Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to incorporate the opposition's speech in reply to the 2014-15 budget.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

Tonight Mr Shorten spoke on behalf of millions of Australians who feel shocked and angry.

Shocked by the brutality of this Government’s attack on their way of life.

Angry at a Prime Minister who pretended to be on their side.

This Budget divides our Parliament.

More importantly, it will divide our nation.

The Government says this Budget is just the beginning.

And it is.

The beginning of extreme policies with an extreme impact on the Australian people.

This is just the beginning, turning Australia into a place most of us won't recognise - a colder, meaner, narrower place.

Losing our sense of fairness and our sense of community.

Labor believes in a different Australia.

An Australia where your destiny is not pre-determined by your parents’ wealth or your postcode.

A fair and prosperous nation populated by a creative and productive people.

But this is not the Australia we saw reflected in the Budget on Tuesday night.

On Tuesday night we saw the outlines of Tony Abbott’s Australia – an Australia divided into two societies.

This was a ‘tax it or cut it’ Budget.

Millions of Australians now know what Abbott’s Australia will look like:

If you need to see a doctor, you will pay more.

If you need to buy medicine, you will pay more.

If you go to work and earn a good wage, you will pay more.

If you have a family, your support will be cut.

If you lose your job, your support will be cut.

If you are a young person, you will be left behind.

If you rely on a pension, you will be punished.

And if you drive a car, even for that, you will have to pay more.

And if you relied on the Prime Minister’s promises– then you were betrayed.

This is a Budget of broken promises built on lies.

And not just lies; systemic and wilful ones.

A Budget that goes out of its way to create an underclass.

A Budget with the wrong priorities for Australia.

A Budget that confirms the worst fears Australians always had about this Prime Minister.

This is a Budget based on a myth.

And now on the basis of this myth, a manufactured crisis, the Australian people have been ambushed with unconscionable changes.

Where is the decency? Where is the honesty? Where is the humanity in this Government?

For a Prime Minister who campaigned to restore trust in our public life, he has let the country down – and badly.

The Budget papers reveal the economic truth.

Australia is fundamentally strong, and so is the legacy Labor left behind.

Low inflation

Low interest rates

Net debt peaking at just one seventh of the level of the major advanced economies.

A triple-A credit rating with a stable outlook from all three international ratings agencies – one of only eight countries in the world.

Superannuation savings larger than the size of our whole economy

And around a million new jobs created

That’s what we left.

Let’s call the Liberal Budget ‘emergency’ what it is:

An attempt to justify the Abbott Government’s blueprint for a radically different, less fair Australia.

From a Government that see the Australian people not as workers, parents, carers, patients or commuters but as economic units unentitled to respect.

BROKEN PROMISES

The Australian people have now witnessed this Prime Minister repeatedly promising one thing before an election while doing something completely different after.

Say what you like Prime Minister.

Spin as hard as you can.

Australians know a lie when they hear one.

They can spot a phony when they see one.

And they know when they’ve been deceived.

This Budget underestimates the Australian people.

Australians are up for hard decisions.

But pay them respect, sit down, talk to them, and listen.

No dancing past the hard questions.

No lectures.

No surprises.

No excuses.

What the Australian public expect are consistent structural changes aimed at the medium and long term.

A Budget that invests in the future.

That is, a Budget which points the way to an achievable destination but by a process, anchored in reasonableness.

COST OF LIVING

A nation’s economic confidence begins with the family Budget.

And this is a budget that shows no understanding or respect for around 9 million family budgets.

This is a Budget that will push up the cost of living for every Australian family.

A Budget drawn up by people who have never lived from paycheque to paycheque.

Never sat at the kitchen table with a stack of bills to work out which ones they can put off and which ones have to be paid to avoid being cut off.

People who don’t understand that increasing petrol tax will make the school run, the commute and driving the kids to weekend sport more expensive.

So Labor says to the Prime Minister, don’t lecture Australian families about hard choices.

Do something to help them make ends meet.

This morning Mr Shorten met with a young family from Queanbeyan.

Karim and Radmilla have two daughters, Isabella aged 4 and Mary Therese aged 8 – and another baby due next week.

Karim is a high school teacher.

Like most Australians, Radmilla and Karim aren’t wealthy – they work hard to make ends meet.

They balance their family budget, but some fortnights are harder than others.

They worry about their washing machine breaking down out of warranty – or paying for new tyres on the family car.

No matter how hard they try, the weekly shop never seems to cost less.

It always seems like less than a month has passed since the last bill landed in the letter box.

And if the Prime Minister gets his way – Radmilla, Karim and hundreds of thousands of Australians like them will be worse off every year.

The Government’s GP tax, the Hospital tax and the increased cost of medicines will cost this family more than $450 per year.

Whenever they fill up their car – they will be slugged at the bowser.

And when Term 3 starts, there will be no more SchoolKids Bonus to help with the costs of new books and new uniforms and shoes for their growing kids.

This Prime Minister’s Budget will smash family budgets across the nation.

NATSEM modelling shows that a couple with a single income of $65,000 and two kids in school will have over $1700 cut from their family budget.

Add in health costs, and the Prime Minister is cutting nearly $40 from their weekly budget, every week.

And under this Budget, the cuts will get deeper and deeper.

More than tripling to almost $120 a week by the time of the next election.

In 2016 this family will suffer cuts of over $6,000 per year.

That’s around one in every ten dollars of the family budget gone.

This is not a Budget shaped by the everyday life of real people.

