Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today the budget reveals the truly twisted priorities of the Abbott government. They doubled the deficit. They forged a Commission of Audit report written exclusively for and by the top end of town, and invented a budget crisis as a cover to impose an ideological agenda on an unsuspecting public. And today, the coalition have now officially drunk their own Kool Aid. Make no mistake: this is an extreme budget from an extreme government completely out of touch with ordinary Australians.

I am going to make a prediction: to paraphrase British politician Gerald Kaufman, this budget is 'the longest suicide note in history'. To every coalition marginal seat backbencher, sweating profusely at the prospect of telling their constituents to go and get stuffed, essentially, I say this: voting for the budget is like a turkey voting for an early Christmas. You will be voting for a lie—a stunning mistruth, which each and every one of you repeated ad nauseam prior to the election; a now absolutely broken promise of no new taxes.

Despite railing in opposition about the need to keep your commitments, Tony Abbott and the coalition have now cynically chosen to abandon all pretence of keeping their word. Let me be clear: this is a budget of entirely broken promises. It is a book of bad ideas, and, sadly, a manuscript of shattered dreams.

Families are shuddering in fear at the cold, cynical, deceptive mess that this Abbott regime has unleashed on them: the schoolkids bonus slashed, Gonski school funding abandoned, the family tax benefit cut—and for what? So that millionaires can get paid $50,000 in taxpayers' cash to have children. What a joke.

Pensioners and workers are shaking with anger at the sheer hypocrisy this government expects the Australian people to swallow. Tradies will be forced to keep on the tools until 70—70! Commuters on the Central Coast and in regions around Australia are looking at getting on a train and working until they are 70—commuting until they are 70. My heart goes out to these workers everywhere at this cruel and callous prospect. It is a heartless policy, written in the comfort of an office on cushioned chairs surrounded by air conditioning and, at the end of it all, celebrated with a Cuban cigar or two. Put this to a vote on a work site, and you would be kicked off instantly.

I do not know about you, but I think most 70-year-olds would be hard pressed to put in eight hours, five days a week, of hard manual labour in the hot sun. But that is exactly what this budget is seeking to do to so many, especially the army of tradies who hail from places like where I live on the Central Coast and other regional areas around the country. That is the option that they have before them—that or falling into poverty.

By introducing this budget, the coalition has shown a blatant disregard for those amongst us who do manual labour. The increase in the pension age will put more and more older Australians into poverty, forcing them onto the lower Newstart payment for years. To expect ageing bodies to endure such backbreaking work is an absolute stretch of possibilities, and it is an insult to those people, who have already given so much through their hard work to this nation. But to force people to suffer the indignity of unemployment instead of the dignity of the old age pension is a really cruel joke.

To add insult to injury, pensioners, families and hardworking commuters have been driven to despair by Tony Abbott's great big new taxes. Despite promising before the election, 'I absolutely guarantee to the Australian people, absolutely guarantee to the Australian people, that the tax burden will be less under a coalition government,' Tony Abbott tonight is hitting families, pensioners, workers and commuters with great big new tax hikes. These new taxes represent a clear and unequivocal set of broken promises.

The GP tax, the 'deceit' tax and the petrol tax are three pillars of the coalition's deception of Australian voters. Australia will be the poorer and the sicker for it. The deficit and petrol taxes are a tax on hard work, a tax on aspiration and a tax that hurts the very people who put their all in to provide for their families, to save for a well-earned holiday at the end of the year and to give help to their children and provide for them the best opportunities for their future.

The GP tax is a particularly cruel blow to Australians, who, prior to the election were promised, over and over and over, that a vote for the Liberal Party would mean 'no cuts to education', 'no cuts to health', and 'no cuts to pensions'. There was simply no truth in those comments. It is simply cost shifting by the Abbott government that will make health care much less equitable and much less affordable for every Australian. Make no mistake: with the GP tax, the Abbott government is dismantling universal health care as we know it in this country.

