David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In this budget, the Albanese government has again completely failed refugees. The Labor Party went to the last election with a national platform saying that they would increase the humanitarian intake for Australia from 20,000 people who need refuge to 27,000 people. After three years, what do we see now in this latest budget? Another broken promise from Labor, leaving the humanitarian intake at an almost record low of 20,000. It is an appalling breach of faith from the Albanese government to refuse to even match the very modest goal in Labor's national platform to increase the refugee take to some 27,000 a year.

With that failure, with that broken promise, we look at the budget and see asylum seeker support payments under Labor are also at a record low—down to just $20 million in this budget to support people who have come to Australia, having sought asylum. They have gone from $300 million a decade ago to just $20 million a year under the Albanese Labor government—literally starving people who have come here seeking support. While those payments are at historic lows, we see massive expenditure—a huge $200 million increase in the amount budgeted for onshore detention, largely going to private, bottom-feeding multinational prison corporations like MTC. Labor is now budgeting to spend $1.36 billion—up from $1.16 billion last year—on largely private, corporate run onshore detention facilities in Australia. There's always money for Albanese Labor to give to US multinationals to do harm but never money to give to families who have come here, sought asylum here, to do good.

Extraordinarily, Labor is spending over half a billion dollars on offshore detention. That's money going to Nauru and also, probably, to PNG to keep offshore detention centres open or to open new ones in the forward estimates. They show no intention of ending that cruelty. The government is refusing to tell us how much more it's giving to Nauru in its most recent bribe to send people to Nauru under its Trump-like deportation laws. All we see from the budget papers is a note that they will be only partially met from the existing resourcing. Heaven knows how much Labor is giving in its multimillion-dollar bribe to Nauru to deport people who have come here and been found to be refugees to Nauru. We know, though, that the Nauruan president has come out and said that, no matter how much Labor pays it, Nauru intends to deport them back to the country from which they fled persecution. This is a gross breach of trust from Labor when it comes to multicultural Australia, to treating refugees fairly and to prizing the contributions that immigrants make to this country. Shame on Labor for those budget allocations.

The Albanese government, in this budget, has decided to double down on Donald Trump, double down on AUKUS and double down on nuclear submarines. You couldn't write this stuff with a straight face, unless you'd seen it happen in real time. While Donald Trump is out there threatening to invade Canada, Greenland and Panama; tearing up NATO; and leaking war plans to journalists by Signal, the Albanese government says this is the time to drop an extra $6 billion into AUKUS. That's what the Albanese government did tonight. In the morning, Donald Trump and his mates leaked war plans via Signal, and in the afternoon Anthony Albanese decided to give them another $6 billion towards AUKUS, increasing the spend over the forward estimates from $12 billion over four years to $18 billion over four years. It's basically a tribute payment to Donald Trump, begging him to be nice to Labor and begging him not to withdraw his nuclear submarines. Are we delivering this as a tribute payment in rubies and wheat as our ambassador goes? It is pathetic. But it's worse than pathetic. Imagine! On the same day that those bozos in Washington are out there leaking war plans on Signal, Anthony Albanese decides to give them an extra $6 billion for nuclear submarines we'll never see. You couldn't make this stuff up. But this is a Labor-Liberal joint policy. No matter how mad Donald Trump is and no matter how dangerous he is, they want to give him more money for nuclear submarines we'll never get.

But that's not all. Also in this budget is a $1.6 billion spend to build a nuclear submarine base at HMAS Stirling, off Perth, for nuclear submarines we don't own. They want this up and running in a couple of years. Even in the most wild, drug fuelled dreams that the Albanese government and the Dutton coalition have about when they're going to get nuclear submarines, the submarines won't come until 2033 or 2034. But this budget plans to build a nuclear submarine base at HMAS Stirling in the next four years and have it up and running at a cost of $1.6 billion to Australian taxpayers—when nobody says we'll have a nuclear submarine. We're literally spending $1.6 billion to build Donald Trump a nuclear submarine forward-attack base off Perth—paid for by Australian taxpayers—and we'll then agree to take on board the nuclear waste generated from that stuff.

Did the Albanese government go out and tell the Australian public, 'By the way, the reason we can't afford to build you new housing is that we're giving $1.6 billion to build a US submarine attack base off Perth'? There are no increases to any payments like Newstart or JobSeeker, and did the Albanese government say, 'That's because we're delivering $6 billion in extra tribute to Donald Trump so he'll be nice to us. Please make him be nice to us! Is $6 billion enough?'? No, they didn't. Anyone with a brain knows we won't get nuclear submarines under this deal and we're just spending $1.6 billion to build the US's brand-new submarine base off Perth. Even US hawks say that what that does is paint a big nuclear target on Perth, because that's a high-profile target in any conflict. We're paying $1.6 billion to paint a nuclear target on Perth. That's the budget that Anthony Albanese has delivered.

The total cost of defence is increasing to almost $59 billion a year in these forward estimates, up over $2 billion from where it was last year. A large chunk of that is the increase in pre-program tribute payments for AUKUS, and none of that will be making us any safer. There's an extra $61 million to 'provide regulatory safety and policy advice in support of AUKUS'. That's $60 million just for regulations in relation to AUKUS. Only Defence can swallow up $60 million and have nothing to show for it. And, remarkably, there's $28 million in this budget going to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade next year to provide 'international policy advice and diplomatic support for the Nuclear Powered Submarine program'. That's basically a fund to send people to Washington to beg the Trump administration to please not be mean to them—$28 million on DFAT personnel to go and beg Donald Trump for stuff. How does this get through? The icing on the cake is this: over the next four years, Labor has us spending $445 million on nuclear powered submarine sustainment—when we don't own a single nuclear submarine. How does this get through?