MEDICARE

Medicare –universal access to healthcare - is fundamental to our Australian way of life.

Labor created Medicare because we believe that the health of any one of us is important to all of us.

We are all members of the Australian family and Medicare is, at its core, a family measure.

And with it, we created a new community standard one that is now 40 years old.

We reject a US-style, two-tiered system where your wealth determines your health.

The Prime Minister once claimed he was the best friend that Medicare ever had but this Budget proves he is ideologically opposed to Medicare and its central principle of universality.

The government proposes to establish a $7 GP Tax for visits to a general practitioner.

The justification is that the Medicare system is too expensive and requires greater patient contribution.

Yet the Budget reveals that not one dollar of the GP Tax will be returned to recurrent health spending.

Not one dollar.

The GP tax is being applied simply to break the universality of Medicare.

The kind of thing you would expect from American Tea Party Republicans - not from a Liberal Party formerly committed to Medicare.

And no hypothecation to a future fund – whether medical or otherwise – justifies the measure or the wilful breach of promise it entails.

Taxing the sick won’t heal them.

Making medicine more expensive won’t make us healthier.

Yes, investing in medical research is crucial. All research is crucial.

But you don’t fund the search for the cures of tomorrow by imposing a tax on the patients of today.

Australians are smarter and more generous than this.

But the GP tax does another thing.

It seeks to turn Australian GPs into tax collectors.

To dragoon them into the service of a completely ideological quest - to distract their time and attention from the immediate task of diagnosing and treating their patients.

The Government has forgotten that general practitioners are the front line troops in our constant battle to keep Australians healthy.

Only the government’s general contempt and disregard of them could lead it to impose such a burden on them.

This Parliament has a choice – it is either for or against Medicare.

Labor gives you this commitment .

Labor will never, never give up on Medicare.

We will fight this wicked and punitive measure to its ultimate end.

$80 BILLION

In some ways, the worst thing the Treasurer said on Tuesday night didn’t actually come from his speech.

It was concealed in the Budget papers.

Hidden in the papers was a capricious, unconscionable attack upon health and education services.

The Budget papers reveal an $80 billion cut to schools and hospitals – a cut for which there had been no discussion, no forewarning, not a shred of consultation.

And let me repeat, the sum, - in case people might have missed the scale of it.

Eighty thousand million, or in today’s parlance $80 billion.

$50 billion dollars from hospitals.

$30 billion dollars from schools.

An attack on this scale is unprecedented.

The Treasurer promised to bring forth massive savings, fairly applied.

Instead, in an incompetent and cowardly way, he has outsourced the main burden of his savings task to the States.

How could a collection of States with limited revenue possibly cope with these cuts?

The Treasurer and the Prime Minister have hinted at the answer: a broader and heavier GST.

The Prime Minister and the Treasurer are blackmailing the States with unconscionable cuts to turn them into the Commonwealth’s cat’s paw –

A Trojan Horse to a bigger GST but absolving the Abbott Government of fingerprints or blame.

This is how low this Budget’s formulations have taken us.

Even John Howard was prepared to take his GST to the people and proselytise on it.

But not Tony Abbott or big brave Joe Hockey.

Never before has the scale of such an attack ever been mounted upon the States and never before so underhandedly.

Labor makes it clear, that we on this side of the Chamber will have no truck with these brutal and cruel cuts to hospitals and schools.

EDUCATION

Labor is the party of education.

We are the party that brought the dream of a university degree within reach of all Australians.

We are the party that implemented the Gonski reforms for schools funding based on need.

A $14.7 billion additional investment in Australian schools.

But after this Budget, the Gonski reforms are dead, buried and cremated.

But Labor is committed to making every Australian school a great school.

It was Mr Shorten’s mother who taught him the power of education.

The pathway that it can provide.

Mr Shorten’s mum was a teacher, winning a teaching scholarship in the early 1950s.

She taught in city and country government schools. She travelled the world, she raised a family.

And then studied again later in life.

His Mum never stopped being a teacher.

She taught his twin brother and him everything.

She taught him the value of education.

Like all parents, what we want for our children is a quality education.

What separates Labor from the Liberals is: we want a quality education for all Australians.

Because it is Australia’s productivity that will determine how we fare in the 21st Century.

When Mr Shorten was at school there were 7.5 taxpayers to support each Australian aged 65 years or older.

When his daughter was born in 2009, that ratio was five to one.

By 2050 it will be only 2.7 to one.

Labor knows the only answer to this challenge is to make the right investments in skills and productivity.

Only through education will Australia fully develop our economic potential, our scientific potential, our artistic potential – our people’s potential.

That is why the Prime Minister’s $5 billion cuts to Higher education are so destructive.

Cuts that mark the end of Australia’s fair and equitable higher education system.

Cuts that bring down the curtain on the Whitlam university legacy.

The legacy that gave Australians like Dr Cathy Foley, Astronomer Bryan Gaensler and author Tim Winton the chance to go to University.

The legacy that gave Tony Abbott – and at least 12 members of his Cabinet the same opportunity.

An opportunity that they now seek to deny the next generation of young Australians.

This Prime Minister’s cuts to higher education sell-out Australian genius and reject Australian potential.

Labor will vote against these cuts to university funding and student support.

Labor will not support a system of higher fees, bigger student debt, reduced access and greater inequality.

We will never tell Australians that the quality of their education depends on their capacity to pay.

PENSIONS AND SUPERANNUATION

Just as we will never tell pensioners to tighten their belts, again and again.

