Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an unfair budget! Once again the Turnbull government have confirmed they stand on the side of big business and the big end of town over ordinary Australians. Of course, they have their own self-interest at heart, and the real evidence of that is in the way they pitched their tax cuts. Seventy-five per cent of Australians will miss out on tax relief—that is pretty much every working Australian. They have been completely ignored by the Turnbull government, while a person earning $1 million a year will get a tax cut of $16,750. And where do those getting that massive tax cut live? They live in the electorates of the Turnbull government ministers and members, and that is called 'pork-barrelling'. In fact, there are just nine electorates across the country that will benefit the most from this pork-barrelling, and eight of those are held by members of the Turnbull government—starting with the Prime Minister with the wealthiest electorate, followed by his deputy Liberal, Julie Bishop. Giving a tax cut of this size to those who need it the least while tripling the budget deficit is clearly irresponsible.

For most electorates—141 of the 150—there is nothing in terms of a tax cut. Certainly the voters in my electorate, the federal electorate of Swan, fall far below the Prime Minister's tax threshold of $80,000 per year. There is no tax cut for them. It is clear that the Turnbull government do not understand that, in the electorate of Swan, the yearly wage of some working people in our community, such as casual hospitality workers, students supporting themselves through uni, casual or part-time cleaners or part-time retail workers, is the same as the unnecessary and unwarranted $16,750 a year tax cut to millionaires—the same. The Treasurer could not have got it more wrong when he declared his budget was not about winners and losers. A millionaire getting the equivalent of someone's yearly wage in a tax cut is clearly about winners and losers. The Turnbull government has demonstrated once again how out of touch it is with ordinary Australian voters.

For the voters in the electorate of Swan these pork-barrelling tax cuts certainly define the Turnbull's 'haves' and the rest, being most Australians. This Turnbull budget is neither one thing nor another and, in the terms of our shadow Treasurer, Chris Bowen, 'It's the worst of all worlds.' The cuts to schools and hospitals continue and, of course, ordinary Australians—those ignored by the Turnbull government—are our families who want a good education for their children, who have already seen the cuts this government has made to their kids' schools and are now seeing more of that. Australian families want a properly funded school system that is funded on need, not according to postcodes. They have not seen fair and equitable funding under the Abbott-Turnbull government; nor will they.

The cuts to our hospitals continue. There are the attacks on Medicare and the cuts to pathology and radiography services, which will see ordinary Australians—those earning under $75,000 a year, who are ignored by the Turnbull government—paying hundreds of dollars up-front when they require pathology and radiography services. And of course, as we know, most of those people are women. I know that in the federal seat of Swan voters are telling Labor's candidate, Tammy Solonec, that they are very concerned about the cuts to health and the cuts to Medicare. It is the No. 1 issue Tammy hears about when she speaks to voters.

The voters of Swan will contrast these cuts to Australian families and to Australian workers who pay their tax and who expect governments to provide decent health and education services with the government's uncosted 10-year corporate tax proposal. Labor supports tax cuts for small business. Remember, it was our policy in the first place. Interestingly, the benefits and incentives we provided to small business were among the first cuts the Abbott government made once they were elected. They did not care about small businesses but, of course, because there is an election on the horizon they have suddenly rediscovered small businesses. I am sure that we will hear today the terms 'small business' and 'mums and dads' in the one sentence. But they are not fooled.

What Labor does not support, of course, is redefining what a small business is. Once again we see the Turnbull government seeking to pork-barrel its mates at the big end of town. The government want to redefine a small business as—wait for it—anything with a turnover of less than $1 billion. So Labor will not be supporting an increase in the 'small business' definition moving to $1 billion. It is just more Morrison madness.

Voters in the federal seat of Swan have told our candidate, Tammy Solonec, that they do not want cuts to paid parental leave. We saw that that came in in the 2015 budget, and it will see up to 80,000 women a year lost almost $12,000, again a figure closely resembling the tax cut given to millionaires. Families in Swan were promised relief from childcare fees, but of course these have been abandoned until 2018, and who knows what will happen then? Hopefully, this government will have been voted out of office.

The cuts to the Child Dental Benefits Schedule will hit families in Swan. I know that our candidate for Swan, Tammy Solonec, is very concerned about this cut. Then there is the double-whammy for voters in Swan: women hit by family payment cuts will see none of the benefits of those tax cuts. Of course, the Turnbull government has completely ignored that half of the voters in Australia are women, and that is true in the seat of Swan. Once again we will see that those tax cuts will mostly benefit men.

