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

I rise to make a contribution on the 2020-21 appropriation bills being considered by the Senate today, Appropriation Bill (No.1) 2020-2021, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2020-2021 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021. Put simply, the budget contained in these bills is emblematic of the coalition government's abject failure of economic vision and of its fiscal management over its entire time in office. Years of Liberal economic mismanagement and inaction on reform meant that Australian households, our economy and the federal budget confronted the very serious challenges and uncertainties of the fire season and the COVID-19 pandemic from a position of weakness, not strength.

The facts here cannot be disputed. Even before the virus and the worst of the fires hit, under the Liberals' watch Australian families were struggling and the broader economy was floundering. The national accounts, prior to the unprecedented events of 2020, exposed the full extent of the Liberals' failure. Quarterly growth had slowed to 0.5 per cent in the December quarter, down from 0.6 per cent in the previous quarter. Annual growth was well below trend, at 2.2 per cent, and was already a full percentage point below what it was before Mr Morrison and Mr Frydenberg took over. The private economy did not grow at all in the quarter and had stalled for the entirety of the preceding year. Growth in annual consumption had declined to its slowest pace since the global financial crisis. Total private business investment was in reverse, having now declined for three consecutive quarters, and was down 1.4 per cent over the year. As a percentage of nominal GDP, it's around the lowest level since the early 1990s recession. And wages growth had been stagnant for some time. Quarterly growth in average compensation per employee had slowed even further in the December 19 quarter, despite Australians already experiencing the slowest wage growth ever recorded.

The nation's finances had not fared any better under three Liberal prime ministers and three treasurers. It cannot go unremarked upon that Mr Morrison, in the other place, was the Treasurer for three of these years and the Prime Minister in the lead-up to the pandemic arriving on our shores. For the last seven years, the coalition government promised to deliver surplus budgets and to pay down debt. In reality, this government has broken its promises to the Australian people every single year. Instead, they had doubled debt and delivered six budget deficits, even before the pandemic hit. This is the context in which the Morrison government's 2020-21 budget must be considered.

Turning now to the budget presented in these appropriation bills: the government has delivered a budget that, despite containing record levels of spending and charting a course to more than $1 trillion of debt, fails in its most pressing duty. It fails to create jobs for Australians and fails to build for their future. It does contain a lot of headline-grabbing names, as we've become used to during this pandemic, like JobMaker and JobTrainer, but the problem is that not many jobs are being created. In fact, the latest labour force figures out of the ABS told quite the opposite story—the story that Mr Morrison and Mr Frydenberg didn't want you to hear. The story was that 25,000 more people actually lost their jobs in October, taking the unemployment rate to seven per cent.

Put simply, this is a budget that focuses on announcements for the Prime Minister but which, in reality, leaves way too many Australians behind. As I just noted, not only will this budget deliver in excess of $1 trillion of public debt and $98 billion in spending but it keeps the amount of people without jobs too high for too long. It contains record levels of expenditure but leaves so many Australians behind without the support they need to make ends meet, without certainty and without any hope. Perversely, it prioritises the funnelling of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money into funds specially set up for the coalition government to rort and pork-barrel at the expense of hardworking Australians. And it ignores the enormous social and economic opportunities of addressing key policy areas, such as child care, aged care—in desperate need of reform—and, of course, social housing, a great way to drive jobs and to provide a lasting social benefit for so many Australians who are doing it tough.

This year's budget demonstrates a staggering lack of ambition on behalf of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. If we look at the numbers contained in these bills—and against the backdrop of the memorable lines from this lot, lecturing year after year about debt-and-deficit disaster and a budget emergency, and who promised a surplus every year, to pay down debt and to get debt under control—they show that we'll have a deficit of $213.7 billion this year, the largest dollar-value deficit ever. There will be almost half a trillion dollars of cumulative deficits over the forward estimates, deficits as far as the eye can see, with the deficit never getting below $50 billion in any year over the median term—that is, up to 2030-31. We see debt rising to $1 trillion and net debt this year at $703.2 billion, growing to $966.2 billion by the end of the forward estimates. This is after this government inherited net debt in the order of $180 billion when it came to office. Gross debt this year will reach $872 billion, growing to $1.1 trillion by the end of the forward estimates and peaking at $1.7 trillion over the median term. There's also $98 billion in new spending in this budget, all of it structurally built into the budget—not offset, but contributing to spending as a proportion of the size of the economy being higher in every year of the forward estimates and the highest in nearly 40 years.

The staggering figures in this bill don't stop on the fiscal side of things. The economic numbers are deeply concerning reading too: record low wages growth set to continue, stagnating below two per cent until at least 2023-24; and high and worsening unemployment heading into Christmas this year, peaking at eight per cent in December 2020 and falling to 6½ per cent at the end of 2021-22 but not falling below six per cent until the end of 2023-24. It's at this point that the government has signalled it will begin its job of budget repair. Time will tell what this really means, but I do think it's interesting that it seems the government has decided that a six per cent unemployment rate—or comfortably below it; we tried to get to this in estimates—is the point where significant budget savings will be made to return the budget to order. That will still leave hundreds of thousands of people sitting on the unemployment queues. In addition to these figures, the Reserve Bank has recently said in its Statement of Monetary Policy that GDP won't reach its pre-pandemic level until at least 2021, that wages growth will be low for a considerable period and that employment won't return to its pre-pandemic levels until 2022.

When we consider the budget and the wider economy in these terms, the picture is definitely a sobering one. Quite often we have these economic discussions in terms of numbers, using numbers to tell the story, but the story for so many Australians at the moment is one of worry, of hardship and of a very, very difficult year, and of concern that next year is going to be just as hard, if not harder. It's the human story behind these numbers that really should focus the mind of the government because it's about the people who are relying on JobKeeper and on JobSeeker, and about the two million Australians relying on the coronavirus supplement to help them get through. It is about young people leaving university and school and wondering how they are going to start their careers with the impact of high levels of youth unemployment. It is, for older workers who have lost their jobs, the thought that they won't be able to get into new employment or that new employment opportunities won't be for them. It's the worry of people who have been living on the pension as they raise children. It's the ones whose rent is more than they can afford and who are at risk of losing their house and can't afford the mortgage. It's all of these stories that should focus the minds of us in this place and that we should all commit to caring about and tailoring solutions for available to the national government to make sure that their needs are supported.

You would think that with all of this economic data, with the story that's provided through the economic forecasts and with the policy response from the government we would see more of an effort being made to battle some of these serious system failures that we have, particularly in aged care. We would use this opportunity where we are spending billions of dollars to try to leave a lasting legacy for those who will have to pay down this debt. It is about making sure women are able to return to the workforce and that they're not prevented by policy settings which discourage them from working or make it impossible for them to take on an extra shift or an extra day.

If we look at what the Department of Social Services were saying when they updated a recent committee hearing—I think it was at estimates—they are expecting 1.8 million Australians to be relying on unemployment support by the end of the year. This is happening at the time that the government has decided to reduce financial support to this group of people and, indeed, end financial support through the extension of the coronavirus supplement in March 2021 at a time when we have millions of Australians relying on those payments.