This Prime Minister sees pensioners as a burden to the Budget.

Labor rejects this.

Labor believes that Australians who have worked hard all their lives, who have paid taxes all their lives – and if lucky, have a humble family home – have earned a dignified and secure retirement.

Pensioners should not have to worry about whether or not they can afford to put on their heating, visit their doctor or buy a treat for their grandkids.

Let’s be clear: the aged pension is not a king’s ransom.

It is a modest sum.

$20,000 a year.

The reforms introduced by Labor guarantee the pension keeps pace with the cost of living.

If the Prime Minister’s pension cuts had been in place for the last four years - today pensioners would be at least $1700 worse off.

The Prime Minister’s breach of trust with pensioners isn’t just breaking a promise he made before the last election.

He is breaking a promise Australia made with our fellow citizens forty and fifty years ago.

At the start of their working life.

A promise that if they worked hard and made a contribution, the nation would look after them in their old age.

This Prime Minister’s cuts trespass against the nation’s covenant with pensioners.

This Prime Minister’s lies and broken promises hurt every generation of Australians.

Pensioners, and their sons and daughters, who are worried about the quality of life for their ageing parents.

Labor makes this solemn pledge to Australia’s pensioners.

Labor will not surrender the security of your retirement.

We will fight for a fair pension.

And Labor will prevail.

This Government’s failure to plan for the needs of older Australians is not just a problem for those currently on the aged pension.

The Prime Minister and the Treasurer should not harangue Australians about working til they’re 70.

If their only plan is for Australians to work longer and harder and retire later, with less.

Mr Shorten has spent his adult life representing the people who do the real heavy lifting: tradespeople, labourers, cleaners, nurses and other Australians who make a living with skilled hands and strong backs.

Many of them started work at 15 – don’t force them to work til they’re 70.

Rather, empower Australian workers to save for retirement is so important.

Labor wants Australia to have the world’s best retirement savings system.

This Prime Minister wants Australia to have the world’s oldest retirement age.

And in this Budget the Government continues to target the retirement savings of all Australians.

The Abbott Government has cut superannuation– another broken promise.

It means more Australians will be reliant on a pension in the future.

As Minister, Mr Shorten moved legislation in this parliament to raise super from 9 to 12 per cent.

And reduced taxation on the modest superannuation contributions of Australians who earn $37,000 or less in a year.

Yet one of the first acts of this Government was to abolish Labor’s Low Income Super Contribution.

This was a cowardly raid on the retirement savings of 3.6 million low-income earners.

Two thirds of those hurt by this change were women - who had moved in and out of the workforce to start and raise a family.

How can this Prime Minister think it’s OK to pay multi-millionaires $50,000 that they don’t need.

And yet rob the retirement savings of over two million women who earn less than that in a whole year?

Prime Minister –how can you not see how unfair this is?

JOBS

Labor believes every Australian should be able to find good and fulfilling jobs with decent pay and conditions in productive and profitable enterprises.

But for Australians under 30 who are looking for work, this Budget offers no hope.

It offers despair.

It offers poverty.

It offers no plan for jobs.

Prime Minister – where is your plan for jobs?

The changes to Newstart are perhaps the single most heartless measure in this brutal Budget.

Sentencing young people to a potentially endless cycle of poverty when they should be getting a hand to find a job.

Is just a blame-shifting, cost-shifting measure that will put the price of unemployment on to Australian families.

Prime Minister, how are people under 30 looking for work supposed to survive for six months on nothing?

These are purely ideological changes that go to the very core of the Prime Minister’s character.

They contradict every piece of expert advice.

This Prime Minister’s vicious, victim-blaming policy will create a forgotten generation of Australians – shut out of the workforce.

Labor will have no part of this.

LABOR BELIEVES

Australia does not have a budget emergency, as the Government claims, but it has a budget task.

And that task, in the face of declining terms of trade and lower nominal income, is to change and reconfigure the Budget’s trajectory.

To, over time, make certain that the combination and influences of Commonwealth spending and Commonwealth revenue come together to reduce the Government’s call on national savings.

In short, to make our national budget sustainable.

But make it sustainable in a fair and reasonable way.

And why is this so important?

Because the Budget supports and needs to support large numbers of dependent people, as it does families on modest incomes, and as it must, on schools and health.

The Budget always needs a balance in its imposition on incomes, the contribution of companies, the incidence of its excises and those expenditures which underpin us as a civil society.

Indeed, we believe, as a great social democracy.

Labor has always held to these precepts.

This is the kind of thoughtful responsibility we in Labor subscribe to.

Recognising what needs to be done and going about the job of doing it.

But this is not the framework this government has adopted.

It is walking away from this kind of balance.

This Budget is designed to change the essential compact of Australian society.

It is conservatism taking it up to consensus – tugging away at the very struts that have held us together as a good and prosperous nation.

This Opposition will support reasonable and balanced remedial budgetary measures but it will not support the conscious development of an underclass.

This is a Budget that would seek to demolish the pillars of Australian society: universal Medicare, education for all, a fair pension, full employment.

The very things this Prime Minister promised not to touch, are the first casualties of his fabrications.

Including new and higher taxes.

This is the Budget of a Prime Minister and a Government who want to tear down everything Australians have built together.

By contrast, Labor invests in our people to make our country stronger.

Labor educates.

Labor cares for all.

Labor believes in an Australia writ large.

We believe that economic growth comes from extending opportunity.

We believe in a prosperous Australia: prosperity for everyone who works and prosperity which works for everyone.

