illiteracy not only as a human but as an economic issue. We must see the existential despair and state of 90,000 Aboriginal people living in remote parts of this country and many other things such as gambling addiction as being no less important to us in our future than getting our economic fundamental absolutely right, upon which, ultimately, success will depend. Before the next election we will announce policy to shape the future that we want as Australians. We are an opposition, but we are also an alternative government.

Our beliefs are in the individual, in the encouragement of, and rewards for, hard work and self-sacrifice in everyday life. We believe very strongly in the family as the bedrock of Australian society, while respecting and reaching out to every other Australian, whatever their economic or personal circumstances.

We believe in choice. We believe Australians should be encouraged and supported in choice in health and education. Equally, they should be free to join a union or not to join a union.

We believe strongly in defence and security and investment in it for the protection of our nation. We believe very strongly that small family businesses are the lifeblood of our nation and its economic prosperity. We believe always in lower taxes, once our obligations to society in health, education, road infrastructure, defence and other requirements have been met.

We believe ultimately in the individual. We believe that the inherent worth of every single Australian is paramount and that our task as Liberals and as Nationals is to stand against oppressive bureaucracy and governments that too often—and under this new government—appear to think that they know what is best for Australians, instead of leaving choices and freedoms in the hands of individuals who actually make this country work.

We believe we will be at our best as a nation if we see ourselves and strive to be an outward-looking, highly competitive and compassionate people, reconciled with our Indigenous history and imbued with fundamental values of hard work, self-sacrifice, courage, tolerance and a determination to see that we support one another, that we respect our freedoms and stand up for the rights, values and freedoms of not only all Australians but all people throughout the world.

Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like most Australians, I have looked forward to this, the first budget of the Rudd government. The economy is booming, the new government has plenty of revenue, and it seemed likely that the serious problems of climate change; water and skills shortages; underfunding of early childhood development, public schools and universities; poor health and housing in Indigenous communities; and the lack of investment in infrastructure—to name just a few—would at last be fixed. The new Prime Minister promised a visionary and bold platform of reform and nation building. The other message that we had been hearing for weeks before the orchestrated leaks was that this budget would be tough, with lots of savage cuts in spending—cuts that were made necessary to ward off the risk of inflation to working families. That did not quite turn out to be the case.

For 2008-09, spending will actually increase by $297 billion—$10 billion up on the previous year—but income in the same period will rise by over $15 billion. The budget is big on handouts, which may well be inflationary. There is little by way of structural reform, too little is being spent on urgent problems like climate change and water, and the money is available far too late. The election promises have certainly been delivered, however ill advised, like the $47 billion in tax cuts, most of it to high-income earners, and the tax rebates for school expenses that also make the tax system more complex—the $5.7 billion for school computers and trade blocks that were certainly not the highest priority of schools. The budget displaces some of the vote-winning stunts of the previous government: summer schools and bonuses for teachers that were driven by a government keen to suggest that a lot of teachers needed retraining and keen to bring in quasi performance pay.

Childcare rebates will be lifted to 50 per cent of a cap that has been almost doubled to $7,500 and paid quarterly. The Democrats support this initiative. In fact, we would sooner see it even higher. But neither this nor the A to E grading on childcare centres will fund better pay and training for childcare staff. We strongly support national standards, but these must improve quality through better trained and paid staff. We see no measure to deal with the shortage of childcare places in inner urban areas where land prices are high and shortages are acute. We hope that the $114.5 million spread over four years to build 38 of the promised 260 new childcare centres will address this problem, but at this rate of funding it will take a quarter of a century to reach the government’s target. We welcome the Jobs, Education and Training Child Care Fee Assistance now covering two years of approved study. The previous restriction to 12 months severely limited the capacity of single parents to finish most courses of study.

In the bigger picture, there is plenty of money for projects, and deficits and government debt are a thing of the past. Over $30 billion in surpluses for the next two years alone will go into the Building Australia Fund. Ten billion dollars is there for new medical technology, research facilities and hospitals, but none of it will be spent before 2009. The Howard government’s $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund will be more than doubled and renamed the Education Investment Fund, but it now covers vocational institutions and research organisations, and the capital can be tapped as well as the interest.

The Commonwealth will return to funding its own big-scale road, rail and ports, and fast broadband to 98 per cent of the population—perhaps a new era in investing in Australia’s long-term future needs. The Democrats strongly agree with this objective. We have been calling for it for years. We just hope that future governments do not sell off these new assets as readily as they have airports, the Commonwealth Bank, Telstra and the like. We would sooner see the telecommunications network in public hands, fibre to the node and all, and healthy competition in service delivery instead of the monopolistic monster which was created by privatising our once public carrier.

We are deeply disappointed that over 90 per cent of transport funding will be blown on roads, with freight rail getting the leftovers and public transport getting zilch. Labor seems to have forgotten that it signed off on a Senate inquiry recommendation eight years ago that called for funding for new and improved public transport and FBT reform to encourage its use. It ignored too the recommendation for greenhouse abatement to be incorporated in transport policies and taxation. As we know, Infrastructure Australia does not have an obligation to investigate greenhouse in its deliberations on transport or any other infrastructure.

One of the reasons the government coffers are awash with cash is the resources boom, much of it in the Top End, and yet there is no funding for social infrastructure in places where that cash is being generated. An extra $33 billion of tax revenue is expected from increased commodity prices in 2008-09 alone, but it is not returning to these areas. Wages in the Pilbara, for instance, are very high to overcome the difficulties in living there. The opportunities that urban dwellers take for granted like shops, theatres, libraries, pools and housing choices are just missing.

There were cuts, certainly, worth $6 billion to $7 billion. The bureaucracy will pay with a $1.8 billion dividend efficiency. Cancelling the welfare access card nets $1.2 billion. Cancelling the OPEL contract brings in a billion dollars. Health lost about $2.6 billion, not all of which seems sensible—but there is little detail other than the cuts to GP payments, pathology, after-hours clinics, research, and advertising campaigns. The dental health scheme worth $500 million for 150,000 people with chronic illness is being scrapped in favour of one for teenagers and for public waiting lists. Small business and employment programs have been cut back, including the Commercial Ready program of grants to small and medium enterprises for research and innovation—which seems at odds with government claims of encouraging smart industries.

