Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I inform the Senate that, at 8.30 am today, three proposals for a consideration in accordance with standing order 75 were received. The question of which proposal would be submitted to the Senate was determined by lot. As a result, I inform the Senate that the following letter has been received from Senator Roberts:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

The need for the Federal Government to tackle cost of living challenges in the Budget.

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today's debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pauline Hanson's One Nation travels Australia and our home states, listening day in and day out, week in and week out. During those travels we always hear that the greatest challenge affecting everyday Australians is the cost of living: cost of energy; cost of doing business; red, blue, or UN, and green tape; taxes; fees; charges. At every turn, governments of both major parties have their hands in the pockets of Aussies, stealing our money. As we are servants to the people of Queensland and Australia, people come to us and say that the greatest government squeeze has gone too far. They say, 'We have had enough. We cannot cope.' People say to us that they do not have one, two or three—let alone 0.5—per cent of their incomes to spare for the government. This government—in fact, every parliamentarian—would be well served by listening to everyday Australians about how tough it is out there and how big, monolithic government needs to get out of the way. Everywhere we travel, people tell us they want government out of their lives.

Let me give just one example to trigger this debate. Drakes Supermarkets, which trades as Foodland, is owned by Roger Drake. Its electricity will increase from $5 million last year to $7 million this year. That is an increase of 40 per cent. Who pays? All people who buy food or all those whose jobs are cut to cover the extraordinary new cost.

Let me frame this matter of public importance by saying from the outset that this conversation does not have to be about quibbling over the exact details of the billions of dollars the government steals from people every day. Rather, it must be framed in the context of big government goosestepping into our very lives. The government's intrusion alone is causing cost-of-living pressures. I am resoundingly pro human, with enormous faith and pride in and admiration for our human species. Why? The last 170 years have seen billions of people lifted out of poverty and removed from the vagaries of nature's weather extremes of drought, flood and famine, vastly lengthening lifespans and increasing comfort, safety, ease and security. And along with the miracle of hydrocarbon fuels—that is coal, gas and oil—which, until recent government interventions, were actually falling in real prices, that miracle is due to human creativity, initiative and love, or, if you will, our care. Yes, care. Everyone in this room is here because in our early years someone cared for us. In fact, in today's marketplace, companies that care for their people and customers thrive. Indeed, a defining trait among humans and advanced species is that those who care for their offspring and for others in their species survive. Caring genes are passed on. With humans, care is inherent.

Our human spirit unites us, powers our constant search for improvements to life and drives our inherent creativity. Creativity explodes in free societies when ideas are shared and extended. Big government encroaching on our lives does nothing to assist in human creativity or initiative. Big government, especially accompanied by regressive Greens policies heralded in the 1980s and 1990s, has caused catastrophic consequences for our species, such as increased power prices, hyperinflated home prices, exhaustive taxation and strangling of the businesses that used to employ millions of Australians. People cannot afford the cost of living when they do not have a job. Our creativity has been stifled. For the control-oriented side of politics to now say that the government should restrain these people or create industries is delusional and denies human creativity, human endeavour and spirit.

It is sad how humans can at times be derailed from our core value of care, as last century showed, with socialists causing the mass deaths of people in Germany, Russia and China, to name but a few countries inflicted with genocidal dictatorships. Why were these deaths caused? Because, as part of our human journey, we form egos or identities that make us vulnerable to delusions and fear. It leads some, such as the Australian Greens, to a negative view of our species. It leads the fearful and inadequate to attempt to control others—control, feeding on fear and ego. Ego feeds big, monolithic government that feeds off of the people to keep itself growing—ever omnipresent, ever oppressive and ever controlling. Our species endures this tension between fear, which underpins control, and freedom, which enables creativity and progress. However, there is a limit to how much control will succeed, and we have pushed people beyond breaking point in Australia. These are fundamental contradictions that we face and endure: control versus freedom. In politics today, the concept of left versus right is out of date and inadequate. We are returning to an understanding that control versus freedom is the core issue, which manifests itself through inadequate documents like last night's budget.

