Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

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

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

Mr Speaker:

Australians are now paying the price for Labor’s reckless spending.

The enterprise and the energy of Australians coupled with the richness of our resources mean that with the right leadership our greatest days, our most prosperous days, should be in front of us.

But opportunities can be seized or they can be squandered.

On Tuesday night we should have had a Budget that laid out a foundation for recovery and growth.

We should have had a Budget that marked a path out of this downturn, offering confidence and hope for a better future.

Instead, what we were offered was a counsel of despair setting out no credible or convincing plan for economic recovery.

A Budget that just doesn’t add up.

A Budget so unbelievable that the Prime Minister is already running away from it –racing to an early election so that he can get to the polls before the full consequences of his mismanagement are felt by the Australian people.

Last year the Treasurer was filled with pride as he proclaimed a surplus built by others.

This year, he was so ashamed he could not bring himself, in a speech of 30 minutes, to even mention the $58 billion deficit he had created himself.

And he could not utter the words “$188 billion of net debt – the highest in our history – double the record under Paul Keating”.

That’s $9,000 for every man, woman and child in Australia.

The Prime Minister will run up more than twice as much debt in less than half the time as Paul Keating.

He says that this colossal figure of $188 billion is peak debt.

Mr Speaker, it is only a foothill at the base of what will be the Prime Minister’s towering summit of debt.

His Budget Papers boast for page after page of his national broadband network – $43 billion worth he says.

But the massive borrowings it will demand are not taken into account.

And who is to say it will be $43 billion?

The Prime Minister went on television to say it would be commercially viable and called on mums and dads to invest.

He did so without any business plan, any financial analysis – any responsible or reasonable basis to support what he was saying.

So what price the Prime Minister’s broadband dream?

Nobody knows – least of all the Prime Minister.

But we do know this – we will all pay for it and it will build that Labor mountain of debt.

And what about Rudd Bank – it will require $28 billion of Government borrowings – that isn’t to be found in the debt calculations.

And if all that is not enough – consider this: the Prime Minister is asking us to believe that between now and his $188 billion of “peak debt” there will be no new spending initiatives from his spendthrift Government.

Mr Speaker, there will come a time when Australians will look wistfully at $188 billion of debt and ask not when our debt will rise to that peak, but when it will descend to it.

And every single Australian will pay the price – it took the Coalition together with the Australian people ten years to pay off $96 billion of Keating Labor debt.

How many years, how many decades will it take us to pay off hundreds of billions of dollars of Rudd Labor debt?

The Prime Minister’s reckless borrowing and spending today is guaranteed to deliver higher interest rates and higher taxes in the future.

Because as we all know, debt has to be repaid with interest – whether it is a family’s credit card, or the credit card of the nation.

Already, self-reliant Australians who take out private health insurance are being asked to pay more in order to offset Labor’s reckless spending.

While the Coalition welcomes the Government adopting our proposal for an increase to the single age pension, the news was not good for all seniors, particularly those self-reliant Australians who seek to put money away for their retirement.

But that is the Labor way – making prudent and thrifty Australians pay for reckless and spendthrift Governments.

Labor blames this ocean of red ink entirely on the global financial crisis.

We can not forget that in November 2007 this Prime Minister was dealt the best hand of economic cards of any Prime Minister in our history.

All of Labor’s debt had been repaid – there was $45 billion of cash in the bank!

The Budget was strongly in surplus.

Unemployment was at historic lows and growth was strong.

Since November 2007 the Labor Government has chosen to increase spending by $124 billion – that is two thirds of the $188 billion debt we will accumulate in just four years.

And what we have got for it?

The same old Labor cocktail of higher debt, higher unemployment and higher deficits.

As the global downturn worsened late last year.

As it became more and more obvious that tax revenues were declining.

The Rudd Government embarked on the most profligate spending spree in our nation’s history.

The idea that a Government faced with a worsening financial climate would borrow $23 billion and give it away defies common sense.

They did not spend it on roads, or railways or bridges or ports.

They gave it away.

Most of it, naturally, was not spent, it was saved.

And so its impact on the economy was modest and short-lived.

In February when Labor presented its $42 billion economic stimulus package – so-called – we took the unpopular decision to oppose it and to offer a smaller and better targeted package, that would have more effectively protected Australian jobs.

Our advice was dismissed scornfully by a Prime Minister who always knows best. Who claims, repeatedly and untruthfully, that it’s his way or nothing.

The truth is that it didn’t have to be this way. Australian didn’t have to embark on this irresponsible, dangerous course of high deficits, high debt, and high unemployment. There was a better way forward, involving less debt, and less risk.

Our Measures

Our Plan for Recovery will be based on four key principles:

• The protection and creation of jobs for all Australians.
• Government should not incur one dollar more in debt than necessary.
• Spending should be targeted at creating jobs and building economic infrastructure.
• Private enterprise and small business must be supported as the drivers of economic growth.

As we develop and expand this Plan we have been meeting with small business people around the nation at nearly 50 Jobs for Australia Forums.

These enterprising men and women are the engine room of our economy.

We have listened to the challenges faced by small business in these difficult times and we have developed and will develop policies that will meet their concerns and respond to their suggestions.

At every forum whether it was in Darwin or Terrigal, Coffs Harbour or Burnie we heard concerns about the need for more effective incentives to take on and keep apprentices during these tough times.

Right around the country we heard complaints about the incredible burden of red tape – at Cleveland a young woman managing a small business told us of the elaborate five hour accounting exercise she was legally obliged to go through to calculate a diesel rebate – worth $27.

Or at Coffs Harbour, in the vital tourism industry, another woman told us of the incredible rigmarole she had gone through to establish a bed and breakfast and hire one part-time housekeeper.

And at every meeting there were concerns about cash flow – the Government’s 30 per cent depreciation allowance for equipment purchases was noted – but many said it was not much good to you if you were short of cash or didn’t need any new equipment.

Tonight, drawing on what we have learned from thousands of small business people around Australia, we propose a number of practical measures to support jobs and businesses, especially small businesses.

All of them have a modest cost – proving you don’t need to borrow recklessly to do the right thing by small business.

