Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, David Johnston is not there. He was airbrushed out before the government even began. This document is full of their election commitments, which they took to the Australian people. They gave solemn commitments and the Prime Minister in particular elevated trust in leadership, trust in his word and trust in his would-be government to some sort of almighty principle that could never be broken. Yet, what do we have in their first budget? I can tell you: a budget of broken promises.

Take the GP tax. First of all, it was $7 on everybody who walked into a GP's waiting room or had to have their blood tested or had to get a scan—$7 times $7 times $7. And for some people—asthmatics, diabetics or those with some other chronic illness—it was a compounding $7. So the more tests you got, the more scans you got, the more times you had to go back to the doctor, it was $7 times $7 times $7. We know what happened with the first iteration of that GP tax. It got axed and everybody thought, 'Phew, we've dodged that bullet.' What we did not know was that the Prime Minister's second effort was opposed by the then health minister, the member for Dickson, and the Treasurer, who advised the Prime Minister that the second iteration of the GP tax was even worse than the first—a flat $5 cut and a freeze on the rebates to patients and ultimately to GP surgeries. That was not just an assault on patients, not just an assault on the universality of Medicare; it was an assault on the fee-for-service model, which nearly every general practice in the country relies upon. Those general practices were supposed to put that program in by 19 January—an impossible time line to meet, if you know anything about the software requirements or the paperwork that would have to be put in place to do that. I spoke to one practice manager last week in Gawler who had a terrible Christmas rushing around, trying to get all of this organised, only for the government to then sue for peace and go back to the drawing board. Then we read that they are still committed to a price signal, which is a GP tax, on your GP visits. So there is still no certainty after all that time.

At 1.30 today I have to call Dr Bruce Groves, in Salisbury North, who runs a clinic that is committed to helping working-class Australians. I have to explain to him that the uncertainty that has been affecting his GP practice for the last six or seven months is going to continue because of this government's budget, because of this government's audacity in breaking their promises.

But it does not stop there. There are cuts to the states of $80 billion on schools and hospitals. We have not yet seen the effect of those cuts. The Senate select committee inquiring into this has received evidence and will continue to receive evidence of how that will affect emergency departments, how that will affect hospitals and how that will affect schools. There are cuts to pensioner concessions. Would you believe it? These are concessions on council rates, concessions for public transport, concessions that help pensioners every single day to cope with the cost of living.

At the last election, this government was constantly banging on about the cost of living. I remember those opposite in this parliament talking about the cost of living. They get into government and cut pensioner concessions—$30 million in my state alone. They do not even have the courage of their convictions out there in the community, pointing the finger at the councils and at the state governments, even though it is their federal cut that has disturbed arrangements that have been in place for decades. There are cuts to pension indexation. They get up in this parliament and say, 'You will still get your cost-of-living adjustment.' They neglect to mention they have changed the nature of that cost-of-living adjustment, reducing it over time—an attack on the ability of pensioners to deal with the cost of living. That is unbelievable for a party that went out there and elevated trust to this sacrosanct principle, that elevated their commitment to this almighty principle on the cost of living. Then they get in and bring down a budget of broken promises, a budget of austerity.

There are cuts to the SBS and ABC. Six grand has been cut from working families. There are cuts to the unemployed, with the government saying to young people under the age of 30 that, if they fall out of work, they will not get unemployment benefits for six months. The effect of that in my electorate will be to make some people homeless. It will leave some people in the most desperate of situations. They do not have the resources to fall back upon. They will end up couch-surfing, they will end up homeless, they will end up without income—a fundamentally un-Australian thing to do.

There are cuts to foreign aid. Some Australians will say, 'Well, you know, charity begins at home.' But, of course, when we see the instability in the world and we know that foreign aid is a measure to increase stability, to improve living standards around the world and to eradicate disease, those cuts will cut bitterly indeed, and we will end up paying the price in the longer term with instability in our region. One-hundred thousand dollar degrees are an assault on social mobility, an assault on the middle class of this country.