There is no way to put Labor's outrage at this GP tax other than to say we are at war with the Abbott government. Labor will now at this time, as we have had to in the past, fight for the sickest and the poorest. We completely reject Abbott's tax on sick people, asking the acutely and chronically ill to pay and pay and pay now, in their illness and distress, for research in the future. It is simply inexplicable. Australians should get the health care they need, not just the health care that Tony Abbott has decided they can afford. Tony Abbott's GP tax will certainly mean that more parents will be out of pocket when they take their sick kids to the doctor, or families simply will not get there when they are in need.

These great big new taxes are a very shallow, knee-jerk reaction from a government that knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Investing in the people of this nation, investing in health and education, is clearly a foreign concept to these people, who in this budget have ripped over $80 billion from education and health over the next 10 years. I would think that even members of Joe Hockey's elusive North Sydney Forum are wondering today whether they are getting their money's worth. But we do not know who they are, so we will not be able to ask them.

In perhaps the cruellest cut of all, it is with a heavy heart that I note the Abbott government's abolition of Youth Connections. This program has seen more than 90,000 young people from across Australia—and hundreds of locals—access hands-on skills training, educational opportunities and personal support to help them get back into work or school. For less than $80 million a year, this vital program, Youth Connections, supported over 67 organisations across 113 service regions right across the country. They employed 750 specialist youth workers. This program will close by the end of the year, its students locked out of education, their needs ignored and their dreams shattered by a cynical government that seeks to rip the heart out of this country.

Cutting these sorts of programs—and there are tens of them—is not a saving at all. We all pay a very heavy price when young people slip through the cracks. These are more than cracks; these are gaping holes in the social fabric of Australia that have been constructed by a cynical government that simply does not care about ordinary working Australians. This has been, sadly, a time of youth unemployment, and cutting services to young people is incredibly short-sighted.

Australians are not going to forget this budget of broken promises and shattered dreams, and certainly the young people who are now going to be forced to be unemployed for six months before they can collect any support from the government are going to be extremely disadvantaged. Talk about taking hope away from a generation! You could not have configured a better model.

Labor will fight for ordinary Australians. Labor will fight this callous budget. Labor will fight these sickly tax hikes at every turn. And we will fight for those people who, sadly, were deluded into believing the promises of a Prime Minister who said, over and over and over again, that there would be no cuts to education. He has cut. He said there would be no cuts to health. He has cut. He said there would be no change to pensions. Well, they are changed forever with the mantle of this government and its budget that it has put before the Australian people tonight. It is a disgrace and it is impacting on Australians in the most shameful way. Labor will be fighting this budget tooth and nail.

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight, dreams have come true for the coalition in the budget that has been delivered. Wealthy Australians will be left largely untouched by this budget, but disadvantaged Australians will be even more disadvantaged because of it. Australians who are already doing it tough will be punished and will do it tougher. If you are old, if you are a student, if you are disabled, if you are unemployed or if you are sick, you have been targeted in this budget by a callous government that promised one thing before the election and did the opposite after the election. Despite the promises made by the Prime Minister before the election, we have seen attacks on health and education and we have seen the introduction of new taxes. There is a new tax, the so-called debt levy tax, despite the clear promise of the Prime Minister himself that there would be no new taxes as part of the 2014 budget. There will also be a freeze or a reduction on family tax benefits, directly targeted at poorer Australians.

The clearest indication yet that this government hates Medicare and the universal healthcare system, of which Australia should be so proud, has appeared in this budget. It has always been clear to Labor that the coalition would like to bring about the demise of Medicare, the demise of universal affordable health care for all Australians. Tonight we have seen the introduction of the $7 co-contribution payment. That is $7 that Australians will have to pay if they want to visit a GP and seek some other services. All of the evidence is that having to pay an up-front payment for medical care dissuades people from seeking that care. All of the evidence is that preventative health care and early intervention prevents escalation of illness and, of course, prevents escalation of the costs associated with treating illnesses at more advanced stages. Seven dollars per visit to a GP is not much on the salaries of those who work in this place, but for a family or a person on a low income it is a great barrier to better health outcomes.

Introducing a co-payment for GP visits will not see any significant cost savings. It will see the beginning of the end of Medicare. Medicare was introduced by the Labor government, and we understand that is the primary reason the coalition government wants to get rid of it: it was a good Labor initiative that benefits all Australians. The groups of people who most benefit from universal health care like Medicare are the most disadvantaged groups in our communities, including and in particular Indigenous people, low-income earners, those with severe mental health problems and the aged. All of those people will be hurt by the government's announced $7 co-payment.