Today's debate is about two paths that the government's budget could have taken. One path promotes fear and regressive big government—a budget any Labor Treasurer would be proud of—while the other path promotes freedom, with less control and less theft through taxation. A so-called Liberal government chose the former, not the latter. It is ironic that for seven decades Western nations have been fed the nonsense that we humans are inherently uncaring, greedy, irresponsible and even evil, and that, as a result, we need more government to protect us from ourselves. Yet government itself consists of humans. Why is it that the Australian Greens, union bosses and the tired, old parties advocate for ever more control through big government intervention and regulation? This advocacy of control has driven the distancing of government from the people they claim to govern. It has driven overregulation and distortions that smash employment and stifle strong and firm industrial relations. Regulation adds cost and decreases quality; it increases prices. There is little or nothing the government can do well or right when compared to the same effort of the private sector or, if you will, human endeavour.

Let us considered the obscene and meagre attempts to solve the costs of purchasing a new home. Unlike Senator Dastyari and the ALP, our party understands the love and care that can be associated with home ownership. However, how could the government possibly think a cap of $30,000 will even make a dent in the cost of a deposit for an average home for most Australians? For an average home, that is barely five per cent of the deposit. The mortgage insurance alone could be close to $30,000 on some of these purchases with a five per cent deposit. Also, releasing a few parcels of federal land for development in Melbourne will not solve the problem. The problem with housing is red, green and UN-blue tape strangling land release and limiting the growth of human creativity in property development. Giving a first home buyer a $30,000 tax concession saving is an insult to our intelligence, but the elites just do not get it.

Last night the Treasurer said he would take a scalpel to the problem of housing affordability, not a chainsaw. Why is it that the Hon. Treasurer looks at the left-wing control side's chainsaw solution of taxing investors as a possible solution? Why wouldn't a so-called Liberal government look at our chainsaw solution and drastically cut red, green and blue UN tape to release more land and human creativity? That is the supply side sorted—fixed.

Further, the government laments $13 billion of discarded savings in this budget. Thirteen billion dollars does not even cover our interest debt, by the way. It is a long way short. However, we can reduce the need for excessive taxation which drives the cost of living, simply by looking at expenditure. There is something novel—let's look at expenditure! I might add: we can get rid of or send back to the states the departments of environment, health and education. We can abandon the ridiculous climate and energy policies that are crippling our nation. We can save tens of billions of dollars. If the public were to learn, via a transparency portal, every red cent that bureaucrats spend, I can tell you now that, as quick as could be, government spending would fall by billions. This has been proven in some states of the United States and in parts of Europe.

I have called for an urgent meeting with the Treasurer to discuss this proposal. We need 24 million auditors in Australia poring over every cent that we spend in this parliament. Public servants would be too embarrassed to reveal how much they spent on travel, accommodation, finger-painting lessons and massage chairs. They simply would not spend the billions of dollars the government could save by releasing, in real time, the exact amounts governments are spending. In fact, if we did away with duplicated federal departments, as I said, and ceased disproven climate policies, that would further reduce government spending and the need for hikes in taxation. Reduce spending and you reduce the need for our greatest cost-of-living expense, taxation.

Figures in the late 1990s and the early 2000s from the Australian Bureau of Statistics said that a person earning the average wage spends 68 per cent on government. They hand over 68 per cent to government on rates, fees, levies, taxes, surcharges, special fees and special levies. That is the equivalent of working from Monday to mid-morning on Thursday and handing it over to the government. The meagre rest—one and two-thirds of a day—is available for spending on education, sewerage, water, travel, transport, food, shelter. That is the cost-of-living pressure.

On my Facebook wall today, Vivienne Schnell said:

When did any government vote for less government? They have to be forced to do that at gunpoint.

I have hope and trust in the human spirit that fights to be free. I have hope and trust that freedom, not control, will prevail and that the march towards big government will end peacefully. That journey starts with debates and dialogue here in this chamber. People like Ms Schnell may be frustrated and have nothing from last night's budget to give them comfort, but I warn all senators here gathered that her patience—and that of the millions of Australians like her—is wearing thin. Here, in this parliament today, we have been charged with the task of igniting Australia's creativity and initiative which will restore our prosperity.

Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak this evening in response to the matter of public importance submitted this morning by our parliamentary colleague from Queensland, Senator Malcolm Roberts. Senator Roberts asked the Senate to consider the federal government's need to tackle the cost of living challenges in its budget. It gives me enormous joy, enormous pride even, to be able to inform Senator Roberts that the Turnbull government have indeed tackled the cost of living challenges in the 2017 budget. In his speech last night in the other place, the Treasurer articulated an economic vision for our country based on fairness, on security and on opportunity. And a key tenet of this budget, a fundamental objective of this budget, is to address the cost of living pressures faced by ordinary Australians. All budgets are about choices, competing interests and competing priorities, but this budget is about making the right choices, the right choices to secure better days ahead for all Australians.