Labor have been clear from the beginning on the economic response. We are not criticising the government for spending money where it is needed, but we have been critical about the quality of the spending. We have been critical of the government setting up these funds. Depending how you count it, between $5 and $7 billion worth of funds have been established for ministers to allocate expenditure from. Many of these funds in history have conveniently preferenced coalition seats, either targeted or marginal, and we are concerned about money being funnelled that way without proper scrutiny, with ministerial pens approving large amounts of taxpayers' funds to go to particular projects for particular parts of Australia at a time when every dollar spent is a borrowed dollar. So we will continue to focus on the quality of the spend and making sure that every dollar that is borrowed is being used to support Australians, whether it's to create jobs, protect jobs or support families to put food on the table and pay bills. That is the focus we want the government to have, because it's Australians that deserve their priority attention, not their political outcomes.

This budget has finally put some flesh on the bones of the JobMaker plan. This was announced, as people might not recall, months ahead of the October budget, but no-one seemed to know what it was meant to do, how it was meant to do it or who was in charge of it. It took about four months for the detail to be provided and $74 billion of the measures out of the government's expenditure in this budget focused on the JobMaker plan, whether it be through the hiring credit or some of the other initiatives, such as to try to increase business investment, infrastructure spending or the manufacturing strategy. Time will tell whether this emphasis through JobMaker actually delivers the outcomes we need to see. We know that they've been dodgy on the numbers in the past. We saw the Prime Minister on the weekend again saying that HomeBuilder had supported a million jobs in the construction industry. But we know the Treasury has a very different view of the jobs numbers that you can attach to the HomeBuilder program.

For the JobMaker hiring credit, again, the government used the figure in their budget of a million new jobs, and 450,000 of them were supposedly created through the JobMaker hiring credit. When proper scrutiny was brought to this number, the Treasury admitted that, in terms of additionality, they thought the JobMaker hiring credit would create approximately 45,000 new jobs. That's just 10 per cent of what the government has detailed in their budget papers.

From the opposition's point of view, we will be closely watching this. We'll be closely watching the quality of the spend and the government's claims about the number of jobs that these programs funded by taxpayers actually deliver. We will be making sure that the government is not withdrawing support too early from too many Australians who are relying on it. If we think of the 1½ million Australians receiving JobKeeper, the 1½ million Australians on JobSeeker and the two million Australians who are getting the coronavirus supplement, I think that sends a pretty strong message that there are millions of people in Australia relying on this government to do the right thing by them and not withdraw the money too soon. I move:

At the end of the motion, add: ", but the Senate:

(1) notes the 2020–21 budget:

  (a) will deliver a decade of deficits and accrue one trillion dollars of debt,

  (b) spends $98 billion but keeps unemployment too high for too long,

  (c) continues to leave too many Australians behind without support,

  (d) fails to address key policy areas such as childcare, aged care and social housing,

  (e) fails to outline a vision for the country, and

  (f) prioritises the funnelling of billions of taxpayers' dollars for the Morrison Government to rort and pork barrel at the expense of hard-working Australians; and

(2) calls on the Government to provide appropriate levels of resourcing to the Australian National Audit Office so that they can maintain audit scrutiny throughout the economic crisis."

Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the government Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2020-2021 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021. At a time when our economy and the working people of Australia face a crisis on a scale not seen since the Great Depression, the once-in-a-century pandemic has very quickly become a once-in-a-century employment catastrophe, with nearly one million unemployed and another two million underemployed.

Australian households, in the hundreds of thousands, have no-one in work or do not have enough work to pay even the basics of rent, mortgage, food and bills. The government expects that tens of thousands more will lose their jobs before Christmas and thousands more businesses are still at risk of going under. It's a deeply anxious time and, for many Australians, 2020 will be a deep scar. The scarring began with the 2019-20 bushfires and will end with a COVID Christmas. Christmas, hopefully, will be spent with family and friends. Nevertheless, there will be deep uncertainty for many as to whether they'll have a job or business in 2021. However, there is now some hope on the horizon. State borders are opening and vaccines are looking promising, but the reality is that this recovery will not be painless. For many Australians, there will be a recession in the economy for years to come, if we don't act.

The truth is that this government had to be dragged to put in a wage subsidy at all. Labor and the trade union movement were urging them to look at the wage subsidies in the UK, Europe and elsewhere. They made the case that keeping people connected to their jobs through the crisis was the No. 1 priority. Remember in March when they introduced the JobSeeker supplement but no wage subsidy and the mass lay-offs began? It was not until the Prime Minister and the Treasurer saw those Centrelink queues that they began to move.

With the hardline ideologists and the coalition caucus pushing against government expenditure on JobKeeper and JobSeeker, the government ended up with a JobKeeper package that left out more than a million casuals, gig workers, workers in the arts, university workers and aviation workers. All these Australians work hard and pay their taxes. Many have families to support. Many are not eligible for JobSeeker either. They're abandoned by this government. Their jobs were considered not worthy of keeping. So, as our borders reopen and businesses start to consider hiring again, the question now becomes: what sort of recovery are we going to have? At the heart of these appropriation bills is how effective this government's spending will be to revive our economy not just in the short term but also so we can have strong secure jobs for the future and the support and policy settings for industries that will be creating these jobs. Will the recovery be a short-term sugar rush of money thrown at some businesses to get them to employ people on a casual or temporary basis only to churn them out for new workers? Will it be a high-profile announcement from the Prime Minister designed to look at if unemployment and sluggish economic demand is being tackled, with little strategy and even less follow-up? Or will it be a government who faces up to the deep structural problems with employment and opportunity in this economy? Problems that we have already seen before the pandemic hit. Problems that are likely to be cemented by this pandemic. Of course, talking about endemic insecure work, growing underemployment, the crisis in skills training and the record low wages growth brought on by the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government's policy of wage suppression is where the appropriations bill comes in. The Australian government has a historic opportunity, in this once-in-a-century crisis, to refashion and rebuild the skills, infrastructure, energy policy and social safety net that all of us need to succeed in the next 100 years.

How is the Prime Minister and his government deciding to spend our money? Will people be left behind? Will money be spent on rorts or recovery? The nearly $1 trillion in debt that they have racked up should be expected to get us a long way to tackling the root causes of what was a very sluggish, underperforming economy before COVID. Well, the signs aren't good. Firstly, they're clearly pulling the JobKeeper and JobSeeker supplement out of the economy well too soon. For the 1.5 million Australians still reliant on JobKeeper, the cuts to this subsidy come at the worst possible time. Overnight the Treasurer has been spinning the reduction in people on JobKeeper as a positive story. The numbers are welcome but given the border restrictions easing and the tighter eligibility that is not a big surprise. The real question we should be asking is: why commit to spending hundreds of millions on a wage subsidy if you wrench that money out of the economy before there are viable businesses and jobs to replace it? Why, when we know that low-income people spend pretty much every dollar they get, would you take away the JobSeeker supplement and both injure the bottom line of local business when they're desperate for customers and cruelly drop tens of thousands of families back below the poverty line?

Secondly, the government's own estimates have employment staying below pre-COVID levels for at least four years. And what is the government's jobs plan? Well, there isn't one. Of course, one of the centrepieces of their spending is the $4 billion so-called JobMaker hiring credit. But on closer examination this scheme proved not to be the huge support to the economy that was first promised. This is a scheme designed to replace JobKeeper when it ends in March. While JobKeeper was flawed primarily because it left so many workers out, this new scheme will leave even more Australians behind.

