Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night Jim Chalmers delivered a budget for every—

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Green, use the correct title of your colleague.

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are a stickler for the rules, Mr Acting Deputy President! Last night, Treasurer Jim Chalmers delivered a budget for every single Australian. It is a budget that is all about striking a delicate balance between easing the strain on the cost of living and safeguarding against inflation. The core principles guiding our Albanese Labor government's third budget are responsibility, affordability and adaptability. Just like our previous budgets, this one is sensible, feasible and tailored to the needs of the hour. At its core, this budget is about addressing the immediate concerns of everyday Australians while laying the groundwork for future prosperity. It's about offering relief without making inflation worse—a task that's easier said than done. This budget is all about getting wages moving again but keeping more of those wages that you earn. In our regions, this is especially important. It's where the impacts and pressures of the economy and the nation are often felt the hardest.

We are tackling this challenge with a three-pronged approach: relief, repair and reform. 'Relief' means that we have measures in the budget to help Australians cope with the rising cost of living without further inflating the economy. This includes tax cuts for every single taxpayer, providing essential breathing room for families grappling with increasing expenses. 'Repair' means focusing on mending our budget and supply chains to build resilience against future shocks. This is about cleaning up the financial mess we inherited, ensuring that the nation's fiscal health is restored. 'Reform' is about preparing for the future growth, innovation and productivity that this nation deserves. This includes significant investment in building more homes, reforming our universities, strengthening Medicare and the care economy and broadening opportunities across our country, especially in our regions.

This budget is both responsible and restrained, providing more cost-of-living help, such as energy bill relief, for every household and a tax cut for every single taxpayer. We recognise the difficulties Australians are facing, which is why those measures are designed to ease the pressure without adding to inflation. All 13.6 million Australian taxpayers will benefit from this tax cut, with an average reduction of $1,888 annually, or $36 a week. Additionally, there will be $300 in energy bill relief for all households and $325 for one million small businesses. This energy bill relief, coupled with the Queensland government's measure, will mean that Queenslanders will be saving $1,300 on their electricity bills, potentially not spending a single cent on electricity until next year.

We are ensuring that Australians won't have to pay more than they need to on their medications by freezing the cost of PBS medicines. We are waiving $3 billion in student debt so that three million Australians will have the chance to get ahead without falling behind. We are supporting nurses, teachers and social work students by introducing pay for pracs. Superannuation will now be paid on paid parental leave. Additional funding will be provided for emergency food relief. Higher wages are a provision for aged-care workers and early childhood educators, and the freeze on deeming rates for 876,000 income support recipients will be extended. Pushing aside the political noise that we'll hear from those opposite, the message of this budget is very clear. We're here to clean up the mess and chart a pathway forward, and we're doing just that.

The Liberal National Party had us on track to exceed a trillion dollars of debt. But, because of our responsible economic management, gross debt will be significantly lower. We're getting the budget back in better nick, cleaning up the budget mess we inherited and aiming for the first back-to-back surplus in almost two decades. What will we hear from those opposite, particularly from Mr Dutton, when given a chance to respond to this budget? Will they say what they will cut? Will they call for us to stop spending? Will they call for us to spend more in areas that they consider important, like nuclear power reactors? Where will these nuclear reactors go? These are the questions that Australians will want to have answered by those opposite every time they get up to criticise this budget. We know this budget is a budget for all Australians, and we're proud to deliver it.

David Van (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Acting Deputy President, I know you share my passion for the defence of Australia. What we've seen in recent documents, like last night's budget, the National Defence Strategy and the IIP document that accompanied it, is a problem that I foresee we really need to solve. That problem was highlighted in the 2020 Defence Strategic Update, where we were told that we no longer have a 10-year warning time before a major war. A 10-year warning time has gone, yet when you look at the budget, the IIP and what spending has been planned for not just by this government but by the previous government, the large platforms that make up the bulk of the spending are 10 years away. That's well outside the window of warning that we still no longer have.

How do we reconcile the fact that Australia could be held at risk tomorrow? I trust we will not be, but in the very near future we could be held at risk by an enemy, and all our spending and the preparation of our ADF to protect us is off in the never-never. I know there was $5.3 billion across the forward estimates in last night's budget, and that's welcome. That will be spent on some interesting things. But, as a country, we face a dilemma. We have to find a way to fund the Defence capability and personnel that we need right now while still looking at funding the large platforms that we will need in the future. I'm not saying there is an easy answer to this; there's not. This is a very difficult problem, but it's a can that's been kicked too many times. I as an independent senator will try to hold the government and the bureaucracies to account such that we don't face these dilemmas any longer than we have to.

We need to decide what we do now and in the short term. I was pleased that, in the Treasurer's budget speech last night when he talked about investing in a Future Made in Australia, he did actually mention strengthening our defence capabilities and economic security. Hopefully, some of the money set aside for Future Made in Australia won't just go on solar panels and other pet projects. I'm hoping that, between the Treasurer, the Minister for Defence and the Minister for Defence Industry, we can start looking at things that can be done now for the defence of Australia should—and I hope against hope it doesn't—the shooting war start tomorrow. Those large, expensive platforms that we are funding further down the track are going to be needed to keep open our sea lanes of communication. Why? We don't supply any munitions ourselves, so if we want to be able to fight a war, we need to be able to keep those sea lines open. Yet, at the moment, we can't. Why aren't we looking at manufacturing missiles and rockets here in Australia? We have on order 20 HIMARS. The last time I checked, there's a five-year wait for HIMARS. Imagine if there's a shooting war. We're not going to get the rockets and missiles that that system will launch. We have to be able to make them here ourselves. We have to be able to make rocket motors and 155 millimetre ammunition. The Australian defence industry is capable of doing that now. It's more than capable of standing up and getting everything else that we need done in time for a war. It has to start now. We can't leave pushing expenditure onto large expensive ships and submarines. We need to do those things too, but we need to look at how we support our sovereign Australian defence industry manufacturing base to be able to look after us should a war start in a very short time.

Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the reception area in my electorate office in Gladstone is a free community pantry. Every day my team and I fill it up with basics like cereal, tinned beans, pasta, rice and toiletries. Anyone is welcome to come and take what they need. We don't ask questions, we don't ask for their names and we don't make them fill in paperwork. It took a few months for word to get around the community, but now the pantry has become an indispensable service for many desperate and hungry people. And the need is growing. It's not unusual for people to be waiting outside our office when we arrive in the morning, hoping to grab something for breakfast. On Fridays it gets used really heavily, with people stocking up for the weekend. On Mondays, with kitchen cupboards cleaned out, the need is great again.

When we first started we were topping the pantry up once a day. Increasingly, we are having to refill it several times. Young families, teens, older people, employed people, people looking for work, locals from right across the demographic spectrum come to our office every day for a handful of basic grocery items, because it's the difference between being able to eat a simple meal or going hungry.

What did Labor's budget have to say to those people? What hope did it give them? None. 'A budget for all Australians', they said. 'Everyone gets a tax cut', they said. Labor was elected in part because it promised Australians that no-one would be left behind. Forgive me, but we must have missed the fine print where it said 'except people on income support and pensions, renters, first home buyers, university students, public school students and women escaping family and domestic violence'.

Yesterday more than three million people lived in poverty in Australia. Today three million people are still living in poverty. Yesterday JobSeeker and youth allowance were poverty payments. Today they are still poverty payments. For years now experts, advocates and people with lived experience of poverty have been united in one single call: raise the rate. Even the government's own economic inclusion advisory committee, chaired by a former Labor minister, no less, has recommended for two years running that the single best method for tackling the cost-of-living crisis and alleviating poverty is to substantially raise the rate of income support. For two years running Labor has rejected that advice.

Meanwhile, Labor is high-fiving itself for delivering a $9.3 billion surplus. We need to be very clear about what that surplus represents. It represents a decision by Labor, in the middle of a poverty crisis, to refuse to spend public money—our money—on helping the people who need it the most. Could Labor have increased income support payments? Yes, absolutely. Did they? No, they did not.

In a cost-of-living crisis, a surplus isn't an achievement; it's an unmitigated moral failure that doesn't even stack up economically. A surplus won't help a young person pay their rent. A surplus won't help a struggling family pay their bills. A surplus won't help a young family who have to choose between seeing the dentist, buying their medicine or keeping a roof over their head. And a surplus won't do anything to help those hungry people who come to my office pantry in Gladstone every single day.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a community backed Independent, I am here to push hard for what the people who elected me want. I'll put forward solutions, be constructive and hold the government to account. While there are some good things in this budget, there is also a gaping hole at its heart. There's no increase to JobSeeker, youth allowance, Austudy or any other income support payment, leaving three million Australians in poverty. We have the expert advice that lifting this would not add to inflation, yet, despite having a surplus, the Labor government, who told us that they wouldn't be leaving people behind, have decided to do exactly that. We've seen the $300 energy bill relief, which, again, is very welcome but will also be going to people who don't need it—those in this chamber, who also get $4,500 off their tax this year.

Some of the cost-of-living relief in health is welcome, but one of the things I've been hearing a lot about is mental health—the difficulty in getting in to services and the cost to get in. We saw the government slash the sessions from 20 to 10 and promise us that there would be things to make up the difference, yet we've seen the lowest Commonwealth investment in mental health since 2018. We know what has happened to mental health across the country through the pandemic and in the last couple of years.

There was a 10 per cent increase in Commonwealth rent assistance, which, again, was very welcome, but that's less than $10 a week and only supports 40 per cent or so of renters. When you look at the median weekly rents, having increased by $49 in the last 12 months, you start to see how it's probably not the response that a lot of Australians were hoping for. A Future Made in Australia is very welcome, using our tax system to incentivise decarbonisation and building an economy for the future, with billions for critical minerals and hydrogen. But there is no funding for household electrification or solar. These are things that could permanently reduce power bills by as much as $5,000 per household per year, every year into the future. These are the sorts of ideas that we need Australian governments to be implementing.

Disappointingly, there was no plan to address our GP shortages here in the ACT. This is something where we need an ACT-specific solution. We find it hard to attract GPs. We can't get international GPs to move here because of our rating, and that needs to change.

There was no significant support for frontline community services. With 35 women murdered already this year, there is such huge disappointment that there wasn't more to combat men's violence. The $925 million to make the Leaving Violence Program is good, but more is needed. Here in the ACT, only 30 per cent of women who apply for it get that payment. We need more from the government.

I'm really concerned this is a budget that bakes in intergenerational inequity, because it fails to take on these hard challenges and deal with the root cause of so many of them. The scale of the government's response doesn't meet the magnitude of the multiple crises that we face. The housing and homelessness sector is heartbroken today. Despite the headline, the budget doesn't deliver the funding increase they need to build the social and affordable homes they stand ready to deliver.

Students have been massively short-changed. We saw an announced tweak in the indexation, but we're still charging students interest on fees that they've already repaid to the ATO, and we've left the Job-ready Graduates system in place.

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will now move to two-minute statements.