There has been discussion as part of this budget that Australia's healthcare system is careering out of control. That is not true; it is not factual. Australia spends 9.1 per cent of its gross domestic product on health care, and that is comparable to other countries such as Sweden, Britain, Spain, New Zealand, Canada and France. They all spend more than we do in Australia. The United States spends much more, at 17 per cent of its GDP.

The biggest growth in Medicare Benefits Schedule expenditure has been growth in visits to specialists, not to GPs. To prevent visits to specialists you need to ensure that people have access to preventative health care and primary health care that ensures that they do not get to the stage of an illness where they do need to visit a specialist and incur the significant costs to the health system.

I was particularly disappointed tonight to get confirmation at last that Medicare Locals are to be shut down by this government. That is despite clear, articulated promises from the health minister and the Prime Minister himself that Medicare Locals would not be attacked in this budget, but they have been. Tonight we heard that 61 Medicare Locals are to go. I would like to point out to the Senate some of the great benefits of Medicare Locals and, in particular, a Medicare Local with which I am familiar in South Australia. The Country South SA Medicare Local is based in Murray Bridge, in the federal electorate of Barker. I visited that organisation last year and saw the value of what it does in coordinating primary healthcare services and preventative healthcare services for a rural and regional community. Barker is a seat that extends from the Barossa Valley, through the Murray and down to the south-east of South Australia—all areas which struggle to provide healthcare services by virtue of distance and the difficulty in attracting healthcare providers to those regions.

The Country South SA Medicare Local works cooperatively with GPs, aged-care services, ancillary care services, nurses and primary healthcare deliverers to ensure that the region's needs are met and that the services that the community needs in the electorate of Barker are delivered in the most efficient way. In the short time that the Country South SA Medicare Local has been in operation it has initiated a number of great programs. I would like to outline a couple of those to the Senate, because they are the programs that are now at risk because of this government's attack on health services. The Medicare Local strongly supports Aboriginal healthcare programs and empowerment of the local Aboriginal community. It works in partnership with Indigenous organisations to ensure that healthcare services are targeted at that Indigenous community and make the best use of the services that are available.

The Country South SA Medicare Local has also funded a number of mental health programs throughout the region—as I said, from the Riverland to the south-east—and provides services throughout Mt Gambier. Those services are across the disorder spectrum, from high prevalence low-level disorders such as anxiety and depression through to low-prevalence complex disorders requiring clinical intervention. If it were not for the Medicare Local coordinating the provision of those services, many regional South Australians would miss out on services, particularly to assist them with mental illness. The Medicare Local has also provided funding to general practices in the area for enhanced after-hours services and it has assisted providers to set up and run services where they are needed and at times when people can access them.

Another great innovative trial conducted by Country South SA Medicare Local was to work with a nurse practitioner model of care so that patients can receive access to GP services utilising a nurse practitioner. That has greatly increased the services available in regional areas—where, as we all know, it can be hard to attract a GP workforce. Another initiative of Country South SA Medicare Local is the work that is done on providing health care services by telehealth and e-health. I have seen those programs in action and understand what a great innovation it is, particularly for rural and regional South Australians in areas like the seat of Barker, who otherwise would not have access to those very important primary health care services.

Those are some of the things that Country South SA Medicare Local has provided and they are some of the programs that are now at risk because of this government's budget that we have witnessed tonight. The people of Barker have been dudded by this government, by the Prime Minister, by the health minister and by their federal member of parliament, Mr Tony Pasin. The Prime Minister promised before the election that there would be no cuts to health or education, and no new taxes. He said, 'We will do what we have said we will do,' and then did exactly the opposite. He has introduced new taxes and he has made cuts to health services. He has targeted Medicare Locals, which are a great Labor innovation.

I am sure that further examination of the budget by other senators will reveal more broken promises by this government and Prime Minister. I can assure the people of Barker that Labor will continue to hold this government to account. We will detect all of the broken promises made by this Prime Minister, by his ministers and by members of parliament who purport to serve the people of Barker but tonight have left the people of Barker disadvantaged and worse off.