Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I inform the Senate that, at 8:30 am today, six proposals were received in accordance with standing order 75. 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 Wong:

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

The need for a new vision for a stronger and fairer Australia, which focusses on secure jobs and fairer wages, tackles rising power prices, invests in education and health care, and addresses housing affordability.

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 specifics 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.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unlike those opposite, Labor understand that we have to make Australia more equal again and that we have to start by putting forward a good plan and good policies for the future. Despite what those opposite have been claiming, inequality is getting worse in this country. Under this lacklustre Liberal government, more and more people are finding it harder to put dinner on the table each night and it's becoming impossible for people to find secure work. People are getting sicker because they're skipping seeing the doctor because they just can't afford it. People are struggling to access quality education from primary school through to higher education. Households are being absolutely crippled by the rising living costs in this country, and home the ownership rate is now at a six-decade low.

I was shocked and appalled by comments from those opposite, who came out banging their drums saying that inequality had actually gotten better under this government. What a joke! That just shows how out of touch they really are. The facts have been laid bare: inequality is on the rise; Australians are struggling on all fronts. Something has to stop. This government needs to stop this. We need to see this reversed. What the Liberals are doing isn't working. Instead of denying the hardship that everyday people are facing, the least that those opposite could do was to pretend they had a plan to deal with it. But this government is bereft of any vision or any plan to reverse the inequality in this country. At a time where wages have flatlined and bills are going through the roof, the government's only plan is to cut payments to pensioners and support cuts to wages while giving tax cuts to millionaires and the biggest businesses. Why should the top end pay less and the rest of Australia pay more? When will the Turnbull government see sense and for once back the battlers over the billionaires? An economy that only benefits the Prime Minister's mates isn't just unfair, it's likely to be unstable, too. If those opposite spent half the time developing a vision and policies to benefit every Australian that they do talking about Labor and making things up, then Australia would be a better place to live.

Mr Malcolm Turnbull is under enormous leadership pressure. He needs to tell us he's a strong leader, like he did last week. If you really are a strong leader, Mr Turnbull, you shouldn't need to tell us, but it's probably more about telling yourself. If the Prime Minister were really that strong, he would have asked his Deputy Prime Minister to step aside until the High Court makes its ruling. Mr Turnbull, if you were as strong as you are telling us you are, you would be fighting as hard for all Australians to have secure jobs as you are fighting to save Mr Barnaby Joyce's job and your own. Instead of wasting your breath telling us what a strong leader you are, perhaps you could get to work and tell us what you're going to do to create a stronger and a fairer Australia.

The people who elected the Prime Minister to represent them and to have a vision, a plan and policies going forward are in fact looking to Mr Bill Shorten, the leader of the Labor Party, because we're the party of ideas, we're the party of policies and we're the party of vision and we're about ensuring that there is a change in the inequality in this country. But we have a Prime Minister whose only mantra is to give the top end of town a tax cut, to support big business, while at the same time cutting supplements to pensioners. We have an underemployment problem in this country that this government is failing to address.

This is a Prime Minister who is so out of touch, who is so arrogant and who is a leader of a dysfunctional and chaotic government, and that's going to be what is going to be written about this Prime Minister in the pages of history, because he lacks leadership. (Time expired)

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm not sure that I'm in the right debate. I read that the debate is about secure jobs and fairer wages, tackling rising power prices and investing in education and health, and that's a great description of the Turnbull Liberal-National government. It is a government which is focused on secure jobs and fairer wages, that tackles power prices, that invests in education and health and that is addressing housing affordability. So I wonder if I'm in the right debate. I also just heard the previous speaker, Senator Polley, who seemed to spend all of her time talking about Mr Turnbull. I just ask Senator Polley whether she might have a look at the latest opinion polls. Mr Turnbull's rating continues to rise whereas that of her leader, Mr Shorten, continues to fall. When we find that Mr Shorten, who, when head of the AWU, used $100,000 of AWU members' money to give to the Labor Party, you can understand why Mr Shorten's polls continue to fall. I think it won't be too long before Mr Albanese and—I see Senator Cameron here—the Sydney cohort of the ALP will be looking, sharpening the knives to get rid of Mr Shorten and put in Mr Albanese. I hope they don't because—not that I have a great regard for any leader of the ALP—I do think that Mr Albanese would be a far better leader for the ALP and would perhaps provide better competition for Mr Turnbull at the next election. As I say, the opinion polls show Mr Turnbull to be so far ahead as a leader that it's not even a comparison at the present time.

