Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to the 2014-15 Budget.

Once again, today, we see in this chamber those opposite defending their insidious and horrid budget. Some of the questions in respect of what I will touch on today in answers provided by those opposite reflect the position that not only the Prime Minister but also the partners of the coalition have taken with regard to the concerns they have raised about this budget.

It was quite amusing and quite extraordinary to be in the chamber today to hear from the likes of Senator Macdonald when he was, to some degree, probing and questioning the position that the Minister for Finance, Senator Cormann, had taken in respect of the deficit bill that is currently before the chamber.

You only need to reflect, however, on the position that the Prime Minister has taken on this budget. In question time yesterday, in response to a question from the member for Hotham, he said:

We have done precisely what the people of Australia asked us to do …

I am pretty certain, as I go around and talk to constituents and people in general in my state of Queensland, that they did not precisely ask to be lied to, to have their pensions cut, to have their health priorities cut, to have higher education and education cut, and to have a fuel excise put upon them. I would really question why the Prime Minister raised that type of response in question time as of yesterday.

But we do know this is a budget of Liberal-National Party values. It is a budget based on the values where the rich are rewarded, as opposed to the poor being pushed more and more into poverty. We heard, once again, today in questions and in defence by the Nationals here in this chamber of their position on the fuel excise increase. It would pay them to have some intestinal fortitude and to stand up to their partners in this chamber and oppose the fuel excise. You may recall, Mr Deputy President, in this chamber yesterday, my contribution to a debate where I spoke of a constituent of mine, who lives west of Barcaldine. He was complaining to my office about the fuel increase and not being able to afford to go to polo shows anymore. That seems to be a consistent line that rolls out through many emails that I receive in my office. I would also like to refer to an email from a constituent who lives in the Hinkler electorate. He wrote to the member for Hinkler, advising:

… I live in the Hinkler electorate and voted for you at the last election. However since the coalition took office their performance has been less than fair mainly because, of the 2014 budget.

He refers to concerns about other measures and how there are different ways of dealing with the current budget appropriations. He then ends the commentary by saying:

With the skyrocketing costs of energy, water, medical, food, transport, fuel etc. it is becoming increasing difficult for the average family to make ends meet. Give us a break and tax those people, companies and organisations who don't pay tax and who can afford it. The Coalition's voter support may even increase instead of rapidly decreasing since the budget release.

Once again, we find the Prime Minister of this country, saying in a meeting with the US President recently, 'The fuel excise is a carbon tax on steroids.' He actually said to Barack Obama, during the wide-ranging private discussions in Washington that he had, that the fuel excise, which the government announced would increase in the budget, was acting like a carbon price signal.

On one hand, the coalition are wanting to do away with the carbon price but, on the other hand, they are here promoting a fuel excise. I can only imagine that they are claiming it will result in fewer people on the roads and will promote the fact there will be less carbon monoxide rising into the atmosphere. I imagine that is what they are promoting. But it is difficult to get in the heads of a National Party member or a senator and work out what they are really promoting when it comes to these sorts of comments that our Prime Minister made in the US recently.

The last comment I want to make, and I am running out of time, is the effect on the retail sector that has been— (Time expired)

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I always enjoy Senator Furner's contributions. They are always considered—even if somewhat misguided. Let's just draw the broader picture of the budget. Let's give a little bit of context. At present as a proportion of debt to GDP, this nation is at about 14 per cent. Senator Furner is right—at least in this respect—that that is nothing shocking when looking at most of the OECD. That is true. The problem is not the amount; the problem is the trajectory of government debt. Funding Labor's future promises is the problem.

It is as simple as this: if we were to do nothing it would get so much worse. If we did nothing about the education funding, the Gonski funding, the NBN, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the indexation of welfare and so forth the problem would be that government debt would rise and rise and rise.