This morning on ABC TV, one of Australia's most loved stars, Bernard Fanning, from Powderfinger was interviewed about the band's new album. He had an important shout-out for Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister, about the treatment by his government of our arts industry. He said of the government that there have been a lot of announcements but little action. When it comes to supporting the arts industry this isn't the first time he has spoken out. For months he has been saying that the highly-trained professionals in arts and entertainment may be lost for the industry forever. In his words, they have been:

… forced to completely change careers because there has been no work and if they don't come back, there may not be enough behind-the-scenes people to support tours when they get back up and running …

That means devastation to the industry.

My colleague in the other place—the shadow minister for industrial relations and the arts—has been relentless in his support for arts industry. The industry, along with aviation, was hit first and hardest. Aviation and the arts will also be the industries that will have the restrictions on them removed last. Aviation workers who used to work for Qantas but, after a sale allowed by this government, became employees of dnata had to watch while other workers in the industry got JobKeeper, but the ownership structure of their company saw the government deny them a connection to their jobs. Many of these workers live in the shire, in the Prime Minister's own electorate, but still they're shut out—the tin ear of the Prime Minister.

Meanwhile, more than a million casuals and gig workers were also shut out, creating a double blow for their families and for the local businesses that rely on their spending. University workers were punished for ideological reasons, forced to rely increasingly on income from overseas students because of government funding cuts. When this revenue dried up the government denied the sector JobKeeper. They are literally letting universities bleed out staff and courses at a time when Australians have no jobs and many want to get a tertiary education.

Now we have JobMaker, which is also defined by who in Australia's workforce it leaves out. The Prime Minister, with his usual fanfare, claimed that JobMaker would support 450,000 jobs. That sounds good, except you always have to read the fine print with this mob. In this case, a Senate estimates hearing saw bureaucrats admit that only 45,000 of those jobs would actually be new jobs—only one-tenth of what was claimed would be created. Forty-five thousand jobs is not much of a dent in one million unemployed. Meanwhile, when we saw who was actually eligible for this new $100- to $200-per-week subsidy, the alarm bells started ringing. It became clear that, rather than JobMaker, what they'd created was 'JobTaker', 'JobChurner' or 'JobDestroyer'. In fact, if you wanted to create an incentive for businesses to replace their existing staff with younger workers who would get a short-term job and then be churned for another short-term worker, this is the scheme you would design. Not only will your existing staff on JobKeeper not be eligible for the subsidy when JobKeeper winds up in March; to be eligible for JobMaker you have to be aged 18 to 35 years, and the full subsidy goes only to those aged up to 30 years.

So there was a trillion dollars of spending by this government in the October budget but nothing for workers over 35. That's 928,000 people who are on unemployment benefits but cannot benefit from the scheme—no matter that they are experienced and qualified and the employer wants to hire them. Even if you're under 35 the subsidy is for only a year, so it's very unlikely that this scheme will create long-term, secure jobs for young people in the recession. In fact, it's aimed at people who work as few as 20 hours a week. The government has already gutted apprenticeships, cut billions from TAFE, hiked university fees, taken away penalty rates and, in the middle of a pandemic, told people that if you're without work and cannot get JobKeeper then you'll have to raid your own superannuation retirement nest egg just to pay your bills.

Nothing in these appropriation bills shows any real desire to tackle our job crisis. This is our money, and it's right that, in a recession, the government uses the budget to step in when the private sector cannot support jobs. But the public money should be used for long-term investment in infrastructure, education and skills, not as a short-term political fix that looks suspiciously like a pre-election pump of the economy. This government's recent record on spending does not inspire confidence. Last month it was revealed that the federal government spent $30 million on land near Sydney airport at Leppington, only to see it valued at $3 million. Of course, that's now being investigated by the AFP for fraud. The government also hopes COVID-19 will provide cover for the $100 million sports rorts scandal.

We know that this is standard operating procedure of the Liberal-National party. Just last week, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian was questioned about the ever-growing scandal of her office's involvement in a $140 million scheme that gave 95 per cent of sports and community grants to Liberal, marginal and targeted seats. She flat out admitted that pork-barrelling was common practice and that it was okay because it was not illegal. When the federal government's sports rorts were uncovered by the Australian National Audit Office earlier this year, the Prime Minister acted the way we have come to expect when he is caught spending public money to further his own political interests; he announced a sham investigation, a self-investigation by his former chief of staff and now head of the Prime Minister's department.

As I mentioned before on the aviation industry—and I heard an announcement today—money was spent to keep people connected with their jobs. But this government doesn't connect them with their jobs. They've not only allowed 6,900 workers to be thrown out of Qantas; they've also just announced they won't take a bid from the 2½ thousand workers that have been replaced by lower-paid workers. It has the same ring as JobMaker—all talk, no action, and people get it in the neck. We see this government not hold Qantas to account, right on the verge of where so many of these workers reside in the Prime Minister's electorate. We have hundreds of thousands of people needlessly left behind. We have spending on rorts, not recovery. We have a government that doesn't hold to account those to whom they give hundreds of millions of dollars to keep people connected with their jobs. Appropriations in this government seem to be indistinguishable from misappropriations.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2020-2021, Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No.1) 2020-2021. These bills propose appropriations that broadly cover five months of funding for the 2021 financial year as funding for 2020-21 and in the 2020 budget. Bill No.1 would appropriate $36.8 billion, bill No. 2 would appropriate just under $14.9 billion and the parliamentary departments bill would appropriate $141.7 million.

While there is a larger advance than usual to the finance minister's provisions in these bills, the Labor Party recognise the extenuating circumstances presented by COVID-19. We do not oppose the bills, as they're important to facilitate Australia navigating our way out of this crisis. This bill is being handed down in unprecedented times. The bushfires, which devastated so many regions, were the largest in recorded history and had already presented unprecedented disruptions to our lives and to the economy. These have since been overshadowed by a once-in-a-generation pandemic. As COVID-19 hit our shores, it quickly exposed structural weaknesses within our economy. The Morrison recession is the deepest and darkest recession in over 100 years, and our recovery will be protracted for too long. Australia is now heading very quickly to a national debt record of $1 trillion under this Morrison government.

According to research undertaken by the Grattan Institute, our recovery should be occurring much quicker. Unlike previous recessions, this one was brought on by government restrictions and not financial crashes or conflict. That is why the recession is dubbed the Morrison recession. Now that the government is turning things back on, the economy has undergone too much mismanagement over the past seven years to respond to the significant fiscal stimulus the government has announced. Recovery is projected to be sluggish and reflective of the slow job market and lack of business investment which already plagued in our economy well before COVID-19 hit our shores.

The Liberals have been in power for seven years now and they have established a legacy of subdued economic growth, soaring power prices, a lull in apprenticeships and traineeships, and an increase in the price of university degrees. And now our trade relationship with China seems to have hit rock bottom, thanks to the incompetence of the Prime Minister and the trade minister, Senator Birmingham. The fact that 82 ships carrying coal are sitting in the South China Sea unable to dock into Chinese ports is a significant diplomatic and international trade disaster. And it's not just coal. Tasmanian produce is not getting to China because this government does not understand the word 'diplomacy', and now our wine industry is being caught in the firing line because of those opposite. This has the potential to decimate Australian winemaking companies. Late last week, China announced a 212 per cent tariff on wine entering China. That's right: Australian winemakers will now be forced to pay China a 200 per cent tax for the privilege of selling our wine in China.