So what Senator Polley was doing, talking about Mr Turnbull and lack of leadership, I can't quite understand. She really should, if I might say through you, Mr Acting Deputy President Ketter, have a look at Mr Shorten, the guy, as I said, who used $100,000 of members' money to donate to a political party. He's also the guy that used to knock around with the captains of Australian industry, the very wealthy ones, and got their private plane to slip down to Tasmania at the time of what was to be a tragedy. He had left, he saw that it wasn't a tragedy and that there was good news there. He hired a magnate's plane—not hired it; got it for free—and slipped down in time for the early morning television. No wonder Mr Shorten's polls are going down. I think the Australian public are waking up very, very quickly to Mr Shorten, and well they should.

We know Mr Shorten gave that money out as a union leader. That's another reason why membership of the unions in the private sector has fallen to 10 per cent of the total private sector workforce. That means 90 per cent of workers in the private sector choose not to join a union. And yet it's the union that controls the Labor Party and directs what could be the alternative government of Australia. But I digress, because Senator Polley spent most of her speech talking about Mr Shorten and Mr Turnbull.

Can I just say that in the coalition ranks we are very, very concerned for jobs. I'm pleased to say—and credit where credit is due—that half of the Labor Party in Queensland—the faction led by the Premier, Ms Palaszczuk—understands the importance of coalmining in the Galilee Basin and of the jobs that will be created. There were $38 billion in royalties and taxes paid between 2007 and 2013-14, and a recent study showed that the Queensland coal industry contributed $23.7 billion in 2015-16 to the Queensland economy and supported 180,000 jobs. And yet the great workers' party, the union party, continues to denigrate the Adani proposal.

Just last Friday at the Senate committee hearing, we had Labor Party politicians raising all of the reasons why that coalmine and that new infrastructure should not go ahead. And I certainly hope that the North Australian Infrastructure Facility will help jobs in Central and North Queensland by providing some money for common user infrastructure. Not for coalmines—I understand those are fully funded by the particular proponents, whoever they might be. But NAIF, set up by the Turnbull government, is there for common user infrastructure, to provide a bit of assistance from the Commonwealth taxpayer as a loan—I emphasise that—to be repaid where there is a gap in the funding.

And we do that supported by the Palaszczuk section of the Labor Party in Queensland by helping out with Adani. For as much as Palaszczuk and the total 100 per cent of the Liberal National Party support these job creation activities, there are people within the Trad section of the Queensland Labor Party and many down here that we hear of at Senate committee hearings and elsewhere who want to do everything possible to undermine that job creation project for Central and North Queensland and that money-making project for the Queensland government and the Queensland economy generally.

This motion by Senator Wong talks about jobs and fairer wages. Fairer wages and all wages, including penalty rates in this country, are by legislation dealt with not by the parliament, not by the government but by the independent Fair Work Commission set up by Bill Shorten and the Labor Party. Its members comprise many, many union heads of times gone by. We believe in fairer wages and fairer conditions, and that's why we let the independent umpire, set up by Labor, deal with that job.

The Turnbull government is the only federal government in the political history of Australia that's taken any steps to deal with rising power prices. Rising power prices are matters for state governments. In Queensland, of course, the state government gouges the profits and puts up the prices, so they can get more money, because they own the generators, and the profits they make go in to prop up a pretty awful state budget. But the federal government—they are state government issues—is the first one in history to take a national approach to reducing power prices, and we're doing it. Senator Carr whinges at question time, but when he was the minister for industry for six years, what happened? Absolutely nothing—not a thing. It takes a coalition government to deal with that.

Time prevents me from talking about the massive new investment in education. And just today I've got some updated figures of how much more every school in the state of Queensland will get as a result of the Turnbull government's recently announced education initiative. This is more money for every school. I've written to every school. They've acknowledged how grateful they are for the additional funding coming through as a result of this government's activities. So I thank Senator Wong for raising this for discussion today. I'm surprised it was her that raised it, not us, because it's all about what the Turnbull government is doing.

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

In the very limited time available, I want to speak to this motion. Of course, we need a stronger and fairer Australia. It needs to be centred on secure jobs, but we need to have those jobs in the first place—well-paying jobs. There is great news coming out of South Australia today that the South Australian government has secured an arrangement with SolarReserve to build the $650 million solar thermal power plant at Port Augusta—something I negotiated with the federal government, and in particular Senator Cormann, to ensure the $110 million concession equity loan was in place for that, and that is a key pillar. I acknowledge Sam Johnson, the mayor of Port Augusta, who's in Canberra today, where he acknowledged the importance of that concessional loan to make sure the project can get off the ground—to underpin it. That's 4,000 jobs in regional South Australia, direct and indirect, that will come about as a result of this groundbreaking project.

