Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 2) Bill 2023. The coalition will support this bill, as the intention of the bill is to implement what are essentially a number of budget measures of the former coalition government, so it is only right that we would support this bill. The bill supports our primary producers, it supports small business, it enables support for homeownership and it also provides relief to low-income earners who are struggling with inflation, particularly those low-income earners that are struggling with persistent inflation—inflation that we've seen, over the last three quarters, with a seven in front of it and inflation that is not simply a global phenomenon but a domestic phenomenon that, to a very large extent, is being driven by the decisions made by this government. So it is only right to support those low-income earners who are struggling from the effects of inflation, from the effects of a cost-of-living crisis and from the effects of a decline in their standard of living. This is a marked contrast to the government's budget because—let's face it—it was a budget that left Australians behind.

This bill has five schedules. It's a Treasury laws ominous bill. The first schedule amends the Medicare Levy Act 1986 and the A New Tax System (Medicare Levy Surcharge—Fringe Benefits) Act 1999 to index low-income and family Medicare levy thresholds in line with the Consumer Price Index. This will increase the number of people who fall under those thresholds who would otherwise be captured due to inflation. Schedule 2 addresses a grandfathering issue from the sale of the Commonwealth Bank, which may seem like a long time ago, but that issue prohibits the future sale of the Commonwealth Bank's superannuation fund to another asset. Schedule 3 amends the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 to allow primary producers to treat carbon abatement income as primary production income for the purposes of the Farm Management Deposits Scheme and assessing income tax averaging arrangements for primary producers. Schedule 4 amends the Taxation Administration Act 1953 to reduce the GDP adjustment factor for the 2023-24 income tax year. This is the lever that is used to calculate PAYG, pay-as-you-go, and GST instalments that are payable to the taxpayer. This measure implements the 'Small business support—helping small business manage tax instalments and improve cash flow' measure from the 2023-24 budget. Schedule 5 amends the NHFIC Act to allow NHFIC to be given direction in its investment mandate with regard to eligibility for the home guarantees. This is achieved by putting into NHFIC's objects early access to the housing market for Australians who have not owned real estate for 10 years.

Schedule 4 of the bill is one that I think is worth further investigation. It builds on the coalition's commitment in our March 2022 budget to support small businesses with their cash flow by adjusting GDP adjustment factors that the ATO uses to calculate PAYG and GST instalments. This will be revenue neutral over time, while supporting small business to keep more of their own cash—certainly something that we know small businesses are struggling with right now. Cash flow for small business has really reached crisis point. Energy prices are going up. Rents are going up. Small businesses are finding it harder and harder to employ more Australians because wages are going up. Maintaining the viability of a small business now is becoming more and more difficult each and every day. That is why cash flow is critical . We know that cash flow is one of the very biggest challenges for any small business.

This legislation is long overdue. It builds on the coalition's strong record of supporting small businesses' access to finance and assistance to improve their cash flow. A number of measures taken under the previous coalition government included establishing a payments time reporting framework to name and shame the late payers to small business, to help small businesses manage their cash flow when dealing with competitive tensions or the disproportionate scale of large businesses dealing with small businesses. We also established payment times that connected procurement policy to ensure that, when the government contracts small businesses, government contractors pay those small businesses in the supply chain on government terms. It is profoundly important for government to be a procurer of best practice. We also shifted payment times for government contracts to 30 days, or five days if they used e-invoicing. E-invoicing can be one of the potentially great productivity leaps if grasped by both government and the private sector.

We also shifted from monthly to quarterly BAS reporting for small and medium enterprises. And, of course, we restored and expanded the instant asset write-off, which allowed small businesses to make investments in assets that can create productivity and profitability in their business and instantly write-off the entire value of those assets, rather than depreciating them over time. We also cut the small-business tax rate to 25 per cent, and we increased the small-business tax offset for sole traders. The coalition supported Australian small businesses with over $35.8 billion of cash-flow relief throughout COVID, something that we know we heard much about in a post-COVID world. So many small businesses came to us and said, 'Without the support that the coalition government gave us, we would simply not be around today.' Now the challenge is to make sure these businesses aren't just around today but around tomorrow as well.

