Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills. Aged care workers can justifiably ask themselves: 'What does the Prime Minister and his government have against us?' For two years in a row, this government has ripped out money that was going to go into the pockets of the hardworking people who care for those people in residential aged care facilities, who care for people in their homes and who care for people with disability, frailty, infirmity or illness. This government has for two years in a row cut funding for aged care workers. Last year they ripped $1.1 billion from the Aged Care Workforce Supplement designed to address the pay, conditions and career development of some of Australia's lowest-paid workers. On top of that, this year they have cut—as part of their $100 million cut from the aged care budget—$40.2 million from the Aged Care Workforce Fund.

The Abbott government promised to develop a coherent aged care workforce strategy to address the demands of an ageing population. We need to triple our aged care workforce in the next 15 years to meet the challenges of an ageing population. How can the Prime Minister justify a 15 per cent cut to the aged care workforce development programs and have no plans whatsoever to address the challenges ahead? We have a situation where 52 per cent of people living in residential aged care in this country have dementia, but only about 17 per cent of those people with dementia actually live in residential aged care. But guess what? Going for a surf in aid of a good cause to help those people with dementia is not the same as cutting $20.1 million from the Dementia and Aged Care Services Fund—budget paper No.2, page 151, if the Prime Minister cares to look at it. So going for a surf, Prime Minister, will not solve the problem. It might be a good cause—and good on you for doing it—but you cut $20.1 million from the funding for dementia in this budget, after you cut the Dementia and Severe Behaviour Supplement last year. Two years in a row, cuts to aged care workforce development for pay and conditions in the aged care sector; two years in a row, cuts to funds for dementia. In the next two decades we are going to have close to 1,000,000 Australians with dementia. What strategy is there in the budget to deal with this challenge? None. There was none whatsoever in the last budget and none in this budget.

My other shadow portfolio area is Indigenous affairs. The Prime Minister said before he got elected that he would be the Prime Minister for Indigenous people. In word and in deed, they would be at the heart of his government. What did the government do in their first budget? They cut $534 million from the Indigenous Affairs portfolio straight off the top—all program cuts; that is what Senate estimates reveals—yet they had the temerity to argue it was red-tape reduction, streamlining, bureaucratic changes and that this would in fact have no impact on front-line services. Again and again and again, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs said this on national TV and elsewhere—but it is not true. In fact, we know from the submissions lodged to the Senate inquiry looking at the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advancement Strategy, the funding for which is in this budget, that front-line services have been slashed and burned. That is why we are not going ahead on Closing the Gap. They never talk about Closing the Gap, because we are going backwards on target after target.

In the Indigenous Affairs portfolio, once again, there are cuts of another nearly $146 million in this year's budget, including $46 million for health, which would help those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in community controlled health services and elsewhere to improve health and wellness and wellbeing and welfare amongst the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who, for so long, have been disadvantaged with dispossession, dislocation and discrimination. But this Prime Minister should hang his head in shame because it is his department. He brought Indigenous Affairs from FaHCSIA into his department and then he has defunded his own department. That is what has happened. Whether they are in Arnhem Land or Brisbane, whether they are in the Kimberley or in Melbourne, whether they are in the Torres Strait or Tasmania, Indigenous people across the country know. They know that this budget has betrayed them for a second time. For a second year in a row they have been betrayed by this Prime Minister because of what he has done in this budget. They know what was said before the election, and what he has now done in two budgets is completely different.

In my own backyard, in my own electorate, before the 2013 election, they opposed the Ipswich Motorway upgrade between Brisbane and Ipswich. It was so important for South East Queensland—the No. 1 project—that the Council of Mayors South East Queensland said, year after year after year, that it ought to be funded. When we were in government we upgraded it from Dinmore to Darra, at a cost of $2.8 billion. During election after election, campaign after campaign, I fought LNP Liberal opponents who opposed the upgrade of the Ipswich Motorway. They voted against it again and again in this place. We know how important it was for the safety and the economic development of South East Queensland, where one in seven Australians live. In the last five years, 20 per cent of the actual growth in wealth in this country comes from South East Queensland. It is crucial to Brisbane, crucial to Ipswich, crucial to Somerset, Lockyer and the Scenic Rim, crucial to Toowoomba.

But before the last election, in something like a Damascus road conversion experience, all of a sudden, Senator George Brandis comes before the people of South East Queensland and says, 'We're gonna fund the last section of the Ipswich Motorway—the Darra to Rocklea section. We're gonna match Labor's commitment,' that we had put in our 2013 budget before we got tossed out of office. 'We'll match Labor's commitment. In fact, we'll fast-track it.' A couple of days before the last election, the Queensland Times newspaper said: 'You vote Liberal; we'll fast-track the upgrade of the Ipswich Motorway.' I had a look at the press release in this budget from the Deputy Prime Minister, the minister in charge of infrastructure, who lauded himself in question time today. There was no mention of the Ipswich Motorway upgrade from Darra to Rocklea—none at all. I had a look at the forward estimates. Was there $20 million or $25 million? There is nothing on until 2018-19. Fast-tracking? Nothing until 2018-19? What about the people of Brisbane? What about the economic development along those corridors? What about the Ripley Valley development where 100,000 people will be living in the next 15 or 20 years? What about Springfield? There is about 30,000 people living in Springfield. They will have over 100,000 in the next decade and a half. What are they going to do? They are going to be stuck on what the Queensland Times calls a goat track.