Tax loss carryback for business

If businesses make operating losses this year or next year, they should be able to carry them ‘back’ against previous year’s profits and recover, as a refund, up to $100,000 of taxes paid over the past three years.

This tax refund would bolster cash flows in difficult times. Because the tax loss carried back could not be carried forward the budgetary expense should be relatively neutral over the business cycle.

Fairer rules to deal with troubled businesses

Australia’s insolvency laws do not encourage the reconstruction and rehabilitation of businesses that hit hard times. Too many jobs, and too much value is lost when viable businesses are wound up or their assets sold in fire sales.

We support a change to our laws which will emphasise reconstruction of these businesses. Reform in this area, in these times, could save thousands of jobs that would otherwise be lost.

Cutting red tape and making it easier to do business with Government

The most consistent complaint we have heard from small businesses is excessive regulation and compliance.

The Coalition would reduce this burden to the lowest in the OECD, and join state and local governments to deliver a one-stop online portal for filings.

Many small businesses find the paperwork for Government tendering overly complex and inconsistent between departments and governments. Part of our reform will be to standardise and streamline procurement contracts and other processes.

Helping employers provide training for the recovery

We are taking up a suggestion we heard from many employers of apprentices in traditional trades who came to our Jobs For Australia Forums. They told us that two of the biggest barriers to apprenticeships are small business cash flow and wage costs. So we would direct a greater proportion of the incentives for those who take on an apprentice to the first two years of a traditional trade apprenticeship meaning employers will receive this support when they need it the most.

All of these measures are practical, pragmatic and job-focused measures that would greatly assist the economy in this difficult period.

They have been drawn from our first hand and ongoing engagement with small business – whether it is meeting in community halls around the country or on our www.jobsforaustralia.com website.

Budget Honesty

The sheer magnitude of the deterioration in our nation’s finances revealed by the Treasurer on Tuesday night raises a more serious and unsettling set of issues.

Labor has no strategy to return the Budget to surplus other than hoping that “something will turn up” – the something in this case being an incredible six successive years of above-trend growth of 4.5 per cent of GDP from 2011-12 – a scarcely believable boom.

Contrast it to the IMF’s more sober growth forecast for Australia in 2010 of 1.1 per cent.

Nobody believes this “best of all possible worlds” scenario is credible.

The recovery from this recession will not come in a rush – the days of cheap and easy credit that helped fuel the last boom are over, if not forever, for many, many years.

Australians deserve, and are entitled to expect an honest, objective and upfront appraisal of the nation’s circumstances – not to be buried beneath a daily avalanche of spin and media manipulation.

Commission for Sustainable Finances

We will appoint an independent Commission for Sustainable Finances to undertake a top-to-toe review of Commonwealth spending after the next election, to determine what levels of expenditure are sustainable and consistent with the need to address intergenerational equity.

The alarming expansion of spending under Labor makes this vitally important. Annual spending is projected to rise from $272 billion in 2007-08 to $342 billion in 2010-11 – the largest three year increase since the mid-1970s. The Commission’s task will be to help the next Coalition Government to identify and cut the waste in that spending.

Parliamentary Budget Office

The Coalition believes that honesty in fiscal policy would be served by the creation of an Australian version of America’s Congressional Budget Office which has for many years provided the Congress with objective and impartial advice and analysis on fiscal policy and the effects of new policies.

We would establish a Parliamentary Budget Office which would be:

• Chartered to provide Parliament with independent, objective analysis of fiscal policy, including long-term projections of the impact of various measures on the economy, employment, real interest rates and debt levels.
• Responsible to the Parliament rather than the Executive, much like the Auditor-General or Commonwealth Ombudsman.
• Staffed with economic, accounting and actuarial experts, and overseen by a director with an independent tenure.

Governments never welcome greater scrutiny, and so I’m under no illusion that this proposal will be greeted with any great enthusiasm by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. But such a body would contribute greatly to a better-informed debate about fiscal policy alternatives and the consequences of different choices and trade-offs.

The Parliamentary Budget Office will be an invaluable mechanism in seeking to ensure that the damage done to this economy in just 18 months by this inexperienced and incompetent government never happens again.

2009 Budget Measures

Turning to the Budget measures themselves, the Prime Minister, in his desperate rush to find an excuse to go to an early election, has called on the Coalition to indicate how it will respond to the major savings measures in his Budget – the decisions that increase Government revenues or reduce Government expenditures.

Given the magnitude of the deficit, these so-called major savings measures are hardly heroic – in 2009-10 they amount to $ 1.5 billion, compared to a $57.6 billion deficit.

We in the Coalition showed our commitment to fiscal discipline in February by proposing a much smaller stimulus package and when that was rejected out of hand, by voting against the $42 billion package and its $14 billion cash splash.

Only this side of the House has had the courage to take a tough decision to restrain this debt and deficit blow out.

None of the savings measures in this Budget will make, by themselves, a material difference to the deficit.

We will consider them carefully and respond to them reasonably.

This deficit is already too big – we do not want to make it bigger.

But there is one savings measure in this Budget which we will oppose.

The changes to the private health insurance rebate are just the latest phase in Labor’s unrelenting war against private health insurance.

Labor hates private health insurance.

Labor hates it because it encourages self-reliance and because it offers choice.

Australians know that and that is why in the lead up to the last election the Prime Minister was asked time and time again whether he would change the private health insurance rebate.

Again and again he and his shadow health minister said they would not.

Never was an election promise given more emphatically and then broken so brazenly.

Every Australian knows that the cost of public health is growing as are the waiting lists for public hospitals.

Every Australian knows that as our population ages the need for more self reliance in the provision of health services becomes greater.

This broken promise will be a direct hit on the family budget of at least 1.7 million Australians and indirectly will result in higher premiums for all Australians – including those on very low incomes.

And it is just the beginning – the thin edge of the wedge.

And as private health insurance costs go up, more pressure is put on public hospitals.

The Prime Minister claims to be concerned about public hospitals and yet I see in his Budget’s Infrastructure document spending on health and hospital infrastructure receives less than ten per cent the amount allocated to his broadband network.

So much for priorities.

The private health insurance broken promise contributes $1.9 billion of savings over four years – when total revenues will exceed $1200 billion. That fact underlines the point that the Prime Minister’s attack on private health insurance is based in ideology, not economics.