An Australia where your Medicare card - not your credit card - guarantees you access to quality healthcare.

An Australia where the National Disability Insurance Scheme is a reality for people with disability, their carers and the people who love them – not a scapegoat for complaints about spending.

Labor believes that a teenager in a regional town should be studying in a great school – and have the choice of a university education, learning a trade or taking up a rewarding job.

We believe that science and innovation should be at the heart of national policy – because they are central to our prosperity.

We believe in an Australia where small business can grow and thrive.

An Australia that still makes things.

An Australia with quality infrastructure – including digital infrastructure.

An Australia where women are equal – and pays them equally.

An Australia that is closing the gap and extending opportunities for the first Australians.

Labor believes in an Australia that cares for its environment – and takes the science of climate change seriously.

An Australia where multiculturalism is celebrated as a social and economic asset – not treated as sport for bigots and ideologues.

An Australia that is a good global citizen, confident and engaged with the opportunities of the Asian Century.

An Australia ready for the future, optimistic about the future and investing in the future.

This Prime Minister and this Treasurer, talk a lot about the freedom of the market, deregulating and liberating.

Of course, you can get rid of fairness and leave people to fend for themselves.

That is a kind of freedom.

Tonight Labor says to Australians there is another freedom.

There is the freedom of integrity and the freedom of respect.

The freedom that gives every person dignity and the right to be treated equally.

There is a freedom of compassion and respect that gives individuals the opportunity to fulfil their potential.

That is the freedom Labor believes in.

This Budget undermines that freedom.

This Budget weakens it.

This Budget tears at the living standards of our people.

And in doing so, this Budget tears at the fabric of our country.

On Tuesday, the Treasurer quoted from Robert Menzies’ ‘Forgotten People’.

But the Government forgot a lot of people on Budget night.

They are the Australians Labor speaks on behalf of tonight, the Australians I am speaking to.

The Government forgot you in its Budget – and it forgot what makes our country great.

It forgot opportunity.

It forgot reward for effort.

It forgot the fair go.

Well, Labor hasn’t forgotten.

We still believe in fairness.

We still believe in an Australia that includes everyone, that helps everyone, that lets everyone be their best, that leaves no-one behind.

This is the Australia that the Prime Minister has forgotten.

And it is the Australia that Labor will always fight for.

If you want an election, try us.

If you think we are too weak – bring it on.

But remember – it is not about us Prime Minister.

It is about the future of our nation and the wellbeing of our people.

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

In my 25 years in politics I have seen governments and budgets come and go—governments like that of Tasmanian Liberal Premier Robin Gray, who cooked the books; governments like that of John Howard, who engaged in gross populism. Remember his 'rivers of gold', manna from heaven, as he squandered the benefits of the last mining boom with tax cuts not to mention his previous decision to freeze the fuel excise to win an election. I have seen governments ignore the challenges ahead, refuse to even mention climate change or the environment, just as this Abbott government is doing, and play instead to comfort zones, promising that if they continue to do what they have always done everything will be okay, in spite of Einstein's great observation that you cannot solve problems with the same mentality that created them. Frankly, that is our problem in this parliament.

But the Abbott government's first budget is in a category of its own. The nation is reeling as people come to terms with the extent to which the Prime Minister has shafted and lied to people and lead those who believed in him like lambs to the slaughter. Before the recent Western Australian Senate election I said at the Press Club that people were frightened by the Prime Minister because they didn't know what he would do next or who he really is, what he really believes in. But now the real nature of the chameleon has been revealed. Frankly, I have never witnessed such a brazen attempt by any Prime Minister to ruthlessly and so quickly impose such a vindictive, hard, right, cruel and ideological agenda on the Australian people and our environment and then try to justify it by deliberately concocting a fake national budget emergency.

It is breathtaking to watch the Prime Minister and his cigar-smoking Treasurer, together with their hand-picked commissioners of audit, aided and abetted by the Murdoch press, try to con the community into believing that everyone has a moral obligation to share the burden of a confected crisis, arguing that the burden is being shared fairly whilst making absolutely sure that the full weight is carried by those who have no power to fight back—the young, the sick, pensioners, students and those least able to shoulder it, not to mention the natural environment and future generations. If you are privileged, the Liberals will protect that privilege; if you are already struggling, they will stamp you down and make your life harder. Prime Minister Abbott, your heroes, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, would have been proud of you.

But we live in a democracy. The people wisely did not give the Abbott government absolute power. They did not give Prime Minister Abbott absolute control of both houses of parliament. So I stand here tonight to commit the Australian Greens to taking you on. The Greens will stand up to Prime Minister Abbott every step of the way and we will block these cruel budget cuts. Prime Minister Abbott has threatened to go to a double dissolution election if the Senate does not give him what he wants. Well, the Greens say: 'Bring it on! Bring it on, Mr Abbott!' We could be more passionate or more committed to kicking your mob out and stopping the damage you are trying to inflict on people, on the environment and our global standing. We will block the attacks on universal health care and vote against the $7 GP co-payment; we will block the cruel changes to the living and studying allowances for young people and students; we will block the unfair and regressive user pays model proposed for our universities. Why? Not only because it is wrong but because there is no budget emergency and there is no burden to share. What there is is a need to recognise that the world has changed and that national priorities must reflect the global emergency of climate change with its myriad of consequences for societies and economies. We need to identify other major constraints and opportunities facing us as a nation and to offer leadership to genuinely take the action now that will protect people and make life better for everyone, including our children, their children and generations to come.