This is all the more important because of how the government has treated small business in the latest budget. They have decimated the instant asset write-off and reduced the asset value cap essentially down to 2018 levels. Can you imagine trying to buy an oven or a refrigerator today? Of course you're going to pay so much more for it than you would have in 2018, and yet that's where the instant asset write-off level is now, thanks to this government. They've also ended the loss carry-back scheme—again, something that is profoundly important, particularly for those small businesses that make profits in some years and losses in others, in helping them manage their cash flows.

They've also abolished the entrepreneurs program. How are we supposed to have a productive society, a productive economy if we don't encourage that next generation of young people—of older Australians as well—to start their own businesses, to take a risk, to make that big leap, to turn that kernel of an idea into a business opportunity? They've also excluded more than 2.5 million small businesses from energy bill relief. One of the greatest costs that small businesses are facing right now is, of course, the rising cost of energy. In fact, the headlines in the newspapers today reported that Australians are now facing higher energy prices than almost anywhere else in the world.

This is a government that is intent on leaving small business behind, but it's not just small business; it is also first homeowners. This bill specifically enables the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation to build on the previous government's work to ensure that homeownership remains in reach of many ordinary Australians. The bill will allow NHFIC to support Australians who have not held a property interest in Australia in the preceding 10 years. This includes divorced women, older women and long-term renters, and it will allow Australians to re-enter the property market and achieve that great Australian dream of owning your own home—so important, particularly, for older women. We know that one of the greatest economic indicators of security in retirement is homeownership.

The expansion of eligibility recognises the importance of stable and secure housing and provides a foundation for social and economic wellbeing. But the reality is that we're seeing a government that's abandoned homeownership as a goal, just as it has with inflation, just as it has with productivity. They have raised the white flag on the great Australian dream of homeownership. A year after the election, the government's Help to Buy Scheme, which was central, a signature policy in the lead up to the election, is nowhere to be seen. The coalition left the government with a housing sector that was in a strong shape. More Australians were getting into homes. More Australians were building homes. More homes were being built. And there was a huge pipeline of residential construction in place. This has all just disappeared in 12 short months. So, while this is a welcome measure, it's not sufficient for a government that is leaving behind the Australians who are renting and who are saving and who are trying to get ahead.

The bill also makes a small measure, a very routine measure admittedly, to adjust Australian families on middle incomes with the cost of impacts of inflation. This is notably only to the extent that it was missing in the budget last month. It was a budget that made it very clear that Labor has no plans to help Australians with the cost-of-living crisis. It was a budget that made clear that in a cost-of-living crisis Labor's only plans are to put further fuel on the inflation fire. After less than a year in office, government spending will, in fact, increase by $185 billion. That is an expansionary budget in anyone's mind. Labor can't spend its way out of a cost-of-living crisis.

This measure stands in stark contrast with what's actually needed in Australia right now and what they did not receive just a few Tuesdays ago. What Australia needed was a budget that actively reduced inflation, that has as a priority a specific objective of producing inflation. But, in fact, the budget just a few Tuesdays ago actively removed the objective of reducing inflation from its fiscal strategy. It was there in October with the first budget that Labor delivered, but it was actively removed by May. Labor raised the white flag. They said: 'Inflation isn't our problem. That is not something we can deal with. We don't know what to do here. The RBA will have to do all of the heavy lifting.'

By contrast to this bill, the budget obviously makes life much harder for Australians—for small businesses, families, self-funded retirees and mortgage holders. There is a small indexation change to the Medicare levy, but that certainly doesn't make up for the pressures that Australian families are feeling under Labor's inflation. Unlike this Albanese government, a typical Australian family with kids now will be around $25,000 a year worse off than they were just one year ago. That's not the sort of money that you can find down the back of the couch. It is not small change. Labor need to take responsibility for this.

Labor will not build a stronger economy and they didn't deliver a budget that was fair to all Australians. The budget in fact failed hardworking Australians right at a time when they needed a plan to address inflation and the cost-of-living crisis. There is no plan to address the unprecedented increase in net overseas migration that will see 1.5 million new migrants come into Australia over the next five years. The budget cuts infrastructure spending. It increases migration and cuts infrastructure spending. It doesn't address public enemy No. 1, which is inflation. It fails to address congestion. It fails to address housing and rental prices. It is failing to address the liveability and amenity of our towns and suburbs.