The government has chosen to tackle the cost of living pressures for Australians and their families, taking action to ease the strain in areas such as housing affordability, power prices and child care. The Australian economy has grown consistently every year for the past 26 years, but not all sectors have grown evenly. The Turnbull government recognises that not all Australians have enjoyed the benefits of our nation's growth.

Housing affordability is an issue that has dominated so much of the national conversation and, while there is no silver bullet that any federal government can provide for this problem, the Turnbull government has not shirked its responsibilities. This budget seeks to ease the burden on the hip pockets of ordinary Australians and ordinary households by making housing more affordable for prospective buyers and renters, and to support people who are homeless. Tax concessional savings through the superannuation system provide the right incentives to help first-home buyers struggling to save for their first home. We are also reducing the barriers to downsizers by allowing those over 65 to contribute up to $300,000 into their superannuation on the sale of their family home.

But the policies I am most proud of are those which will genuinely improve the outcomes for those most in need. The Turnbull coalition will look after those who are homeless and will provide $375 million to give further certainty to the providers of homelessness services. We will also establish a National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation, similar to the model applied in the UK, to operate an affordable housing bond aggregator. We will provide tax incentives to private investors to build the social housing that we desperately need in every single state in this country. This is a government that is not only tackling the cost of living for ordinary Australians, it is providing a helping hand to those who are just starting out and building safe places for our society's most vulnerable.

When you start a family and your children are young, families find themselves burdened with all types of new cost pressures and all families want the best possible start for their children. Studies show that a quality preschool program in the year before school makes for far better outcomes in school years. In addition to our landmark $2.5 billion child-care and early learning reforms, the Turnbull coalition government will ensure that all children continue to have access to 15 hours a week preschool in that year before school. This is a $429 million investment over two years made by a coalition government that is not only doing the right thing by future generations, but is tackling genuine cost of living pressures for ordinary Australians right now.

Many Australians have cited health care and the growing costs around health care as a major source of financial stress. The Turnbull government reconfirmed last night its commitment to Medicare and to the PBS system for which funding will now be guaranteed. It will be enshrined in legislation. But the government's commitment to easing the cost of living concerns about health care do not stop there. We are partnering with Medicines Australia to reduce the costs of medicines by $1.8 billion over the next five years. We are listing new drugs for patients with chronic heart failure at $510 million. We are funding public hospitals by $2.8 billion as a result of this budget. Medicines are cheaper, hospitals are well funded. This is a government that is tackling the cost-of-living pressures for all Australians.

The rising cost of energy is a major concern. In a resource-rich country like ours, Australians deserve affordable and reliable energy to heat their homes and to keep the lights on. In the short-term, the Turnbull government has committed to a one-off energy assistance package to pensioners, payable immediately to help with their rising energy bills. We have also commissioned the ACCC to inquire into the competition of the electricity and the gas retailers. We have provided $90 million to secure gas resources for domestic use and we have secured gas industry commitments to improve domestic supply. For the longer term, we are investing in a new generation transmission and storage capacity, including Snowy Hydro 2.0.

Finally, I am very pleased to share that the government is also restoring the pensioner concession card for those impacted by the asset test change introduced in January this year. This will allow almost 100,000 extra people to access discounts offered to concession cardholders.

This is, ultimately, a pragmatic budget. It is a budget centred on fairness, opportunity and security, which will assist all Australians. The government has chosen to prioritise those services that Australians rely on, especially our most vulnerable. I want to assure Senator Roberts that this is a budget that does, indeed, address the cost-of-living pressures for all Australians based on the principles of fairness, opportunity and security.

Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a shock it has all been—the last 24 hours since the delivery of the Turnbull government's 2017 budget. We know that they were going to try as hard as possible to walk away from their 2014 budget train wreck. But where they have ended up has completely left Australians in a position of thinking that this government has not only already lost its way but become a wolf in sheep's clothing. Given any chance at all, it would return to those unfair cuts and awful outcomes that it made in its budget of 2014.

Why do we know that? They have made it very clear that the only reason that they have delivered this kind of budget—this budget in which, yes, they have stolen some of Labor's policies; although they have only half baked them—is they could not get their unfair budget through the Senate. So given any opportunity for this Senate to change its make-up, they would go back to type and they would bring back that train wreck of the 2014 budget. And we all know the unfair zombie measures that were involved in that. Unemployed people having to wait six months for any income support, paid parental leave cuts, family tax benefit cuts—there was a range of zombie measures that were going to hurt the most vulnerable of our society. So do not be fooled, Australians. This budget is only here in place because the government could not get their unfair 2014 budget through the Senate.