These tensions must ease, or Australia's economy will continue to deteriorate under this government. And it isn't just wine, as I stated before. So many of our industries have been affected, including beef, barley, seafood, sugar and timber. My home state of Tasmania relies heavily on exporting our world's-best products to China, and so Tasmania can't afford this government continuing to stuff up our relationship with China—because that's what they're doing. This economic neglect has been exposed in this moment of crisis and, unfortunately for many Australians, they will have to deal with the blunt nature of this political ineptness as well.

From a national economic perspective, the government has now begun to withdraw support from the economy, and households will begin to feel the sting of this recession. The International Monetary Fund has warned that support is being withdrawn too soon and that this will result in unemployment remaining too high for too long. But the Morrison government is fixed on their plan, regardless of what happens, because—as we know—they're not very good at taking advice. The stimulus is made up of measures which will not necessarily produce jobs. The income tax cuts will more likely result in money being saved and not spent. According to the government, the tax cuts will cost $16.9 billion in the next financial year alone and create 50,000 jobs. But if this money was invested in other sectors such as university education, child care, health care, aged care or creative arts, modelling from the Australia Institute predicts that this could generate up to 210,000 jobs—a significant amount more than the government has indicated. This has been mentioned to those opposite, but do you think they would listen? Of course not. They only listen to their rich mates. Those opposite are not fans of independent research or, one could say, facts.

The Liberals road and transport infrastructure projects also create fewer jobs per dollar spent than other industries. The Treasurer is content with unemployment remaining high and thousands of jobs being lost. But this comes as no consolation to the millions of Australians who will now face undue hardship because of a lack of leadership from those sitting opposite. Australia is at a crossroads. We are at a pivotal point in our recovery. We could rebuild our nation and ensure a more resilient and robust economy into the future—but all this budget is doing is handing down a one-year, short-sighted response with no guarantee of any meaningful reform.

As Anthony Albanese outlined in his budget-in-reply speech, the Labor Party has a plan and a vision for Australia that are supporting the rebuilding of our economy and that will work well beyond the next 12 months. We have a plan that creates jobs, enhances our manufacturing self-sufficiency, considers the disproportionate impact on women and, most importantly, makes sure that it doesn't leave anyone behind. The $4 billion JobMaker initiative completely excludes older workers. The Labor Party has been campaigning for years to address Australia's high levels of youth unemployment and underemployment. This group of young workers have been suffering from low wages and difficult labour markets since the GFC. But all this policy does is ensure that the 928,000 people aged over 35 and on unemployment benefits are deliberately excluded from hiring subsidies.

This policy divides Australians and is creating tensions within our community when we can least afford it. This subsidy will predominantly target low-skilled industries, which were the hardest hit throughout this recession; however, it will likely entrench the structural issues which younger people were already facing prior to the pandemic. As older people are being excluded from this wage subsidy, the Labor Party fears that this will result in older workers, and in particular older women, facing a higher likelihood of homelessness and joining the group of long-term unemployed. I urge the government to rethink this decision as we head into Christmas. I want those opposite to think about how this policy, and their policies generally, are hurting Australians. I urge those opposite not to pit Australians against one another, but at the moment that's exactly what their policies are doing.

Policy must be based in evidence. When evidence based policy is implemented, it often succeeds. Labor are doing the important policy work necessary for success. We are ready to govern. Ahead of the next election, Labor will bring forward a comprehensive plan for the repair and construction of social housing. Data shows that Australia has a social housing shortfall of about 433,000 properties, and up to 116,000 people are homeless on any given night. This crisis has made it ever more clear how essential safe and affordable housing is. We have a housing crisis in Australia and there needs to be investment in this essential service. Public housing more than pays for itself: for every $1 million of residential building construction output, it has a multiplying effect of $2.9 million throughout the industry and broader economy. This stimulation must boost the post-crisis economic recovery and reduce homelessness. Repairs could start almost immediately, providing work for local plumbers, chippies, sparkies, plasterers and painters, as well as companies that manufacture building supplies and materials. Access to appropriate support with secure long-term housing provides the stability required to break the cycle of homelessness. This housing-first principle is known to improve prospects. It has yet to be adopted by the Morrison government. Construction jobs are always welcome in an economy that requires it.

Under the childcare policy proposed by Anthony Albanese in his budget reply speech, it would mean that working mothers would be able to afford child care for their kids. It's as simple as that. Women will not be let down by Labor's plan to kickstart the economy and get Australians back to work. Modelling from the Grattan Institute has indicated that this reform would work. It would boost workforce participation, and families will be better off as more parents are encouraged to work more hours. As we are currently experiencing a service-led recession, it is imperative that we boost the discretionary spending in the economy, and this reform would do just that. Childcare fees in Australia are some of the highest in the world.

Australia can and should be a country that makes things. We currently have one of the lowest manufacturing self-sufficiencies in the developed world. A strong local manufacturing sector can deliver world-class goods incorporating the best technology and provide the good, secure jobs our workers need and deserve. We need to see more trains, buses and boats built in Australia by local workers, and ensure every dollar of federal funding spent on these projects boost their local jobs and industry. In my home state many companies have the know-how, skills and professionalism to get the job done right there in Tasmania. I have spoken many times about companies such as Definium Technologies and Incat, two world-leading companies that deserve the backing of state and federal governments to ensure local manufacturing continues to happen in Australia. Why won't those opposite jump on board? They talk a lot about 'Team Australia', but when it comes to actually backing local manufacturing they are all hat and no cattle. It's time to start backing locals to locally manufacture—no excuses anymore.

Anthony Albanese's defence industry development strategy will leverage a $270 billion investment pipeline and develop sovereign industrial and research capacity. We cannot enact this reform without a skilled and appropriately qualified workforce. Therefore, an Australian skills guarantee will give apprentices and trainees an opportunity to work on major Commonwealth projects by ensuring 10 per cent of workers on federally funded projects are apprentices. The Liberals have a plan to boost apprenticeships by 100,000, but this doesn't make up for the loss we have experienced in the past seven years, nor does it account for the predictable drop in involvements as a result of COVID-19.

This budget put us in trillion dollar debt. That is a remarkable amount of money, but it doesn't offer any guarantee of ensuring a strong economic future for Australia. We are certainly in unprecedented times and, as many countries begin to experience a second and third wave, I am thankful for our swift response to COVID-19 which has meant that we have performed relatively well, thanks to our state and territory leaders. However, we need strong leadership and a long-term vision for Australia. This country is screaming out for leadership at the federal level. It can't rely on Scott Morrison and his team to deliver that certainty. We cannot rely on the Morrison government to lead us out of the economic circumstances that we are in. They have delivered a trillion dollar debt. They can talk about being good managers, but we know we were heading for disaster before COVID-19 hit. We knew that there was a hit to the national economy, and they have done nothing in this budget to actually steer us out of these troubled waters.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President Stoker, I think the last time I was in this position while you were in that position I was a little hot under the collar and you invited me to withdraw a remark and I remember declining to withdraw it. On reflection, I will just say that I am listening and learning every day and that I regret putting you in a difficult position on that afternoon. So I thought I would start out that way with a slightly conciliatory tone and end that there.