The coalition wants Australians to do well. Indeed, Australians deserve better. But, at the moment, we're being held back by a government that has no economic plan for the future. It has no economic plan to deal with public enemy No. 1—to slay the inflation dragon. There is no such thing as cost-of-living relief for all Australians unless you can bring inflation down. Unless this government can address inflation, it is not doing its job. It is threatening the standard of living for all Australians. So we will support this bill because it reflects coalition measures— (Time expired)

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am glad to rise today to speak to the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 2) Bill 2023. While I thoroughly support the measures in this bill to help small business, the fact of the matter is the bill doesn't go far enough. It does nothing to help the people in this country who get out of bed every day, put their noses to the grindstone and actually produce goods and services.

I noticed before that my colleague Senator Hume raised the very pertinent issue that it does nothing to deal with inflation. What causes inflation? It's when either demand is higher than supply or supply isn't high enough. What we have here is a budget that has 400,000 migrants coming into this country—that will increase demand—while at the same time it is cutting the infrastructure that supplies the goods and services. How is that going to help inflation? If you want to increase supply, you have to build infrastructure. That is the way it has always been done in this country.

Those of you who know your history about the early colony will know that for the first 17 years of the colony Australia relied on foreign debt. When that foreign debt was repatriated when they had the drought of 1805, they started in rum. That literally went topsy-turvy until Governor Lachlan Macquarie came. He was the first governor to see Australia as a country and not a colony. He knew that any country had to control its own currency. He issued the 'holey dollar'. He got a heap of Spanish peso and punched a hole in the middle of that peso and called it the 'holey dollar' and the 'dump'. With that he built infrastructure, some of which still stands in Sydney today—the Sydney Hospital and the Sydney barracks.

If we want to actually fix the inflation crisis in this country, we need to do what Lachlan Macquarie did and we need to build infrastructure. But that is not what's happening in this budget. They have pulled infrastructure works. They have pulled infrastructure for things like Hells Gate Dam up in North Queensland that's going to provide hydropower and more irrigation to irrigate the soil. That would produce more fruit and vegetables and cropping and things like that. Instead, they are going to put money into what are known as 'renewables', which they aren't. They are going to import billions and billions of dollars of 'unreliables'.

We could build hydro. I'd back hydropower, by the way. I don't want to turn my back on hydro. That is genuine renewable power because the water comes from the sky. No-one has to build a solar panel or a windmill to get that water. No-one has to build anything other than a dam, and those dams can last hundreds of years. Whilst they do have a little bit of an environmental impact, I think their footprint is quite low.

The problem with this budget is that we are not dealing with the underlying issue of supply and demand. Instead, what this government has done is take no fiscal measures whatsoever, when it's otherwise known that you can use quantitative easing. Instead, what they are relying on is the RBA to use this brutal measure of qualitative easing of something like 12 interest rate rises in 13 months—I'll stand to be corrected on that. Who's going to pay for that? I'll tell you who's going to pay for that. I'll tell you who's going to suffer the most from that. It's the battlers. It's the people who actually get out of bed every day and put their nose to the grindstone. What do those people do? They supply goods and services.

That's the other thing about this particular budget. There is nothing in it to cut taxes from the bottom up for the battlers. If you want to increase supply, cut taxes on the people who supply the goods and services. That would be another way to deal with inflation, but we are not doing that—no. We are not giving any tax cut at all to the people who actually need it the most. We're going to let bracket creep jump up another seven per cent. This doesn't help them at all.

This is the other thing. I tell you, don't start me on Treasury. I could be here all day. They do not model secondary impacts. Why doesn't Treasury model the velocity of money? If they did that, they would realise that tax cuts for low-income earners cost next to nothing. How do we know that? Because, under the Howard-Costello government, they constantly cut income taxes right throughout the income tax spectrum. That's what we need to be doing. I look forward to next year's budget because we will finally get the Morrison government's income tax cuts coming through, and they are desperately needed.

