Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

It always pays, when you are looking at budgets and appropriations bills, to read the fine print; and, when you look at these appropriation bills, it is even more the case than in previous years. This budget fails the fairness test that Labor set for the government last year and it fails the fairness test that we maintain this year because many of these same unfair measures that were included in last year's budget remain in this year's budget. The cuts of $80 billion to schools and hospitals remain in this year's budget papers. The $100,000 university degrees remain in this budget. The freeze to the compulsory superannuation increase remains in this budget, compounded by the removal of the low-income superannuation contribution for 3.4 million workers. Cuts to the ABC and SBS, to community legal services, to homelessness and domestic violence programs remain in this year's budget. And, of course, the cuts to foreign aid remain in this year's budget—$11.3 billion, the largest single cut in last year's budget. This was inflicted on the aid budget in the mid-year economic and fiscal update in 2013, in the budget of 2014, in the mid-year update of 2014 and now in the budget of 2015. This means Australia's aid program is at its lowest percentage of gross national income since records have been kept.

Of course, it is not just the same old cuts from last year that we are worried about; there are a whole range of new cuts in this budget. As though the cuts from last year were not bad enough, as though they did not go deeply enough, as though they did not cut family income enough, there is another round of cuts this year. The first cut, and perhaps the one that has achieved the most notoriety, is the cut to paid parental leave that will leave 80,000 new mothers and 80,000-plus new babies a year worse-off because of the government's attack on what they are calling 'double dippers', 'fraudsters', 'rorters', 'scammers'—these new mothers and their babies who will now have less time together in those first crucial months of a baby's life.

There are further cuts to families on the lowest income—more than $6,000 a year by the end of the forward estimates according to new NATSEM modelling that was released over the weekend and more than $100 a week for families with incomes of $55,000 a year or less. Again, as well as the changes to family tax benefit and the changes to paid parental leave, a continuing change is proposed for the age pension assets test that will seriously affect retirees—and all of this at a time when the government is having a look at what they can do to retirees but absolutely refusing Labor's proposal to do something on the very generous tax concessions to very high-income earners.

There are a lot of cuts to individual organisations in our electorates, and more of those become apparent every week as the true effect of this budget—the headline figures—gets translated into what it means for cuts on the ground for individual services. Many members of parliament have been contacted by their community legal centres. I have the Redfern legal centre in my own electorate. The Redfern legal centre is facing the prospect of reducing its general legal team services by about half. That means turning away up to 500 disadvantaged clients in the next year, many of whom are victims of domestic violence who rely on this service. The Marrickville legal centre, which is not strictly in my electorate but serves many of my constituents, is facing cuts of a similar scope, and legal centres right across the country are facing similar cuts, really compromising their ability to serve their most disadvantaged clients.

As well as the massive cuts to hospitals last year and the proposal last year to introduce a GP co-payment, in the area of health we see a continuing freeze on the Medicare Benefits Schedule. In effect what is being asked of doctors is that they take a four-year pay freeze, that they actually not be able to keep up with the cost of providing services to their patients at the increasing cost of providing services. And what does the AMA say about that? The AMA says it is likely that GPs will be forced to charge an $8 co-payment anyway, despite the fact that the government has realised that they cannot get their formal co-payment through the parliament. There will be this co-payment by stealth. But in this budget there is about another $2 billion cut from health, including $500 million cut from drug and alcohol abuse treatment and sexual health care and other huge cuts to dental services—to kids dental and veterans dental.

I was delighted to hear the Prime Minister talking about tackling the terrible epidemic of ice that we have in our communities. It is breaking apart families and it is destroying communities, including regional and remote communities. It is a drug that is very addictive and takes a huge physical toll on users but is also creating social havoc in our communities. One of the things that is most disappointing about the cuts to the health Flexible Funds is that these are the very organisations that are working with drug addicts to help them stop using drugs. You cannot on one hand say that we are interested in tackling the ice epidemic on our streets, in our communities and in our families and on the other hand rip money away from the very services that are out there—few and far between—helping addicts to stop using drugs.

Haymarket Foundation is an organisation that I had a lot to do with in my electorate, but because of redistributions it is now slightly outside my electorate. The foundation is facing taking services away from its clients—clients who instead of going to the Haymarket Foundation will end up in our hospital emergency departments, or they will end up in our police holding cells, or they will end up in our mental health services, because they do not have the primary care that the Haymarket Foundation is able to give them.