It's been almost two months since the Treasurer, Mr Frydenberg, announced the 2019-20 budget. It looked pretty weak on the day and the last two months haven't strengthened the perceptions of the community about the government's capacity to manage its way to economic recovery. Two months later, the budget still looks like the cheap, weak document that it was on the day that it was announced. It is pretty hard to imagine a circumstance where you could navigate up towards a $213 billion deficit this financial year and still have most people in the community unable to say what the budget has actually done. There's $480 billion worth of cumulative deficits over the forward estimates, with deficits projected for the next decade. Our net debt is to peak at $966 billion, 43.8 per cent of GDP, in 2023-24.

The Labor critique of this budget is not about the debt itself. I remember being on my feet in this place at the beginning of this year and passionately arguing that the Australian government should deliver a wage subsidy to support jobs and businesses through this recession. I argued it passionately because I could see in the faces of those opposite that their stoic refusal at the time to do that—their decrying of anybody who made an argument that the Australian government should be stepping in to support businesses, wages and the jobless through this crisis—would lead to a terrible outcome for the Australian economy. I remember that very well, and I remember the government's welcome backflip a week later.

Our critique is not of the debt itself. Our criticism is that very little has been achieved with it. Our criticism is that it's inexplicable, really, that you could shovel this much money out the door and have nothing to show for it. The largest deficit delivered by the previous Labor government was $54.5 billion in 2009-2010. It was a budget deficit that was the result of effective stimulus during the GFC period. What did that deliver? It delivered Australia as the only country in the OECD that did not fall into recession. That's a pretty bland assertion on the face of it, but for me on this side, growing up in a country town and spending most of my working life in and around the manufacturing industry, I know what a recession delivers in terms of long-term unemployment, social dislocation and misery. But that $54 billion deficit prompted so much opportunistic hand-wringing, complaining, bleating, moaning, groaning and propagandising. I'll never forget the budget deficit bus that some of the characters opposite used to ride around in through regional Queensland and regional New South Wales, and bothering people in every little country town in Victoria. You could not deliver a budget debt truck big enough to put the numbers on it for the kind of deficit that the characters opposite have delivered. It would need to be in 12-point font in order to get all of the digits onto an ordinary bus or truck.

People are entitled to ask what is being delivered in terms of lasting infrastructure for this trillion dollars. Is it lasting social reform, lasting economic reform? The answer is, 'Not very much'. This was supposed to be a budget that created jobs. By the government's own estimates it will take four years for unemployment to return to pre-crisis levels. That's four years where some people who are unemployed today will still be unemployed, presumably in our outer suburbs and presumably in our regional towns. There's no plan for child care. There's no proper plan for aged care. How you could get to a point where there's a trillion dollars in debt yet not have lifted a finger in the face of the Neglect report that the government received about aged care is beyond me.

There is no plan for energy. The government is entirely isolated on energy policy. Now the New South Wales Liberal government has had to step in to do what the Commonwealth government should always have done and lead the way. Every state and territory has a plan on energy policy. This lot, constrained by outdated and, mostly, pretty dopey ideology around energy policy, is unable to act in the national interest. A trillion dollars has gone but there is no outcome on energy policy.

There is no plan for social housing. It has taken the Victorian government to announce it's spending around $5 billion on much-needed social and public housing. I think it was Mr Wilson, the member for Goldstein, a place where there's probably not much need for social housing—no, actually, it was Mr Falinski, the member for Mackellar, who said, if I recall correctly, that he'd prefer it if people just went out and bought their own homes. What an extraordinarily narcissistic, out-of-touch sort of proposition! Does he know there are a thousand people in Mackellar on public housing waiting lists? Perhaps he should go and meet them.

There's no plan for the future of JobKeeper recipients. Instead, we've just got a grab bag of announcements and marketing programs. It didn't take long—there was not a cent out the door of the Emergency Response Fund as bushfires started to rage around the country last week, and there was nothing out the door of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund—to get the marketing machine going for this budget. The ads for the budget were up on billboards within days—focus group tested and ready to roll—in supermarkets and shopping centres, in ethnic media and right across our newspapers. The advertisements were ready to go. The economic recovery plan ads were on TV with the tagline 'Our Comeback'.

I asked in estimates how much the government planned to spend publicly congratulating itself on its budget. The answer was 'nobody knows'. 'You can only know the full cost of a campaign once it has started,' I was told. So we will have to wait for this government come back and tell us in future estimates how much the Our Comeback campaign really cost. What we do know from estimates is that it has involved millions of dollars going to Liberal Party mates to conduct thinly disguised political research for the benefit of the Prime Minister and his political party—millions of dollars to their focus group research mates in an unprecedented venal attempt to make sure funds that should properly be spent by political parties doing their research have instead been expended by the Australian taxpayer in the interests of the Prime Minister and his political party. It's a budget of blank cheques—blank cheques to government ministers, blank cheques for the private sector, especially the extraordinary write-off provisions, and blank cheques to the advertising industry. It's a complete failure of imagination to deliver spending and projects that will benefit Australian taxpayers.

How did we get so little? If you want an answer to that question, have a look at the JobMaker program—poor planning, no accountability, wilful ideological blindness leaving hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Australians behind. It is a $40 billion wage subsidy program that you could not have designed to be less effective. It seems to be wilfully designed to be ineffective, to be incapable of delivering. The program itself is almost as large as the second Rudd stimulus package and twice as big as the Building the Education Revolution program. On budget night—you can see the punchline coming here from miles off—the government promised 450,000 jobs. As soon as the words come out of their mouths, you know it is not credible, not achievable, marketing spin, an announcement with no delivery—450,000 jobs.

It didn't take long for that to fall apart. In budget estimates, Treasury officials, no doubt used to enduring this sort of nonsense from their political masters, had to explain why it wasn't true. They said 450,000 was an estimate of the take-up of the program given the current outlook. 'It's not the same as 450,000 jobs being created,' they said. So the claim is a distortion. They went on to say:

In costing this, we have made a conservative assumption that about 10 per cent of employment in these firms is genuinely additional, it wouldn’t have happened were it not for the hiring credit.

The government announced that it was creating 450,000 jobs. The actual figure is 10 per cent of that—45,000 jobs. In reality, it is a statistical blip. It is not 450,000 jobs; it is $90,000 per actual job created.

According to Treasury, and indeed the Grattan Institute, the average full-time wage is $81,000, the average wage for all workers is about $62,000, the median wage is about $55,000, the median tax-file income is $45,000 and teachers earn on average about $70,000. The government could have hired 45,000 nurses and it would have spent less money and created the same number of jobs. Research out this week has shown that New South Wales students have fallen three to four months behind in key areas such as reading and numeracy over the course of the pandemic. Effects have been worse for the poorest 24 per cent of families and particularly those in rural Australia. Meanwhile, the same pandemic has left many casual teachers unemployed. The Grattan Institute proposed a six-month tutoring blitz to help one million disadvantaged school students recover learning that was lost during the COVID-19 lockdown, but there is no announcement on that scale, no capacity to deliver the kinds of reform programs that the country needs.