A lot of the cuts are from means testing, and we tentatively welcome this departure from the previous government’s ‘cheque’s in the mail’ handouts to all, including the wealthy. The baby bonus will come fortnightly from January next year, which is probably not such a bad thing. It and the family tax benefit part B will not go to those families that earn over $150,000, despite Labor’s promise that the threshold would be $250,000. That $150,000 threshold now also applies to tax breaks for workers supporting a dependent spouse, housekeeper, invalid relative, parents or parents-in-law.

We welcome the baby bonus being extended to adoptive parents for children over two—a win for my colleague Senator Stott Despoja, who has campaigned for this for some time. But there is still no publicly funded maternity leave, and I wonder how big the surplus has to be to make $590 million a year affordable—or is there some other objection to giving women in Australia entitlements that are taken for granted in other countries? Women are—rightly, I think—asking how come the means testing mostly affects them and their family responsibilities while measures such as the abolition of tax on retirement income mostly benefit men.

Men are certainly more likely to buy expensive cars, which now are to be taxed at a higher rate of 33 per cent. But surely it would be more strategic to tax according to energy waste rather than dollars, like so many other more enlightened countries do. The photovoltaic panel rebate stays at $8,000, but we were shocked to hear that this is now to be means tested to an absurdly low household income of $100,000. As a non-essential item, PVs are still very expensive at around $16,000. According to solar companies that have contacted me today, 85 per cent of those who have put them on their roofs so far have family incomes of over that amount. The $10,000 in low-interest loans does not come on stream for another 12 months, and solar installers are saying that their clients are dropping off like flies since the means-testing announcement. This is a very serious mistake, and it will be a complete disaster for the industry unless it is reversed—and immediately.

The education revolution in schools mostly consists of capital works, computers and literacy programs, but it does not address the shortfall in per capita funding for running schools, the funding disparity between primary and secondary schools or the inequitable private school funding formula that becomes more irrational every year as more and more schools are given exemption from it.

We look forward to seeing the details of the government’s $577 million literacy and numeracy programs. These need to be spent on effective and flexible programs to deal with a wide range of problems that children have in learning. It is not enough to test children to see where they are in comparison with their peers; we need to understand why it is they do not learn at the same rate as them—and sometimes that will not matter because they will catch up. In other cases, learning difficulty and disability will dog them throughout their schooling unless there are effective interventions.

We are pleased to see 44,000 new scholarships, the abolition of full-fee degrees and incentive for students to study and teach maths, science and nursing—but that is it for student support. The $500 million one-off cash injection in 2007-08 to help universities rebuild campus infrastructure is a very good start, but the backlog of deferred maintenance across the sector is estimated to be in the order of $2 billion. There is no money to revitalise student services and organisations that have almost disappeared under voluntary student unionism, and the government’s review seems to have come to nothing. Labor, like the last government, is not addressing the inadequate indexation of university grants, and this will continue to eat into any gains in the headline level of funding allocated to universities.

There are incentive payments to the states of $200 million a year for three years for elective surgery as long as they meet targets on reduced waiting times, but there is still no decision on how the Commonwealth underfunding of the health care agreements for hospitals will be dealt with. The states will be given a billion dollars in the budget to tide them over.

We welcome the threshold increase for the Medicare surcharge. We doubt the private health insurance industry doomsday claims but even if there was a drop of 400,000 members—just four per cent—they would cease to prop up a very expensive health system. We are disappointed that the government has stuck with its 30 per cent private health insurance rebate. This costs us $4 billion a year—money that would be far better spent on the public system. We welcome the $275 million for GP superclinics and hope these are not more of the same fee-for-service arrangements but instead provide integrated primary care in places that most need it.

The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission disappears next year—or at least the funding to it does—instead of being an ongoing body with standing committees monitoring the difficult and mostly invisible areas of, for instance, Indigenous health, mental health and aged care. Most Indigenous health spending is a follow-up on the Northern Territory intervention, and most of it finishes next year. It needs to be asked why these measures should not be introduced across the country, because problems also exist in Aboriginal communities in other states. Indeed, Professor Altman points out that the child abuse notification rates in the Northern Territory are about half of those of the national Indigenous average.

Of the 37 new measures identified to help begin the process of closing the gap, the major ones are previous government commitments. A lot of the money goes to government business managers, $31 million; income management, $64 million; and the task force reviewing the intervention, $34 million—but this compares with a mere half a million dollars for consultation on a new national representative body.

There are small sums for child and maternal health services, and it is good that night patrol services, youth alcohol diversion programs, follow-up health care and the promotion of law and order are to be funded.

The Minister for Health and Ageing was presented with a worthy proposal to fund a mobile health unit targeting women’s reproductive health services in very remote communities, which would help prevent the very high death rates from breast and gynaecological cancer. But I do not see this in any of the budget papers.

It is clear that properly investing in Indigenous community health centres and better support for remote area nurses is crucial, and for less than $30 million eye diseases like trachoma could be wiped out in just three years. Thirty per cent of Aboriginal kids in Katherine, 16 per cent in rural Darwin and 53 per cent in the Pilbara have trachoma. A lot of them will go on to have irreversible blindness. The government has a proposal to fix this from the Centre for Eye Research, which has great expertise in this area, but it continues to ignore it. Even Niger, the poorest country in Africa, is controlling its trachoma with an active intervention program—but not us.

We say a large chunk of the new $10 billion health fund should have been earmarked for Aboriginal primary health care, and we support ANTaR’s call for capacity building in Aboriginal health programs.

The $780 million for dental health is a good investment, but it falls short of an overall long-term plan, and the government will need to insist on better accountability from the states for success in delivering timely treatment.

The government has kept and increased slightly the conditional adjustment payment for aged care, which will be welcomed by the industry, but it is only a stopgap measure. And there should be an obligation to the nurses in aged care, who currently earn $20,000 a year less than their colleagues in other sectors.