Senator McKim, I'll take that interjection, but I will say this: when you've got inflation at seven per cent, it won't be long before we go up. Up to 150 grand, everyone is going to be appreciated. I mean, 150 grand doesn't get you very far these days, either. But, as I've said, I've always supported income tax cuts right throughout the entire bracket because, as I've always said, businesses get a tax deduction for the cost of doing business, so the workers should get a tax deduction for the cost of living. It is completely nonsensical in this country that we tax someone on, say, 50 grand, who pays six grand in tax and six grand in super. They're actually going backwards. So that's something that we can look at.

The other thing that really concerns me is the fact that we are trying to kill the very goose that lays the golden egg. Of course, that is the royalties and the company profits from things like coal, iron ore, gas and gold. We have to acknowledge the vast and massive contribution to all the budgets in this country of our mining sector, which has been holding up this country. A large reason for the budget surplus is that the iron ore and coal prices are so high. I think coal prices have slipped back a bit.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Ayres, what's your point of order?

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

Reluctant as I am to constrain the remarks, there's a point of relevance here.

The:

It's not about relevance. You either have a point of order, and I haven't heard anything that Senator Rennick has said—

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

The point of order is that Senator Rennick's comments go to the budget. That is not what this measure is about.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's not a point of order for his contribution. All senators are able to put forward wide-ranging propositions. At the beginning of Senator Rennick's contribution, he was talking about the treasury laws amendment bill, and I think he's being relevant. Senator Rennick, could I just draw something to your attention. I appreciate that we all have our styles, but, when you tap the desk, it's picked up by the microphone. Thank you. Please continue.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I apologise for my tapping. I get very passionate about the hardworking people of this country. I must admit I tend to go off because I love this country and I love the people in this country who put their nose to the grindstone. When I stood up, I did initially refer to small business. All of these measures that I'm talking about help small business because, when we have more people in productive sectors, when we have higher velocity money and when we are more productive, we can have a lower, flatter tax rate for everyone and we can have greater government revenue to help those people who need help in the economy as well. I guess what I'm trying to do in this speech is look at measures that are going to improve productivity and lift the standard of living for every person in this country. Quite frankly, that should be the centre of everyone's mind no matter what bill they are talking on, so I thank you for your indulgence, President.

Of course, we are used to seeing this from the other side of the chamber, constantly trying to shut down solutions. This side of chamber, the coalition, believes in productivity and believes in building this country up so that we give our children the same opportunities that our forefathers gave to us. I say this every day. I wake up every day and I get out of bed I am so grateful for the sacrifices not only of our forefathers, but of the people out there today. If you're listening out there on ABC Radio, I just want you to know that we are incredibly grateful for all the hard work you do. As the words of our national anthem say, it is 'wealth for toil'. I will never forget that.

As someone with 25 years experience analysing balance sheets et cetera, you'd always look at the wages, you'd always look at those people who go out there—it never ceases to amaze me the ideas in some of the small businesses out there, the ideas they come up with and the innovation. That's what we want to do because when you're bogged down with what the other side loves to push all the time—this self-loathing, this guilt, this fear, this fearmongering—you get weighed down with it. You start wondering, 'Do I really want to try to start a business in this country if I'm going to have this constant fearmongering and so on?'

I had an interesting article sent to me this morning about how the birth rate has dropped in last 18 months. They were blaming it on climate change. I just thought to myself, 'You people are delusional.'

An opposition s enator interjecting—

Yes, it's a Sydney Morning Herald article. I'll send it to you later. I thought, 'You people are delusional.' I have to do my preselection speech in a couple of weeks and it's on my mind—

Honourable senators interjecting—

Hang on! People often say about the coalition that we don't believe in young people, but do you know what? I do believe in young people. The reason why I ran for parliament—