It was an extraordinary decision to spend $40 billion in a way that most perversely excludes almost a million unemployed workers—you see, the program leaves out people over the age of 35; they are stone-cold left out of the labour market stimulus program. There are 928,000 Australians over the age of 35 on unemployment benefits—that is, 57 per cent of people on unemployment benefits. The Morrison government has those 982,000 people over the age of 35 now competing with Australians under the age of 35, whose wages will be subsidised. If you're in a country town and you can't find a job, if you're in the outer suburbs and you can't find a job, if you're over the age of 35 and you can't find a job, it's pretty clear where the finger of blame should point: squarely at the Morrison government. The Morrison government is a government without the capacity to imagine or to deliver reasonable reform. (Time expired)

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today we debate the appropriation bills before us, in which we've seen a lot of big numbers representing lots of spending promises. Unfortunately, this budget from the Morrison governments also contains a lot of hollow promises and missed opportunities, which will be particularly difficult for the country at this time. We've seen net debt reach $703 billion, an extraordinary level, and it's set to grow to over $966 billion—eye-watering numbers—at the end of the forward estimates. This takes us to a trillion dollars of debt. Gross debt, currently over $800 billion, is forecast for get to well over a trillion dollars over the forward estimates, peaking at $1.7 trillion over the decade.

As we debate these budget bills today, we know that we remain in very uncertain times. In addition, we know that this difficulty has been exacerbated by the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, a response that has simply been too slow, too reactive and too uncoordinated. The government failed to make the tweaks that could have reined in some of that eye-watering debt and failed to target measures more specifically to drill down into parts of our economy. These issues have been evident in every step of the government's response. There can be no doubt, of course, that the government had to stimulate the economy and that parliament had to act to save Australian jobs and keep the economy ticking over. I would have to say that this task would have been made much easier if they hadn't taken their eye off the ball in terms of economic management before the pandemic even arrived on the shores of our country.

It's important to recognise that in the initial response by the Prime Minister to the initial suggestion of a wage subsidy—a wage subsidy that, I might add, has been the cornerstone to preventing economic collapse—the Prime Minister said no. He said no to that wage subsidy. He said there was no need for a wage subsidy. And then of course we found that the government had closed parliament and that it was to be closed for five months. They postponed the budget. Then, as the country moved into necessary lockdowns, we saw extremely long queues in our Centrelink offices as thousands and thousands of Australians lost their jobs. Parliament was reconvened, and the government finally accepted the proposition that a wage subsidy was critical to saving our economy in order to save thousands upon thousands of businesses and to support millions of jobs.

I have to say I wasn't surprised at the government's slow response on these issues. After all, they very strongly opposed state border closures. They were slow to support lockdowns that have prevented the spread of the virus and have essentially been at the heart of our economic resilience. In this respect there's nothing more telling than their support for Clive Palmer in his fight against WA's border closures. Four months ago Prime Minister Morrison said that trying to eliminate the virus was not the right strategy. Yet today we find that the states with the most economic resilience are the ones that have been able to virtually eliminate the virus—bar its existence within hotel quarantine, as we quite rightly and properly invite people back to our shores after their struggle to get home. Happily, our state premiers did not listen to the Commonwealth railing against state border closures. As we know, Western Australia closed its borders on 5 April. They've stayed closed and are just starting to tentatively reopen now.

As we reflect on this in the context of this federal budget, I highlight the critical role Western Australia has played in keeping the national economy going. Iron ore exports are at a record high. As we know, our major trading competitor in iron ore has not been so lucky. Brazil under-recognised the significance of the impact COVID-19 would have on its society and its economy. It is experiencing escalating levels of death and impacts on its health system and economy. Inevitably, that has had a very large impact on Brazil's iron ore exports. But, even with WA's iron ore exports propping up our national economy, the Prime Minister and many of his Western Australian Liberal colleagues sided with Clive Palmer in a blatant attack on WA's safe and strong border closures, putting at risk the health and economic wellbeing of Western Australians and in turn the nation.

Today we find that Australia is in a much stronger position than that of other countries across the world. Nations that failed to shut borders and put in place lockdowns to suppress the virus are today in social and economic crisis. We in the Labor Party certainly recognise that lockdowns would have been impossible without both JobKeeper and a big lift in JobSeeker payments. People would have simply had to go to work to make ends meet, and with that would have come the inevitable contagion, from people being unable to adhere to the requirements of the lockdown.

As I drill down into the budget measures further in this speech, let's remember that in this year it is the Australian people who have done the economic heavy lifting here. They've done the heavy lifting in adhering to coronavirus restrictions. Indeed, our nation and its citizens will have a lot of heavy lifting to do in the future to repair the economic damage that has been done to our country in the context of needing to pay down that escalating debt in the long term. The Australian people have made great sacrifices to keep Australia in a safe and strong position and, on that note, Commonwealth budgets should be documents that outline positive strategic direction for the country. They should be about people, not dollars. For the leaders in our parliament, budgets should be about providing an opportunity to give a strong vision for the country; a vision for Australians and a vision for Australia.

But this budget is indeed a big missed opportunity. It represents, yes, pulling a bunch of macroeconomic levers to keep the economy from collapsing and to support people's livelihoods and incomes. But it doesn't do nearly enough to create jobs. I can see this very clearly in the context of my own portfolio areas within the jobactive networks, where the government has been wholly unprepared and disorganised in working out how to triage hundreds of thousands of unemployed people into the jobactive networks and to reform the services that they provide in order to provide people with meaningful support as the economy restructures. In our country we expect unemployment to remain high for just far too long; another 160,000 Australians are expected to be unemployed by Christmas—a trillion dollars of government debt and yet, still, many Australians are being left behind.

In the government's policy announcements we've seen how 298,000 people over the age of 35 were left behind by their deliberate exclusion from the JobMaker hiring subsidies. We have seen no plan for child care and the role that improved equity in child care could provide for our economic recovery. There's no plan for a fix to our aged-care sector. The extra home-care places in this year's budget, as we know, are but a drop in the ocean compared to the waiting lists today. And we also know that the crisis in our aged-care system in respect of COVID-19 was made much worse by this government's neglect of the sector for too long. The low wages in this sector have certainly contributed to the circumstances of the virus being transmitted.

There's no plan for the future of JobSeeker recipients—1.4 million people have a very uncertain future as to whether they will go back to the old rate of $40 a day and, as we know, the government seems to be planning to deliver just that. There's no plan for energy security and certainty coming from this government, something that has long beleaguered our country and impeded its economic development and progress. That's because of that policy uncertainty. It's most definitely not an uncertainty that we can take forward with us into the future as we try to work as a nation to emerge out of the economic impacts of COVID-19.

Let's not forget how this government has put the boot into future university students and young Australians when you absolutely took the scissors to our university sector via your so-called funding reforms. At a time when you said you wanted to support young people and their mental health, a time when universities were encouraged to make early offers to students, it's particularly galling that students accepted places at universities without knowing about the astronomical fee hikes they would face. Somehow it was okay to do that to the young people of today. This government has absolutely failed to understand that our nation needs to be a smarter nation and a stronger nation on the other side of economic recovery. You failed to recognise that the aspiration of young Australians to seek better opportunities through education should be absolutely core to this recovery.