We have to dig down because the Prime Minister and the Treasurer continue to use this word 'fairness'. The government has decided to use the Labor word of 'fairness'. In using that word, it is being incredibly untruthful. This budget is not fair. It is not fair in the area of education. It is not fair on health. It is not fair on housing affordability. In all of these areas, it is trying to tell Australians, 'We have done something fair.' Okay. Perhaps if you look at 2014 and if you look at this budget, they may think to themselves that they have done something fair. But that just goes to the heart of the fact that they actually do not know what fairness means. To say you are going to lift the Medicare freeze and say that that is fair but then not actually do it—but then make people wait another year, two years, three years, before they can get that support—that is not fair.

It is all about the detail, when it comes to this budget. The gloss soon wears off once you start digging beneath the words of fairness that they keep using. And once you keep digging down, you realise that the government has not walked away from its ideological obsession to give $50 billion of company tax cuts to the most wealthy in this country. You realise that the ideology of trickle-down economics to create jobs and growth that they talk about is still there, even though it is an outdated and flawed economic policy objective and they have still left in place a number of other areas that are going to hurt some of our most vulnerable.

Let us look at the way they have tackled education. Finally, they have recognised the importance of needs based funding, and I give them credit for recognising the importance of needs based funding. That ensures that every child, in every school, gets every opportunity for the best education, no matter what their postcode, no matter what their circumstances. But that will only work if it is properly funded, and we know that the government has still left a big $22 billion hole in the Gonski needs based funding formula that Labor put forward when it was in government. So that is a big fail there. There is no fairness there. It is a failure.

The other failure is in housing affordability, something that is facing this country in such a big way for this current generation and the next generation. Nothing there for them. No negative gearing changes. No capital gains tax concession reductions. It is all still there for the big investors. The big investors do very well out of this budget because nothing has changed. But for those trying to get into the market—first-home buyers—we know that house prices are soaring. We know how many of the purchasers are made up of investors, because they are doing very well out of Australia's negative-gearing system. Nowhere in the world seems to have one like ours. That is another fail, another squib.

The other area I am very disappointed about, which really affects my home state, is in the area of health. There are a number of people who will only be able to access a GP or a specialist if they can have that service bulk billed. And that is the whole point of a universal healthcare system. That is why Labor created and brought about Medicare. But that is completely being dismantled—and has been over the last while—by this government now, in what the journalists call a 'Labor lite' approach. The government says, 'No, no! We are going to protect Medicare. We are going to lift the Medicare freeze. And it's all going to be good, because we've changed our clothing. We've now got these different clothes, where we think it is okay now to protect Medicare, even though we did have our Prime Minister telling President Trump that it was good on him for repealing Obamacare, which looked a lot like Medicare.' Go figure that one.

Having said that, no: there is no lifting of the Medicare freeze. We are going to have to wait at least a year and even longer—three years for specialist treatments—for people in serious need of their health needs being addressed by those specialists and doctors. Why couldn't you have done it now? That would have given you some legitimacy in this budget. But no: a failure.

The other area I want to look at is the area of women's rights. The Australian government used to produce a yearly Women's Budget Statement—until the Liberals abolished it in 2014. So over successful governments, including the Howard government, there was—

Senator Seselja interjecting—

Senator Cameron interjecting—

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Minister and Senator Cameron, particularly Minister, I am having trouble now hearing Senator Singh, so please accord her a little more respect. Thank you.

Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In 2014 the Liberals abolished the Women's Budget Statement because they wanted to hide how women were impacted by their policies, by their cuts and by their spending. I am calling on the Liberals to bring back the Women's Budget Statement, but so far this has fallen on deaf ears. To fill the gap, for the last number of years Labor has been producing a women's budget statement in opposition, and we will do so again this year. We have a strong record when it comes to women's rights and women's policy: we brought about the first paid parental leave scheme, we developed the first national plan to reduce violence against women and children and we invested $3 billion to increase wages in the female-dominated social and community sector. We have a very strong record on advancing women's rights and, when next in government, I have no doubt that we will bring back the Women's Budget Statement as part of the federal government's budget.