No, listen to this, Senator McKim—

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Rennick, you are well and truly off the topic now.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay; I'll come back. What I want to talk about is the importance of innovation and incentives. That's what this budget lacks, incentives to drive enthusiasm to invest into this country. That is a legitimate issue that this budget does not address, incentives to build infrastructure. The more dams you have, the more power stations you have, the better the roads you have means you will push down the cost of doing business, which deals with inflation. You can sit there and think that's a funny proposition, Senator Ayres, but it is actually a genuine issue, and it relates to this budget. We don't have enough of it in this country. What we get instead is this constant vilification of the very goose that laid the golden egg in this budget, which is our iron ore industry, our coal industry, our gas industry and our gold industry.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Rennick, I am going to draw you back to the bill. I have given you a fair go. You started off on the Treasury laws amendment bill and I've allowed you to drift a little, but in the last few minutes I'm going to draw you back.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay, I'll come back to the budget again.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's the Treasury laws amendment bill.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, the Treasury laws amendment bill. There are measures in here for small business, but there aren't enough. That's what I said initially. We basically need to reduce the red tape. We need to stop imposing on small business these laws around carbon capture et cetera, because they're not helping small business at all. They're imposing a great compliance burden, as well as an economic burden, on people because the price of gas, for example, the price of energy is going to kill them. That's what this Treasury laws amendment bill doesn't deal with. It doesn't deal with the cost of living. It doesn't deal with inflation. It doesn't deal with increased rents. There are many small businesses out in regional Queensland who can't actually get workers because either there's not enough housing or rents are too high. What did this budget do with regard to that? Nothing. It has not dealt with that at all.

I will conclude my remarks by saying that we need greater innovation in this country, and we need the Albanese government to get off the back of the people who produce goods and services in this country. Producing goods and services will increase supply, which will help drive down inflation. We can't continue to rely on the blunt instrument of the RBA, that cruel measure. I am happy to recommend this bill, and I will finish with that.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 2) Bill 2023. It is a bill that amends several acts and introduces budget decisions of the government, including in relation to changes to superannuation, in relation to the taxation treatment affecting primary producers and in relation to housing.

What we've seen from this Labor government, given effect by the budget, is broken promises to the Australian people—in particular, Labor's pre-election promises not to introduce new taxes or changes to superannuation. In the budget we saw Labor massively increase the burden on our trucking industry. The trucking tax, which will be implemented over the next three years, will put an additional $1.6 billion on the industry which carts every single product from our ports to people, and from our producers to ports. The cost of every single item is going to go up as a result of this Labor government's decision to tax the trucking industry over the next three years—an absolute shame. With the cost of fuel going through the roof, the inability to find drivers and the cost of maintenance and spare parts going through the roof, to put an additional $1.6 billion over these small and medium enterprises, in the main, is absolutely indicative of this government's inability to make a decision that puts downward pressure on inflation and puts downward pressure on the cost of living.

Every decision they're making, whether it's on industrial relations or whether it is in agriculture—we saw in the recent budget a farming tax on our primary producers, when food inflation in this country is already at eight per cent and going up. Every mum or dad or senior Australian that heads to the supermarket and fills their trolley knows it is getting harder and harder every week to pay for that. What things do they take out of the trolley and what things can they keep in it? These are actual decisions families are making right now.

We haven't seen economic conditions like this for decades, and the Reserve Bank, as other senators have made clear, is having to do the heavy lifting to fight inflation. What should be happening is the monetary policy and fiscal policy of the government working in harmony, supporting each other. Instead, because of this government's failure to increase productivity, to put downward pressure on inflation, to decrease government spending instead of increasing, we've got an additional $185 billion being spent by the federal government over the next five years. That's what's happening; instead of not spending money, they've increased to the tune of $185 billion. So what does the Reserve Bank have to keep doing? Putting up rates, because we have to slow down the inflation dragon, as some are calling it. When you have a high inflationary environment and when inflation expectation becomes embedded, when people expect prices to keep going up, that is when the behaviour of people across the economy changes, and businesses think it's okay. And you know who gets hurt most in a high inflationary environment? Poor people. The government like to talk a big game about helping people, but every single decision they make across a whole raft of portfolios is the wrong one to deal with the pressures our economy is seeing at the moment.

The farmers tax, as I spoke about, was a 10 per cent tax on research and development and biosecurity levies, putting at risk the system of agricultural research and development levies begun by the Hon. John Kerin, God rest his soul. He would be rolling in his grave. This is an iconic program in this country where the taxpayer combines with agricultural industries to co-invest in research and development that's actually going to drive forward innovation right across agriculture, from our beef industry to our cotton industry and the like. They're taxing it. Not only does Labor's farmer tax put at risk research and development levies it puts at risk farmers' support for the system of levies of animal and plant biosecurity that was established by the Howard government.