There are plainly hundreds of opportunities for the Prime Minister to offset that saving if the measure is defeated – he could do worse than starting with his own foreign affairs spendathon in support of his UN ambitions.

But tonight I will make one suggestion of a suitable offset for the Prime Minister’s consideration.

One that would make for a healthier Australia and lessen the burden on public hospitals rather than increase it.

The Government could comfortably afford to retain the current private health insurance rebate without any cost to the published Budget outcome by increasing the amount of excise collected on tobacco by 12.5 per cent (or about three cents extra per cigarette).

Tobacco is the single most preventible cause of ill health and death in Australia.

So there’s a tough choice for a weak Prime Minister.

Raise $1.9 billion by making health more expensive and putting more pressure on the public hospital system or by adding about 3 cents more to the price of a cigarette and taking pressure of the public health system.

You see, Mr Speaker, budgets are indeed about priorities.

Conclusion

Mr Speaker:

History tells us that an addiction to debt and excess spending is in the DNA of the Labor Party.

Too many times, Labor governments both here in Canberra and in the states have taken us down this dead-end street.

This time, we were told, it was all going to be different.

Australians took on trust this Prime Minister and this Treasurer.

When they swore hand on heart at the last election that they were economic conservatives, Australians took them at their word.

They hoped this government would govern wisely and prudently.

And they genuinely wanted this Prime Minister to succeed.

They were prepared to give him every chance.

Yet, today, Australians see our national balance sheet drowning in red ink.

They see our nation’s future mortgaged for as far as the eye can see.

To repay the principal and interest on Labor’s $188 billion debt over the next 10 years will cost taxpayers $25 billion a year – our largest ever surplus, the Coalition’s last, was $20 billion.

And if the debt turns out to be higher – say $250 billion – then the repayments would be $33 billion a year.

Australians wonder how it could have come to this, in only 18 months?

Now, you might have expected a bit of humility, a bit of contrition, from a Prime Minister and a Treasurer who have failed this nation.

Instead, all we get are sanctimonious lectures about how the Opposition should either lock in behind this Government’s failed strategies.

Or provide Labor with the policy alternatives, with the map and compass, that will get them out of the mess in which they find themselves.

Mr Speaker:

Tonight, our job as political leaders is to build hope for the future.

For at least 60 years our proudest boast as a nation is that no generation of Australians has been left worse off than their parents.

That optimism, that confidence and certainty in what the future promises, is central to the success of modern Australia as a safe and prosperous place to bring up a family – the anchor of our society.

It is our responsibility, the members of this Parliament, to ensure that, whatever challenges we may confront, we will do all we can to ensure our children will have the opportunity to build an even better Australia than the one we know today.

Enterprise, opportunity and optimism – these are core Australian values.

They are core values of mine and of the Coalition.

They are essential building-blocks if Australia is to continue to fulfil its destiny as a strong, vibrant and prosperous nation

Yet, tonight, we cannot avoid the hard questions:

Will we be the first generation of Australians to bequeath to our children a lower standard of living?

To what extent are our actions today consigning the next generation of working Australians to higher taxes, higher interest rates and higher debt – a lesser opportunity to give their families what we ourselves enjoy in life?

And, when the time comes to answer to the Australian people for these failings, who will be judged the Guilty Party?

That day of reckoning is approaching for the Rudd Labor Government.

Its gross policy miscalculations have made much worse the impact of difficult global economic conditions.

The Treasurer admits it will be many years before Australians are as well off as they were before this Government came to power.

The Prime Minister has no idea how to fix the mess he has made.

He cannot even summon the courage to try.

The Prime Minister’s threat of a double dissolution and an early election proves to all of us what this Budget is really about.

It isn’t about protecting the jobs of Australians.

Least of all the one million Australians it says will soon be out of work.

It is about the job security of one man and one man only.

A Prime Minister frightened of the consequences of his mismanagement, now wants to cut and run before he is found out.

Mr Speaker, history tells us it always the job of the Liberal and National Party Coalition to repair the damage done by Labor governments; to rescue Australia from Labor debt.

It will not be easy.

But on this side of the House we are ready to take up that challenge – and to do so with the confidence and determination that comes from knowing that the Coalition has the experience and the expertise to get the job done

Mr Speaker, it is only a Coalition Government that can and will restore this great nation to prosperity.

I also seek leave to incorporate a speech in response to the budget by the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, Senator Barnaby Joyce.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The budget has failed to show the path to the reduction of debt and with the forward projection of total liabilities of the net financial worth in excess of half a trillion dollars in 2012-2013 Mr Rudd and Mr Swan are sleepwalking.

Without a determined path to debt reduction Australia is on a path to destitution. The previous prediction of a forward budget surplus in 2008 of $21.7 billion has vanished and now there is a deficit of $57.6 billion and also little belief that can be left in the capacity of Labor to stay to budget. Even in November Mr Swan was predicting a surplus and six months later we are on the abyss.

In more recent predictions Dr Neil Hyden in February from the Australian Office of Financial Management said that the $200 billion facility would be fully drawn in 2012-2013 and now three months later we are being asked to consider that the limit will have to be extended to $300 billion. The cost of funds on this appears to be less than 5% which is just not possible if, in the same breath, the government believes there will be growth of 4.5% which would signal a return globally to a substantial increase in economic conditions. The economic turnaround would be contemporaneous with an increase in demand for funds and an increase in the cost of funds.

There is somewhere between $450 billion to $500 billion owed by governments within the sovereignty of Australia which the Federal Government has promised to repay and that means that somewhere within our Nation in the near future, at a conservative cost of funds of say 6% considering we’re at historic lows at the moment, we will have to find at least $27 billion a year just to pay the interest. Now they won’t find it so you know what they will do, they will just borrow more money to pay the interest. The demise will be uncomfortable.

In the budget regional Australia has been decimated in some areas such as funding for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry which has lost close to a third of its funding. Yet it is such industries as Agriculture that we will be relying on to refinance our Nation. Likewise leaks to The Australian newspaper about the allocation of funding to the Inland Rail have turned out to be not the case. Infrastructure on reducing port interconnectivity and bottle necks and traversing the coal, wheat, cotton, cattle industrial belt between Brisbane and Melbourne would be more conducive to economic growth that will allow us to repay our debts than new motorways on the coast for the family car.