The key to having jobs is to make sure that energy prices come down—whether it's in gas or electricity overall. We are facing an existential crisis in this country because gas prices are simply too high. Unless we deal with those gas prices, unless we have policies to tackle it head on, you can expect to see tens of thousands of jobs leave our shores in the coming months and years, and that's something we can't afford as a nation. Some of the measures by the federal government seem to be having a downward pressure on gas prices—things I negotiated with my colleagues in making the gas market more transparent in the first place.

But we need to go further. We need to tackle the decline in manufacturing. Six per cent of Australia's economy or GDP is based on manufacturing, compared to 12 per cent a decade ago. That is a shocking figure. I know that Senator Carr and others who have been champions of manufacturing in this country would be very alarmed at that. Contrast that with Germany, where 22 per cent of their GDP is based on manufacturing. Why? Because governments, private industry and unions work together in a collaborative way to build manufacturing. They have the Fraunhofer Institute, which has been a great success in getting synergy between industry, unions, the university sector and government to drive those good outcomes in manufacturing.

We need a procurement policy that must be implemented. Those changes at the end of last year were significant changes. They could be better, but they are significant changes. We need to tackle dumping laws and to be tougher on free trade agreements; we need to invest in education, trades and skills. When it comes to health, for goodness sake let's put an emphasis on preventive health so we can prevent people going to hospital in the first place. There are so many other issues to traverse, but I hope this gives a flavour of what the Nick Xenophon Team stands for.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the proposition that has been put forward by the leader of Labor in the Senate, Penny Wong. Labor is absolutely committed to building a better society and to building a better community in this country. We do want secure jobs, and that's why we have said that you need to resolve the issue of climate change so that we can get investment in this country into renewable energy and create jobs for these young kids that are listening to this debate today, because that's the issue. We don't go back to coal. We don't go back to the era where coal drove everything in Australia. We need the opportunity to bring this country into the 21st century.

We do need fairer wages in this country. Under this rabble of a government that we have, under that weak Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, we've seen wage stagnation to the extent that the Reserve Bank is saying that we need some process to lift wages in this country. And what was the first thing this government did? It actually cut the wages of the parliamentary cleaners, the people that clean the toilets after this rabble of a government. They had their wages cut under this government.

We want to make sure that we tackle rising power prices, but you need certainty. You need investment. You need new investments in this country to deal with that. We want to invest in education. Seventeen billion dollars is what you lot have cut from the Gonski agreements around the country. We want to make sure that there is not only a school system that we can be proud of but a TAFE system that we can be proud of. And what we see around the country is the National Party standing back, watching austerity budgets cut back on TAFE around the country. We want more apprentices. We want more opportunities for young people and we want opportunities for older people in regional and rural communities to access TAFE. These are the issues that we see as important.

We want more health care. We want better health care. We want a focus on health care. We don't need more $7 fees added to people who are going to see the doctor, as this lot did in their first budget. We want to deal with housing affordability. We want these young people that are here listening in today to be able to afford their home in the future. But, while this mob defend capital gains tax exemptions and negative gearing for their rich mates who put their money in their back pockets for their election campaigns, we are always going to have a problem with capital gains tax exemptions, negative gearing and the use of self-managed super funds to push young people out of housing affordability in this country. We will deal with that.

I want to finish on this issue. The coalition are obsessed by the Leader of the Labor Party, Bill Shorten, and I know why: because it's the 16th or 17th poll—they raised the issue of the polls—that we've seen the coalition way behind Labor in the polls. And then you get Senator Macdonald come up here, again with that obsession, and talk about Beaconsfield. He has not got a clue, obviously from what he said, about Beaconsfield and Bill Shorten's involvement there. He hasn't got a clue what happened. He should come here and apologise to the people of Tasmania, who watched one of their fellows down there die at Beaconsfield, trapped in a mine, dead. And we had this nonsense from Senator Macdonald. We had miner Larry Knight dead at 44 years old, and we get that nonsense from Senator Macdonald. We had Brant Webb and Todd Russell trapped, and the public knew that Bill Shorten was down there supporting those workers and those families—more than this mob would ever do for a worker in their lives. You're a rabble of a government and an absolute disgrace.

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

I want to thank Senator Wong for the opportunity to make a contribution on issues such as secure jobs, rising power prices, investment in education and health care, and addressing housing affordability. I think it is fair to say that most people who have a basic understanding of economic principles understand that most of the generation of wealth in a nation happens from the private sector. We know that the public sector, governments, can borrow more money, and my colleagues on the other side of the chamber know all about that; cut services, and nobody in this country wants to see an unnecessary reduction in services; or we can increase the receipts of the nation by higher taxes and charges. Of course, it is two out of three for my colleagues in the Labor Party and the Greens, who support those anti-economic measures in terms of their management of the economy. It's well known that whilst the Labor Party, historically, has made great contributions to this nation over many decades, it cannot manage an economy. It mismanages every economic opportunity that it has. It's also well known that it has no interest in rural, what I refer to as provincial, Australia.