During Senate estimates, the coalition was able to expose the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Minister Watt, as he was completely unaware about how the tax that he has implemented across his portfolio even works. Minister Watt had to apologise to the RRAT committee for misleading it in relation to how the farmer tax would apply. As we hear from industry, the new farmer tax will apply not only to research and development levies but to farmers' biosecurity levies as well. The risk here is that farmers seek to reduce their research and development levies or their biosecurity levies to minimise their exposure to Labor's tax, because we know that farmers actually get to vote on setting what those taxes should be.

Labor's superannuation reforms will also hit farmers and small businesses, who, under the advice of financial planners and advisors, put their properties into self-managed superannuation funds. Guess what? It's a pretty small farm that's under the superannuation cap—a very small farm. So a lot of primary producers in this country are going to be captured. They're now faced with the prospect that they'll have to pay tax on unrealised increases in the valuation of their properties, and, in many cases, farmland purchased for $500,000 15 years ago may now be valued such that the superannuation balances are notionally more than $3 million and are therefore going to be subject to paying tax. And that's not the lazy money that a farmer and their family will have in their back pocket. They're going to sell half the farm to pay for the tax. This is the level of unmitigated disaster this government seems to wreck as it gallops towards putting in ideological policies without consulting on the people that they are actually going to impact and affect.

The superannuation changes and their impact on our primary production sector in this country is a classic example of the Labor Party's inability to consult with particularly those of us that live outside of capital cities. But, increasingly, we're hearing right across the board about the level of consultation. This week we heard from primary producers who got on a bus at 1 am in my home state of Victoria and sat in this gallery to listen to this Senate refuse to allow a Senate inquiry into the impact of transmission lines on their livelihoods, on their communities and on their futures. I am digressing so don't draw me back. I'll go there naturally.

This bill also relates to the changes to housing measures. The biggest change to housing availability, as a result of the Labor Party's decision, is their reckless decision to increase arrivals by 1½ million without any plan of where they're going to live or the impact that will have on our already congested suburbs. No idea. They hadn't run a planning ministers' meeting. It was the federal minister's responsibility to call those meetings. They've been in government for 12 months, and they were yet to actually call the planning ministers from the states together to say: 'You know what? We have got a housing crisis.' You don't have to go very far from this place to work that out. It's right across the country. You'd think the first thing you'd do if you are the federal minister and had that power was get on the phone, get a meeting organised by July last year, get the state ministers around the table and start solving this problem on the supply side. How do we get the development pipeline going? How do we get land released and planning approvals done quickly so that we can get the houses built?

In the time we've spent debating the housing bill in this place the minister responsible has sat on her hands instead of actually calling state ministers together. It's not a hard job. I've done it before. It's very easy. You have a whole suite of departmental officials to assist you. You would think that would be the No. 1 priority if you were really interested in fixing the housing crisis, instead of having political arguments here with the Greens.

The first two budgets of the Labor Party have been shockers for the infrastructure portfolio, which I'm the shadow minister for. It has been 12 months of cuts and delays. It's fantastic to see the South Gippsland Shire Council in the chamber today. They have come all the way from a place I know very well—Leongatha, in my home state of Victoria. The ALGA conference has been on this whole week. Local councils from right around this country have come here and heard a lot from the Labor government about climate change adaptation. Have they heard much about how to repair the shocking roads, particularly in rural and regional communities?

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator McKenzie, you are now drifting.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's the treasury laws amendment bill.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was going to the infrastructure needs across the community, the role of infrastructure in driving up productivity and, therefore, assisting with the heavy fiscal lifting, and this government's continual decisions to cut and delay investments not just in rural and regional roads but in community programs, such as Building Better Regions. It has taken them 12 months to get their community programs up and running. The guidelines have been released but still no money is flowing into these communities for much-needed social and economic development programs.