Senator Conroy interjecting—

The trajectory is like this, Senator Conroy: under your government, public debt in this country would have trebled in nine years. The steepest trajectory in the developed world is what that lot left us—the steepest trajectory of public debt in the entire developed world. It will treble within nine years. Debt will be at $667 billion and interest payments will be about $3 billion a month. On current projections, within a decade, every man, every woman and every child in this country will be in debt to the tune of $25,000. That is on their projections. That is if we do nothing. For an average family, that is about $100,000 for each family within nine years—virtually no time at all.

But, of course, Labor would be happy. Labor would be delighted, because at long last they would have achieved their great ambition—a public sector that eats up more and more of the national wealth. Labor would love that—government which decides, government which increasingly decides who are the new rent seekers, the new spivs, the new carpetbaggers and the new cronies they will play to. They love that. They want to be just like Western Europe. What a prognosis for a successful future! The Labor Party would finally get what they want—a little bit of Western Europe in South-East Asia. Wouldn't they love that! They would finally get what they want. What sort of prognosis is that for Australia's future? In the fastest developing part of the world, with the economies that are growing the fastest, we would have an economy something like a sclerotic economy, something like Western Europe—and it would happen within nine years.

That is the legacy of this lot, and they sit here and talk about fairness. I accept that Australians are being asked to give. That is true. And I suspect that there is some pain. But any difficulties, any pain, any complaints from anyone in this country will be nothing compared to the sacrifice that will have to be made in just nine short years if we do not fix this problem now. That is the problem that confronts this country. Is there some difficulty? Is there some pain right now? Yes, there is, but if we do not fix this problem it will be so much worse within three terms of parliament. That is all it is. On their figures, they have forecast $667 billion of debt within nine years.

We do not even know any more whether Labor believe in balancing the budget. Mr Swan used to talk the talk though he could never walk the walk, but at least he said he believed in balancing the budget. When was the last time you heard Mr Shorten or Mr Bowen say they believe in balancing the budget, that they believe that generations should live within their means? When is the last time you heard that? They will all talk about, 'We should just go for broke'—which of course is economic surrender. I have heard 'Go for broke' spoken in French. I have heard 'Go for broke' spoken in Portuguese. I have heard 'Go for broke' spoken in Icelandic.' I have heard 'Go for broke' spoken in Greek. Do you know why? Because it is always a surrender. It is always said in Greek: 'When you have got nothing to offer, go for broke.'

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

I do not know if it is going for growth but we certainly had the enlargement of a voice, which was approaching screaming, here in the chamber. I think that it is a sign of that great Shakespearian saying, 'Methinks the lady doth protest too much.' This shouting, carrying on and nonsense is a distraction. This government want Australians to be distracted from what they are actually doing in terms of ripping away the fabric of this very society.

Yesterday the Prime Minister stood up in the House of Representatives and said, 'This budget is the budget that the Australian people elected us to bring down.' He could not be further from the truth. But there is something very powerful about his budget. It reveals the values of this Liberal-National coalition party and how wantonly and desperately they are under the influence of an ideology that would seek the destruction of Australia's social fabric—our egalitarian fabric about moving forward together.

This budget from this government reveals a complete lack of care for fairness—and we can see it most clearly in the questions that we asked today and the inadequate responses about the differences between people in the bush and people in the city and about failures of consultation with key stakeholders, including the National Farmers Federation and the Country Women's Association. Believe you me, when Nola Macleod, president of that great Australian organisation, the Country Women's Association, says, 'Warren Truss certainly didn't speak to us,' I will believe her every day over the stream of lies that the Australian people have now come to expect is the level of communication they can get from this federal government.

With particular regard to the answer given by Senator Abetz in response to my question about paid parental leave, it is not surprising that the minister was so quick to shoot down dissent from his own coalition partners, the Nationals, this question time. It is not surprising that the Nationals are standing up for their electorates as they watch the golden rivers of Tony Abbott's signature Paid Parental Leave Scheme flow into the inner city Liberal seats and only trickle to the regions.

