Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

The first budget of the Abbott government was not just unfair; it was also mean-spirited, short-sighted and incredibly counterproductive. It was a budget that gave tax breaks to big business and put money back in the pocket of big polluters. It was a budget that took money from families and pensioners and that cut funds to renewable energy innovators, the CSIRO, and the Climate Change Commission. It was a budget that hammered the young unemployed, denying them any support for a period of six months, while seeking to gift six months' salary in parental leave to people on $100,000 a year. It was a budget that Cassandra Goldie, the CEO of ACOSS, described by saying:

The real pain of this budget - crushing and permanent - will be felt by people on low incomes, young people, single parents, those with illness or disability, and those struggling to keep a roof over their heads. These are the groups doing the heavy lifting …

It was a budget that Jennifer Westacott of the Business Council of Australia described by saying:

We are very concerned about the risk that savings are falling too heavily on some families and young people trying to find work.

And it was a budget that has directly and indirectly cost jobs in areas that Australians hold precious: 1,000 jobs in science and innovation from the CSIRO, which invented wi-fi, Aerogard, plastic banknotes, the world's first effective influenza treatment, 100 varieties of cotton and the hendra virus vaccine, among many other things; 500 jobs from the most trusted source of news and current affairs in the country, the ABC; more than 10,000 jobs across the Commonwealth Public Service; and tens of thousands of jobs in manufacturing, the renewable energy sector, the automobile industry and ship building and maintenance. In August, Australia reached its highest level of unemployment in 12 years and for the first time since 2007 unemployment was higher in Australia than in the United States. The Prime Minister promised to create one million jobs within five years. Unfortunately, we know how much promises are worth from this Prime Minister.

The Abbott-Hockey Budget is a remarkable failure. It has cost jobs and deepened the deficit. It has only succeeded in its aim of directing punitive measures against those who can least afford it and in cutting funds to health, education, science, pensioners, Indigenous affairs, the environment, the ABC and the SBS. As Crikey's Bernard Keane wrote earlier this week:

The political difficulties that face Hockey spring of course from that disastrous budget in May. The problem about that document wasn't merely the perceived unfairness of its measures, or the government's cack-handed attempts to alternately insist it was fair and explain its toughness was justified by the budget situation. It was that Hockey managed to produce a sadistic budget that didn't actually significantly advance the timetable for a return to surplus. The government was thereby left with the opprobrium of pursuing measures universally recognised as punitive, without the political benefit of being able to point to a fiscal light at the end of the tunnel. Worse, it's clear now that the tunnel is getting longer.

The damage and chaos of this budget have been visited upon so many Australians that it is only fair that responsibility for its harm be shared by those opposite. Responsibility belongs not just with the Prime Minister, but also with the Treasurer and the Minister for Foreign Affairs. The Minister for Foreign Affairs has presided over the biggest cuts to the Australian aid program in history—$7.6 billion has been stripped away in the name of Australia's political, economic and trade interests rather than continue the previous Labor government's focus on saving lives and reducing poverty. The foreign minister has not acted to stop the savage cuts in her portfolio that have seen hundreds of dedicated former AusAID staff lose the jobs they were passionate about and that have significantly reduced the critical work that Australia does to stop disease, to lower infant and maternal mortality, to provide medicine, clean water and sanitation and to build resilience and capacity. In fact the government is now threatening a further pillaging of the aid budget as a consequence of its own parlous economic performance.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron spoke with courage and he acted with honour when he said that the budget of the United Kingdom would not be balanced on the backs of the poor. The Abbott government has not acted with honour or courage. It has not balanced the budget; it has made the deficit worse. It has laid the burden of its economic incompetence on the backs of the poor and the disadvantaged, both here in Australia and across the world. It has presided over a sharp jump in unemployment to the worst level in more than a decade. It has cut jobs and, what is worse, it has sought to crush the source of future jobs in the knowledge economy, in renewable energy innovation and through education and training. We talk about good policy and administration as future-proofing. Unfortunately, this government is busy punching holes in that future, and the jobs and wellbeing of thousands of Australians are right now pouring through those holes.

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