Finally, there is a policy area that you would think simply could not be cut any more than it already has been by this government over the last three years or more, and that is the foreign aid and development budget. But, yes, it has been cut again. I really did not think it could be. It has already been consecutively cut to the bone so much—dropping by almost 30 per cent during that time. I remember a time when we had bipartisanship on aid and development, when we had this goal of reaching 0.5 of GNI. That all went out the window when Tony Abbott became Prime Minister, and it has continued under Malcolm Turnbull, to the extent that we now make the lowest contribution to aid and development that we ever have—the lowest contribution we have ever made—down to 0.23 of GNI and going down. It is not going up but going down. Meanwhile, the Conservative government in the UK has stood firm in its aid spend of seven pence out of every 10 pounds—that is a UK Conservative government. (Time expired)

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

I welcome the opportunity to talk about the impact of the cost of living in this country as it hurts Australians, particularly those who are on low incomes, are on income support and rely on our social safety net. The gap in inequality is growing in this country, as I have spoken about on many occasions in this place, particularly thanks to this government's policy, which always favours the well-off and hurts the most vulnerable. We saw that last night in the latest budget.

People on lower incomes, in the lower income quintiles, in this country are struggling, and they continue to struggle. As I said, there are plenty of reports now coming out about inequality—both wealth inequality and income inequality. A report released by ACOSS late last year showed that an estimated 2.9 million people live below the internationally accepted poverty line, and I have no doubt that this will worsen as the government continues its slash-and-burn approach to our social safety net. Again, you could see the evidence of that last night. The government continue to want Australians to believe that trickle-down economics will float all boats and have an outcome for those on low incomes, when, in fact, the money simply does not trickle down. At a time when things are tough for Australians, our social safety net is essential to ensure that people are properly supported when they are struggling.

It was Senator Malcolm Roberts who raised this matter of public importance, and I have to say I find this extremely hypocritical of him and the One Nation party, as they have an appalling track record when it comes to looking after Australians who are struggling to make ends meet and those who have to survive on income support. I would like to draw to the Senate's attention an interview that Senator Hanson did with Phillip Coorey from The Australian Financial Review in October last year. The article reported her as saying:

"Right across the board, not only in welfare, I see a big waste of money and we actually have to rein it back in."

The article continued:

She said successive governments, in a bid to win votes, had allowed welfare to become a way of life rather than a helping hand and 'tough decisions' were needed.

'If we are going to be able to, in the future, support those who are truly in need, like the sick or the aged, we've got to do something about it now,' she said.

The article went on to say that Ms Hanson said:

I want the money to be put into hospital waiting lists and schools. Infrastructure in this country is ridiculous.

Further, the article said:

Ms Hanson acknowledged many who voted for her party were on low incomes and some were on welfare.

And it quoted Ms Hanson as saying:

I'm sorry, I can't please everyone and not everyone's going to agree with me but I have to make decisions I believe are right for this country and future generations.

The article continued:

She said her supporters were not the type to tolerate 'welfare bludgers'.

To me, by using those words and other words that One Nation have said in this place, they assume everybody on income support is a bludger.

I do not use the word 'welfare', because this government and many others have tried to denigrate the word 'welfare'; so I talk about our social safety net, because that is what it is. It is our social safety net that ensures that the most vulnerable members of our community have the support they need, particularly in the face of increasing inequality and, for those people, the rising cost of living. When you are on a low income, the cost of living makes a difference. It makes an essential difference. People have a right under our legislation and under international obligations to have access to social security. Australia has a responsibility to ensure that we have a social safety net.

Irrespective of this matter of public importance debate today, people need to know that the One Nation party in the Senate will not protect our social safety net. In fact, they take every opportunity they can to denigrate our social safety net and try to rip giant great holes in it, or assist the government to rip giant great holes in our social safety net. This issue needs to be considered in the context that there are people who are on income support or on very low incomes who are struggling to make ends meet—and those are the people we need to be investing in.

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

I am delighted to take this opportunity to comment on the federal government's activities in tackling cost-of-living challenges. Senator Siewert quite rightly identified the stress that is so evident now across so much of the community. So wouldn't it be amazing if the $15 billion a year that we are borrowing overseas just to pay the interest on an accumulated debt was actually available to go back into the economy to support so many of the areas that others in this debate this evening have highlighted as being essential areas?

It is a simple fact that the electors of Australia have got what they wanted. That is what democracy is all about. The voters of Australia voted for the Senate that we have got. We have seen our opponents on the other side three times in the last parliament knock back no less than $15 billion of savings that they themselves had identified. They were savings that they identified leading up to 2013, and three times in this Senate chamber in the last parliament they refused to accept them. As the finance minister said today, we have now had knocked back some $15 billion of savings that could have been there in the budget and could have been available—in addition to the $15 billion I just mentioned that is now being borrowed overseas just to pay interest—to support those essential areas that have been the subject of discussion today.