There is nothing extra in the budget for mental health, despite the yawning gaps in services, particularly in supported accommodation, early intervention and services for young people, as our inquiry is discovering. Some of the previous package is certainly improving services, but it is still only eight per cent of the health budget, a lot less than its 14 per cent of the disease burden.

The MBS item has taken out the bulk of the 2006 health funding, and yet there is inadequate monitoring or analysis of its success.

We warmly welcome the $85 million for perinatal depression. It is irresponsible to have had so little by way of services and support for women and their babies at this vulnerable time at this point.

It would have been good to have seen money for building expertise in the treatment of many conditions that largely go untreated, like eating disorders.

The government persists in the idea that carers can be fobbed off with a bonus handout and a few more qualifying for the carer payment, but this is grossly unfair to individuals making great personal sacrifices in caring. Their contribution needs to be recognised, both to acknowledge their responsibilities and to reward them financially for the job they do and the $30 billion or so that they save governments every year.

Climate change action is now super urgent, but this is certainly not reflected in the budget. Most of the $2.3 billion for climate change will not be spent for four to six years. The budget is also littered with yet more solar pilot programs and small grants projects instead of measures that will deliver the fundamental shift needed to prepare us for the deep cuts we know are going to be necessary to avert the most dangerous climate change.

A mere $55.5 million of the $500 million renewable energy fund will be spent before 2010, and even clean coal, so-called, will only see $158.4 million spent in that time. Whatever you think about the prospects of carbon capture and storage from coal-fired power stations and the public funds being spent on finding the technology that can do it cheaply, this does not suggest that the government or the industry is in any sort of hurry.

There are literally gigawatts of renewable energy projects—solar, thermal, wind—ready to build and to invest in, but those commitments will not be made unless the new increase in the MRET is started this year instead of 2010. The previous target was met four years early, and waiting unnecessarily another two years loses momentum as well as capacity building in the manufacturing industry here.

We need a thorough overhaul of the tax system and the energy and transport subsidies that currently encourage emissions at a time when we must start abating. The green car fund, worth $500 million, is deferred until 2011. We urge the government to use this fund not just for incentives for hybrid petrol-electric vehicles but also for the so far small-scale local importers and converters of vehicles that are fully electric plug-in cars, scooters and motorbikes.

Transport congestion in cities imposes huge costs on business and citizens alike, but despite this the building infrastructure fund will spend only $75 million on transport infrastructure this year. The tens of billions will not start flowing until the end of next year, and only a fraction of it will be spent on rail. We should be modernising track and road-rail interchanges to deliver a substantial shift in intercapital freight from road to rail and investing in public transport, particularly expanding rail services and transport nodes.

On the Murray-Darling, where major investment in water-saving infrastructure is urgently needed, $400 million was announced, but half the spending is next year. Money is being poured into new water sources like desalination, despite the high cost and high energy use of these plants. Spending on water licences, buybacks and conservation of water is minimal and there is nothing to suggest the Murray will get its promised 1,500 gigalitres of water back.

There is a tiny subsidy for rainwater tanks and greywater treatment units for a small percentage of the population—nothing like the national fund needed to drive investment in effluent treatment and reuse, stormwater harvesting, efficient irrigation or household incentives to collect, reuse and save water.

The Democrats give credit to the government for its progress on tax reform and in taking major steps towards a less wasteful and more equitable tax system, but it is apparent to us from this budget that the government has deferred many of the hard decisions. Tax cuts will cost $47 billion over four years. The low-income tax offset goes from $750 to $1,200 from 1 July, but tax will still be paid by people earning just $20,000 a year in 2011. We say the tax-free threshold should now be raised to $20,000 and the rates indexed.

It is disappointing that there has not been any progress on reforming capital gains tax or negative gearing.

First home buyers will get a 17 per cent contribution for the first $5,000 deposited in a first home saver account each year. It remains to be seen whether this will just add to the price of new houses. There is also a $623 million fund for landlords to lower rents for those on low incomes. We hope this works better than the rent assistance that is available in keeping rents affordable.

It is troubling to see $512 million for freeing up land for housing. This usually means greenfield sites on the outskirts of our already sprawling cities where there are no services and people are locked into driving for hours to get to work and school. We would like to see a renewed interest in building regional populations and increasing the density of our cities around good transport and services rather than endlessly spreading our cities.

There is no excuse for the government to delay lifting its overseas aid budget to 0.5 per cent of GDP in 2008-09, rather than waiting for five years, and it must reach 0.7 per cent soon after that. The projected sea level rises will displace hundreds of millions of the poorest people on earth. Our overseas aid budget will have to be higher in the future unless we act now on climate change.

We also need to see far more spending on reproductive health. Our nearest neighbours, Timor and Papua New Guinea, both desperately need this assistance. In Timor, 660 women die for every 100,000 births, compared with just eight in Australia. In PNG, that number is 300. Five Australian babies die per 1,000 born, but in Timor the number is 82 and in PNG it is 65. Only nine per cent of couples in Timor have access to contraception, and it is little wonder that they have on average almost eight children per woman—much higher than in the poorest African countries. The Millennium Development Goals cannot be delivered unless Australia increases its aid to these countries for health and education.

The government’s caring for country program ought to be for maintaining biodiversity. Aside from funds to conserve the Tasmanian devil, however, and to tackle the cane toad menace, the budget gives little for the systematic and comprehensive protection of threatened species and habitats. Australia has 1,800 threatened species that face impending extinction. While welcoming the $180 million for the national reserve system and the $200 million for the Great Barrier Reef Rescue Plan, we cannot see any initiatives on biodiversity conservation in the budget.

We welcome the $2.8 million over two years for public consultation on the need for a human rights charter, but we query whether this is a realistic sum, given the government has pledged to consult far and wide with communities across Australia who are at most risk of having their rights breached. There is unfortunately no significant funding to increase legal aid, despite the fact that the National Legal Aid council says there is an urgent need for an injection of $156 million for a properly funded system.