This government, the Turnbull-Joyce government, has created some 240,000 new jobs—a quarter of a billion new jobs—since it come to power. I don't know how many more jobs the Labor Party think there are to be had, but this is an outstanding record. As you all know, when people have the dignity of a job, it creates a much fairer Australia. The missions we've created with reductions in taxation create opportunities for private sector businesses to go ahead and employ more people and give people the dignity of employment. It creates these opportunities. Investment creates opportunities, and opportunities come in the form of jobs, which see a reduction in the impacts on the social security net in our nation. It gives us improved living standards, and Australians, generally—not all; I don't think it matters at what stage in life we look, there are some people who find themselves left behind—have first-class living standards and education compared to anywhere in the world and have some of the best health care in the world. When you get people into jobs, all of this impacts on the economy and, amongst other things, results in a reduction in the cost of social security and an increase in receipts for the Commonwealth. And what does the Commonwealth do when it is in good economic circumstances? It invests that money, mainly in infrastructure projects and the provision of services for the nation. That is regarded as an investment in those economies. That turns to creating opportunities and jobs and in the wonderful economic cycle, the circle joins and goes on forever.

I find it difficult that the Labor Party would talk about creating a stronger and fairer Australia when their current tax policy is to increase taxes. This is a well known 101 of economics. Increasing taxes simply stifles investment. It reduces investment, and, therefore, these opportunities that I spoke of, these jobs that are created, don't appear. In fact, jobs are lost.

Let's just link that to what they're talking about: to tackle rising power prices. It is well known that the Labor Party—it almost defied logic for me as I watched them over the last decade—abandoned blue-collar workers in provincial Australia and particularly those who were involved in our coal industry up in central Queensland. There were 14,000 jobs gone. There were 14,000 real jobs gone in Central Queensland between Townsville and Gladstone. The Turnbull-Joyce government has compensated with the creation of 240,000 new jobs, but, nonetheless, 14,000 jobs are gone.

Let's talk about how the Labor Party might support us in dealing with this. It's no surprise that my speech concentrates on Queensland, my home state, and on projects that will lift the economic fortunes of all the people in Central Queensland. We've got the Adani Carmichael project, with 2½ thousand direct jobs and nearly 4,000 indirect jobs once that goes into operation. We're talking about a total employment impact of 11,800 jobs when the secondary jobs are taken into account—those businesses and industries that will support the development of the Carmichael project. With GVK there are almost 3½ thousand jobs in construction, along with 3,200 when it's in operation. We haven't even touched on some of the ancillary stuff that happens here. We haven't even touched on the $1 billion rail line that has to be built and the increase in the port facilities in Central Queensland.

I have invited colleagues from across the chamber more than once—to save having to do it every time I speak, the invitation stands open—to make contact with my office. I'm happy to meet the costs of travel. We'll go up into Central Queensland, into the public bar of the Black Nugget Hotel, into the town square at Blackwater or into the main street of Emerald and you can meet the people who will be directly affected by your policies that you continue to espouse. You can meet these people. You can meet the small-to-medium-sized businesses for whom you resisted a tax cut that would provide them with some surplus that they—most of them at least—would inevitably reinvest in employment opportunities. Going back to my cycle: employment creates opportunities, increases the receipts of the nation, puts the Commonwealth in the stronger economic position and allows us to invest in projects like the development of northern Australia, a $5 billion fund.

I cannot believe that Senator Wong selected some of these issues for the debate under standing order 75 today. She forgot to mention or wasn't aware of the $2 billion dams package that will be invested in infrastructure in so many of our states. She forgot about the $1.7 billion invested in the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing to get our commodities from provincial Australia, particularly the central west and the south-west of my home state. There is $1.5 billion already invested in the Inland Rail, with a further $9 billion committed to be invested in that project. There is $10 billion invested in upgrading the Bruce Highway to make it flood-proof. There are all those commodities in the north. Hundreds of thousands of people are employed in the banana industry and the sugarcane industry, and they can all have secure jobs, knowing their commodities can make their way down to port.

I want to finish where I opened. The Australian Labor Party has a long tradition of poor economic management. It's reflected in their policies today and the fact that these policies will impact on rural Australia. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

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

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I am astounded by the words of Labor's MPI which, at its core, is about cost of living. In November 2009, the then ALP Senator Mark Furner and I exchanged correspondence. He relied on written advice from Senator Wong. Her comments falsely blamed carbon dioxide from human activity for natural climate cycles and weather. On these Labor-Greens misrepresentations of climate are based Labor energy policy, killing jobs and raising cost of living.

