Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) and the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to the 2017-18 Budget.

It is great to have the opportunity to follow-up on the questions Labor senators asked in question time around the 2017 budget. Senator Brandis today in question time was not able to answer any of the questions he was asked. He did not even really attempt to answer any of them, because he knew that he could not justify the decisions the government has taken and are contained in this budget. Specifically, he could not answer why Australians earning as little as $21,000 per year will face a tax hike when some of the highest income earners in the country, millionaires, will get a tax cut of $16,000 a year. Nor could he answer why it is fair that $22 billion less will be spent in Australian schools whilst at the same time the government can find $50 billion to continue tax cuts for big business. He also failed to explain why university students will have to pay more in fees and why they will have to pay HECS sooner when the government, again, can find all this spare capacity to provide tax cuts—$50 billion worth for big business.

In failing to answer these questions, Senator Brandis thought that by repeating or perhaps chanting the word 'fairness' he would be able to dress up these decisions. Well, we all know the doublespeak that this government engages in and is becoming famous for. Just because you say something a lot of times does not actually make it true. So I think it is worth looking through the budget in more detail to find the many elements that we argue are not fair. Regardless of how many ministers front cameras and talk about fairness and opportunity, the reality of the decisions that underpin this budget tells a different story.

For example, to hit low-income earners with a tax increase is not fair, particularly when you are giving the highest income earners a tax cut. To make schools across the country sacrifice education funding to ensure that big business gets tax cuts down the track is not fair—and that is a decision taken in this budget. It is not fair to ask uni students to pay more and to repay loans earlier, and to provide an efficiency dividend of $3.8 billion on universities when at the same time the government is providing a $50 billion tax cut to business.

To delay cuts to Medicare for three years is not fair. The people of Australia made that clear at the election last year. They want Medicare protected. They do not want cuts and they want to be able to access bulk-billing when they need it. To do nothing meaningful on housing affordability when we see the struggles that young people are going through to get their first home is not fair. To not tackle some of the unfair tax concessions that exist, and are contained in this budget, is not fair. To cut $300 million from foreign aid and sabotage the programs that go to support perhaps the most vulnerable people in the world is not fair.

The $600 million cuts to TAFE—not fair. The failure to deal with the energy crisis; keeping in place $500 million of cuts for Indigenous affairs; cutting jobs for Human Services; failing to invest in science, in research and in innovation; cutting hospital service for veterans; and no mention of climate change at all, not one word in the budget—all certainly not fair; not fair for this generation and not fair for future generations. This is a budget which leaves Australian women behind—not fair. No women's budget statement and no clear policy analysis for how these decisions affect women. Cuts to tourism through Tourism Australia—not fair. Not calling a royal commission into the banks—not fair.

They are all decisions that were taken in this budget. I do not know if it is just me, but George Brandis and fairness really are two things that do not go together. Just because you say it, no matter how many times you say it, it does not make it true.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Once more, this is like being at the smorgasbord of the Brekkie Creek Hotel. I just do not know where to start. I do not know whether to start down the pudding end or the entree end, or go straight in for one of those huge steaks that we famously produce in my home state.

Five minutes is a limited period of time in which to make a point, but let me try and pick up on as many points from the good senator's speech as I can. I often make allowances, when listening to contributions from Labor members, for their ignorance about the base economy of our nation, about basic economics. Somehow they think that the sun rises on the left-hand side of this building and sets on the right and that government itself is the driver of all things good in this nation. Well, let me tell you something: it is the businesses of this nation that keep us going. What Labor know well is that governments can borrow money—and they deadset know a thing or two about that, because there is a $300 billion legacy to underpin the fact that that is what they know to do. They do not know how to spend it efficiently. They pump it into people's roofs, where there is no productivity dividend whatsoever, and into school halls, which gives this little sugar hit in the community and then has no long-term effect. They know how to spend it. Senator Brandis made the point earlier today that they had no cap on the percentage of GDP of taxation. They had no cap on that, so they have no regard for that. We have brought in a fiscal discipline here in relation to the percentage of GDP, with respect to the responsible spending of this government.

Senator Gallagher—through you, Deputy President—you stand and talk about the welfare of women and students. I can tell you what they need most, within their households or for themselves: they need a job. For them to have a job—

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are no jobs planned!