We need to work out where as a nation we are going, how much it will cost to get there, how we are going to raise the money to do it whilst reducing our debt over time. Instead, Australia's social contract, our commitment to recognition of Indigenous people in the Constitution, our commitment to equality of opportunity in everything from education to access to justice, our universal health care system, our notion of a fair go for everyone, our federal system of checks and balances, environmental protection right down to our ABC and SBS are being torn up in this budget. It is a backward looking budget delivered by Prime Minister Abbott but written by big business, for big business, for the big miners, big polluters and big banks—the vested interests of the old economy determined to stamp out anything or anyone that threatens their profit will power.

This is not about the future of the country or making life better for our children; it is about making life harder for people now, and our children, and condemns us all to a dog-eat-dog existence in a rust-bucket economy pitching on the rough seas of a world struggling with climate change, environmental degradation and inequality. It is entirely without vision.

This budget is so last century in its focus that one journalist described it as an 'asphalt budget'. It represents a massive opportunity cost to our nation. Where are the jobs for the people whom the Prime Minister orders to earn or learn? Where are the economic platforms from which we can take off in new directions with new technologies and innovation? Road-building driving congestion, coal ports as stranded assets, and shovels in motion hardly represent a platform for economic prosperity.

The Abbott government has ignored and failed to address the global trends likely to hit our nation hard in coming decades and constrain our ability to provide jobs and services for our people. We are facing global warming and extreme weather events; divestment from fossil fuels; environmental degradation; water crises; volatile food markets; dislocation of millions of people in our region; as well as growing health care, education and training costs. We are facing an ageing population needing to be supported by pensions, a growing gap between rich and poor, and a mining industry transitioning from construction to production.

Leading global economist Michael Molitor has recently commented:

History tells us that a great approach to lifting growth comes from investing in infrastructure, as this has the double effect of creating jobs and the new platform from which future growth can take off. Of all the large infrastructure projects one could imagine, nothing comes close to the scale of opportunity represented by a rapid de-carbonisation of the global energy system.

He goes on to identify investment in new, low-carbon energy assets; energy efficiency; more capital into technologies that exist at scale, like solar and wind; and more capital in proven technologies that do not yet exist at full commercial scale like energy storage, smart grids, and battery electric vehicles—and I would add public transport and high speed rail. He argues for investment in game-changing technologies like graphene or quantum computers.

He asks where the capital will come from and identifies the same large institutional investors who financed all the existing low-efficiency, high-carbon-emitting activities in the past. Why? Because pension funds and insurance companies are moving to invest in infrastructure to secure higher financial returns. Hence the fastest-growing new asset class are green bonds and climate bonds. Yet this government wants to deny that to our nation.

What is required is the policy framework to make it happen, and we have it with the clean energy package, the carbon price, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the renewable energy target. But despite the success of this package in driving investment and jobs and reducing emissions, the Abbott government is determined to tear it down—to abandon one million solar roofs—in favour of roads and coal. This is vindictive, constitutes environmental vandalism and can only be seen as spite.

As for direct action and the Emissions Reduction Fund, forget it. Treasury has already forgotten about it. It has cut its forecasts of take-up and is spreading direct action over 10 years. The fig leaf has completely disappeared. Not even the government expects to be able to deliver a five per cent cut in emission by 2020. How irresponsible it is to abandon a multi-billion-dollar, polluter-pays scheme in favour of paying Gina Rinehart, Twiggy Forrest, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto fuel tax credits, and charging people to go to the doctor to pay for it.

Worse still, this government have become medieval in their attack on science, research and evidence based policy to the extent that the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and its environmental science programs have lost $142 million. But compare this with the funding of $250 million which has been directed to the school chaplaincy program, with the added restriction of requiring it to be delivered by a religious provider with no option for secular welfare providers. Our natural environment will suffer a vicious assault as environmental powers are to be transferred from the Commonwealth to the states, or even local government, or anyone for that matter. Decades of environmental protection and the legal work of environmental defenders offices has been trashed. Our national parks—those precious places—are to be subject to guns, resorts, four-wheel drives, and grazing. Anything goes.

Even the new medical research fund is a smoke-and-mirrors investment. We need medical research but to blackmail the parliament by saying it will not be delivered unless the co-payments to visit the doctor or fill a prescription or get a blood test or X-ray are passed is wrong. It is a Sophie's choice and plain wrong. We will block the co-payments proposition. Research must be funded but it must not come from the pockets of the sick.

That brings me to the question of who will pay—where will the money come from? Well, Mr Abbott, instead of looking after your mates let's admit that revenue is there to be had; you just choose the backs of the young, the sick and the vulnerable rather than Gina Rinehart and her ilk. We, the people, own the iron ore; it is time that we were paid a fair return for it. That is what a mining tax is supposed to do, rather than have the profit from our resources go offshore to foreign shareholders. Why should Australians miss out so that our kids sit for six months at a time with nothing—not one cent. How do you expect young adults to live?

People must be really be feeling conned that they went along with 'axing the tax' without realising that if the big miners did not pay, then they would do so instead. The Greens remain committed to restoring the mining tax to its full potential and keeping the price on pollution—and contributing $48 billion to budget. That is how much could be had.

The G20, the International Monetary Fund, the OECD and the World Bank are all urging governments to stop providing subsidies for fossil fuel use. These are the institutions that define what the economic orthodoxy is. But it seems that the Prime Minister and Treasurer only heed their advice when it matches their ideology.