In question time today the Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate asked a question of the Attorney-General, accusing him of levelling a tax against people who earn $21,000 a year. I did my figures during question time. The first $18,000 of the $21,000 is tax free. A person earning $21,000 in this country pays $500 per annum tax. And, if they had no other deductions, the 0.5 per cent that would be the levy in two years time would equate to $2.50 each year. It would equate to $2.50 a year. That would be that person's contribution to support the NDIS, which will require funding in two years time. To put that into perspective for people, it is less than the cost of a Mars bar at Aussie's, because that is $2.90. So $2.50 a year would be the contribution by that hypothetical person raised by Senator Gallagher.

But it is my view, which I hold very, very strongly and will never depart from, that the best way to ensure affordability for a family—for the honour and integrity of, and for opportunity and a future for that family—is a job. And we know very well that the largest employer group in the nation is small business. It is not big business; it is not government; it is small business. The engine room is small business. Millions of people are employed in small business, not just in the cities but in rural and regional Australia, and not just in the highly skilled jobs but in the semiskilled and unskilled jobs. And this government, I am very proud to say, is driving down the tax rate to 25c in the dollar and preserving the $20,000 write-offs that have become so essential for small business.

Yes, I agree completely with Senator Siewert: in our own home state of Western Australia, we are definitely seeing an enormous amount of strain. Maybe some of those people who have been earning $250,000 a year on the mines have been living well beyond their means; maybe they should have been continuing to live on the $100,000-plus a year that would have been their normal salary.

But I say this: the people of Australia have voted. This is the Senate they wanted. And now they must live with that outcome.

Treasurer Morrison and Prime Minister Turnbull and finance minister Cormann quite rightly took the position that we still need to grow this economy. Isn't it interesting that, in the last two or three weeks, surveys were conducted that found that 65 per cent of Australians said that they wanted expenditure to be contained. Senator Seselja knows, as Senator Fawcett knows, that the biggest single cost centre in our budget is welfare. The same 65 per cent who said they wanted expenditure contained also wanted no interruption to welfare spending. You cannot have it all ways.

So we see tax relief for small business, which we know is now driving, and will continue to drive, towards job opportunities and training opportunities. We saw some of the decisions made last night in the budget by the Treasurer to further encourage employment of apprentices. Only in the last few days we have been talking about the opportunities for naval shipbuilding—of the offshore patrol vessels, the frigates et cetera—across southern Australia. Apprenticeships are flowing and will flow. There will be employment opportunities and training in that shipbuilding industry.

In our own home state of Western Australia, the first floating LNG platform, Shell's Prelude, will be in our waters soon. It will provide an enormous opportunity for skills and skills development for 30 or 40 years into the future.

Comment has been made in this place on housing availability. Senator Hume made mention of the increase of $370 for those organisations which service the homeless. Our own state of Western Australia, as Senator Reynolds knows, has this wonderful state-government-supported program called Keystart, starting young families into their own homes. It provides deposit relief. An interesting statistic is that the level of bad debts is 0.3 of one per cent—less than a quarter of the bad debt rate in the commercial banking sector. Indeed, once they are in their own homes, Keystart's clients typically move their debts over to commercial banks. That is the sort of area I want to see us move further into.

Senator Singh spoke about housing affordability. In Melbourne and Sydney the prices might have gone through the roof, but there are plenty of spots in rural and regional Australia, and in our own home state of Western Australia, where they have not. We have got historically low interest rates. We have got a situation where debt is now 190 per cent of disposable income. We cannot sustain that over time.

I commend the Treasurer for his decisions. I commend the government. And I commend this to the Senate.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I said earlier today, I thank Senator Roberts for the opportunity during this discussion on the cost-of-living impact of this budget to return to my theme for this week, which is the book of Gonski. Because, of course, the school fees paid by many Australian families are critical to how they deal with the cost of living in their family budget. I am pleased to see that Senators Back and Seselja were in the chamber because I think some of what I say now will help them understand what this serious problem is. Overnight, Senator Birmingham lost the Grattan Institute on this matter. I am going to take a moment to read exactly what the Grattan Institute said, rather than my interpretation of the Gonski report. Let us see what the Grattan Institute said overnight on this issue:

There appear to be two main issues for the Catholics. The first is the 'capacity to contribute' measure, by which non-government schools with students from wealthier suburbs receive less public funding than comparable government schools or non-government schools with students from more disadvantaged areas.