There are a host of other items missing from this budget, including assistance for people with disabilities, especially those who are young and in nursing homes. There is nothing for the underfunded ABC or SBS. There is nothing to help sole parents caught in the Welfare to Work trap. There is very little for many single age pensioners, mainly female, who will have little or no extra income. There is nothing to increase the superannuation savings of women compared with those of men. Overall, we say the first Rudd budget is too tentative to deal with the serious issues that are facing our country.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The arctic ice and the Saudi Arabian oilfields seem a long way from Australia and Prime Minister Rudd’s 2008 budget. But they should be at the forefront of our minds as we consider what a real leader, a leader contemplating the state of the world and the wellbeing of all people, would have delivered for our nation in his first budget. Leadership means having the courage and imagination to face up to the challenges of the time and to formulate a vision worthy of the people, their future and the situation in which they find themselves. It means presenting that vision in such a compelling way that people are inspired to be part of it.

Faced with the fear and crises of the Cold War and the space race, President Kennedy captured the imagination of his country when he announced that America would put a man on the moon within the decade. He could not have known if the moon mission would be successful in a decade or how much it would cost, but he united Americans around a goal that fired their imagination and he succeeded. The same can be said of Churchill, when he exhorted Britons with those famous words, ‘We will fight them on the beaches,’ during the Second World War. The cost of not winning, the loss of freedom and a way of life, made losing unthinkable in both cases, and the people lifted.

The summer arctic ice melt and the depleting oil reserves are representative of the social and economic catastrophe that we now face from global warming and peak oil—every bit as compelling as the challenge faced by Churchill and Kennedy. The evidence is now clear that slow and steady action is a recipe for ongoing disaster. We are already experiencing dangerous climate change and may have passed peak oil. If we are to avoid catastrophe, we must not only reduce emissions but halve them by 2020 and cut them to net zero as soon as we can. We must build a new postcarbon economy and society and we must do it now.

Henry David Thoreau once wrote: ‘In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they’d better aim at something high.’ If we try, perhaps we will succeed, and at worst we will fall short of the target. But if we do not try we will certainly fail. A true leader would try. The 2008 budget demonstrates that we do not have a leader, a Prime Minister, equal to the task. We have a manager for business-as-usual times when we have already gone beyond business-as-usual times. We have an accountant when we needed a fiscal visionary.

This budget props up Third World economic vulnerabilities by selling off our natural capital. The government’s expenditures, taxes and subsidies undermine instead of unleash knowledge based industries and intelligent green growth. This budget’s plan for selling off natural assets does not represent a strategy for responsible financial positioning. Giving the community a few more dollars in tax relief to slightly reduce the significantly higher costs of petrol, food and energy, driven in large part by climate change and oil depletion, whilst living and working in the same ways, does not deal with the problem. Superficial promises to cut the excise simply delays the action that we need to take in oil proofing the country to address the underlying causes of high food and fuel prices.

The world as we know it is already permanently physically changed. It is shocking to know that by 2013 growing scientific evidence suggests there will be no arctic summer ice and the magnificent polar bear and numerous other species will be close to extinct in the wild. The risk of the thermohaline ocean conveyor slowing or stopping is heightened. The age of cheap, easily accessible oil is over not only because we are running out but also because we cannot afford to keep on using it if we are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is no going back. But how we go forward will determine whether we experience a future that delivers positive benefits for people and communities or one that delivers poverty, scarcity and conflict.

Prime Minister Rudd gave Australians the impression that he understood the urgency and magnitude of climate change when he acknowledged that it is the greatest moral and economic imperative of our time. Addressing climate change was a key element of his election appeal. But now it is clear that the Rudd government is just as negligent as the Howard government. Global warming is not just another budget item. Oil costs are not just a figure in the current account deficit. It is a figure that will grow to $25 billion by 2015 and beyond.

Global warming and oil depletion represent the biggest challenges that we will face in our lifetime. But they also represent the greatest opportunities to make our lives not only different but better. What is required is total transformation of our way of life and the economy that underpins it. As the UN Secretary-General, Mr Ban Ki Moon, said prior to the Bali United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference:

We have experienced several great economic transformations ... the industrial revolution, the technology revolution, our modern era of globalization. Now we are on the threshold of another revolution—the age of green economics.

He then went on to call on nations to fight global warming and promote that transformation.

There is an emerging consensus that nations and corporations that fail to understand this imperative will lose competitive advantage while those that grasp the new opportunities it offers will prosper. Australia is well on track to losing competitive advantage, not because we are not blessed with fantastic natural advantages, not because we do not work hard or because we do not have the capacity to be different, but because we fail to grasp that imperative and that opportunity. As Albert Einstein said, ‘The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation.’

We know we need to change. We are materially better off than generations who have gone before, but is the price worth it? We are already living the rat race that people who fought for and won the eight-hour day would not believe possible. We have given up weekends in the name of productivity and efficiency. We have to work harder and longer for bigger houses full of stuff that we do not need and which are literally costing us the earth. Our children have to work to get themselves through university and are then saddled with HECS debts. And our aged are lonely and undersupported with families who have little time to visit or care for them. How fair or sensible is it for people to go to bed with their mobile phones and be required to be available 18 hours a day? Tired people are unhappy people, yet so many adults and children go to work and school in the dark and get home in the dark, having wasted four hours or more in traffic jams. How many of us do not know our neighbours and have no time to walk anywhere or grow anything in our gardens? How many of us can offer to do community voluntary work or play amateur sport and engage in and be part of the local community? We live day to day with a nagging uneasiness about living in a rich society where many are poor, homeless and sick. How many of us buy our families more consumer goods to make up for the time that we cannot spend with them? How many of us regret that fruit and vegetables come from all over the world when local farmers are struggling to survive? How many people, when asked, answer that what would make them happy is more time? The treadmill seems inescapable.