Australia has compromised its future with Labor’s management and insistence on the perverse logic that retail expenditure on imported goods from an arrival in the mail of a $900 cheque will turn around a global recession in a service-based economy.

There is no evidence that this gift to Chinese manufacturing has helped Australia.

Instead of learning from their mistakes, the Rudd Labor Government pushes ahead with its plans to introduce a new tax. The foreshadowed Emissions Trading Scheme is completely counterintuitive to economic growth to pay our debts and keep Australian Working Families in work. It will be a boon for the carbon permit market but there will be nothing in it but debt for the producers of our nation’s vital food supplies.

Rural health only gets an extension of $9 million which means the Labor Government’s belief in ceiling insulation is 400 times greater than their belief in the delivery of basic health services to people away from metropolitan Australia.

Off the coast there is very little in the way of major road infrastructure however, it is inland Australia that produces the export wealth for our Nation.

Pensioners have been given an increase and this is something that the National Party has been calling for, for quite some time.

The Nationals have foreshadowed major cost reductions, such as a tier of the removal of a major layer of government, and while this does obviously become a galling point for so many it may become essential with the sale of major public assets to start reigning in the current debt which if it proceeds on its current trajectory will be terminal for Australia’s financial capacity.

We should not forget the position both Ireland and Iceland, and the trouble the Eastern European states have got themselves into. We should never gain any comfort from saying our position is not as bad as the United States as their position is extremely dire, however, as a nation their capacity to turn their financial position around is immensely more dynamic than Australia’s.

The budget is in essence a reflection of Mr Rudd’s attention with matters overseas whilst the finances at home have gone into freefall. His continual distraction with issues secondary are now seen in the state of the nation’s finances and the tokenistic nature of such things as the 2020 summit have come into absolute focus in that far from being able to predict what would happen in 2020 they could not predict what would happen 12 months ahead.

It is absolutely fundamentally important for the long-term stability of our Nation that the Labor Government and any that follows them grasps the nettle and makes decisive structural moves to reign in the debt. This has not been done in this budget so the task is still in front of us.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At a time when the community is facing unprecedented environmental and economic challenges, this budget should be transforming Australia to a low-carbon economy. This budget should be, but is not, a green new deal for Australia. When the recession ends, Australia should be in place to reap the benefits of the global green jobs boom, not at the back of the queue. Instead, this budget is a clear demonstration of the Rudd government’s commitment to the old economy, a commitment that will delay Australians having the opportunity of the new jobs, innovative research, developmental opportunities, ecological security and social benefits that would come from a move to the new green economy. This is an opportunity that has been seized by governments around the world, as with the progressive decisions made by President Obama in his multibillion-dollar green new deal stimulus package for the United States.

Tonight I will set out some of the ways we Greens would grab this transformative opportunity with both hands. The Prime Minister has called on the Senate to pass this budget in its entirety. I say to the Prime Minister: this Senate is the house of review. It is the people’s backstop and innovator. We are not here to be a rubber stamp, and this budget is far from perfect. It fails single parents, the unemployed and the environment, so the Greens will responsibly scrutinise and improve it and we will be moving amendments in the Senate in later debate.

I do know that Australians do not want an early election, nor do we Greens, and we say to the Prime Minister: ‘Let’s work together to improve this budget in the same way that we Greens worked with the government to improve its economic stimulus package earlier this year.’ We are proud that through our effective work in the Senate we were successful in adding some $350 million for local green jobs to the government’s $42 billion stimulus package. It was a package which originally did not create many jobs outside the building and construction sector, and the Greens-inspired local jobs programs which went into it are now highlights in this budget. The millions of dollars for jobs in heritage, cycleway infrastructure and a range of community project grants will create thousands of jobs for Australians throughout the country, and, of the $60 million for heritage grants to be rolled out in the next year, $2 million has already been allocated to support important conservation restoration work at the National Heritage listed Old Government House in Parramatta, for example. The Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape in south-western Victoria, the first place included in Australia’s National Heritage List, has also received just over $360,000, and earlier this month these funds were provided to the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners and the Winda Mara Aboriginal Corporations for the Budj Bim Tracks project—more jobs created in regional Australia.

In March we also came to an agreement with the Treasurer for improvements to the liquid assets tests so that people who were on lower incomes would get better access to income support when they became unemployed. Our negotiations also sealed an increase in funding for the bushfire research centre in Melbourne.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics plays a vital role in collecting and analysing social data and providing essential information for research and policy development. We went in to bat for it. Sixty million dollars has been allocated to it over four years in this budget. This is a significant improvement for this agency. Having said that, I note recent job losses in the Australian Bureau of Statistics and I would expect that this funding will ensure that the jobs cuts there will stop.

We are particularly proud that Australia’s 1.2 million age pensioners and carers, who have been struggling to make ends meet, have seen an increase in this budget. Single age pensioners, forced to live on less than $285 a week, have been particularly vulnerable. That is an income which the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Treasurer have admitted they could not live on. We have been campaigning for a minimum $30-a-week increase in the single age pension since before the 2007 budget.

Increased funding for the nation’s broadcasters is also welcome and long overdue. There is an additional $167 million to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in this year’s federal budget to increase Australian content and to roll out a children’s station, which will benefit millions of families. But we recognise that it will take much more than this to reverse the effects of a decade of neglect. There is an extra $20 million to SBS, which we welcome, but it is not even enough to remove the broadcaster’s reliance on advertising revenue, and we ask the government to look at better funding for this important alternative and creative component of Australia’s broadcasting. The Greens solidly back the ABC and SBS, and it is great to see that our public broadcasters, at least the ABC, have done better in the budget. But it is disappointing that the government has neglected smaller community broadcasters across the country.

Australian parents have been calling for action on paid parental leave for years. While the Greens are pleased to see a commitment in Tuesday’s budget to the introduction of an 18-week scheme, the fact is it will be delayed until 2011—that is after the next election—and will not require employer superannuation contributions to continue. It will not go well with the electorate. Senator Sarah Hanson-Young’s paid parental leave bill is currently before the parliament, and I urge the government to back our fully costed model for 26 weeks paid parental leave and to adopt this model before the next election.