The Catholics argue that it is wrong to assign students the average socio-economic profile of the catchment area in which they live, because their students are on average less well off than independent school students from the same catchment.

Let me stress this point: 'There is some analysis to back this argument.' This is the Grattan Institute; this is not me. 'Indeed, the original Gonski review'—I still have it here with me. Pages are starting to fall out of it. In fact, the most critical page, which highlights the detailed consideration of this issue that the Gonski review undertook.

The original Gonski review argued that 'work should commence as a priority to develop a more precise measure of capacity to contribute to replace the existing SES measure'.

This is the problem. The problem here is that Gonski recommended this work occur. He said certain things should happen in the interim, which the Labor government put in place, and which Minister Birmingham, without having done this policy work, has ripped out. That is the real story of this matter. Rather than Mr 'Policy Pure'; it is actually Mr 'Policy Inept'. This is why I say he has been can do conniving. He knows what he has done here, but he is busy pretending otherwise. He has built a shield, which is the elite, high-fee independent schools which is worth only a small element of the overall cuts here. And he is using this shield, publicly, to cover the much bigger cuts.

Let us talk about some of these bigger cuts, because in estimates, I am sure, we will unearth more and more detail here. We know that the move in relation to the system weighted average measure, which Gonski 1.0 recommended should remain until this SES review had occurred, is worth, to Catholic schools, nationally, $80 million a year. What we do not yet know, because the minister is busy pretending that this is some special case for Catholics—which is false—is what the system weighted average was worth for other low-fee independent schools.

We have schools like the Lutheran schools that I visited in rural Victoria, who also operate within a system and who also benefit from a system weighted average until such time as we rectify the acknowledged errors with the SES measure. What has Minister Birmingham done? He has just maintained the pretence that one size fits all is okay—only with respect to Commonwealth dollars, remember. He is operating on assumptions of what contribution parents should make, but he will not fess up about what they are. He just derides Catholics for exaggerating or being hysterical or rent-seeking, but he will not say what his own assumptions are about what parents would need to contribute for their schools to reach a student resource standard. Oh, no, he is not dealing with any of those issues. He is just maintaining the position that he is Mr 'Policy Pure' and that he will not be bullied.

Compare that to Senator Cormann today, who said that the budget was pragmatic. There is no pragmatism here; it is just a charade and it is a farce. Because, even if we accept the Grattan Institute's recommendation and now say we fix the SES measure, by the time it comes into place, we will have compromised the delivery of education within Catholic education and put enormous pressure, adding to the already existing pressures on our government school systems. And this is where I say the government is not even wary of the consequences in relation to cost shifting here. This is what is so damning about this suggestion that Gonski 2.0 is the 'New Testament', according to some of my colleagues here—Malcolm Turnbull's 'New Testament'. The amount of harm—and this is why I say this is conniving—this will yield will pale into insignificance with what someone like George Brandis has been able to do to community legal centres: leaving people waiting or allowing these things to occur, because they have not done the policy work they should have.

Remember Gonski 2011. As a priority, this work on the SES measure should occur. In the meantime, you set up the new needs based system—as the Labor government did in the way Gonski recommended—in discussion with states, territories and non-government schools building a consensus, as was recommended. It required 27 different arrangements—that did indeed exist at that point in time—to move towards a common student resource standard. But, instead, we have this minister parading around on this charade that one size fits all for Commonwealth dollars is the answer. Well, it is not. I covered earlier why it was not in relation to the funding share from the states versus the Commonwealth, but now I am covering the other serious problems of this package, which is why I say it is a dog of a package.

Let us go to the other issue that the Grattan Institute raised. The second issue is the so-called system-weighted average—it is the Grattan Institute saying this, not me—whereby the capacity to contribute for non-government systemic schools is calculated using the average SES of all the schools in the system. This has the effect of increasing overall funding to Catholic systemic schools by tens of millions of dollars each year–that is them, not me, confirming what I said earlier. But, remember, this is not just Catholic schools; this is systemic non-government schools, such as Lutherans and low-fee Christian schools. There are quite a number of them.

For Catholic schools, the system-weighted average approach potentially acts as a counterweight to the flaws in the SES calculation. If that is the case, removing the system-weighted average, which Gonski 2.0 does, should be accompanied with a review of the formula. Again, this is consistent with recommendations of Gonski 1.0.