Today the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Wong, a South Australian, continues to severely hurt Australia's strength as her party destroys fairness, kills job security and turbocharges energy price rises, closing factories and shutting mines and businesses. Instead, a stronger and fairer Australia will come from policies based objectively and honestly on hard, measured data—scientific data—physical observation and empirical evidence. This is all we ask for in economic policy. Such evidence, according to NASA satellites, shows that atmospheric temperatures have shown a flat trend for the last 22 years despite record amounts of carbon dioxide from human activity—no warming. The Global Historical Climatology Network's records show that the longest temperature trend of the last 120 years was 40 years of cooling, from the 1930s to 1976, when carbon dioxide from human activity increased dramatically during World War II and the postwar economic boom. Bureau of Meteorology data show that Australian temperatures in the 1880s and 1890s were warmer than today.

The way to a new vision for a stronger and fairer Australia, secure jobs, fairer wages and reducing energy prices is to eliminate the anti-science and destructive climate policies initiated by the then Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, in 2007 and meekly adopted and promoted by then Prime Minister, John Howard, fearfully trailing in the polls and media. The ALP-Greens climate fraud has much to answer for. And the antidote is easy: tell the truth and restore scientific integrity. Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party stands for fairness and integrity, a fair go for all Australians together. A vision for a stronger and fairer Australia with secure jobs and fairer wages must be based not on which way the wind blows but on solid facts, hard evidence.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, we do have a need for a new vision for a stronger and fairer Australia. And that's because this government has not got the ability to lead our nation. There is no leadership. Added to that, they fundamentally lack vision and a sense of what is fair. It's as if they're stuck in a time warp. They espouse policies from the 1950s without realising that the world has actually moved on, that the world has changed. And the policies the Australian government enacts for the Australian people need to change, too; they need to keep up-to-date.

Labor, on the other hand, has a vision for a stronger and fairer nation. Only Labor will fight for secure jobs and fair wages. Only Labor will tackle rising power prices, invest in education and health and address housing affordability. And why is that? It's because those opposite lack the courage, willingness or ability to fight for a better Australia. They're content to keep on eroding workers' rights and conditions because it suits them and their big-business mates. But we on this side believe Australia will be a stronger nation when we are a fairer nation, when everyone believes that they have opportunities, when everyone has potential to succeed and when loopholes in the law aren't used by some to not pay their fair share.

Sadly, fairness has gone backwards. Since the mid-1970s, real wages have grown by 72 per cent for the top 10 per cent of workers but by just 23 per cent for the bottom 10 per cent. If I was still an early childhood educator, or a cleaner, and had received the same wage gains as financiers and solicitors, then I would be about $16,000 better off a year. Unfortunately, early childhood educators and cleaners do not receive the same wage gains as financiers and solicitors, so they're not $16,000 better off a year. We know rising inequality has direct costs. And in an economy that benefits only the fortunate few it isn't just unfair; it's likely to be quite unstable and even unhappy.

The rules shouldn't be rigged for one group of people over another. Labor wants to see changes in a number of areas. One of those areas is discretionary trusts, which are overwhelmingly held by the most affluent households. Taxing discretionary trust distributions to mature-age beneficiaries at 30 per cent is a similar approach to what John Howard did as Treasurer in 1980 when he stopped the rort of distributing tax-free trust income to toddlers. Charitable trusts, deceased estates and people who work in or run a small business and receive a salary won't be affected. But high-income professionals who are splitting their income with their adult children and parents will have to go back to just one tax-free threshold, just like the rest of the workforce. That is fairness.

While the Turnbull government has led cuts to penalty rates and let them sail through, Labor will continue to fight these cuts. It's just unfair to cut the wages of our lowest income earners while millionaires get tax cuts. We've also seen the rise of the casualisation of work. Casual work makes it harder for people to get loans or mortgages, to plan their future and to maximise their career opportunities. The priorities of federal Labor start with jobs and wages and tackling inequality in the labour market, and the best way to secure jobs is to ensure we have a well-educated and trained workforce. So, while Labor stood its ground and campaigned against Gonski 2.0, it is a bit unfortunate that we saw the Greens capitulate and allow approximately $68 million to be ripped out of the education system of my home state of Tasmania. Unless we focus on quality education based on need, we will leave behind a generation ill-equipped to face the challenges of the future economy.