In closing my remarks today I really want to give a positive nod to our Labor leader, Mr Anthony Albanese. In his budget reply, he outlined a really positive vision for Australia, a vision that acknowledged the significant hardships that many Australians are facing. He recognised their aspiration to emerge stronger from this economic recession and outlined the critical role that an Australian government can and should play in economic recovery. It's a plan that I'm proud of, and it's a plan that holds true to the values of the Australian Labor Party. As I reflect on the missed opportunities of this year's federal budget, I look forward into the future to the Labor Party's role in continuing to support the economic wellbeing and social wellbeing of all Australians.

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

[by video link] There's no bolder expression of what vision and priorities the government has for Australia than a budget. But when you look at this year's budget it reveals a government that stands for nothing. The Morrison government is bereft of ideas. It has no plans for the future. It's got no plan for early childhood education and care, no plan to fix Australia's broken aged-care system and ensure quality care for older Australians, no plan to create jobs and support jobseekers through the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. I could mention a myriad of other failings by this government, but I do have limited time today, so I'll focus on these areas, as well as the Morrison government's ongoing ideological attacks on the ABC.

This government cannot be trusted to steer Australia through the COVID-19 pandemic or out of the Morrison recession. This is a budget that leaves Australia in $1 trillion of debt for the first time in our nation's history, but with nothing to show for it. The hypocrisy of those opposite on fiscal management has been laid bare. Years ago they declared that Australia was in the midst of a debt and deficit disaster. If you mention debt and deficit now they run for cover. You don't see them for dust. Debt has more than tripled since they came to office. The 'back in black' mugs that celebrated their artificial surplus have vanished from the Liberal's merchandise store.

This is also a budget that delivers no plan for recovery from the Morrison recession—Australia's first recession in 30 years. Of course the government would like to blame this recession entirely on the COVID-19 pandemic, but they are nowhere near blameless for the dismal state of the economy. Australia went into the pandemic in a position of weakness, not strength. Before the pandemic hit, the Liberals and Nationals had already doubled government debt since coming to power. Australian workers were already experiencing wage growth at record lows. Households were already worse off than they were in 2013. Before the pandemic hit, business investment was down, consumer confidence was down and labour productivity was declining. So, on almost any measure, Australia's economy was weak under the management of this government before COVID-19 was even heard of.

There's no argument that the pandemic has been a significant economic challenge, but this does not give the government a free pass for their economic failings. Even in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, this government has failed to get its economic management right. Despite the Treasurer's pronouncement that 'Australians know that their government has their back,' millions of Australians have fallen through the gaps in economic support, especially with the JobKeeper scheme. This includes workers in charities, universities and the arts sector and many casual employees.

These gaps, combined with the rise in insecure work, have exacerbated the economic impact of the pandemic on Australians and undermined the health measures needed to keep us all safe. It's worth remembering, too, that the government only introduced a wage subsidy because of political pressure. It was Labor that initially called for a wage subsidy, and, at the time, the government ruled it out, only to backflip once again a few weeks later.

The one measure that the government have introduced to support jobs and the economic recovery, the JobMaker hiring credit, is not the saving grace they claim it to be. We heard those opposite proudly boasting that their scheme would create 450,000 jobs, but then, in estimates, Treasury officials confirmed that it would only create 45,000 jobs—one-tenth of the figure the government had initially claimed. When the JobMaker legislation was going through parliament, Labor tried to put in place protections that would stop employers from sacking workers and replacing them with cheaper, subsidised workers. But then, in a grubby deal, One Nation teamed up with the government to remove this safeguard, even though they had voted with Labor and the crossbench to maintain this protection the day before. Not only does this threaten the job security of every worker aged over 35; it also excludes over 900,000 people aged over 35 on unemployment benefits from the hiring subsidy. To illustrate this point, Labor produced 16 examples of job ads where employers were specifically advertising for employees that met the scheme's criteria, including a requirement that applicants are aged under 35.

We've warned the government that JobMaker does not go far enough in helping soften the blows from COVID-19 and that a lot more needs to be done. If the government are serious about creating jobs, they would do well to look at Labor's proposals, outlined by the Leader of the Opposition in his budget reply. Labor's Rewiring the Nation initiative would invest $20 billion to rebuild and modernise the energy grid. The blueprint for this has already been completed by the Australian Energy Market Operator and signed off by all governments. This will provide thousands of new construction jobs, particularly in regional Australia. We have also proposed a National Rail Manufacturing Plan, to have more trains built in Australia, boosting local jobs and industry. Our Defence Industry Development Strategy will leverage $270 billion in investment, develop sovereign industrial and research capabilities and build skills and expertise within the Australian workforce. We've also announced an Australian Skills Guarantee, ensuring one in 10 jobs on major Commonwealth projects will be given to apprentices, trainees or cadets. We've called on the government to deliver a plan to repair social housing—something we would do if we were in government right now. Around 25 per cent of Australia's social housing stock is in urgent need of repair and maintenance, and this plan would create jobs for local tradies.

If the Morrison government want to lift labour productivity and create jobs, they also need to address the ability of families to balance work and family responsibilities. As a former early childhood educator, I understand and value the quality of early childhood education and care, not just for helping parents to participate in the workforce but also for the incredible contribution it makes to early childhood learning and development.

We know those opposite don't appreciate the value of child care. It's why various government frontbenchers have described subsidised early childhood education and care as 'a money pit' and 'communism', and one particularly backward senator in this place called it 'the hand of government reaching in and taking away our children's youth'. This attitude goes some way to explaining why the government introduced a childcare fee system that left one in four families worse off, and why Australians pay some of the highest childcare fees in the world.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government were very proud to trumpet their temporary free childcare policy, but it was never properly funded. It put many providers at risk of closure, and it closed the door on a number of childcare places for many families. And, if that weren't bad enough, the government broke their promise to early childhood educators and ended their eligibility for JobKeeper payment before any other profession.

In contrast to those opposite, we understand the value of subsidised quality early childhood education. We understand the big difference it will make to helping millions of Australians enter the workforce, particularly those who want to take up new job opportunities and increase their hours as Australia recovers from the recession. We know that child care helps women in particular with workforce participation, which is important, given women have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. And that's why a Labor government would scrap the childcare subsidy cap, a cap that would see some women losing money by taking on additional hours of work. Labor would also increase the maximum childcare subsidy to 90 per cent, which will cut costs to 97 per cent of all families in the system.

While budgets are an important mechanism for creating jobs and driving economic prosperity, they're also a means by which governments look after their most vulnerable citizens. Older Australians deserve a secure and dignified retirement. Of all the failures of this government, there's few so monumental and so tragic as the disastrous failures in aged care. In September it was revealed that 50,000 Australians in residential aged care were abused each year. I've got to say that, when I heard that, I felt physically ill. The aged-care royal commission heard that one in five aged-care residents was receiving substandard care. Complaints about aged care doubled in one year to 8,000, yet the Morrison government has failed to properly resource the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to handle those complaints, and more than 110,000 calls to the My Aged Care hotline went unanswered over the past three years. There are 102,000 Australians on the waiting list for home-care packages, and 30,000 Australians were moved into residential aged care prematurely over the last three years because they couldn't get their home-care package soon enough. Another 30,000 died over the past three years while waiting for their approved home-care package. This year's budget provides funding for another 23,000 home-care packages, which is not nearly enough to address even the backlog. Only 2,000 of these are level 4 packages—the ones which provide for the highest level of care—and the number of people waiting for a level 4 package is close to 16,000, or around eight times that number.