But the surplus generated by the resources boom has given us a one-off opportunity to change. And global warming and oil depletion make it impossible not to do so. Australia has a choice. All that is holding us back is the lack of imagination and the political will to change. What needed to happen in the budget was for the government to fund a vision for transformation, but instead it squandered both the opportunity and the surplus in tax cuts, reduced services and slashed research. Whilst there are education, health and infrastructure funds, there is no climate fund, with nothing for disaster readiness. We have spent $10 billion on counterterrorism since September 11 but only $500 million on emergency relief capability. We are not immune in Australia from massive natural disasters caused by climate change. As one of the wealthiest countries in the region, Australia should establish a global disaster relief centre to coordinate civil and military aid responses to disasters like cyclones, floods, bushfires, earthquakes and tsunamis at home and abroad. Imagine how we would be feeling today if we had a real vision for a sustainable future such as that painted by the Greens. Imagine if the Prime Minister, through his Treasurer, had said what a Greens Prime Minster would say. Here is what we would have heard:

‘We as a world and a nation are living beyond our ecological limits and suffering global warming and oil depletion. Our land is sick and, in spite of our surpluses, in spite of being materially better off than our forebears, we are not as healthy or happy as we could be. We need to aim for a higher quality of life—to be happier, healthier and more fulfilled with greater environmental, social and economic resilience in the face of the challenges before us. It is time to face up to climate change, time to embark on a great new Australian initiative. It is time to make imagination Australia’s natural resource of the future. We must reconcile our humanity with our economics. We need transformation—a wave of environmental, social, technical and economic innovation that will touch every person, community and institution such that we change from a resource economy to a knowledge economy living in harmony with the land, rediscovering our connection to life. And we need it urgently. To that end my government, with your help, will make imagination the resource of the future. We will make Australia sustainable by 2020—ecologically, socially and economically sustainable by 2020.

We have delivered a transformative, enabling budget that will make it happen. To reach our goal of sustainability we will need every one of us to bring to the task all of the brainpower, innovation, creativity, and nation-building capacity that we can muster. We have designed a budget strategy that by 2020 will: (1) deliver all of Australia’s electricity from renewables; (2) maximise the energy efficiency to all of the nation’s businesses and industries and homes; (3) heal our country by ending the logging of the remaining native forests and clearing of savannahs, restoring and building resilience in ecosystems and maintaining the carbon they store; (4) redesign and revitalise Australia’s cities into urban villages linked by rapid mass transit and cycleways; and (5) produce more of our own food sustainably.

To do this we need a healthy society and a well-educated one. We need to increase our spending on education, research and innovation at every level from schools, TAFE colleges to universities and research institutions. We need free public preschool for all children, 12,000 new teachers, a 50 per cent increase in capital and maintenance investment, and a rise in teachers’ salaries. We need to make teachers, especially in the TAFE system, permanent again. A knowledge nation values its teachers even more than it values its sports stars or celebrities. After a decade of denigrating public schools, we need a national empowering public schools program to encourage and resource excellence and promote enrolment in local schools.

Local schools strengthen local communities, and local communities will be the backbone of a sustainable society. Sustainability must be incorporated into the curriculum and in all vocational courses. To rapidly achieve the transition to a postcarbon economy, we need every person to understand the values that underpin sustainability. This is not the time to slash $63 million from CSIRO funding. Science is critical to a sustainable future. We cannot drive a revolution on the scale we are talking about on a scale greater than the IT revolution, for example, without science and energised students.

We will abolish HECS. Instead of tax cuts for the rich, we will provide students with a living allowance so that no student is forced to work during term time. Doesn’t that make for happier families, healthier students and a better educated population? We will have national discussions about how we can work together to be healthier and happier and share the changes and workloads to achieve these goals in a way that reduces the gap between the rich and the poor, the overemployed and the underemployed. We need to come to a national consensus about how we can have a higher quality of life by redesigning our homes, communities, cities and workplaces and our ways of life to be more sustainable.

The future is ours for the making. We embrace the challenge and look forward to 2020 when we will look back and say that we were the generation that set Australia on the path to the healthy, happy and authentically sustainable nation that it has become. We were the generation that did not disappoint our children or steal their future from them.’

Mr President, that is the speech Australians would have loved to hear. It would have drawn a line under the past and made the future hopeful and exciting, not daunting. But instead of such a speech, we had what can only be described as a tweaking of the parameters of imagination and thinking of the Howard years. Whilst there have been welcome changes to try to reduce the gap between the rich and poor and to alleviate additional costs of child care and energy, they can only be seen as token against the backdrop of the tax cuts. The increased tax on luxury cars will be offset for the rich many times over by the huge take-home pay hike for the wealthy as they pocket their tax cuts. The 30 per cent private health insurance rebate, costing almost $5 billion a year, has not been touched.

A person on $300,000 will take home $91 a week more, whilst a person earning $30,000 will take home only $11. One tank of petrol or one visit to the supermarket will absorb that and more for a low-income earner. If the government was serious about a more equitable society, it would have seriously addressed inequity by not proceeding with tax cuts for those earning over $75,000. The Greens will move to amend the budget accordingly.

The current disparity between what the rich get and what low-income earners get is stark when you consider that, by 2011-12, the cost of superannuation tax concessions will exceed the cost of the age pension. How can any Labor member of this parliament justify that? To suggest that a one-off energy payment will satisfy pensioners’ needs is dishonest. The age pension is inadequate and must be increased.

While the one-off payment to carers is welcomed, because anything is better than nothing, the government have failed to deal with the long-term wellbeing of carers. They urgently need an increase in carer payment and a scheme to address their long-term disadvantage, for instance, in superannuation. We cannot say that our society is sustainable if carers’ vital work, impacting on their own mental and physical wellbeing, puts them in the lowest social wellbeing index.

To address gambling or alcohol abuse we must ensure that taxes are returned to address the problems generated. The $10 billion dollar alcohol abuse problem will not be minimised by filling government coffers with an undirected alcopop tax but by redirecting that taxation revenue to education, counselling, access to services and by banning advertising. That is what the Greens seek to do.

Funding for Indigenous people does not match the government’s rhetoric, nor adequately addresses what needs to be done. Around $450 million per year is needed for health if we have any hope of closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, yet in this budget the spending is only $250 million for all programs and most of that is misdirected through the government’s discriminatory, ill-targeted Northern Territory intervention, spending another $69 million for administration of the failing income quarantining debacle.