I'll just quickly talk about Australia's homeownership rate, which is now at a six-decade low. Over the past generation, the share of young Australians owning their home has fallen while the share who are renting has risen. As major city house prices push the seven-figure mark, we increasingly risk becoming a nation where the only way of buying a home is to get help from your parents. That's okay if your parents can afford it. I had to help my daughter recently to purchase a home. I earn good money, but if you're earning $60,000 or $70,000 a year, or even less, how do you help your adult child buy a home? Let me tell you: it cannot be done. My daughter wasn't eligible to get a mortgage, because she's on contract work all the time. Although she has an honours degree, she was— (Time expired)

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

I rise today to speak in response to the matter of public importance submitted to the Senate by our parliamentary colleague from South Australian, Senator Wong. Although I applaud the spirit of Senator Wong in raising this matter of public importance in this place, I am frankly galled by the political nonsense inherent in the senator's insinuation that the Labor Party somehow has a superior vision for Australia's future. In this matter of public importance, Senator Wong blindly echoes the cheap populism and desperate rhetoric of her disingenuous leader. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition, with his cheap and easy calls for fairness and equality, under which hide a dangerous redistributionist agenda, clearly believes he has found a path through his lack of personal appeal to voters and is desperately channelling the populist exploitations of the UK's Jeremy Corbyn. If you'll excuse the pun on such a serious matter, Bill Shorten is clearly remaking himself as a Corbyn copy of his UK socialist hero. Do you like that?

Let me remind the chamber of the Turnbull government's approach to a fairer and better Australia. Three months ago, the Treasurer delivered his budget in the other place. It was a budget firmly centred entirely on the notions of fairness, opportunity and security. Indeed, those on this side of the chamber are the staunch defenders of these notions, including fairness, but not of a populist, lowest-common-denominator, divisive definition of fairness. It is not a 'chapter 1, page 1 of the socialist playbook of the politics of envy' definition of fairness, nor is it a 'when all else fails, engage in class warfare' definition of fairness, conjuring a Monopoly-man-esque image of the rich Australian using trusts to legally avoid his fair dues of tax. The coalition's view of fairness is an inclusive one. It is a fairness that unites the nation in common purpose and does not divide it for political purpose.

The idea of fairness perpetuated by Labor and the Greens is a very, very narrow construct about distribution from those who have to those who have less. It doesn't take into account the innovation, the risks and the sacrifices taken by small business people that enable them to build a business and employ others. Fairness should also involve rewarding them for their risks, their sacrifices and their sleepless nights in order to create something of value. Government must never lose sight of the risks taken by industrious men and women in this country nor seek to punish their success.

I take, for example, the attack by those opposite on family trusts. Discretionary trusts, as we all know, are not tax avoidance structures. They can be, and often are, used by farmers and by small businesses to aid in things like succession planning and asset protection. And that the Labor Party would dismiss trusts simply as a crude tool of the tax-avoiding rich is an insult—an insult to the multitude of small businesses and agricultural trusts in Australia. It's an insult to small business people and it's an insult to farmers.

This is just the latest hit to small business from a Labor Party that doesn't understand that Australian small businesses drive Australian jobs and wages. Following their refusal to keep the lower company tax rate that the Turnbull government has legislated for small businesses, this is a party that simply doesn't care about small business. I know that those opposite might like to think that in the catchcry 'fairness' they have found a phrase that will 'Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war'. But, in my mind, I feel that they have actually unleashed a poodle as opposed to a pit bull here.

The Australian public are not fools; they know that higher taxes are not the answer. Higher taxes will not solve the problems for those that have been left behind. As the Treasurer so plainly and so clearly put it: higher taxes don't increase your wage. Higher taxes don't increase your wage—that is a flat-earth argument that will penalise Australian families and whack small businesses. Indeed, the Parliamentary Budget Office has released the costings of Australia's new taxation plan, and it will be no surprise to hear that they estimated a cost to the economy in excess of $167 million. Now, how Senator Wong, the Leader of the Opposition or indeed anybody on that side of the chamber in Labor's parliamentary caucus could see this as good tax policy—as fair tax policy—is totally beyond me. It truly is a mystery.

Acting Deputy President, you will hear those opposite, those whose hopes are desperately pinned upon some improvement in the Leader of the Opposition's personal popularity, repeat the mantra of inequality and fairness like a broken record. But, as the Leader of the Opposition himself said in his budget reply speech, repetition is no substitute for conviction. For our country's sake, for our children's sake, we cannot allow Labor's creeping redistributionist agenda to come to pass. This is not a new vision; it has never been a new vision. It is the oldest play in the ALP's little red book. It is a socialist wolf in Labor's sheep's clothing.

So, I thank Senator Wong. I thank her very much for bringing this matter to the attention of the chamber. But I feel confident in dismissing this matter of public importance as simply the politically motivated nonsense that it is. And I thank the chamber for its time.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australia I grew up in is in the rear-view mirror. When I was a child, I was told that if I did the right thing by others, if I kept myself out of trouble and if I worked hard, I would be successful. Today, that promise isn't true anymore. We still think the key to improving your lot in life is hard work, but that's increasingly not the case. The link between work and reward is being eroded.