Tammy Solonec, our candidate in Swan, was talking to me this morning and told me that sole parents in the federal seat of Swan, who are mostly women, will be much worse off under the Turnbull government's budget. If the woman is a sole parent in the seat of Swan with an income of around $65,000 a year and two children in high school, she will be more than $5,000 a year worse off. So I just do not know how Mr Morrison cam claim that this budget is not about winners and losers. It clearly demonstrates to me and no doubt will demonstrate to the voters in Swan, the people that Tammy Solonec talks to, how out of touch the government is. You cannot continue to take from Australian families, to take from Australian workers, to take from Australian pensioners. You just cannot keep doing that and at the same time over and over give to the big end of town, pork-barrelling your mates in just nine very wealthy electorates. That is what we saw from the Turnbull government last night. It is a budget very clearly defined by its unfairness, very clearly defined by the winners, the handful of wealthy in this country—and good on them if they have made wealth, but they need to contribute, not get the yearly equivalent of someone's salary as a tax cut.

It is the Turnbull government's last budget before we go to an election. Australians have been let down and disappointed once again by a government that in the past made promises they broke, so why would Australian voters trust them now? Voters in Swan certainly will not trust a Liberal-National party again. They will be voting for Tammy Solonec.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Some things in politics are all too predictable. The government says last night's 2016 budget was a budget for jobs and growth. They blamed the former Labor government for the successive budget deficits that are now forecast to stretch out into the next decade. The Labor opposition says it is a budget for millionaires. They contend that most Australian families will miss out on any benefit and that that simply is not fair. These scripts could have been and probably were written well in advance, and the same lines are going to be repeated ad nauseam over the next eight weeks.

If you step back from the highly partisan debate, the majority of commentators—and there are commentators aplenty these days—have found the budget distinctly underwhelming. Indeed, the best that some could say last night was that Treasurer Morrison had to some extend followed the philosophy of the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates insofar as the budget appears to have been designed to do the least harm. All too often these days politics seems to involve the triumph of low expectations.

Regrettably, however, I do not think is a Hippocratic budget. Regrettably, it will do harm; it will do harm by omission. It is not what it is in the budget—a tax cut that maybe could buy a meat pie and some very modest tax breaks for business. It is the things that are not in the budget that are the bigger issue. For a budget that is supposed to be all about jobs and growth, it is inexcusable that it fails to acknowledge the crisis in manufacturing in this country not just in the auto-making sector but also in our steel industry, with manufacturing in this nation as a percentage of GDP now well under double digits, unlike comparable developed nations. Australia's manufacturing as a share of GDP has slipped from 12 per cent in 2004 to well under seven per cent now and is expected to slide even further to below that of nations that never had a significant manufacturing base—for instance, Botswana at six per cent and Rwanda at five per cent. Contrast that with Germany, the jobs and economic powerhouse of Europe, where 22 per cent of their GDP is derived from manufacturing, including smart, advanced manufacturing.

The budget papers refer to the massive decline of some 60,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector in the past year. However, they conspicuously fail to acknowledge the 200,000 jobs at risk, especially in South Australia and Victoria, and flow-on effects throughout the rest of the nation when the auto-making sector shuts down at the end of 2017. A strong, viable steel industry is essential for our nation's manufacturing sector. Arrium, the producer of structural steel in this country—the steel that is used in concrete pours for new buildings and so much more—is a critical part of our manufacturing sector. Indeed, it is an essential part of its foundation.

Arrium, which is currently in administration, is doing it tough, and an entire city, Whyalla, relies on steelmaking to survive—although I am confident that the administrator, Mark Mentha, can revive its fortunes if we have the right policies in place. If we keep going as we have been, we will soon no longer be a manufacturing nation of significance. Unless we change Commonwealth procurement laws to ensure that the social and economic benefits of local procurement are given priority not just with the $59 billion of Commonwealth funds that are used to procure goods and services each year but with the tens of billions of dollars more that go to state and local governments for infrastructure, Arrium and so many other companies will not have a fair chance to prosper and, indeed, could fail.