The nation is in surplus. Surely now is the time to invest in making it fairer. Whilst certainly not a Green budget, this is not even a traditional Labor budget. It will benefit the already wealthy without addressing the underlying causes of increased costs of food, petrol, and energy which hurt everyone, but which disproportionately hurt those who are already struggling.

So what of the five headlines of a green budget needed to deliver a sustainable Australia? How did they fare under the Rudd budget? Instead of hearing a vision that all of Australia’s electricity will come from renewables by 2020, we heard a deathly silence on commercialisation or rollout of renewable energy technologies. The Greens say: can we do this by 2020? Yes, we can. Ask yourself whether, in 1995, only 13 years ago, you would have thought it possible to have the world wired for instant global communication or that our lives would revolve around instant messaging received by telephones in our pockets. But a renewably powered Australia by 2020 will not happen by paying lip-service to renewable energy technologies and giving $500-plus million to support a coal technology that does not exist and has no prospect of delivering any significant emission reductions by 2020.

What should have happened is as the Greens have advocated—a bold emission reduction target for 2020, the establishment of a ‘sun fund’ of $3 billion over 10 years to drive research development and commercialisation, as well as the introduction of a feed-in tariff to support these technologies that are ready to go but are not as cheap as wind. A bill such as the one I introduced today is what is needed.

The 20 per cent mandatory renewable energy target is a good start but should have been at least 25 per cent. It currently is most effective for wind energy but has to be supplemented by a feed-in tariff for the technologies that are market ready but not yet the least-cost technology. The fact that the government do not understand renewable energy or the realities of large-scale rollout of the technologies or the barriers to market readiness is no better demonstrated than by their rush, within 24 hours of the budget, to try to fix the mess they have made by giving everything to clean coal in 2008-09 and by flagging that they will patch the gap by shifting $40 million from the Energy Innovation Fund which was previously committed to solar energy storage and hydrogen technologies and redirecting it to assist geothermal energy companies with ongoing drilling costs.

Why is the government trying to divide and rule the renewables sector by taking from solar to give to geothermal when it should have taken the funds from the coal industry’s pipedream? Has the government decided to destroy the solar sector? Any preliminary analysis or even a conversation with the industry would have revealed that means testing rooftop photovoltaics would lead to a complete collapse, and so it is already happening. Within 24 hours of Minister Garrett’s myopia, solar companies are already calling my office, reporting that potential customers have indicated that they will not be proceeding with photovoltaics. There is serious speculation of industry-wide collapse, taking down the government’s Solar Cities program on the way out. This is amateur hour for the government, and it will have to reverse it. Did the government even consult the renewable energy sector, or were Ministers Garrett, Ferguson and Wong too busy meeting with the coal companies to make time?

Another Green headline: maximising energy efficiency across the country, from huge industrial complexes to offices and to every home by 2020. Yes, it is a big idea. It is a climate winner, an expansive jobs and manufacturing industry driver, and it is achievable. The Greens have put forward a series of policies that would, given a sufficient investment, drive systemic change of this kind across Australia. The first, the Energy Efficiency Access and Savings Initiative, or EASI, would retrofit all of Australia’s 7.4 million homes over the course of a decade, rolling out home energy audits, providing the service and paying the up-front cost, which would be recouped through savings on energy bills. EASI would require an up-front investment from the government that, at its peak, would reach $22 billion. But it would more than repay itself, not only through direct repayments but also through deferred investment in new power stations and electricity grid infrastructure, reduced emissions and greater household amenity.

We also have EASI programs, energy efficient programs, driving energy efficiency in commercial buildings across Australia and in large industrial complexes, requiring them to implement the energy efficiency opportunities that they have identified in the audits that have been conducted to date. Instead of this, set against that bold vision, what Rudd Labor promised in the budget is a confused hodgepodge of small-scale investments targeted at achieving media coverage now, a few photo opportunities down the track and very little in the way of real emissions reductions. The Rudd government has broken an election promise to spend $225 million over three years to 2010-11; instead, committing only $126 million by that time.

The government’s green loans scheme is tokenism when what we need is systemic change. With only $240 million allocated, a third of it not to be spent until after the next election, it could give loans to as few as 24,000 households if each chooses to borrow at the top end of the $10,000 limit. The slow start, with no sense of urgency, means that as few as 1,360 homes could benefit in the next year and only 16,000 before this government’s term could be ended at the next election. What is more, by only providing financial support, it ignores the other well-known barriers to people taking up energy efficiency opportunities—namely, lack of information and lack of priority.

The Low Emission Plan for Renters is similarly tokenistic and ill thought out. With only a $500 rebate available for landlords to install insulation—less than half the cost in many cases—landlords still have very little incentive to save their tenants energy and money. It also has a slow and late start. Housing assistance is one way to permanently reduce costs for low-income earners. All new housing initiatives must meet high energy efficiency standards and be on public transport routes. Immediate housing affordability is not seriously addressed, as people are still struggling to find affordable rental properties or are struggling to pay their mortgages. The Clean Business Australia initiative, Climate Ready, the Green Building Fund and Re-Tooling for Climate Change are more of the same: piecemeal, minimally funded, with no sense of urgency.

Green headline 3: heal our country by ending the logging of the remaining native forests and the clearing of savannahs, restoring and building resilience in ecosystems and maintaining the carbon they store. This would be a climate and biodiversity winner, but instead the government continues to drive ecological destruction and the destruction of rural communities by slashing the environment budget and continuing to subsidise logging and the managed investment schemes that are destroying river systems and town water supplies as well as social harmony in rural Australia. The carbon and biodiversity tragedy of the loss of old-growth forests in Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales can be sheeted home to the Rudd government just as much as to the Howard government. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts is just as responsible as his predecessor.

Under Rudd Labor, Collins Street farmers are set to own the water in our rivers and pay nothing for our groundwater. According to the government’s 2007 Tax Expenditures Statement, the tax deductibility of forestry managed investment funds will cost $140 million in 2008-09, $365 million in 2009-10 and $425 million in 2010-11. In other words, the Rudd government plans to pay the rich to destroy our ecosystems, forgoing almost a billion dollars over three years. Meanwhile, it is taking $50 million away from the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts and abolishing the Biodiversity Hotspots program.