Compared to the Australia of the previous generation, today we're still working hard but we're a nation working for lower wages with less job security. The generation who grew up being told that the way you moved up in the world was with education and training is now in charge of this place, and is making policy saying that students should pay more and that universities should get less. House prices are growing faster than income and trying to save up a deposit for a first home is like chasing a piece of string on the ground that keeps getting further away from you every time you go to grab it. Median house prices grew four per cent in Launceston last year and they grew eight per cent in Hobart. Meanwhile, incomes are going nowhere and there's still a big problem with unemployment and underemployment. Young people are being told to work hard and save for their first home, but they don't have the jobs to get their foot in the door and they are getting no help from this government. Of course, the Turnbull government thinks it's helping by giving young people an internship that pays them nothing and offers them no guarantee of employment at the end.

Where has the big picture thinking gone? We have a government that says, 'If you want to study then you should pay more to do it and, if a university wants to teach you, it should have to pay more to do that too.' We have a government saying that there is not enough money to increase Youth Allowance payments for students. The result is that students can't afford to spend their weekends studying because they're spending their time making coffees or waiting tables, because they need to be able to feed themselves somehow. Then the government looks at the money those students are making on the weekends and they say: 'You're making too much money. We'll have to cut some of that too.' Where does this all end? Where is the logic? Are these students working too much or not enough? Every hour they spend working in a pub or in a supermarket is an hour they're not spending on their study. We wonder how we're going to get people to finish their degrees. Well, here's a thought: why don't we give students enough time to actually study in the first place?

The Greens put forward a bill this morning that would have increased Youth Allowance by $110 a fortnight. The effect would have been to give students a little bit of breathing room. It would have meant that missing a shift because you're sick or studying wouldn't mean starving for a week. It would have meant more students doing more study, which is what we're supposed to be encouraging, which is supposed to be the purpose of the Youth Allowance payments in the first place. The bill was voted down by the champions of equality and opportunity in the Australian Labor Party. You'd expect it from the government but it's particularly shocking from the Australian Labor Party.

What's worse is that it wasn't just students who would have benefited from the increase; those on Newstart would have been better off too. But, instead of backing an increase for those who can't find a job, they backed a review instead. Another review won't change the fact that there are more unemployed people than there are job vacancies. It's simple arithmetic. If there are more people looking for a job than there are jobs, then not everyone will find one—it's pretty simple. Rather than punishing those who can't get a job, not because they don't want one but because there aren't enough jobs, we should be looking at the other side of the equation. We should be doing more to create jobs that will employ those people looking for work.

Looking after the vulnerable means actually looking after the vulnerable. It isn't a promise to say the right thing; it means actually doing the right thing. Let's be real. Pensioners aren't asking for the world. They aren't asking for a mansion, a jet ski and an investment property on the beach. Pensioners are simply asking for an age pension that gives them enough to turn on the heater in the morning. That's what they are asking for. Is it too much to ask? This government spends all its time fighting itself. What do we do to get a government that fights for the rest of us? Well, do you know what? I'll tell you who else is struggling: there are job seekers, there are students, there are veterans and there are small businesses. I can tell you they're in trouble. (Time expired).

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

I rise to repeat this simple, self-evident truth. The Turnbull government will not bother itself to tackle the ever-extending list of cost-of-living challenges its leadership has forced upon all Australians. As Bill Shorten said last month: 'Workers' share of income is at its lowest levels in half a century'. There is less money in their pay packet and less security in their job. More and more Australians are part time or casualised and are denied a proper income that they could live on. They are able to be dismissed, put off or have their contract varied at any time.

Our out-of-pocket childcare costs have risen every year under the Abbott-Turnbull government. Despite their childcare changes, the government's own figures show fees are set to keep rising at over five per cent a year—well above wages. But the Turnbull government doesn't care about addressing inequality. It has no plans and no interest in addressing people's life circumstances, not because it can't, but because it won't. Helping Australians with cost-of-living challenges is simply not in this government's DNA. This is the party that has spent nearly half a decade talking up tax cuts for millionaires and multinationals, while, at the same time, applauding tax cuts to wages and implementing cuts to basic services. They haven't advanced climate policy or energy policy and the problems of housing affordability and negative gearing are untouched. Multinationals still do not have to pay their fair share of tax. There's an income tax cut for the top bracket and penalty rate cuts for the lowest tax bracket.

However, there's another truth in this parliament and it is the truth about the Labor Party. The Labor Party works for a fair and more equal society. It is the truth about us that we always have and we always will. There is only one party interested in improving the lives of all Australians: it is the Labor Party. The Labor Party is prepared not only to recognise inequality as the most serious threat to our health as an economy and our cohesion as a society but to set out and take the necessary steps that will actually address it.