Importantly, in this type of environment, investing in the right type of infrastructure to get people and products where they need to go as quickly and as easily as possible is what we need to be seeing happen. Everywhere we look they've slashed funding in their budgets and put on hold for three months $120 billion of infrastructure pipeline projects—from roundabouts to port developments, highway and byway duplications and the airport rail link in Melbourne. What a joke! Melbourne is one of the best and most liveable cities in the world. It is a cosmopolitan metropolis. We are one of 10 out of the top 50 countries that don't have a rail link from the CBD to the airport.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator McKenzie, once again I'm really puzzled as to how we got there. Keep coming back to the bill before the Senate.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

President, it's about productivity and this government's inability to invest in things that will make the economic situation better. Making a small change to the Medicare levy, as this bill does, is not enough. I hope later on today I get to make a contribution on the appropriation bills because I have a lot more to say about my portfolio responsibilities in infrastructure, transport and regional development, and this government's failure to listen to the regions and invest in the regions. I think Senator Rennick made a very generous contribution about the contribution regional Australia has made to the fiscal position of the government. Despite having deficits for as far as we can see and having a $185 billion increase in government spending over the next five years, they were very happy to announce a small surplus. Do you know what that surplus is on the back of? Rural and regional Australia.

Those on that side of the chamber don't want to talk about our fabulous resources industry, our agriculture industry and the men and women in this country who work day in and day out and pay their income tax. So a boon from income tax, because we've got such low unemployment at the moment, and a boon from our resources industry are the only reasons this government can claim a surplus.

I hope they're prepared to take the tough fiscal decisions, going forward. The first 12 months from this government has been an absolute shocker in terms of being prepared to make those tough decisions that our economy, our nation and our most vulnerable need them to make. The people who will hurt the most if inflation stays high are our poorest. Instead of talking a big game—you've won the election and it's tough being in government—it's time to act.

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 2) Bill 2023. Whilst I acknowledge that a number of the measures that are contained in this bill are particularly important, I also acknowledge that it implements a number of measures that the previous coalition government had put forward.

The subject I'm particularly interested in talking to in my contribution today is schedule 1 of the act that amends the Medicare Levy Act 1986 and the A New Tax System (Medicare Levy Surcharge—Fringe Benefits) Act 1999 to index low-income and family Medicare thresholds in line with the CPI to increase the number of people under the threshold who would otherwise be captured due to inflation. Can I say at the outset that the coalition, the opposition, supports the regular indexation of Medicare as contained in this legislation. It's very welcome, but it does also draw attention to the fact that a number of other measures and actions have been taken by this government that have weakened our health system and our Medicare system.

Today I want to put on the record that we are particularly disappointed in a number of these measures. Firstly, this government came into power promising that they were going to strengthen Medicare. The reality is that since this government's been in office all we've seen is Medicare being weakened. A Strengthening Medicare Taskforce report was released by the government earlier this year which was really articulate in articulating the problems were facing our healthcare system in Australia, although it really didn't provide very much in the way of solutions. But the most disappointing thing about that report was that I don't think anybody in Australia does not realise that the health workforce crisis that is before us is the most urgent thing that we need to be dealing with. The report did not address workforce in any way, shape or form. And whilst the report was very strong on aspiration and very strong on rhetoric and talked a big game about big picture things, it had no specific actions contained in it. There was no funding in it, there were no time lines in it and there was no urgency—no urgency about the most important issue facing Australia's healthcare sector, and that is workforce.

We've been hearing from the health minister and from the Prime Minister for months and months and months about the issues around workforce shortages. We've also been hearing from the aged-care minister about the fact that there are workforce shortages. Yet, despite that, we have seen nothing about addressing the workforce crisis—in fact, the counter. We've seen the aged-care minister bring forward the recommendations of the royal commission into aged care by a whole year, requiring 24/7 nurses in aged-care facilities—something that the coalition has always supported, but only supported in the context of the royal commission's recommendations—in the middle of a workforce crisis. So, not only have they failed to recognise the severity of the workforce crisis; they've actually put measures in place that make it worse. In addition, in relation to our doctors, one of the most critical places that we have seen that workforce crisis play out has been around primary care, and the burden on our healthcare system because our primary care system is under such pressure is immense. We see this with ramping at hospitals. We see it with people not being able to get in to see their doctor. We see it through a lack of accessibility to hospital systems. Despite that, we have seen nothing at all about addressing the issue around general practice. Right now we have a great challenge before us, and we have a government that is not doing anything to address these issues.