One of the most tragic outcomes of the government's failure in aged care is that three-quarters of COVID-19 deaths have occurred in that sector. To date, there have been 685 COVID-19 deaths in aged care. And the aged-care royal commission has directly attributed this to the Morrison government's failure to plan properly for a COVID-19 outbreak in aged care. And they've already pointed out this tragedy could've been prevented had the government acted upon previous aged-care reviews and addressed persistent problems in the sector. There are about a dozen reports into aged care, containing about 150 recommendations that the government have done nothing on. They haven't acted on them.

A final failing of this year's budget that I would like to mention is that it locks in existing cuts to the ABC. Calling this a failure is too kind to this government, given their approach to the ABC is more of a deliberate ideological attack. Those opposite, we know, have never liked or supported Australia's independent public broadcaster. If there's one thing they hate, it's being subjected to independent public scrutiny. That's why they continue to attack Australia's public broadcaster, undermine its independence and cut its funding. We know that they would privatise the ABC if they had the chance, but they can't, because Australians love and value their ABC and wouldn't have a bar of it. Survey after survey has shown, overwhelmingly, the support for and trust in the ABC, even from coalition voters.

So, instead of doing away with the public broadcaster holus-bolus, the Libs and the Nats chip away at the ABC bit by bit. The Prime Minister has the hide to deny that there have been cuts to the ABC, but previous years' budget papers have specifically referred to 'savings'. ABC Managing Director David Anderson confirmed the cuts in addressing a Senate estimates hearing in March. He said:

… the ABC will have to absorb cumulative budget cuts that amount to $105.9 million per annum by the time we reach the 2022 financial year.

In New Zealand they added money to the public broadcaster through COVID because they understood that most people would listen to or watch their public broadcaster. I just don't understand how, in Australia, the Morrison government and previous governments can be so pig-headed about funding cuts to the ABC. Since the horror Abbott government budget of 2014, the ABC has suffered cumulative cuts of $783 million, despite Mr Abbott having promised no cuts to the ABC the day before the 2013 election.

The Press Council's founder, Ranald Macdonald, said in an opinion piece that this year's budget delivers a further $67 million in cuts on top of the $87 million in cuts delivered by the government's three-year funding freeze. On 29 June, the ABC's Media Watch outlined the full impact of the cuts so far. They explained that shows like Four Corners, Media Watch, Australian Story and Foreign Correspondent would have to cut the number of episodes made and would have less money to travel to produce episodes. They said 74 jobs would be lost from ABC News and a further 53 jobs from the Entertainment & Specialist team, impacting dramas, kids programs and shows such as Gruen, The Weekly and Mad as Hell. (Time expired)

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to join my colleagues in speaking to Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021 and associated bills. A number of Labor colleagues have already done so, and, like them, I indicate at the outset that Labor will be supporting these bills but not without reservation and not without making some comments about this year's budget and, most importantly, what it does not do.

As my colleague Senator Bilyk just outlined, even before the COVID pandemic hit our shores the Australian economy was performing below par. If you speak to any Australian worker they will tell you that their wages have not been growing in recent years, and the data backs that up. The data backs up Australian workers' experience, which is that under this government wages have grown at a lower rate than we have ever seen. I've seen many graphs indicating that while some in the economy are doing well, particularly corporate Australia, those benefits have not been shared equally with the working men and women who actually drive and achieve profits. In recent years we've seen significant growth in corporate profits. They are being shared with shareholders, in the form of dividends, and with executives, in the form of bonuses, but they are not being shared with the working men and women whose daily work produces them. It's about time this government took some action to make sure the economic benefits that some in this country have received in recent years are more fairly shared.

One reason for the inequity is that there is far too much insecure work in this country. This is something which we've been talking about at length for a long, long time over here, and we continue to see this government fail to take any action to ensure that Australians' work is more secure and that they have a more even bargaining position when they're trying to achieve wage rises. It's no surprise, therefore, that wages continue not growing in this country in the way that they should be.

Of course, that situation is only being exacerbated now that we've had the pandemic hit, wreaking havoc across the economy. Again, it's working Australians who are bearing the brunt of the recession that this government has overseen. It's working Australians who are losing their jobs, whose wages are still not growing and who remain in fear of hanging onto their jobs if, indeed, they have so far been able to retain them. Even in the time today since I agreed to speak on this bill, we saw another announcement from another big Australian company indicating that more jobs are going to go. Of course, I'm talking about Qantas. I'm pretty disgusted, frankly, with the actions of the Qantas management, who themselves receive salaries in the millions of dollars, along with bonuses, but who continue to strip jobs and to outsource jobs from their own company.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's outrageous!

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is outrageous, Senator Polley. It's another example of what I was talking about earlier, which is that we're not seeing an even bargain between working people in this country and high-flying executives on their high high-flying salaries. Again, we've seen Qantas say today that they'll outsource 2,000 more jobs—particularly amongst ground staff and baggage handlers. That of course comes on top of the thousands of redundancies that Qantas has already announced.

No-one is denying that Qantas, along with other aviation companies and anyone exposed to the tourism industry, is doing it tough right now. But why is it always working people who have to pay the price of this? Qantas's motives can be seen quite clearly in the statements they've made today, which indicate that the reason they've made this decision to outsource 2,000 more jobs is to cut costs, which can only mean that those workers end up being paid less. Again, we have this government standing by and allowing corporate Australia to take these kinds of actions at the expense of working people, and this is going to make the recession worse. Just as the government's own decisions to exclude over a million workers from receiving the JobKeeper payment made the recession worse, and just as the government's decision to reduce the JobKeeper payments and to reduce the JobSeeker payments are making this recession worse by taking money out of the economy at the wrong time—at too early a time—just as those decisions by the government are going to make this recession worse, the government's inaction when we continue to see big corporate players in this country lay off thousands of workers or come up with tricky contracting arrangements which will cut people's pay, will make the recession worse. The reason is that if these workers from Qantas are outsourced—and it does appear that that's going to occur—then they'll be paid less. They'll have less money in their pockets to spend in local businesses, which means that those businesses will themselves have to lay off more people. Again, that's going to make things worse. Obviously, it's going to be bad for those individual workers now, but it will actually mean less money flowing through the economy and more people losing their jobs.

I don't know how often we have to raise these issues with the government before they're prepared to take action and before they're prepared to stop withdrawing financial support in the form of cutting JobKeeper, cutting JobSeeker and letting corporate Australia lay off thousands of people, or cut their pay, because these things are going to make things worse. We've seen over the course of today various ministers, from the Treasurer down, starting to crow about what they think the national accounts figures might have in store for the country this week. You can see them already preparing to tell us that everything has turned the corner and that everything is getting back on its feet. Well, if that's not a sign of how out of touch this government is then I don't know what is. If you talk to any Australian, they'll tell you that they're in fear of losing their job, if they haven't lost it already, and that they're in fear of being unable to meet their mortgage payments. Only last week I was at my kids' sport, talking with parents there who have been stood down for months and who are very worried about what this government has in store come March in the form of JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments. So if we see any attempt from this government this week to crow about the economy turning the corner because of some data that we might get from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, that will be another sign that this government has completely lost touch with ordinary Australians who are doing it really tough right now because of the decisions that this government is making.

The most recent unemployment data shows us that there are seven per cent unemployed—

Scott Ryan (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Watt, you will be in continuation.