Sadly, it is also not surprising that the Prime Minister and Senator Abetz are so quick to try and shut down any public dissent from the Nationals. But they are failing in that as much as they are failing this nation. With 700 women on the northern beaches of Sydney, in the electorate of Warringah, eligible for up to $50,000 in Paid Parental Leave payments and only one-third of that number eligible in the electorate of Wide Bay, the Nationals have a right to be bemused by the equity of this Liberal Party policy. That is why we are seeing the complete unravelling of a dysfunctional, arrogant government that is not listening to the people of Australia and is still insisting on the budget that it brought down, the budget that is set to undo Medicare, the budget that takes money away from pensioners.

This budget is not the one that Australians believed that they were getting. It just reveals over and over again the big gap between what Australians think is fair and right and what this government is willing to inflict on ordinary people. The regional electorates were forgotten when this government came up with this policy. It did not consult. It does not care to. There is a constant failure of consultation. There is a constant failure to address the reality that inequity is absolutely in the genes of this Liberal Party, which is leading its coalition allies by the nose to a disgraceful position of inequity in Australian public policy.

With regard to school funding, in the time that remains to me I would like to put on the record that I am proud to be a New South Welsh woman when people in New South Wales—including the Nationals, at the New South Wales conference—are seeking to hold this federal Liberal government to account to honour its six-year commitment to school funding and to reverse the cuts. We had questions today put to the Minister representing the Minister for Education here in the Senate, Senator Marise Payne, who continued to roll out misinformation to try and deflect from the reality that an exit of $30 billion of education funding has been confirmed. She might try and play the game with the pea and the thimbles, where you shift money around—they tried to get away with that with $1.2 billion in education—but the reality is: this government is taking money from the poor— (Time expired)

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to have the opportunity to comment on the proposed Paid Parental Leave program to promote post-parturition participation, to improve productivity and profitability, towards parity, in a particularly and peculiarly appropriate process. And how wrong Senator O'Neill is when she comments on the value of this particular program to rural women. As Sharman Stone, the member for Murray, said the other day, in response to a question from a female ABC interviewer: 'You enjoy these benefits, don't you? You in the ABC enjoy them. Commonwealth and state civil servants enjoy them. Employees in insurance companies, banks and big mining companies all enjoy them, don't they?' Do you know what the ABC interviewer did, Senator O'Neill? She was silent, simply because, as we all know, this is not a welfare payment; it is equally applicable to anybody across the spectrum. This Paid Parental Leave scheme is going to allow women to stay in small businesses. Over time, as we all know, women have left small businesses to join banks, insurance companies and the public sector. So, far from this being some sort of an accusation against rural and regional Australia—which is a little bit rich coming from the Labor Party, who would not know where rural and regional Australia was—Mr Deputy President, I can say to you, after an entire life associated with rural and regional Australia, that the bush is very, very happy with the coalition.

Senator Furner asked a question about my friend Tony Seabrook, who may have made a comment about the diesel fuel excise. Let me tell you what Tony Seabrook said in June 2011, when then Prime Minister Gillard and then Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig cut the knees and the legs out from under regional and rural Australia by banning the live export trade, affecting not just northern Australia but sheep producers, grain producers and, particularly, cattle producers and damaging the relationship with Indonesia, which Prime Minister Abbott, Foreign Minister Bishop and Defence Minister Johnston have only recently been able to start to repair.

I am delighted, as an ex-academic in a rural and regional university, to comment on the benefits of the higher education changes which have been brought in by the Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne. I met with one of the vice-chancellors yesterday, and we discussed the benefits of sub-bachelor degrees. I could speak for some time about how those young people who did not quite make it into university initially will be able to get financial support, through HELP, to do sub-bachelor degrees, which will start them on a process possibly even through to doctoral and postdoctoral studies, something which the Labor government, when it was in power, never, ever legislated for.

In the short time left to me, I would just like to comment on how Labor decimated the bush when they responded to the global financial crisis. We heard the nonsense from then Prime Minister Rudd and Treasurer Swan about how they saved the nation. There were four reasons this nation was saved.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ah, yes!