So, 19 months later, there are no witches hats, no bulldozers, no cranes, no workers, no designs, no plans. So much for fast-tracking, and the budget papers reveal they have betrayed the people of South East Queensland on the Ipswich Motorway. They should hang their heads in shame. They have gone back to form. This is what Liberals do. They claim one thing before the election and then do another. Let's have a look at the budget papers. Let's have a look at what they said before the last election. They said there would be a budget surplus in the first year and each year thereafter. What did they do? They have doubled the deficit. Unemployment is high. Taxes are up. There are 17 new taxes. There is over $3 billion extra in taxes that they did not say they would do before the election. There have been pension changes and indexation changes to make it harder. In my area, 92.2 per cent of people are bulk billed, and guess what? The changes they wanted to do and their effective freezing of indexation in relation to those payments going to doctors will mean that more and more people in Ipswich and the Somerset Region will be turfed out of bulk billing. So much for universal health care in this country!

The Liberals have never once supported Medicare. They have always thought it was a con or a rort. It is the same thing with superannuation. They cannot find a superannuation bill or an increase in superannuation they will ever vote for. They have always opposed it. At the last election, I remember my opponent talking many times about paid parental leave schemes. The paid parental leave scheme that Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, now the Prime Minister, was going to bring in was rolled gold. He was going to bring in $75,000 for new mums. He has had every position he can possibly imagine on that and, once again, they cannot even maintain their position post this budget. They claim that people are double dipping and engaging in other types of practices. Yet they themselves do it. It is extraordinary that they have this position with respect to paid parental leave, and it is in the budget papers. It is simply astonishing that they would have this position.

When it comes to the budget itself, what happened last year? Last year, I can remember the cigars, the pats on the back and, 'Joe, you're a great mate.' Within a matter of months, a Liberal Party member could not get the Treasurer to a fundraiser and would not have him anywhere near his electorate, because it went down so badly. It was unfair on mothers, unfair on families, unfair on pensioners and unfair on the military, DVA veterans, the aged and Indigenous affairs, cutting $80 billion out of health and education. And, by the way, another $2 billion has been cut out of health funding in this budget, including another amount of almost $1 billion cut to an undisclosed number of health programs, according to budget paper No. 2, page 110. So they had a problem with their budget strategy last year. They had to fix it. It was not about the jobs of Australians. It was about the job of the Prime Minister and the job of the Treasurer. We know that this budget is all about saving their jobs. It is not about the jobs of Australians.

The youth unemployment in my electorate is 17.2 per cent. The unemployment rate has been hovering at about eight per cent for a while. It is too high. It is way above the national average, and we have a challenge in my area in relation to jobs. It will not be solved by disinvesting. It will be solved by consistent, good investment in infrastructure and job training—not cutting more than $1 billion out of jobs training and skilling. It will not happen when you get rid of things like the trade training programs. I have about five or six high schools in my electorate that would have got trade training centres. The ones that are currently there are fantastic, and they are doing great work in preparing young people for jobs of the future. That is what they are there for. You cannot cut all of these youth training programs, including the kinds of funds that are necessary in TAFE and elsewhere, and expect the unemployment rate to go down.

What this government has done is destroy, in large part, business confidence. If business confidence is riding high, why did they introduce the small-business concessions and tax cuts, and the roll back and depreciation changes in this budget? They know they got the budget strategy wrong last year. In their hearts, they know. The polls show that they know. They guaranteed, when they were doing their mobile offices or listening posts—as they call it on that side of the chamber—they know in their heart of hearts, and their constituents would tell them, they made a mistake last year. They knew it was fundamentally unfair, and their constituents told them it was unfair. So what do they do this time? Having voted against the small-business tax cut that we had—they voted against it; so much for the party of free enterprise, opposite—and having discarded the depreciation advantages we had for small business, and the roll back in relation to the advantage that small business would have, all of a sudden they discovered them and thought, 'That is not a bad idea.' Well, they should have listened to Labor when we had the legislation in the first place, when we had those advantages on the table for small business.

This budget is short sighted and cobbled together. It is all about something that would really resemble an episode of The Hollowmen. It really is extraordinary. It is like their medical-research fund that they cobbled together, last year, six weeks before the 2014 budget, which made Soviet-era long-term planning look like a really attractive option. This government has monumentally failed the people of Australia. They said one thing before the election, they did another in last year's budget and, when that failed them and their political necks were on the chopping block, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer had to do something. Thirty-nine people opposite, in the Liberal Party backbench—and goodness knows how many of the parliamentary secretaries or those from the ministry—voted against the Prime Minister in an attempted leadership coup, and the Prime Minister had to bring down a budget that said 'fairness'. It does not mean that your budget is fundamentally fair every time you say 'fairness'. It is not, and the people will see through it.

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