Caring for our Country is ad hoc and non-strategic, with no increase in spending on the environment. It demonstrates that the government has failed to learn the positive and negative lessons of the Natural Heritage Trust. Once again, there is no understanding of the need for landscape-scale restoration or the urgency of the task. In the Murray-Darling Basin, for example, long-term targets for return of water to the Murray have still not been set and—amazingly—the Murray-Darling Basin plan does not come into effect until 2019. We will have a plan and no river. The much vaunted reform has not overcome the conflict between the states. The science says that 3,500 gigalitres of water must be returned to the system if it is to have any chance of recovery. When are we going to get it, Prime Minister?

Redesigning and revitalising Australia’s major cities into urban villages linked by rapid mass transit and cycleways is the Green’s fourth headline. This is not only a great climate idea, it goes to the heart of the stress and obesity crisis that we face. The Greens would invest heavily in public transport and redesign our cities to be people-friendly rather than car-friendly. We would allocate at least 25 per cent of the $22.3 billion AusLink 2 funding for 2009-10 through to 2013-14 to major infrastructure projects that shift people or freight off roads and onto more climate friendly alternatives. By 2014, the proportion of funding for low-polluting and mass transit options should be greater than that for roads. But it is certainly not going to be the case.

Imagine the difference to people’s quality of life if they could walk to work or cycle in their neighbourhoods and move between neighbourhoods on rapid transit. The oil crisis and the climate crisis make it critical that jobs are taken to where the people are, rather than move people to the jobs. This would mean that people have more time to enjoy their lives—they would be healthier, breathe cleaner air and get to know their neighbours. Instead, the Rudd government has invested only $78 million in dealing with congestion, and has continued with billions into roads and freeways. No government that takes peak oil or climate change seriously would spend only five per cent as much on rail as on road funding in the coming year. The government has not even had the courage to abolish the fringe benefits tax concession for motor vehicles, the cost of which will be about $1.6 billion in this financial year alone. Getting rid of it would have been a clear climate winner and behaviour change driver. If an equivalent tax concession was made for public transport, it would take people out of cars and on to public transport. Even with cars, we have no vehicle fuel efficiency standards, and the Rudd Green Car program, much spun and publicised, does not begin until 2011—after the next election.

The Greens would expand the AusLink funding guidelines to include urban, intrastate and interstate public transport infrastructure projects. We would ensure that AusLink’s corridor strategies would address the issues of oil vulnerability and greenhouse gas mitigation.

Finally, the Greens’ fifth headline for a sustainable Australia by 2020 is ‘going with our own food’. Imagine if Australians produced more of our own food and produced it sustainably. It is a high-level goal because it goes to the heart of our health and wellbeing, the interaction in our neighbourhoods and our interaction with our rural communities. The world’s food production systems are becoming increasingly frayed by ecological degradation and human rights abuses. Every Chinese frozen vegetable that finds its way into Australian mixed frozen vegetable packs is subsidised by environmental destruction and low wages. Extreme weather events will drive shortages as land is turned over to biofuels, cooking oils and plantation forests. In spite of the free trade mantra, countries are now declaring food emergencies. (Extension of time granted) We need a national food plan to deliver food security in the face of the collapse of global free trade markets, crop collapse because of drought, floods or fires and displacement by plantations. We need to understand our food better—where it comes from, what it takes to grow it and what carbon is embedded in it.

Just as the climate is approaching a tipping point, so too is society. Revolutions do not occur when people are ground down as in the Howard years—they occur when they expect things to be better and their hopes are dashed. The Australian people want us to aim high in addressing the overwhelming challenges of our time. They want of be part of the solutions. The Greens provide that vision and the new thinking that will actually solve these massive challenges. The climate will not wait for governments which cannot imagine a different world and neither should the people, for it is an uncharted, different world that we are now a part of.

Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Rudd government’s first budget has delivered the promised tax cuts for Australian working families, and families are happy for whatever help they can get to cope with higher interest rates and skyrocketing petrol and grocery prices. But the government has failed vulnerable Australians: it has failed those on a pension; it has failed families in the outer suburbs and regional areas; it has failed to address short-term inflationary pressures and it has failed to give families a real choice in child care. The government has also chosen to find savings from payments made to support and recognise families, thereby raising the concern that families and the vital service they provide to the community will continue to be seen as a target for future budget cuts.

Australia’s 3.4 million people on a pension are overlooked. These Australians are really struggling to make ends meet. That is why Family First wants to give all pensioners across the country an extra $70 a fortnight to cope with the skyrocketing cost of living. The increase should go to the 1.9 million Australians on the age pension, as well as those on the disability support pension, the parenting payment single, the carer payment and a number of other pensions. They are the most vulnerable people in our community.

So many pensioners are really struggling to make ends meet and need extra help to pay huge petrol and grocery bills and to just get by. The current pension rate is too low. Singles get $546 a fortnight, while couples get $456 a fortnight each. An extra $70 a fortnight would make a substantial difference. According to the St Vincent de Paul Society, age pensioners spend 30 per cent more on food as a proportion of their income than average households and are the hardest hit by soaring grocery prices.

Family First believes the Rudd government’s first budget should have cut petrol tax to put immediate downward pressure on inflation to help families with the ever-increasing cost of living. Craig James, the Chief Equities Economist at CommSec, said:

Petrol is the single biggest contributor to the current high inflation rate ...

We know that cutting petrol tax does two things: it puts downward pressure on inflation and it helps families to make ends meet. Petrol prices and inflation driven interest rates are two of the biggest impacts on family budgets. One of the most significant drivers of inflation has been, as I have mentioned, skyrocketing petrol prices. So why didn’t the Rudd government cut petrol tax by 10c a litre, as part of its billion dollar tax cuts, to put immediate downward pressure on inflation? More than 50c of the price of every litre of petrol goes to the government in tax. Petrol tax is one thing the government can control in trying to reduce inflation. Cutting petrol tax in the short term makes sense, but over the medium to longer term we need to significantly lift our investment in public transport to give people in the outer suburbs and regional areas an alternative to using their cars. Lower income people and first home buyers tend to live in the outer suburbs where housing is cheaper. But poor public transport means they depend on their cars, which means they suffer more from punishing petrol prices.