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It certainly wasn't because of your NBN! The four reasons were these: firstly, Labor went in with a $20 billion surplus; secondly, there were very good prudential regulations in place because of the efforts of the Howard-Costello government; thirdly, the Governor of the Reserve Bank had the opportunity to significantly reduce interest rates because, peculiarly, Australia had been in such a strong economic position that he could do that; and, fourthly, we had this place called China which so lavishly wanted to buy our resources—our coal, our iron ore and, eventually, our energy resources. Far from incurring debt on assets and activities that would add to the wealth creation of this nation, what did the Labor government spend Australia's wealth on? What did they incur debt on, borrowing money from overseas? Pink batts that led to deaths and house fires, and we are still paying; school halls which are now falling down and which did not add one element to the educational value for young people in Australia; and $900 cheques, followed by $1,200 cheques, which went straight to casinos, alcohol, drugs and Chinese television sets. There was nothing spent on adding to the wealth of this nation, nothing on mining exploration, nothing at all to add value to the future of Australia. (Time expired)

Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to say, Senator Back, I would love to live in the world you seem to inhabit where everything is fantastic, where this glorious budget has been handed down, where as you walk through the streets of your community peopled throw flowers and rose petals at your feet and thank you for the amazing job you have done—when you have put a $7 co-payment on Medicare, when you have cut funding to universities by 30 per cent, when you are putting in the Paid Parental Leave Scheme which is going to disproportionately hurt people in rural and regional Australia. Senator Back is shocked because clearly the people he is talking to keep telling him what a fantastic job the government have been doing. I would love to inhabit that world because no-one else appears to be there. You would be all alone.

In question time today we saw the government beginning to unravel. Just prior to question time, on the key government measure of a debt levy, a very senior former government minister—a backbencher who has been 30 years in this place and who, after 1 July, will be the longest serving member—said he had lost faith in this government on this issue, that he did not believe them and that the government could not convince its own MPs and its own backbench.

Senator Bernardi and Senator Williams are making clear their opposition to the Paid Parental Leave Scheme. Not only have they been backgrounding media about it but they have certainly been up front loading the media. I have to give them both credit. They have been quite upfront about their views. In this budget there are measures which are unfair, there are measures which are inequitable. This government cannot convince its own backbench. You wonder why so many Australians have so many doubts.

My state of New South Wales today handed down the state budget. We saw a figure in the vicinity of $2 billion coming from money that has already been cut. This is not money that is going to come before the forward estimates, which is in the tens of millions, but already the impact that this government's cuts are going to have on New South Wales families. You have strong opposition from state Premiers including state Liberal Premiers. You have opposition from the Liberal Party backbench. There is opposition out there from the community and, apart from a few elements of the conservative media, no-one supports these measures.

The government have convinced themselves that the tougher they are the fairer they are being. They have convinced themselves that it is a tough budget with tough measures, but it is not that. This is an ideological budget. These are ideological measures. These are value statements. When you are doing something like PPL but you are cutting university funding and when you have a research fund but you are putting a $7 tax on every time you go to a doctor, those are political decisions. They are value statements. The government have got it wrong on the values. They have got it wrong on their priorities. We now have a situation where even the coalition is starting to fray, with their own backbench are saying, 'This isn't fair, this isn't right, this isn't equitable.'

Earlier today a lot of us supported a measure that we were not happy with. If I had designed the debt levy, I would have made sure it was there for all three years. I would have fixed up the fringe benefit tax loophole and a few other measures as well, but we supported it because we are not opposed to action and we are not opposed to sharing the burden. We are opposed to inequitable measures like the PPL, measures that discriminate against those in bush, against lower income earners. We are opposed to increasing the Medicare levy which many Australians, especially those on lower income, cannot afford to pay. Today we saw the beginning of the government, certainly their Senate team, already starting to fall apart.

Question agreed to.