There is the proposed privatisation of Australian Hearing, which was formed by the Chifley government in 1947. It has survived the Menzies, Gorton, McMahon, Holt, Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Keating governments. It is a tremendous institution that has helped deaf Australians, and this government is thinking about privatising it. When they are doing the scoping study to privatise it, do they ask Health what their opinion is? No. Do they ask Deaf Australia with their opinion is? No, they defunded that organisation, so they cannot possibly hear what it will have to say about it. They just leave it to the bean counters in Finance to establish they get $200 million out of a national institution; they try and squeeze that out of a national institution that has been so important to generations of Australians. This institution was formed to look after veterans of World War II—men like my grandfather, who served in New Guinea—made deaf by cannon fire. It was formed in the wake of rubella outbreaks which made people deaf. It has been a world-leading institution in hearing, and they want to privatise it. You could not believe this stuff. They are hacking into the poorest and most vulnerable, and destroying important national institutions.

Then we look at what they are doing in defence. They talked a good game in defence, but they are cutting Defence Force pay. They attacked us in government for giving three per cent, and they are giving 1.9 per cent. This budget is a bitter austerity. The biggest problem is that it is ultimately self-defeating. The member for Rankin gave some figures in this chamber about consumer and business confidence going down the toilet—that is where it is going. This is confidence-sapping, security-robbing, terrible austerity. We have seen this being inflicted in Europe and it has been an absolute disaster.

In my state of South Australia, we have seen a decision on automotive manufacturing that has been a job destroyer. Up to 10,000 jobs will be gone by 2017, and there is a very poor, minuscule package to deal with that. They forced Holden to make a decision and chased them out of the country, which led to the decision that Toyota made. It has been a terrible collapse. We are yet to see the bitter cost of that collapse. The only benefit of government division in this place is that that miserable member for North Sydney is going to lose his job at roughly the same time or maybe a bit before. That is going to be the only consolation of the government's divisions, in my opinion.

We now see the submarines decision. I am glad that the member for Hindmarsh is here. He got a little award for being the best nodder. He was nodding behind the Prime Minister and then he was nodding behind Senator Edwards—nod, nod, nod. Then we found out that this arrangement that he has extracted from the Prime Minister is not worth hot wind, because we know the Prime Minister's processes are undermining confidence in Australian manufacturing and making the process of appropriating, purchasing and procuring submarines a very, very messy one. That is because they came up with a new language: competitive evaluation process.

We have seen this government being chaotic, divided, rabblers, obsessed with PR, obsessed with hoo-ha and obsessed with rah-rah and spin. They are obsessed with getting a new salesman, like the member for Wentworth, the member for Curtin or Mr Morrison—one or the other. They will get a new leader. We all know that the air is coming out of this Prime Minister. We all know exactly what is happening.

I would just point those opposite to the Council on Foreign Relations and what Joshua Kurlantzick had to say under a headline 'Tony Abbott has to go'. This is the way he begins the article:

Is Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott the most incompetent leader of any industrialized democracy?

That is the beginning of the article. It goes on:

Tony Abbott, however, is in charge of a regional power, a country that is the twelfth largest economy in the world and the only rich world nation to have survived the 2008-9 financial crisis unscathed. Yet in less than two years as prime minister, Abbott has proven shockingly incompetent, which is why other leaders within his ruling coalition, following a set of defeats in state elections, may now scheme to unseat him.

We know that is happening, don't we? I am not sure whether the members opposite are part of the 39 or part of the 61. Some of them have had the Prime Minister in the electorate. That is very brave. It is very brave to have the Prime Minister in your electorate. You would have to be crazy to have the Prime Minister in your electorate when he is the most incompetent leader of any industrialised democracy. Can you believe it?

Joshua Kurlantzick does not stop there, though. He says:

Abbott’s policies have been all over the map, and the lack of coherence has often made the prime minister seem ill-informed and incapable of understanding complex policy issues.

This is extraordinary. What an extraordinary indictment of this Prime Minister, but we should not be surprised. We should not be surprised, given this budget of broken promises. They all went out there with their lovely document. I do not know if the member for Menzies is here; he did not make the lovely PR shot on the front of it. They went to their electorates—Hindmarsh and other places—promising a lot of things, but the electors in those places got something different indeed.

This budget is a budget of broken promises and this Prime Minister will only serve a short period more. This government is terminal. It is terminal because it was built on broken promises and bad commitments. The Australian people will see them off.

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