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, no. The Labor way, of course, is to get the government to give them a job. We have a Labor government in Queensland that has replaced nearly 14,000 jobs that had been shed, properly, to fix the economy in my home state. They have now been reinstated. They are on steroids. But it is the private sector that provides the jobs. It is the private sector that provides all the welfare that is needed for a family and their community to be able to take a position, create an income and make a contribution to the tax base. For them to do that, from time to time the government of the day have to get out of their way.

You talk about this as a tax cut. This is not a tax cut. This money that you talk about is a reduction by our government of the percentage that will be taken as taxation. It is money that belongs to these people in the first instance. We are just a government that is taking less of it. This is not a tax cut. This is a reduction in the tax position. It is not a cut. The money that remains with them, as you know full well, is reinvested in those businesses. This is where the employment will come for these students—whom I have funded. If you take my contribution to the tax base and apply it all to supporting students at universities, I have put thousands of them through university. I have put thousands of them through university for no benefit for myself, and now we find that 25 per cent of them are not even prepared to pay it back. We have made a moderate adjustment: $8 a week for someone who is now employed and earning $42,000 a year.

I have been waiting for today to watch your attacks. I wanted to see whether there would be any depth and energy in the reaction from the Australian Labor Party, in particular, to the budget yesterday. There is none. Your performance today in question time and in the speaking opportunities you have had has been flat. The reason it has been flat is that there are no fractures in this budget. It is a terrific budget. The people of Australia have received it splendidly, and it leaves you with nowhere to go as you try to respond to the most fiscally responsible budget in your living memory. (Time expired)

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always good to follow a great comedy act. It gets the crowd a little warmed up, doesn't it? This Prime Minister has been shedding identities like a fussy kid trying on Halloween outfits in a costume shop. The first costume is Captain Optimism. He was very excited about start-ups. Do you remember that period? He invented the internet and there had never been a better time to be in Australia. He moved on. The second costume was that of a very serious conservative, who said no to action on climate change, no to same-sex marriage and yes to deals with One Nation. The third costume, which has only recently been revealed, seems to be the ghost of John Maynard Keynes—a big-taxing and big-spending Prime Minister who wants to take on debt like it is 1949.

The problem of course with all of these costumes is that none of them really fit and none of them have been in any way convincing, because with each outfit one thing has remained exactly the same: the Prime Minister's willingness to sacrifice whatever principles he had remaining in order to save his skin for another day. It must be very easy to stand up for what you believe in when the only thing you believe in is yourself. Is it any wonder at all that Peta Credlin said that this is a budget short on Liberal values and long on survival instincts for a Prime Minister? Is it any wonder that former Treasurer Peter Costello is today wondering where the coalition's commitment to deficit reduction has gone?

You do not have to even go outside the parliament to find criticism of the budget. You can simply turn to the government itself. This Prime Minister has flip-flopped and changed his mind so very often that he has placed his own ministers in the embarrassing situation of having argued very strongly against the measures that are contained in this budget. In February the Minister for Finance, Senator Cormann, said:

We do not want to increase taxes. Our commitment is to lower taxes.

This budget has made him the highest-taxing finance minister in a decade.

In 2009, as opposition leader, the member for Wentworth described $200 billion of gross debt as 'colossal' and 'unprecedented'. His government now presides over a debt that is several multiples of this number. Just this morning he admitted that he thought that the zombie measures that he ditched in the budget had merit, which leaves one to wonder why exactly he is ditching them. Australia is learning the lesson, which the Liberal Party party room has probably absorbed by now, that you cannot rely on the Prime Minister's commitments.

Australians know that we cannot depend on the Prime Minister's new-found commitment to fairness either. Indeed, earlier in question time Senator Cormann confirmed this because he acknowledged that many of the things in this budget were 'not really what we wanted to do'. As much as this Prime Minister and this government now like to use the word 'fairness', we all know that their hearts are not really in it.

It is not fair to cut $22 billion from schools whilst simultaneously giving a $50 billion tax cut to big businesses. It is not fair to give a tax cut to high-income earners while at the same time demanding that university students pay thousands extra for their degrees. I note that, whilst Senator Brandis thinks it is fair for them to pay for half of the cost of their degrees, Australian students already pay a far higher proportion of their university costs than most comparable nations. It is not fair at all to future generations to have a whole budget speech that makes no mention of climate change and provides no new initiatives to tackle climate change, despite the fact that we are in no way on track to meet our fairly lacklustre targets.