So this pretence that this government is fully implementing Gonski is a load of rubbish. The small savings they will make from elite schools in no way matches the damage they do when they change the capacity-to-contribute curve. The curve on this graph, on page 178 of the report, is the guts of that matter. And, until we get from government how much they are saving by shifting that carefully calculated formula, as was recommended in recommendation 22 of Gonski, Catholic education is in serious trouble. And Catholic schools and parents will bear the brunt of this minister's policy ineptitude—policy-pure rubbish. This is a conniving dog of a package.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to start by heartily congratulating the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the finance minister and their staff, who have put this 2017-18 budget together. I believe it delivers a responsible, fair and appropriate budget in the circumstances.

Our first responsibility in this place, which seems to be forgotten by many in this chamber, is that we are elected to represent the people who voted for us. They expect us to act and achieve things. However, to act needs compromise, and those opposite seem to think that the only responsible thing for them to do in opposition is to oppose everything.

I listened very carefully to Senator Wong and others who were speaking today on this issue, and it is quite astonishing to think that, on the one hand, they are criticising the government for not sticking with their savings while, at the same time, blocking absolutely everything. Again, I have listened very closely to those opposite for a very long time now in this chamber and I cannot recall a single suggestion from those opposite on how we could find another area to compromise in to make savings, because that is what Australians expect us to do.

I well remember 21 April—I think it was—2006 when we had the first national debt-free day. That was the day when the Commonwealth went into negative debt, which means the Commonwealth had no debt; in fact, it started to save and put money aside for the Future Fund. Ten short years later and after seven years of Labor, they have indebted several generations from now with over hundreds and hundreds—I think between $450 billion and $500 billion worth of debt. Even when we get the budget back into surplus, we will still have the debt to pay back.

I, again, commend the government on this budget. I think they have absolutely prioritised those who need it the most but they have also made sure that it is deliverable. Those opposite endlessly pontificate—and, again, we have heard them here tonight—about fairness, equality, opportunity and compassion. Talk is cheap, and those opposite, who take the high moral ground in these areas all the time, forget one important thing that those of us on this side never do—that is, to be fair and compassionate. Words and great ideas are not enough; they have to be paid for.

Again, in all of the overblown rhetoric we have heard here tonight about the budget, there has not been one positive suggestion on how we could actually move forward—no alternatives or other good ideas on how to do it. We saw very clearly that Labor, when in government, had great ideas. They wanted to implement things—fantastic—but, as any household who manages the budget knows: you have to live within your means. You have got three options, if you do not live within your means. For new expenditure, you have to make savings somewhere—you have to go to the bank, take out a loan and pay back the loan, the principal and the interest. What else do you have to do, Senator Duniam?

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have to—

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have to raise money elsewhere.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is true: you have to raise money elsewhere.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have to raise taxes in this case. So what did those opposite do? Not only did they raise taxes but they just kept borrowing and borrowing and borrowing to pay for some of the most ridiculous, wasteful expenditure, which is to their shame.

On this side, we have a highly responsible budget. We are putting money where it needs to be, and it is into reducing the costs of living pressures on Australians. There are many ways in which this budget is doing that. We are easing the pressure by tackling energy prices—again, irresponsible, ideologically-driven Labor state governments are pushing up the price of energy, which is crippling many, many families—so we are putting in measures to, at least, provide some relief.

We have already put in measures to reduce the burden of child care, which, again, is a huge cost-of-living pressure on many Australian families. But the best form of welfare—and, particularly, for the people of Western Australia at the moment—as we always say, is a job. This government continues to create measures for small business so that they can employ more people—for example, in my home state of Queensland, they have just announced $2.3 billion worth of expenditure, most of it from the Commonwealth, for new infrastructure projects, which will be at least 6,000 jobs. The new defence projects, the new shipbuilding projects, again, mean many thousands more job. We are putting money into providing people with the skills that they need—the skills to get jobs, the skills for the future.

Senator Hume talked very eloquently about what we are doing for housing affordability—helping young Australians realise that dream of affording their own home, and providing older Australians who have worked hard all their lives to have equity in their own homes with the opportunity to downsize, sell their home, put money into superannuation and still, hopefully, have money for the things that they would not otherwise be able to afford to do.

On healthcare costs: those opposite deride us for healthcare costs, but we are doing more than they ever did in their time in government towards reducing healthcare costs; making health care more affordable and also making prescriptions— (Time expired)