For an industry that is 150 or more years old to still require subsidies paid for by taxpayers is a blatant rort. While they are cutting from the most vulnerable in our society, this budget has seen another $720 million over the forward estimates directed to the big miners, courtesy of the taxpayer, bumping their subsidies up from $13 billion to close to $14 billion. And there is a new one—another $100 million subsidy for digging holes in the ground. If you want real money from the miners, ending the fuel tax credit is the way to go. There is no industry development justification; it is purely about bloating the profits of old, outdated and harmful industries while at the same time stalling economic progress and holding back a new technological frontier that is already available to us.

So the lie of budget emergency is pretty plain to see. The revenue is there; the political will to collect it is not. As Treasurer Hockey himself said, 'As a result of decisions made since coming to office, the government is collecting less taxation than otherwise would be the case'. It is their choice. So do not believe for a single minute that there is a burden to share. What there is, however, is a need for structural adjustment so that revenue streams match expenditures into the future. Prime Minister Abbott has shielded the rich from any lasting burden in this budget. He has lacked the courage to take on corporate Australia and has instead acted like a bully, targeting the weak rather than those most able to afford it. Don’t believe the nonsense of the temporary and phony repair levy. It is a trick. You would only have a repair levy if there was a crisis to repair, and if the levy was real and not token. But there is not a crisis. If you accept the need for a temporary repair levy, you are accepting there is a budget emergency when there is not one. It is an attempt to justify vicious, permanent cuts to the poor with a forgone coffee for the rich, and we reject that embedded deceit absolutely.

There is no need for the poor and vulnerable to sacrifice anything; in fact, Newstart needs to be increased. But there is every need for permanent structural changes that ensure the rich pay a permanent new marginal tax rate, and that is what the Greens will pursue in this budget. We will not have a bar of the nonsense around their whole budget repair story. But what the Greens will do is stand up for a fundamental principle in Australia and that is: no matter where you are born or who you are, if you have a disability we will take care of you and your carer. No matter what your parents' financial position or where you live, you should have access to equal and high-quality education and support. If you need medical care our universal healthcare system will look after you. We will not stand for the US system where the rich have everything they need and the poor go without. This is where Tony Abbott, our Prime Minister, is taking us with his system of co-payments and deregulation of university fees, increasing costs and debt levels.

The architect of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, economist Bruce Chapman, has labelled the changes as unfair and said they would 'unduly impact on poorer students.' To put it in perspective, it is estimated that the fee increases from deregulation would increase a nursing degree from $18,000 to—wait for it—$89,000 and an engineering degree from $26,000 to $106,800. Under this deregulation proposal, a teacher will graduate with a HECS debt estimated at $90,000. It will take them 43 years to pay off their debt and their interest bill—compared to an average of 10 years currently. On top of this, new interest rates for loan repayments are on their way. What message about the value of education is this sending to our younger generation?

Now let’s move to schools. It is appalling that the fifth and sixth years of the Gonski reforms have been abandoned. I cannot tell you, Madam Acting Deputy President, how heartfelt the sadness, frustration and anger will be in the education community around Australia to see that fifth and sixth year funding not there. How can Treasurer Hockey talk of leaving a better future for our kids whilst abandoning help for the most disadvantaged kids in our schools? It is just disgraceful. But the real bullying and the true revelation of character for the Prime Minister and his cabinet is his treatment of young people and people who cannot fight back. All young people under 30 will need to either work at least part-time or study to receive a government payment. If you find yourself unemployed there will be a waiting period of up to six months—six months with nothing—and once the waiting period for benefits is over, you will be eligible for Work for the Dole for six months and you will need to work 25 hours a week. After six months the income support ceases and on the cycle goes until you find a job, begin studying or turn 30.

The Prime Minister is completely out of touch with people trying to live on payments like Newstart or Youth Allowance. What does the Prime Minister think people will eat? Where does he think they will live? They cannot afford to rent; where are they going to live? And where does he think they will get a job? Youth unemployment is already high in so many places around the country, but I can tell you that in north-west Tasmania, for example, there are very few jobs to have. My office has been inundated, as have many of my colleagues, with desperate messages from young people around the country, petrified of what these changes will mean to them. I will read a couple of examples for the benefit of government senators. I quote:

I’m on a 12-month traineeship and I’m terrified of not having a job to go to once my contract is up. I go to the doctors often for check-ups on my anti-depressants, so not only will I have to pay that but for my prescription, which will be going up too. I’m 22 and I feel helpless.

What about that, Prime Minister? Here is another one:

I live rurally and already I was planning to take a gap year in 2015, not out of want but out of necessity to save up for university and earn enough to be considered 'independent' in the government's eyes. Now I'm not so sure that uni will ever be a possibility. The fee deregulation scares me how high will they rise? Already many can't afford them and now? Living rurally is a challenge when it comes to uni, as rarely can rural kids stay at home whilst attending uni. Instead, they face an expensive move to the city or campus they are studying at. This puts them (us) at a significant disadvantage already compared to city-living uni students. Getting a job now in order to begin saving for university is out of the question. Well, I'm out of ideas as to how I'm supposed to go about things now. How do you move to the city for university when you have no money?

These are just two examples of what the cuts will mean for young Australians. It is actually devastating for them. But it is not just the young this budget will hit; it will hit families and it will hit the sick and it will, at some point, hit every Australian.