We Greens welcomed the substantial increase in new rail projects, particularly the investment in metropolitan rail networks in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, but it is a pity that these initiatives do not extend to rail projects for Tasmania or the ACT or to getting more of the nation’s freight off roads and onto the rail network. It is an even greater pity that one of the projects simply services the coal industry in Newcastle, which the Prime Minister visited today. We note that many of the rail projects in the budget are scoping rather than construction, rather than getting things underway. The government should ensure that these projects or their equivalents actually move on to action and fruition. For example, in Melbourne the announcement of $40 million for preconstruction work on the east-west rail tunnel is a real but preliminary victory for the ‘No road tunnel’ campaign and the Greens, who have been very active in supporting it. But the cost of this project, if it is to go ahead, is put at $3.5 billion. The fact is that there is no funding for tollways in Melbourne in the budget, and that is real recognition of the community’s increasing call for low-carbon transport options, particularly of course public transport. The Greens will pursue more funding for extending existing train lines and building more tram routes.

Australians want greener and more affordable transport options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to improve public health and to reduce obesity but also to reduce the cost of transport—and I cannot help but think, with the massive allocations we are continuing to see for building prime arterial roads like the Pacific and Hume highways, and indeed the major thoroughfare in my home state from Launceston to Hobart, that the government should be looking expeditiously at providing space on these great arteries for a very fast passenger train network and for a cycleway linking the great cities of this country. It will be much more expensive to do this in retrospect.

I was speaking with a European ambassador today about the spread of these very fast trains in Europe. The most recent Spanish budget had €56 billion allocated to extend their very fast train network, which already services such cities as Valencia, Madrid and Barcelona. I can report to the Senate that these fast trains have taken 20 per cent of the air traffic out of the skies over Spain. I talked to people from France in recent days, and the 800-kilometre trip from Paris to Marseilles is now a matter of 3½ hours. It is faster than having to go to the airport through clogged traffic in both of the biggest cities of France, it is cheaper and it is much more comfortable. These trains are crowded—they are very, very attractive. We should look at that future for Australia as well.

The government has determined to keep its $4.5 billion tax cuts for the rich in this budget while at the same time ignoring those suffering real financial hardship. While the pension increase which I mentioned earlier is welcome, the Greens are disappointed that the government has failed to provide similar support for single parents or for the million or so Australians that the government expects may lose their jobs in the coming year. Unemployed people, whose incomes are even lower than those of pensioners, were ignored in the stimulus package cash payments back in March despite the Greens efforts to have them included. Now they are ignored in this budget. Unemployed Australians, increasingly out of jobs because of the recession, must try to scrape by on $227 a week. That is $90 less than the new single age pension rate of $317. It is a pittance, it is too hard, it is too punishing and it ought to have been increased in this budget. Not only have the Greens been calling for that increase but I have just pointed to the tax cuts as an alternative way of funding a reasonable increase. I will be pointing to more alternatives later in this delivery. The inequity in the income support system should be addressed. Based on 2008-09 data, the Australia Institute estimates the cost of an increase to the unemployment benefit to achieve parity with the pre-budget pension would be approximately $1.7 billion in 2010.

For the first time since the single mothers pension was introduced, pension payments to single parents will be paid at a different rate from other pensions. The Prime Minister has stated that he could not live on the pension, yet with this budget he is asking single parents—more than 85 per cent of whom are single mothers—to raise children on $285 a week. These children are effectively growing up in poverty, and this wealthy nation can do better—even in a recession. The Greens welcome changes to the eligibility for youth allowance, making it easier for many young people in education to access income support. We believe these changes should be brought forward to benefit students now, however. The tightening of the workforce participation criteria should not start until 2011 to ensure that young people who are planning to commence study in 2010 are not disadvantaged.

The decision to index the family tax benefit A against the consumer price index instead of being linked to pension indexation will hit those at the low end of the income scale, including more than one million children with parents in receipt of the family tax benefit A maximum rate. Instead of hitting these people, why did this Labor government not raise this revenue by reversing its tax cuts to the megarich? The government has also announced that taper rates will be increased from a 40c in the dollar to a 50c in the dollar reduction in a person’s pension, depending on how much income they make. This measure will also have the effect of lowering the rate at which the pension will cut out. That is very harsh; it is a harsh option for raising revenue when Labor could have raised contributions from wealthier Australians. This will affect pensioners, including old age and disability pensioners, to raise $1 billion or so when, again, there were better options. I will mention some of those very shortly.

When it comes to private health insurance—and I note the Leader of the Opposition’s comments a little earlier tonight—the Greens will move in the Senate to have money saved from means testing the private health insurance rebate allocated to public hospitals. We think it simply should not be put into consolidated revenue. We will also look very closely at the means testing of the private health rebate and the consequent increase in the Medicare levy surcharge—something that gives me some misgivings.

We will continue to be very vocal about Public Service sector job cuts, opposing the additional two per cent efficiency dividend which has already cost around 1,700 jobs in the nation’s Public Service. We welcome the government’s decision to in fact reduce this to the 1.25 per cent general efficiency dividend. But in the recession Public Service jobs should be retained rather than shed. We are pleased that there will be new Public Service jobs flagged in this budget in Centrelink, CSIRO, the Child Support Agency and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. But the decision to axe Land and Water Australia is a particularly nasty budget cut, in which not only will 51 public servants lose their jobs but a valuable research agency will be lost. Cutting this program for a saving of a measly $13 million at a time when climate change is creating the most significant challenges for rural Australia, not least amongst all Australians, is simply irresponsible and the government should think again about that cut.

The budget has no dedicated response to job creation in the form of labour market programs. While the government is spending big on major infrastructure projects, public housing and schools, creating building and construction centre jobs—and the Greens welcome that expenditure, in the main—there are no significant measures to create jobs in other sectors of the community. In the past, in tough economic times, it has been Labor governments that have instituted large-scale labour market programs for people who have lost their jobs as a consequence of the economic downturn. It appears now to fall to the Greens to try to get some of that back into economic planning in this country. Our changes to the economic stimulus package, which will create up to 10,000 jobs, show how a more targeted expenditure can create jobs as well as stimulate business. However, the extra $228 million injected into Adelaide’s desalination plant in the budget, on the agreement that it will double output from 50 gigalitres to 100 gigalitres, is concerning, considering we have seen a cut of $16.4 million over two years from water reform programs for the Murray-Darling Basin. Surely this money could have been better spent on water buybacks to give the Murray a bigger flow and the Lower Lakes the lifeline they need.