For a proper fair budget we will probably have to wait for a change of government. In the meantime, though, I do hope that the coalition party room enjoy their new high-taxing, high-spending Prime Minister.

David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unsurprisingly, both Labor speakers so far in this debate have focused on measures that are contained in the budget which the ALP is critical of. In all cases, they have linked those measures that they are critical of to the decision of the government to provide company tax cuts. This is a line being commonly used by the ALP: they focus on some aspect of something that is in the budget that they do not like and they say: 'Well, why couldn't you have done this, given that you are giving the company tax breaks? There is spare cash for that, so why couldn't you have paid for something else?' They compare isolated measures. This is not a valid way to look at any budget.

I am sure Senator Gallagher in particular, as a past Chief Minister of the ACT, would be fully aware that, when you look at a budget, it is not a zero-sum game. Every budget is about hundreds if not thousands of decisions which collectively form a budget that is intended to deliver the outcomes that the government of the day is seeking to achieve. Some of those decisions will involve reductions in expenditure or the removal of programs that are no longer delivering in the ways they once did or were intended to do; in other cases, there will be new spending to try and deliver new outcomes. And that is because economies and societies are diverse and changing entities that require constant review and new approaches. The measures that are required to help stimulate economies and to ensure that societies are appropriately catered for by government are a changing mix as well, and also require constant review and constant consideration. In some cases, that will require you to spend more on certain aspects of society or of the economy; in others, to spend less in order to deliver balanced outcomes as a result of an overall budget.

Part of those considerations, and part of the decisions that people will make, is that no spending by government is possible without a tax base. To have such a tax base, you need to have economic activity. And to have economic activity, you need to have incentives for people and for businesses to take chances—to go out and risk their livelihoods, to make decisions, to try and get new businesses off the ground, and to grow existing businesses. Tax cuts were once universally accepted—and, until very recently, were accepted also by the opposition—as a proven method of creating an increased incentive for people to take such risks, to go out and make decisions which will help grow their businesses and, by doing so, grow the numbers of people they employ, grow jobs for the community and, inherently, grow wealth for the community. As I said, Labor used to agree with this; until recently—just a couple of years ago. But, whether it be politics and the political opportunity of taking a different line and opposing tax cuts for companies or whether it is because the unions have just told them that that is what they have to do, Labor have shifted their position. And today we are having this debate, where they are looking in a very isolated manner at tax cuts and they are trying to compare those with other, completely unrelated decisions that are made in the budget.

Senator McAllister made the same comments. That said, she only got to that right at the end of her contribution. Rather than playing the ball—by looking at the issues, looking at the facts, pulling apart the budget and having an examination of that—she spent the first half or three quarters of her speech in this place attacking the man, attacking the Prime Minister. Interestingly, right at the end of her comments, she used the phrase, 'it is not fair to future generations,' referring to the budget and talking about climate change and its lack of mention in the budget. Well, there are plenty of things that this government is doing about climate change. What is not fair to future generations is a failure to bring the budget back into surplus, and a failure to do that as quickly as we possibly can. It is clear in the budget that was delivered last night that we will be back in surplus in 2020-21, with an increased projected surplus over what was predicted last year. That is what we need to do to be fair to future generations. It is exceedingly unfair to saddle future generations with debt for expenditure on goods and services that we enjoy today. (Time expired)

Chris Ketter (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The latest budget confirms that the economic credentials of the coalition government are in tatters. When it comes to the issues of expenditure and taxation, the mythology would have it that the coalition will always be more responsible in those areas. But, when one examines the facts of the matter, it is quite the opposite. I was interested in the response to the budget from Alan Kohler today in TheAustralian. He pointed out, quite rightly, that the 2014 budget was when the then Treasurer, Mr Hockey, said:

The days of borrow and spend must come to an end.

… …   …

... the time to fix the Budget is now.

What happened was that, under the coalition government, spending went from 24 per cent of GDP in Labor's last year of office to 25.6 per cent in 2015-16. Taxes went up as well.

During the course of question time I asked Minister Cormann a question in relation to the gross debt. We will see in coming months the gross debt exceeding half a trillion dollars. As I said in my question, that is a total of $20,000 for each Australian man, woman and child. What hypocrisy on the other side. When we look at the record of the then opposition back in 2009, Mr Turnbull described the $200 billion of gross debt at that time as colossal, unprecedented, a mountain and a summit, but we have the fact that we are on track to have a projected gross debt of $725 billion. So let us put to bed the myth that the coalition has any credibility when it comes to the level of tax and the level of expenditure. I always go back to the research done last year by respected economist Mr Stephen Koukoulas on the issue of taxation. I have shared this in the past, but I think this puts the final nail in the coffin of the reputation of the coalition when it comes to these points.