The budget raises the spectre of sick Australians having to choose between a doctor’s visit and the necessities of life. Universal accessible health care is to be done away with. This budget puts us on the path of a US style, two-tier, underfunded health system where your credit card is more important than your Medicare care card. The announcement that bulk-billing is to be abolished and replaced with a raft of co-payments for seeing a doctor, for blood tests, for imaging and for medicines signals the end of Medicare. It means an explosion in out-of-pocket costs for Australian health consumers. Elderly Australians will simply be unable to afford to go to the doctor. Parents will have to say no to medicines for their kids. Combined with billions ripped out of hospitals, it signals a drastic drop in the quality of health care that we can now expect from this government.

This budget is a vicious attack on the fabric of our society. It abandons the environment and it jeopardises our future. It will leave a legacy of environmental and social damage, a legacy of lost opportunity and a legacy of shame when it comes to our engagement with our region, with a massive hit on overseas aid. It is a massive hit on our budget that we choose to spend billions being cruel to people being held in detention centres. But this budget will also widen gap between the rich and the poor in Australia. Our country deserves better than a cruel budget written for big business, big miners, big polluters and big banks, who are all completely let off the hook.

The Greens will stand with university students, with schoolkids, with families, with pensioners, with carers and with the sick. We will stand with environmental campaigners, with children not yet born, with our precious threatened species and with the places we love, from our magnificent rivers to our great forests to our national parks and to our Great Barrier Reef.

We will stand against the Abbott government. We will stand for a decent life in a country that can afford to have not only decent quality of life and health and education but a great and optimistic future if we have a vision to move quickly in the face of climate change. But, tragically, we are trapped with a government without vision, a government with such a narrow focus that it chooses to let those who can afford to pay off the hook and put the entire burden on those who cannot. The ideological dimension cannot be overlooked here. This is being driven from the Institute of Public Affairs, from Rupert Murdoch, from a whole perspective with a hundred asks. In this budget, the IPA is getting delivered for it exactly what it has campaigned for and what it has asked for.

But I want to reassure the Australian people that the Greens will stand with you. We will stand with you against the Abbott government. We will stand with you to kick this mob out. We will do that now and we will do it right up to the next election, whenever that is. The Greens have a strong commitment to democracy, to fairness, to ecological sustainability and to a good life for everyone. That is what we commit to do and to campaign for, and to stand against the Abbott government's cruel cuts in this budget. We will not be supporting them.

John Madigan (Victoria, Democratic Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Tuesday, the budget of bad ideas was tabled. It shows that the government is implementing fierce austerity measures when it comes to offering something innovative and appropriate to ensure that the most vulnerable, including pensioners, families, the unemployed and asylum seekers are not continually taken advantage of.

Since the Commission of Audit came out of two weeks ago, I knew the government was going to hit the Australian people with a sizeable punch in the guts. I have come to expect nothing less. This is a family-hostile budget. Families are going to be hit hard.

It is ironic that today, United Nations International Day for Families, I am giving my response to the budget, which has moved Australia closer to abolishing any financial recognition of the cost of dependent children on taxpayers. Taxpayers in this country are treated as single individuals for tax purposes. This is regardless of whether they have dependent children and/or a dependent spouse. There is no universal recognition of the cost of children in our tax or welfare system. Only those families on significantly low incomes benefit from family tax benefit A and now those families who receive family tax benefit B will be subjected to harsher income testing and eligibility criteria.

Despite the rhetoric about the value of families, this government's fiscal policies tell us a different story. According to figures from Treasury officials, a family of three will lose $4,171 a year in family tax benefits. Add to this the increased cost of doctor's visits and the increasing petrol costs, cuts to hospitals and cuts to education funding, and it is not hard to see who the biggest losers will be. Meanwhile, the dreaded deficit levy will cost someone on $190,000 a year a mere $200.

Thirty years ago, Australia acknowledged the cost of raising children through a universal family allowance system. This was known as horizontal tax equity. Since then successive governments, both ALP and Liberal, have eroded this concept. Allowances were means-tested, then abolished and replaced by family tax benefits A and B. These have subsequently been eroded. Then we had the baby bonus, which has also been changed and devalued. The current proposals will further restrict eligibility for family tax benefit B, freeze the current levels of family tax benefit A and family tax benefit B and reduce payments to large families and single parent families.

Family assistance in Australia is now a welfare payment rather than a universal recognition of the cost of children. Families are now considered to be a drain on the public purse rather than a productive and necessary part of our economic and social system. It has come to this: the government of the day now believes that you should only have children if you can afford to, as though children are a private indulgence rather than a national benefit. This builds resentment in our community from the childless, who feel they are supporting those with children rather than acknowledging that an income supports more than the individual earning it.

The Democratic Labour Party believes we must all remember that our children are the future generation of Australia. They will assume responsibility for all of us and will inherit all of our failures and our fortunes one day. What kind of legacy are we leaving a generation whom we are continually devaluing?

Abolishing family tax benefit B after the youngest child turns six places more pressure on mothers in single income families to seek employment. Australia faces huge youth unemployment, yet now mothers are pressured into entering the paid workforce in order to make ends meet. Many older mothers are forced to compete for jobs with their own young adult children. It seems only those families already living in poverty will be able to receive benefits.

Mr Acting Deputy President, I seek some indulgence to speak a little about the establishment and evolution of family benefits in our tax system. It was during the Second World War that workers gave up a pay rise in favour of a general payroll tax to redistribute wage income to workers with dependent children. Child endowment had its origins as a voluntary redistribution of income by workers collectively in favour of their mates with dependent children. It was a social contract.