You have to read the fine print in this budget to see the level of damage that these cuts will have in our communities. We have seen cuts to the Australia Council as well. Interestingly, the minister, Senator Brandis, has decided that he is better qualified to decide on arts funding than the arts organisations are. I am sure the beautiful design of his bookcase tells us that he does have an eye for the finer things in life. But it is unusual and irregular to have an independent system that is brought instead under the control of the minister in the way that it seems the minister is proposing in this instance.

We heard some weeks ago that the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy is funded for another year, and we were asked to wait until the budget to find out how that was going to happen. Well, it has happened by taking $150 million from the Sustainable Research Excellence scheme—again, robbing Peter to pay Paul. That is the pattern of this budget: give with one hand, take away with the other. The childcare funding that the government has so trumpeted, which does not start until 2017, depends on $3½ billion worth of extra spending in child care. That has been $1 billion cut from the last budget, and we are told by the government that this extra funding will depend on $1 billion more cut from paid parental leave and $5½ billion cut from family tax benefit. So, the cuts start straightaway, or as soon as the government can get them through the parliament, but the new childcare funding of course does not start until 2017, which presumably is after the next election.

It is also true for pensioners. The government has realised that this parliament will not let them pass their unfair changes to pension indexation. So the government said, 'Okay; fair cop; we will give up on pension indexation but instead we will still go to a retirement age of 70'—the highest in the developed world—'and the $1.3 billion cut to pensioner concessions and the funding to aged care', including I think one of the cruellest cuts of all, which is the funding to the dementia supplement.

We know that it is very difficult to find a place in aged care for someone with dementia or challenging behaviours. Providers are hesitant to provide those places unless they have the trained staff and the necessary ratio of staff. Indeed, sometimes they need physical upgrading of their premises. They are very unwilling to take on the extra responsibility of caring for people with dementia and challenging behaviours if they do not have the extra funding. It is a perfectly understandable and explicable position for aged-care providers to take. Cutting the dementia supplement is really saying to families, 'You're on your own.'

This budget fails the fairness test that we set at the time of the last budget, but it also fails the government's own economic credibility test. Debt is up. The deficit is up. Taxes are up. Unemployment is up and is staying up for longer. One of the most extraordinary things about this budget is that, at the same time as it is unfair to Australians and it rips $6,000 away from ordinary Australian families, it still manages to double the deficit so that the predicted deficit for next year has gone from just over $17 billion to over $30 billion. It increases debt. There are 17 new taxes and charges. Tax as a share of the economy is higher than it ever was under the previous Labor government. It has not been as high as a share of our economy since the Howard years. Unemployment is at a 14-year high. Coming out of the global financial crisis, economies around the world are picking up and employment is increasing. Australia, having survived the global financial crisis in a better condition than most comparable economies, has actually gone backwards on unemployment. Unemployment is at a 14-year high.

We are always willing to work constructively with the government on measures to improve the budget bottom line. Indeed, in last year's budget we supported over $20 billion worth of measures that improved the budget bottom line. In his speech at the Press Club last week, our shadow Treasurer, Chris Bowen, pointed to a number of other measures that we are likely to support in this budget, including: the change to taxation of work and holiday visa holders; the abolition of the large family bonus; the removal of the zone tax offset for fly-in fly-out workers; changes to work related car expense deduction methods; and the implementation of the 'no jab, no pay' policy. That at least will provide about $2.4 billion over the forward estimates.

But we proposed $20 billion of savings over the next 10 years. That was announced several weeks before the budget. We hoped that the government would follow our lead on preventing large multinational companies from avoiding taxation. We thought they might follow our lead there or at least work cooperatively with Labor to recoup some of those billions of dollars of taxes that are being diverted from Australia. Nope—no deal. We thought maybe they would be interested in slightly trimming very generous superannuation tax concessions for very high-income earners. Again, there was no deal. So that is over $20 billion in improvements that the government could have had if they had been prepared to work cooperatively with us that they have rejected. This budget, as last year's, is unfair. The devil is in the details. You need to read the fine print. As well as being unfair, it fails the most basic economic test that this government set for themselves.

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