There is no worse demonstration of the old-style thinking of this budget than the massive expenditure on coal—almost double the amount to be invested in clean, renewable energy projects. In fact, that single coal project in the Hunter Valley, where the Prime Minister went today, will receive almost the same amount of money as the entire $1.5 billion Solar Flagship program over the next six years. This budget banks on coal mining and burning booming again. While it gives some much-needed support to renewable energy and energy efficiency, it remains locked into the coal-reliant past instead of forging a path towards a vibrant, carbon-neutral economy for Australia.

President Obama’s recent multibillion-dollar stimulus package points to the kind of priorities we need to emulate to set Australia on track to deliver a zero-carbon jobs boom. In President Obama’s package, funding to roll out renewable energy technologies was well over double the corporate welfare for coal. By contrast, the Rudd government’s budget support for coal is higher than all of the market-ready renewable technologies combined. The Obama package sets aside a much higher proportion of funding for energy efficiency than this Rudd budget. The most visionary aspect of the Obama stimulus is the massive injection of funding into an intelligent grid infrastructure—something that Senator Milne has been advocating in this place. Upgrading our grid is perhaps the most important investment our governments can make in energy. Building a high-quality, intelligent grid will save money for every Australian householder, every business and every factory. It enables much greater energy efficiency and it will modernise our outmoded energy network into cutting-edge technology that can repair itself, avoid blackouts and be open to being 100 per cent renewably powered.

The government has at least recognised that that grid investment is necessary, but it has put aside only $100 million, equivalent to only 1½ per cent of its expenditure on renewables and coal. Put that against Obama, who has set aside $11 billion, as much as his total investment in renewables and coal combined. Australia, 1½ per cent; the US, 100 per cent. The comparison is very stark. If this budget had followed President Obama’s albeit imperfect prescription, Australia would have invested $2 billion in renewable energy, $750 million in coal, $4 billion in energy efficiency and $2.2 billion in upgrading the grid. While renewable energy would have received slightly less direct funding, the indirect benefits from the grid upgrade, as well as the raft of supportive policies, would have driven investment many times further.

Of course, the Greens would rather see the coal sector invest its own profits in its infrastructure needs. The last figures I saw for the coal industry, which I remind senators has a very large component of overseas ownership and therefore drainage of profits out of the country, were a $48 billion income. This is an industry that has known about climate change coming for at least the last four decades and has no excuse for not having invested itself in the renewable component of its potential future to deal with the onrush of climate change. It should now not be falling back on, nor should it be being given by this government, the very important billions that need to go into energy efficiency and renewable energy.

President Obama has been investing tens of millions of dollars in jobs-training packages to prepare the American workforce for the huge task of transforming its energy infrastructure. Instead of bowing to polluters’ demands, Obama is protecting the workers’ futures by preparing them for the jobs that are needed to deliver a renewable energy and energy efficiency boom. The Rudd government should take heed. The Greens will be doing all we can to ensure that the parliament does.

There are many opportunities in the budget to fund the fairer, jobs-rich, green economy I have touched on here tonight. The Greens share community concern about the $57.6 billion deficit. That is money that must be repaid and cannot therefore be spent on transforming our economy or supporting schools, hospitals, public housing or transport in the years ahead. However, in these extraordinary economic circumstances, a moderate budget deficit is prudent if the funds are spent on investing in transforming Australia’s economy and creating the jobs that would flow from the transformation. However, the government has chosen to prop up the old economy, in the main, rather than transforming to the new economy, where it should be going.

We have identified very large savings which can he made by redirecting funds from the old, polluting economy. Over the budget period of the next four years the Greens would save $35 billion in the following ways. Removing the tax cuts for people with incomes of more than $100,000 would save $4.5 billion. Maintaining the current rate of defence expenditure but not increasing it by the proposed three per cent above inflation—we are not a country threatened by any other country on earth—would save $7.3 billion. We would save $22.2 million per year on public funding of research into carbon capture and storage; there is $89 million. The $1 billion to be spent on the Hunter Valley coal project, as I have said twice earlier tonight, would go. The additional $280 million to be given to the biggest polluters under the government’s carbon pollution reduction program would follow suit. I might add that we do support Mr Turnbull’s call for higher taxes on cigarettes.

In addition, the Greens would make further substantial savings by abolishing some long-running industry subsidies that damage both the environment and the budget bottom line. In particular, we would remove the fringe benefits tax subsidy for company cars—including those used by public servants—to save about $8.2 billion over four years. A further $3.2 billion over four years would be saved by ending fuel subsidies to the aviation industry and $10.3 billion would be saved by ending fuel subsidies to mining, electricity, transport and related businesses, such as gas, water, waste, postal and warehousing. We are talking here about taking out the massive public subsidies there are for burning fossil fuels and putting that across to transforming the economy as well as to a social dividend, which I would have expected of a Labor government but which we are not seeing in this budget.

The Greens have economically sound alternatives to this budget. Our ideas are much more job rich, more environmentally sound and more socially responsible than those Labor has produced. This government has flagged changes to the superannuation system, the private health insurance rebate and the pension age. Many of its measures require legislation. We Greens will be looking at them all closely. We will be consulting widely with the community and we will work to ensure that best outcomes for Australia can be made in this Senate. As with our job-creating changes to the $42 billion stimulus package, we can and will help the government make this budget more productive for the taxpayers’ dollar.

We are a constructive entity in this Senate and this parliament and for this nation. We are an ideas bank that is badly needed by a new government which has failed to rise to the challenge of this new century. We are a component representing a vigorous and thoughtful part of the Australian community which is intent upon improving poor quality ideas and legislation and improving upon the failure to innovate and be at the forefront of world thinking and government decision making. We intend to keep our foot on the accelerator to ensure better outcomes from this government and better governance in the future. The opportunities that were wide open for this government to transform to a new green economy in this budget, and which were actually in some cases enhanced rather than made more difficult by this recession, have, almost without exception, been missed. The power of those who have invested in the last century’s thinking is time and time again expressing itself in the budget that the Treasurer delivered on Tuesday. This country can and should do better, and we Greens are going to keep the pressure on this government to ensure that that happens for the benefit of all Australians.