Later on, child endowment was severed from the payroll tax, which was given to the states to exploit as a general revenue source. By the 1970s, child endowment was merged with abolished tax rebates, formerly deductions, to create universal family allowances. These allowances were universal precisely because they were meant to recognise horizontal equity at all levels of income. Over the intervening years, family allowances and family payments have increasingly been as described as 'welfare'. But they were never welfare. The name 'family tax benefit' explains their original purpose—to even up tax burdens between those with dependent children and those without. Children were seen as a benefit to all.

The government and the Treasury cannot have it both ways. If they want to say a child or student is not entitled to government support because of that child's parents' income then they ought logically say that that part of the parents' income really belongs to the child and should be split with the child through a system of deductions. They should be saying that X thousand dollars of the parents' income should be reallocated and treated as the child's income and income tests applied accordingly to that income in the child's hands. Likewise with spouses—if you are to going to deny a social security benefit to a person because of a spouse's income, you should logically split the spouse's income between them and tax accordingly.

This budget simply does not make sense for Australia. The fuel excise levy is just one example where the government has lashed out indiscriminately This levy will disproportionately affect low- to middle-income earners, particularly those who are supporting a family or living in regional Australia. It is all good and fine for the Greens to suggest that the revenue be invested in more public transport; however, a myki card for those living on hundreds or thousands of acres in regional Australia is no real substitute for affordable fuel prices.

The Democratic Labour Party believes education is paramount for the development of young people in our society. The education industry and the future of education in this country has not been left unscathed by this budget. The massive multi-billion dollar cuts to higher education are not encouraging signs for those who are studying and those who are planning on future study.

Low- to middle-income families are the hardest hit in this budget. There is no recognition of any contribution they make to our society. Mothers at home raising children have no voice and no profile in a society which values money alone at the expense of human dignity and the common good. This budget further divides Australia into two classes: haves and have-nots. Low- to middle-income families will be hit hard.

What the government is doing to age pensioners deserves an honourable mention. All age pensioners have made a significant contribution to Australian society and should not be the target of cuts to spending. Forcing pensioners to pay $7 to visit a GP and to pay more on their medications due to changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is a strange way of thanking them. I asked the minister yesterday to outline how much money will be raised by increasing co-payments for concessional patients by 80c—how much impact this will have on the budget's bottom line—and whether this can be considered fair, reasonable and proportionate for the sick and elderly. Do you think I got a response? Of course not We are charging pensioners an extra 80c, yet I could not even get an answer on how much impact this would have on our bottom line. I bet it will have much less impact on our economy than it would on the standard of living of older members of our community.

This leads me to my next point. The Democratic Labour Party believes all pensions should be indexed by an independent tribunal in much the same way as parliamentary salaries so that they are not subject to political manipulation. It has become all too easy for successive governments to tamper with the pension amount, often forgetting how difficult it is for thousands of Australians to live on the allowance which they have been taxed all their life to create. Now, it is not as if the government is not consistent—consistent at putting the most vulnerable last.

This brings me to our responsibility towards people from other countries who turn to us for asylum. A government's act of compassion to asylum seekers can often be an indication of the heart of a nation. This budget would indicate that, as a nation, we are suffering a serious cardiovascular disease. This budget compromises Australia's ability to respond to asylum seekers with compassion and independence. Stationing Customs and border protection personnel out of Indonesia, Malaysia and particularly Sri Lanka indicates that we would prefer to close a blind eye to human rights abuses in the hope of maintaining strong diplomatic relations with often compromised governments. The Democratic Labour Party has a very strong policy on asylum seekers and refugees, and I implore those listening to the debate in the chamber this evening to read it.

I do not feel as if I would be doing the right thing by younger Australians, particularly Young Liberals, if I do not make mention of the government's privatisation plans. Before the budget, I had written off Medibank Private as a likely target for assured privatisation, however, to read that the government has allocated $11.7 million towards a scoping study on another five agencies is ludicrous. This money would be much better spent towards ensuring pensioners do not have to contribute to the costs of their much needed medication, not to mention what is going to be left for future generations of Young Liberals to privatise.

This budget leaves a lot to be desired. It truly is a budget of bad ideas. The government is committing $2.8 million over four years to assist small business to compete for Commonwealth contracts, yet it allocates $10 million over the same period to jointly fund research with China to assist them to take our natural resources.

The decreases in the income threshold for repaying HECS debts to $50,638 will place extra financial pressures on low-income families and single-income families This is compounded by the increase of the interest rate from two per cent to a capped level of six per cent in repaying HELP debts This will have a negative impact on many families. How will single-income families manage debt as these pressures sky rocket?

The new Trade Support Loans scheme for apprentices has really been promoted through a wolf in sheep's clothing. At a cost of $439 million over five years this is only possible due to the scrapping of the $914.6 million from the Tools For Your Trade scheme. A country is what a country makes, and further discouraging young people from doing apprenticeships is not helping the future of our nation. The government may argue that they have their priorities right, though it is clear that they simply do not.

It is not all bad news. It is nice to see that the government has announced a freeze on politicians' pay for a year and the removal of certain gold pass benefits for past and present politicians and their family members. However, these measures do not go far enough. I know I would certainly welcome a freeze on politicians' pay until we are back into surplus. This would be truly leading by example. After all, why should our finances improve if the finances of the nation we are responsible for do not?

What happened to Menzies' the forgotten people? What happened to Howard's battlers? The real challenge is to grow the cake for all Australians. Those with the least will, it seems, pay the most. This truly is the budget of little innovation, empathy or compassion.