The federal government should have announced an investment in public transport infrastructure and capacity in the outer suburbs and regional areas on top of state government funding, building to a $1 billion annual fund. This would help families struggling with skyrocketing petrol prices and mortgage interest rates. Recent research on families living in the outer suburbs of Western Sydney found that they were spending three times the proportion of their gross household income on petrol compared to what people in the eastern suburbs of inner Sydney were spending. That was because people in the west were driving more than 20 times the distance that people in the inner suburbs were driving and, tellingly, because they did not have the same public transport options. Families in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and in the outer suburbs of cities across Australia are facing the same problems. How can they avoid petrol pain unless the government provides adequate public transport services to give them the option of not using their car?

Family First is passionate about caring for Australia’s environment to preserve it for our children to enjoy. That is why Family First welcomes the Rudd government’s initiative for workers and their families with the introduction of low-interest green loans. Family First also welcomes the National Clean Coal Fund, which will help reduce greenhouse emissions and secure jobs for thousands of workers and their families.

The government has also announced new means testing of family payments, including the baby bonus. The first reaction of most people is that all welfare payments should be means tested but these family payments were never meant to be welfare payments. Whilst Family First agrees that millionaires do not need access to these payments, treating family payments such as the baby bonus as welfare is a concern. Family First is concerned about the ultimate result of means testing important family payments. Once means testing starts, where does it stop? With birth rates still below replacement level, families who have children are actually helping Australia. These family payments also help with the greater expenses parents have in bringing up a family. Kids bring greater expenses whatever your income level.

The government has now means tested family tax benefit part B and the baby bonus, so they are not available to families earning more than $150,000 a year. Means testing families by their income level may sound good, but it ignores the number of children in a family. A family with three or four kids with a family income of $155,000 would not be entitled to either the baby bonus or family tax benefit part B and would be far worse off than a family on $150,000 with one kid. In this simple example the expenses of a family with more children is much greater, but that family is no longer entitled to family payment support. The government should, at the very least, make an allowance for the number of children a salary is supporting. Senators will remember that I come from a family of 16 children. I can tell you that if my parents had been fortunate enough to earn more than $150,000 they still would have had higher costs than most families.

The simple fact is that Australia needs children and families to grow and that most Australians of child-bearing age want to have children. But research by the Australian Institute of Family Studies shows that, even though couples want to have children, they do not have as many children as they would like. One key reason for this is that couples do not have confidence that they will have strong continuing support from the community. Family payments are one way of giving that community support.

The government provides many benefits to members of the community that are not made available on the basis of income alone, like universal access to health care, because these are important social goods for the community. All families, regardless of wealth, can send their children to public, government funded schools for a free education. They can also access free surgery in public hospitals. The difficulty with introducing a new means test is that, once you concede the principle, the cut-in level for the means test can always be moved further down the income scale. Once governments start to cut family payments, there is a temptation to make one more cut and another saving, and they may find it hard to stop. Family First is happy to look at better ways to deliver the money to families but is concerned about cutting the overall level of money available to families.

Treasurer Wayne Swan also says mothers in paid work will be helped in the budget by tax breaks and more money from the childcare tax rebate. It is great that mums in the paid workforce can expect more help from the government in the budget, but what about mums who have made a great financial sacrifice to stay at home? The Treasurer has talked about mothers who work to make our economy strong, but families do not work for the economy. The government should be making the economy work for families. A Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs study last year found that more than half the mothers in full-time paid work would prefer to work fewer hours. There needs to be a balance between work time and family time. What is the government doing to help families find that balance?

The government will increase the childcare tax rebate, which will help those families that can afford institutional child care, but what about those families that choose to use a family member or a friend and get no extra assistance in this budget? Why does the government restrict assistance to parents who choose centre based child care, rather than allowing parents to have a tax break for the type of child care they want? Only 20 per cent of parents choose formal care for their kids. Family First wants to give all families with children under five the same childcare payment every year so they can choose the child care they want, whether it is in-house care from a grandparent or neighbour or from a childcare centre. This would replace the childcare tax rebate, which only some parents can claim. Government policies must help all mothers, not just those the government wants to work to serve the economy.

Family First welcomes the government’s attempts to provide better medical care for our rural and regional communities by providing $4.6 million over the next four years to place more medical students in rural and remote communities as part of their training in the hope that they will return to the country after they have graduated. However, Family First does not think that this has gone far enough to help with the acute shortage of doctors in country Australia and calls on the government to adopt Family First’s doctor scholarships scheme. Under Family First’s plan, hundreds of free medical places would be offered, in exchange for a five-year commitment to work in regional and rural Australia.

Turning to the alcohol toll, one year ago, at the last budget, Family First raised the alcohol toll as a significant issue facing Australia. It costs Australia $15.3 billion a year to mop up after problems related to alcohol. I drink, and most Australians drink, but we need to create a culture of responsible drinking. That is why Family First wants the government to ensure there is information or warning labels on all alcohol products, wants to restrict all alcohol advertising to appear after 9 pm and wants to close the crazy loophole that allows alcohol advertising during the day because it is related to sport. That is wrong. It sends the message that alcohol is linked to sport, a link that we should certainly break.

Finally, Family First is concerned that the budget has nothing in it to help the states reduce their dependence on pokies, despite the Prime Minister’s concern over gambling dependency. Family First knows the government shares its concern over the significant social issue of poker machines but does not understand why the government did not use its first budget to look at ways to alleviate the problem. It is quite clear that the states are so hooked on gambling revenue that they are unable to break their habit without federal intervention. Family First’s Poker Machine Harm Reduction Tax (Administration) Bill 2008 would, over time, move poker machines out of pubs and clubs and see them restricted to casinos and racetracks, which are dedicated gambling venues.

In conclusion, Family First welcomes the Rudd Government’s first budget with tax cuts for working families but is concerned for Australia’s most vulnerable people, those on pensions, who have once again been left to fend for themselves on slim pickings and crumbs from the table.

Debate (on motion by Senator Stephens) adjourned.