Our antidumping regime and non-conforming building products from overseas are two other important areas that need urgent reform to give Australian manufacturing and jobs a fair go. Of course, members of the government, especially those from my home state of South Australia, can rightly trumpet the government's recent announcement in respect of naval shipbuilding and say that all will be well. Of course, I wholeheartedly welcome the much-delayed commitment concerning construction of the next generation of 12 submarines and praise my colleagues for being part of that success. But there is still a long way to go before the contracts are signed. There is an even longer way to go before steel is cut—up to seven years before we see most of these jobs materialise. There will certainly need to be continuing pressure on whoever forms the next government to see that the commitments that have been made in regard to naval construction and submarine building are fulfilled in full. In any case, it will certainly be some time before the benefits of new naval construction re-energise South Australia's shipbuilding and defence industry sectors.

In the meantime, the Navy's new supply ships, worth some $2 billion, seem destined to be built in Spain, but I note the contracts have not yet been signed. But a contract has been signed for Australia's next Antarctic research icebreaker, a $500 million build that will be constructed in Romania. South Australia's shipbuilders are still going to face some very serious challenges before the new naval construction projects come online, with at least 700 direct jobs due to go in South Australia by the end of 2018—the so-called valley of jobs death—with several thousand more jobs affected through the supply chain and multiplier effects.

The budget does very little for the South Australian workers, contractors and small to medium businesses in manufacturing supply chains that face immediate and grave challenges. As is so often the case, the government's ideological—I say blinkered—commitment to free trade agreements also fails to consider the extent of impacts on local manufacturing opportunities. I have already referred to the importance of local procurement. However, the budget references to the TPP procurement agreement are certainly light on detail and could compromise Australian jobs by restricting the ability of local procurement agreements that would take into account the great benefits of buying local. But it could get worse—much worse—if Australia signs on to 'the greatest procurement treaty you've never heard of', to quote Graeme Philipson of Government News. If Australia goes on to sign the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement, that could well make it illegal for state governments such as those of South Australia and Victoria to attempt to ensure that the local benefits of procurement are considered. It could also mean that any attempts by this parliament to strengthen our procurement laws could be challenged in the WTO.

South Australia's manufacturing crisis, and indeed the crisis around the country, is real and immediate and will only intensify in coming months. If the government were a physician, it would be standing by the bedside, passive and ineffective, wringing its hands and telling everyone that it hoped for the best while the patient struggles for life. This indifference extends to the struggles of Australia's iconic wine industry. While the government has made some unambiguously welcome steps towards promoting Australian wine to the world and dealing with aspects of the wine equalisation tax, it has failed to acknowledge the Winemakers' Federation's urgent plea to phase out, now, the much rorted wine equalisation tax rebate on bulk and unbranded wine. That tax has distorted and damaged the sector, pushing many hundreds of wine grape growers and winemakers to the economic brink. The government's failure to listen to the industry and to do the right thing by beginning the phase-out now, rather than in 2019, will cost Australian winemakers dearly.

The budget could also have provided the government with the opportunity to reconsider other measures that can only exacerbate economic challenges for regional Australia. The government's failure to scrap the much-feared backpacker tax, due to commence on 1 July, is certainly another body blow for farmers wanting to get the job done in regional Australia, where there are periodic labour shortages. This silly, counterproductive tax needs to go now.

There are also some very serious questions in regard to the health, education and aged-care aspects of the budget. The government certainly has not restored the health and education funding that was cut away in 2014. The budget papers also blandly refer to 'efficiencies' of $1.2 billion over four years through changes in the scoring matrix in the Aged Care Funding Instrument. This could prove deeply damaging to a significant number of our senior citizens. The government certainly needs to spell out its plans in detail to show exactly what is proposed in this very sensitive area, and they need to give an absolute guarantee that none of Australia's elderly will be disadvantaged.

It would be remiss of me today not to also point out the government's failure once again to come to grips with the enormous social and economic impacts of problem gambling. Despite the government announcing—a welcome announcement—last week that it would clamp down on online gambling, including illegal offshore online gambling sites, there does not appear to be any money set aside for the enforcement and implementation of these policies.

I fear that this is very much a 'treading water' budget from a government desperately anxious not to sink at the 2 July poll, and I understand that. Time will tell whether the government's gamble will pay off. No doubt there will be a strident partisan debate between the coalition and Labor in coming weeks, but it remains to be seen whether either side will really address some of the really important challenges that our nation faces, especially the jobs crisis in our manufacturing industries.