I note that Minister Cormann's responses to my questions were quite trite: that the coalition would always have lower taxes and less expenditure than Labor. That is the cheap line that keeps coming back, but, if you look at the actual record before us, you see that, in the 10 years in which the tax to GDP ratio was at its highest, eight of the 10 years were under a Liberal administration. Labor came in at about eight and nine in the order of those 10 years. Even more extraordinarily, as Mr Koukoulas points out in his article of April last year, of the 10 years with the lowest level of taxation as a proportion of GDP, Labor was in office in all 10 years. So let us not have this cheap rhetoric that the coalition will always have lower taxes and will spend less, because the record is absolutely the opposite.

But let us get to the budget. I would say it is something of a cruel hoax when it comes to the issue of infrastructure. Yes, there are some headlines about the amount of money that is supposedly available for infrastructure, but it is a fantasy. When we look at the new announcements of funding, the only real money that has been announced in the budget is for a local road in the seat of Gilmore which is called the Far North Collector Road. There is $13 million for that initiative. When it comes to my home state of Queensland, as our Premier said today, Queensland has had a slap in the face when it comes to infrastructure investment. We know that the federal government has had the business case for around 12 months for the Cross River Rail project. This is, according to Infrastructure Australia, the No. 1 infrastructure project that needs to be funded in the state of Queensland. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Minister for Social Services (Senator Ryan) to a question without notice asked by Senator Siewert today relating to the government's proposal to drug-test 5,000 income support recipients.

I asked specifically about whether this was a gross violation of people's civil liberties, and of course he did not adequately answer that question. But his answer to my second question, which was about profiling people, and his subsequent further information in the chamber, were extremely useful in further understanding where the government is going with this. And it is horrifying. It is true to say that people were shocked and are horrified that the government is going so low to vilify vulnerable Australians—to demonise them, to marginalise them, to try to scare them off income support or from even applying in the first place—that they will seek to drug-test 5,000 people and then put them onto the failed cashless welfare card.

No matter how much the government spins it, the cashless welfare card is not proven as a concept. The interim evaluation that was carried out did not prove the concept. However, deeply concerning on this matter is not only the fact that they are seeking to do drug-testing of income support recipients but also—and I quote the government's key facts document handed out last night as part of the budget—the fact that:

Job seekers will be selected for the trial on a random basis, based on a data-driven profiling tool …

The minister went on to say that risk profiling will be used to identify particular characteristics that indicate a higher risk of substance misuse issues.

Just what data is the government going to be using to do this data profiling for income support recipients? So, if you are an income support recipient, from now on the government is going to be putting all your data into some process and then using that data to risk-profile whether you may be taking or abusing substances. But this will be 'random', folks! It will be random, but they will look at the high risk of substance misuse issues—they will be risk-profiling those particular characteristics.

This is deeply concerning and sets an extremely dangerous precedent. Not only will all new income support recipients be put through this process; they will be forced to take drug tests, and then, if they prove positive, they will be put onto the cashless welfare card. And only after they are forced to take another drug test and have a positive result will they then be directed to some additional medical professional assessment for their substance abuse issues. This sets a very dangerous precedent in terms of not only how the government intends to treat income support recipients into the future but also other areas they may be using data-driven profiling tools for.

It would be fair to say that researchers in the broader community have been very excited about the use of data and the investment in IT to assist with bringing data together, and about the use of big data for informing evidence based policy—which is a joke when you are talking about this government, because, if we were talking about evidence based policy, we would not be talking about this particular approach; we would not be talking about drug testing that is going to put people further on the margins rather than actually helping them. We would be taking a health based approach instead of one of vilification and of saying: 'Let's try and drum them out of income support so that it makes their situation even more marginal.' We would be actually looking at the real evidence about what works. But I would say to the people who were celebrating the fact that they are now going to be able to use some of that data-rich material to develop research projects and evidence based policy: this is what the government wants to use it for, folks—for risk-profiling particular characteristics. In this instance, it is for those at high risk of substance abuse—but for what next? You are using the data this time for this, but what is next? This is a very dangerous road that this government is embarking on.

Question agreed to.