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

On Tuesday night, the Treasurer delivered to an anxiously waiting Australian public a budget that was in deficit in more that just numbers. This is a budget that punishes incentive. This is a budget that withholds hope. This is a budget of broken dreams. For weeks now the government, through its carefully orchestrated leaks, has been sending the Australian public the message that this would be a different kind of budget to that which we are used to. Unlike previous budgets, the days of generous spending across the board were coming to an end.

This came as no surprise to anyone. Family First understood that Australia was in the midst of a global financial crisis. We understood that tax revenues had plunged dramatically and left a gaping hole in the government’s budget, while the unemployment rate had skyrocketed. We understood this very well because we have spent countless hours talking to those Australians who have been affected by the global financial crisis. We also understood that a government that was raiding the taxpayers’ kitty as if it were a bottomless pit was one day going to wake up and realise that, if it did not change its spending habits quickly, the money was eventually going to run out. We understood that we were going to have to tighten our belts and do our part for the economy.

But what we also wanted to hear from the Treasurer was how our individual sacrifices would eventually lead us out of this hole. We looked to this government to show leadership and bring forward a budget that was not only honest for these times but also gave us hope for the future, hope for better times. Instead of hope, Australians were left with a budget that took their simple dreams of a home, a family and a decent retirement and broke those dreams. Australians were left with a loud and clear message from the government that they were better off not having a dream for themselves or their families. Australians were handed a budget that punishes those who want to improve their lot in life—a budget that punishes incentive. It is a budget that takes the opposite view of the Australian ethos that if you work hard to build a good life for yourself and your family, you will reap your rewards.

On Tuesday night the government broke one of the most important dreams: the expectation of honest government. Australians, perhaps naively, had hoped that this time their government would be true to their election promises and that the election promise not to touch the private health insurance rebate would be honoured. But it was not. They tried to say it was a ‘change in policy’ and not a broken election promise, but who are they kidding? The cuts to the private health insurance rebate have left many Australians disillusioned not only because it exposes the Rudd government’s dishonesty but also because means testing the health rebate is exactly that: mean.

It is an unfair system because it looks only at the household or individual income and does not take into account how many children there are in the household. As any Australian parent knows, the cost to families can increase significantly depending on the number of children to be cared for. Under the government’s proposal, a couple on $149,000 a year with no children will be eligible for the full rebate while a family of five with a household income of $150,000 would have their rebate reduced. That makes no sense and undermines the family.

However, it is not only the government’s cut to health care which will have a serious impact on families. The decision of the Rudd government to cap the Medicare safety net for fees relating to pregnancy and IVF treatment has broken the most basic dream of all Australians—the dream of having a family. The government reforms will now see the costs involved in having children increase enormously, in some cases by thousands of dollars, for many people. This is hardly consistent with the commitment of the Rudd government to help working families. If the government has resorted to taxing mums then it has clearly lost touch with ordinary Australians. Over 11,000 babies are born to Australian families through assisted reproductive treatments each year. The government’s budget proposal would jeopardise those Australians who rely on this treatment to have children; this treatment is their only hope.

Having children is the greatest blessing in life. It should not be reserved for the rich. Birthrates are still below replacement levels, and families who have children are actually helping Australia. We have an ageing population, and this means the number of full-time workers we have to support our pensioners is decreasing. The government, however, has taken a short-term approach, making it less affordable to have children without a thought to the consequences that this may have in the future. It has shattered the dream of a family for so many Australians and failed to see the future consequences for our nation. Family First is also concerned that the drastic rise in out-of-pocket obstetric expenses will force many Australians out of the private system and into the public hospitals. We believe this move is short-sighted and will end up costing Australians money rather than saving money. This will place an even greater strain on our overstretched public hospitals because many people just will not have the money to afford these price increases. That means longer waiting times and even greater shortages of hospital beds for those who need them.

Family First welcomes the government’s announcement that it will be introducing paid parental leave. It would be an understatement of gross proportions to say that this decision is long overdue. Gone are the days when a family could easily be supported by one working parent. The rising costs of living have, sadly, made this a luxury most Australians simply cannot afford. As a result, many Australians have been forced to delay having families; for those who have not, the financial strain can often be incredibly demanding. This scheme will provide much-needed financial support to families wishing to have children but who have struggled to stay afloat on only one income. Most importantly, it recognises the inherent social value of raising children in the community. It recognises that it is not just those people who hold a full-time job who are productive members of our society.

The biggest winner of all, however, will be our nation’s children, who will benefit from having the care of their mother on a full-time basis, not only in the scarce few hours juggled between work and sleep. Family First is disappointed that the government has decided to delay implementing this vital scheme until 2011. Australia is already lagging behind 157 other countries which have paid maternity schemes, including places such as Chad, Mongolia and Rwanda, and we believe this issue is too important to wait. Given the numerous government backflips and broken promises which we saw in Tuesday’s budget, how can we be sure that the government will be true to its word on paid parental leave when the time comes? How can we be sure that this is not just some ploy to mask the bitter budget pill that all Australians were forced to swallow this week? If the government were serious about helping working Australian families, surely this would be the first item on its list of reforms.

The government cries poor and says it just does not have the money to fund the scheme now, but it has no problem splashing out $1.7 billion of taxpayers’ money to fund costly overseas military operations. We find the government’s priorities surprising. Family First is also disappointed that this scheme will leave stay-at-home mothers out in the cold. Those women who have made the choice to become full-time mothers will be penalised by the government and will not be eligible under the proposed scheme. Whilst they will still be entitled to receive the baby bonus, in some cases this will result in stay-at-home mothers receiving almost 50 per cent less than women who have recently exited the workforce. This sends the message to mothers that the Rudd government only cares about people who can pay tax and fill its coffers. This is not good enough. The Rudd government is telling those mothers who stay at home to raise their children that their contribution to Australia is not valued. Family First believes we should not punish parents because they choose to stay at home to take care of their children and our future.