Another area we heard a big game about in the portfolio was urgent care clinics. Of course, addressing the issue that is primary practice is tremendously important. We as an opposition have always said that if there were measures that this government was prepared to put forward that were sensible and were actually going to address the issues—that were going to focus on patients, the consumers in Australia—then of course we would be prepared to support them, But what we've seen, once again, in the announcements around urgent care clinics is a really big game when it comes to the announcement—50 urgent care clinics in Australia within the first year of this government, and right now we don't actually have any new urgent care clinics. All we've got is eight clinics in Victoria that have been rebadged. The Victorian government—Premier Andrews—got up and heralded these new clinics that were established, took full credit for the establishment of a number of care clinics in Victoria, and then a few weeks later the Albanese Labor government stood up and took credit for the exact same things. So, we are in a situation here where, despite all the rhetoric around supporting our healthcare system, supporting our Medicare system, we actually haven't seen very much, apart from a heap of headlines with no substance behind them.

In addition, one of the most important things facing Australians at the moment is mental health. We know from speaking to many stakeholders in the sector that we are seeing a huge increase in the number of people reporting being under stress, having anxiety, particularly as a result of the cost-of-living pressures on them. We know that right now we are in a cost-of-living crisis. I think every Australian wakes up every morning and realises that they're worse off than they were this time last year. Australians are seeing escalation in mortgages, escalation in energy bills, escalation every time you go through the supermarket in how much they are paying for everything that is happening to them. It was estimated as part of the budget process that the average Australian family with children is up to $25,000 a year worse off than they were 12 months ago, and this is having a devastating effect on people's mental health.

We are seeing an escalation in demand for mental health services, and what does this government do? It cuts the number of sessions that are Medicare subsidised to people who need them, from 20 sessions to 10. Those Medicare subsidised sessions were actually in place for those people who had moderate to severe mental health challenges. So, the most mentally vulnerable in our community have had their access to the support that they previously had cut in half.

But I think the worst thing about the decision by this current government to cut those sessions from 20 to 10 is that, despite recommendation 12 of their review—which came out and said that the sessions should remain in place, particularly for those people who needed them the most—the government removed the sessions and then, sometime later, after the backlash from the community and from people who were depending on them, decided they'd hold a round table with stakeholders, which they did earlier this year. They got together a number of stakeholders across the whole mental health sector. And guess what's happened since then? Absolutely nothing. We have seen nothing in response to that round table. We have seen nothing in response to the huge number of concerns, including petitions that were signed to say to the government that these Medicare funded sessions were so important. And despite the minister saying he didn't think this was the best way to provide mental health support—he thought maybe we should come up with a different way of providing additional support to Australians—we have not seen any additional support. The government, once again, is big on the announcement but pretty light on the delivery.

So, when we responded to the budget this year, the Leader of the Opposition made the commitment that a coalition government would reinstate those 20 sessions because we understand the cost-of-living pressures that Australians are currently under, with an increase in the number of people who are reporting that they are under stress and have anxiety as a result of cost-of-living pressures. We believe that the onus is on government to make sure people get the support that they need, because the mental health of Australians plays into the wellbeing of Australians, and that should always be an absolute priority of any government.

We've also seen measures put through the budget that disproportionately impact rural and regional Australia. The very first thing that this Labor government did in the health sector—its very first policy announcement—was to change the distribution priority area classifications. Instead of what we had previously had, an advantage for rural, regional and remote Australia in getting access to overseas trained doctors and graduates, to have priority, we saw a change that meant that they were actually able to go into other areas which were urban and metropolitan, therefore incentivising doctors who otherwise would have gone to rural and regional areas, who thought, 'It's probably easier; we'll just go to metropolitan areas instead.' The first thing that happened in those areas that were already struggling to get a general practice workforce—the further you get away from the metropolitan area, the further you get away from the GPO, the more likely it is that there is workforce stress—was that doctors were given the incentive to move back to the city.

In supporting this bill today, I would say that schedule 1, which relates to the Medicare indexation, which of course we support, just highlights the fact that, despite that particular measure, there are so many other measures in the healthcare sector that have made Australia's healthcare system and Medicare—instead of coming in here and actually delivering on the promise to strengthen Medicare, all this government has done is weaken Medicare.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank senators for their contributions on this bill.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.