As Bill Shorten has said, Labor will tackle inequality and restore the confidence so desperately needed in our economy. Labor will work with business to drive the industries that deliver decent jobs that people can build a life around and gain a mortgage around and so that they can form meaningful relationships and have dreams and hopes for their future and their children's future. Labor will have the courage to end the toxic politics created by this government on climate and energy policy, which will create the certainty needed to boost investment and drive down energy costs. Labor will put the great Australian dream of owning your own home back within the reach of working and middle-class Australians. Labor will invest in Medicare, in dental care and in our healthcare system, so that Australians are healthier at home and, of course, more productive at work. We will do what this government refuses to do.

This government continues to ignore the issues and the challenges facing Australians, to ignore the facts of inequality. In fact, Senator Cormann doesn't even think that there is an inequality problem. He actually thinks inequality is getting better, despite what the Governor of the Reserve Bank claims to admit. Well, the Labor Party knows very well that as long as the Turnbull government continues to govern for the people of Australia, inequality will worsen and Australians will be the worse off.

Labor will do what this government has refused to do, because we will always stand on the side of fairness and we will always stand on the side of decency for all Australians. We will reward hard work. We will invest in the future and ensure that Australia, once again, does indeed become the country of the fair go.

Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we have seen from those opposite in this debate is the fact that we do need a new vision for this country, because what we've seen is a really motley crew of an excuse for what they tried to elaborate as their vision for this government. But the reality is we have seen no vision from them. All we have seen is slogans that mean nothing and deliver less for the Australian people. There has been no better example of that in recent days and weeks than the Treasurer, Scott Morrison, lecturing us that inequality has actually been getting better in recent years, proving not only how out of touch he is but also, at the same time, his lack of political acumen. In this chamber, we get lectures about socialism from the finance minister—the guy who's best known for smoking a cigar just prior to delivering the worst budget in living memory. Now what we see is a $122 million survey that will be his legacy as finance minister. So there is no doubt that there needs to be a new vision.

The comments and contributions from Senator Macdonald and Senator O'Sullivan need to be touched on as well. They came in here and mentioned the importance of coal in regional Queensland. As a Queenslander, I am someone who understands that. But they obviously missed the memo from Scott Morrison, who said that cheap coal-fired power is dead. They obviously failed to pick up that from his contribution.

But why do we need a new vision? I think it's important to highlight just some of the reasons why that is necessary when you look at the record of this government. We know about the comments from Treasurer Morrison around inequality. However, since the mid-1970s, real wages have grown by 72 per cent for the top tenth of workers but just 23 per cent for the bottom tenth. For all their talk about jobs and growth, the key parameters in this year's budget have actually been downgraded. Growth is down, wages growth is down, employment is down and the unemployment rate is up.

When it comes to power prices, we see the ongoing debacle from those opposite, where they have failed to address it in their caucus despite it being such an important issue. They can have all the cups of tea that they like, but they need to reach a conclusion on the clean energy target. Basically, what that means for everyone out there is that they have to declare a winner between the Prime Minister and the former Prime Minister. That's actually the debate that is ongoing at the moment. But we know that a number of people have seen that wholesale power prices have doubled under Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull. Only last week, the Reserve Bank governor added his voice to the long list of business voices that have said this government must adopt a clean energy target. We know what they did with education and the cuts to the Gonski funding, we know what they've been doing with their undermining of Medicare over a long period of time, and we know, despite all the rhetoric that they had in the lead-up to the budget, that they've done nothing to target or do anything about housing affordability. So the case is clear about why we need a new vision when it comes to these important issues.

The pleasing thing is that federal Labor have been leading the policy debate on these important issues. On secure jobs and fairer wages, we won't be slugging those who earn less than $87,000. Importantly in the current context, we will be reversing the cuts to penalty rates so that, for those people who can least afford a cut, Labor will be there to support them. On rising power prices, as I mentioned before, Labor stand ready to work with the government once they've declared a winner between the current Prime Minister and the former Prime Minister about who we need to talk to to get in place a clean energy target, which will be so important to providing stability and, in the long term, lowering the cost of electricity. On education we're very clear: we will restore the $22 billion that they have cut from all Australian schools. On housing affordability, we will reform negative gearing so that you can only negatively gear newly built homes, and reform the capital gains tax concessions that are unfair to so many people trying to enter into the new housing market.

But it's amusing to watch those opposite flounder about as they try to provide an example of what their vision is for this country. Speaker after speaker came in here, and you did not get a consistent message from any of them. That's because they don't have it. They are unsure what they will do to dig themselves out of their hole, whereas federal Labor will continue to provide the leadership that this country is looking for and provide the answers that the people want in this regard.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the discussion has now expired.