This budget also puts at risk the dream of a safe and secure retirement. This will now need to be delayed by another two years for many Australians. These are the same Australians who have worked hard all their life, putting money away for retirement only to see the retirement nest egg fall sharply in the last 12 months. They are now being told by this government that all the hard work is not enough and that they need to work for another two years. Many hardworking Australians will be forced to forgo a decent retirement, as they will have to work till age 67.

Whilst the budget does go some way towards fulfilling a promise to Australia’s long-suffering pensioners that their dire position will improve, it is only single pensioners who are the real beneficiaries. A year ago, I stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of pensioners at a protest rally in Melbourne in solidarity with their plight and called for an increase for all pensioners. It was this pensioner rally that was the turning point in forcing the government to increase the pension. However, in this budget, married pensioners have been given the scraps and hush money, a token increase of only $5.07 each a week. That will barely get them a loaf of bread and a litre of milk. There seems to be a misconception by this government that, because married pensioners share a home, living must be cheaper for them. The Rudd government is sending pensioners a clear message here, and it is a disgraceful message: you are better off getting divorced and becoming a single pensioner if you want to survive in this budget.

Family First is also disappointed with the government’s decision to draw back on its first home owners grant. It has broken the simple dream of all Australians to one day own their home. We find it puzzling that the government would set up the Ruddbank and dole out up to $28 billion of taxpayers’ money to prop up the commercial property industry but cut back support to the residential sector for getting a home. It is a statement that the government is happy to help big business hold on to their assets but not to help young Australians get a start in life and aspire to the dream to buy their own home.

This is a budget of broken dreams. It is a budget that lacks courage and lacks foresight. Significantly, there is nothing in the budget to address the real issues of alcohol abuse and binge drinking which have plagued Australia. For too long, Australians have been held to ransom by a society ripped apart by alcohol fuelled violence and despair. Thanks to the inaction and lack of courage from the Rudd government, Australia’s binge-drinking culture continues unabated. The Rudd government has once again failed to invest sufficient money in critical areas such as alcohol prevention and education programs for our youth. Most importantly, it has again failed to break the link between alcohol and sport by de-hooking alcohol advertising and sport. I believe the government will look back in regret at this failed opportunity to tackle the blight of binge drinking in our community. If the government could look beyond the short term, it would see that binge drinking and alcohol abuse are costing us $15 billion each year. What better way for the government to reduce the budget deficit than by investing in our future to dramatically slash this $15 billion alcohol toll?

The government has announced a massive infrastructure spending program which will upgrade some of the country’s rail, ports and roads and create thousands of new jobs for Australians. Family First welcomes this policy direction and sees it as one of the more positive aspects of the budget. However, we are disappointed that the $750 million Peninsula Link road project in Victoria, a key infrastructure project that creates significant job opportunities, was not given any funding in this budget. This is a project that is ‘shovel ready’ and a road that will make an enormous difference to Victorians.

Family First is also concerned that not enough is being done to help Australia’s small businesses. Small businesses account for 95 per cent of all businesses in this country and are responsible for over 4.5 million jobs. They are the lifeblood of our community. If the government wants to be supporting jobs then helping small businesses should be the primary focus. Family First recognises the important tax breaks which have been included in this budget for capital investment and sees them as a good step. However, they remain just that: one step. The Rudd government must do more to protect small businesses from the full impact of the global financial crisis. One of the major problems being faced by small businesses is financing. Financing is not easy to come by. When the banks are willing to provide it, they extract a heavy price. We have seen the Reserve Bank slash the cash rate to the lowest level since March 1960. While not all of these rate cuts have been passed on to homeowners, the gap is even wider when it comes to business loans. If the government is serious about helping small businesses then it must look at taking decisive action to address this issue. The government must ensure that any rate cuts are passed on to business loans and overdraft facilities as well.

I understand that times are tough, and that is why we expect tough decisions be made by the government. Superannuation has been one of the biggest areas to take a hit. However, I find it remarkable that the one type of superannuation which has been left untouched is the excessive superannuation paid to politicians. This is the same outrageous superannuation that will see the Prime Minister one day leave parliament on an annual salary of over $166,000 for the rest of his life and the Treasurer with an annual salary of over $105,000. It is the same outrageous superannuation that sees politicians receive a whopping contribution of up to 69 per cent of their salary each year while ordinary Australians are asked to make do with nine per cent. It is the same outrageous superannuation that lets the pollies access their money immediately upon retirement, while the rest of us are forced to wait until 60—or maybe 67, if the government gets its way. All this, of course, does not apply to those setting the rules.

In a budget which calls for tough measures, it seems the only people who are not doing it tough are the pollies themselves. In fact, the Rudd government have actually boosted the money for politicians by generously awarding them an additional $90 per week for their electoral allowance. It amazes me that the Rudd government can implore Australians to knuckle down and do it tough and then have the gall to continue sticking their own snouts in the trough of perks paid for by hardworking Australians. It is a real smack in the face to all Australians who are struggling to stay afloat when they see their politicians feathering their own nest. Most incredibly, tucked away in this budget is a little gift for the Prime Minister himself: a boost to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet of $13 million and an injection of 65 extra staff. At a time when Australians are told to cut back and make do, this excess by the Prime Minister is obscene.

On Tuesday, the Rudd government delivered a budget that offers no hope and no incentive and crushes the simple dreams of many Australians to own a home and to have a family and a secure retirement. The Rudd government needed to be cost conscious, but, in doing so, it has failed to also be family conscious. It has forgotten that taxpayers are real people, not just another line on the balance sheet, so when you slug taxpayers you are also slugging hardworking Australian families.

The Rudd government has trumpeted that this budget is a nation-building budget. But nation building is about much more than infrastructure and roads. It is about building a nation of people who are connected, who have hope and a belief in where they are headed. It is about building our families and building our future. Nation building is about building a sense of unity and common purpose, particularly in challenging times. In this difficult economic climate we must be working together to support those who will be out of work and to assist those who will struggle in these tough times. Our focus must be on one simple thing: looking out for one another and rebuilding this nation not just with bricks and mortar but with human infrastructure.

Debate (on motion by Senator Arbib) adjourned.