Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

It is not my intention to spend too much time on the diatribe we have just heard, but I would just make the obvious point that is being made by all informed commentators around the country, which is that the reason we have a crisis in energy policy in this place is that there is no national energy policy. There is no coherent national climate policy. There is a reluctance to adopt what almost all informed observers want, and that is a price on carbon. The government will not do it because they are ideologically opposed. So, instead of the claptrap that we have just heard, let's have a discussion around coherent national policy and understand entirely that this government have been at the wheel for four years and have done absolutely nothing. I do not want to say any more about that, because I think the member's contribution spoke for itself, and it was not that flash!

I am actually a little sad today; sad and disappointed that we are now seeing, through this government's policy, a narrative that is clearly articulated around attacking the most vulnerable, the poorest, the sickest and those least able to defend themselves in our community. The government are doing this because they want to redirect money to big business that might otherwise be spent on the welfare of ordinary Australians. We have seen the Prime Minister, in my view, make an absolute clown of himself in successive question times by avoiding the real questions here, just as we heard him avoid the real questions about 18C—another disappointing approach to public policy. What is it that he wants to be able to be said that cannot be said by people in this country? Why would he be appealing to the worst of the demons in our community for their support, at the expense of the interest of the majority of Australians? Why would he be doing this?

And so it is that we are seeing exactly the same thing in economic policy. Sadly, last night, the Senate passed legislation that will have the effect of cutting $1.4 billion from Australian families. This, as you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, was a budget measure from 2014—that horrid budget. The reward for the then Treasurer was to become Ambassador to the United States. The then Prime Minister is, of course, no longer Prime Minister; he paid the real price. He paid the price by losing the prime ministership of this country while his Treasurer gets, one might say, rewarded for leaving the parliament by being offered the job in Washington. No doubt he is doing his best—I do not know what that will be, but nevertheless he is no doubt doing his best.

This is a budget measure which was made in 2014 and they have regurgitated it in this current budget round by freezing family tax benefit rates for two years. One point five million families will be worse off, more than two million children will be worse off, and a significant proportion of these families are on the maximum rate of FTB A, which means their household income is less than $52,000 a year. These are unfair cuts and, again, they are made on the weakest, poorest, sickest and most vulnerable in our community, deliberately made by a Prime Minister and a government who believe, somehow or another, that it is okay to do this. Remember: this is the same Prime Minister who, while attacking Labor's opposition to the Fair Work Commission's penalty rate decision, is effectively abandoning 700,000 Australians and making sure, inevitably, that their incomes will fall. These are not people who, I might say, can afford to have their incomes drop.

We do not see the Prime Minister suggesting that members of parliament, for example, should take a 10 per cent or 15 per cent pay cut, but that is the effect of what he is doing by endorsing the Fair Work Commission's penalty rate decision. Instead of coming out to defend the interests of Australian workers and their families, he is more intent on attacking the opposition for not supporting the Fair Work decision. It is entirely appropriate for us to disagree with the decision made by the Fair Work Commission, just as it is entirely appropriate for the Prime Minister to do the same, and to make representations to the Fair Work Commission, which the government did not do in the first instance—they did not bother putting in a submission—to look after the interests of the Australians who rely on these penalty rates for their income. So it is us. They are attacking the poorest working Australians who are in jobs. They have their penalty rates reduced and have their incomes fall at a time when wage growth is at an all-time low, and he expects us all to support the idea that we should give the top end of town a tax cut. Well, whoopee.

Why are we so disappointed in this man? He purports to represent the interests of all Australians. He does not. He is captive to the reactionaries in his own party and the top end of town. He has not lived the experience of these people who will suffer as a result of the cuts to FTB. He has no lived experience of people surviving on $30,000 or $40,000 a year, working Saturdays and Sundays. He has no lived experience. He does not understand the cost pressures upon these families and what it means in terms of providing an opportunity for young people in this country, for families to have the confidence that not only can they provide housing for their children and themselves in a safe and secure environment but they can actually put food on the table, send the children to school, occasionally with a new pair of shoes, and maybe, just maybe, have a motor vehicle and can put petrol in it, but they have no time for luxuries. These are poor Australians that this man is attacking.

Last night I heard the Minister for Finance say that no-one is going to lose any money as a result of these changes to FTB. Of course, we know that is just nonsense. Failure to index means a real cut to their income. We are not stupid, and the finance minister will soon learn that the Australian people are not stupid. You cannot have it both ways here. You are either in this job to look after the interests of all Australians, or you are in it to look after your mates, and he is in it to look after his mates. That is obvious to all of us. The Prime Minister can parade around the dispatch box, as he does—turning red, bleating and moaning, insulting—but what he is doing is attacking the very heart of the Australian people. He can try and deny what the impact of these policy changes will be, but it cannot be clearer. It cannot be clearer. These policies will have a devastating effect on Australian families, just as the penalty rate decision will have a devastating effect on many Australian workers.

There is a whole panoply of areas where these attacks are taking place. One of these is an area which I have raised in this place before, and that is the cuts being made to community legal centres, particularly local women's legal services in my own electorate. These legal services are there to protect the interests and the rights of the most vulnerable in our community—women who have been the subject of family violence. You can hear the Prime Minister all the time as he parades around talking about advancing the interests of Australian women, looking after the interests of the community. But he and his government are endorsing cuts to community legal services which will effectively mean that the people who have been the subject of wicked attacks may not have representation. How could he possibly do this? How can he possibly stand up in the parliament and defend these cuts?

We know that the Attorney-General, who we think is bound for overseas—another person getting a reward for doing an asinine job—is the person responsible for implementing these proposals. He is cutting the funding to the Central Australian Women's Legal Service, for example, the Katherine Women's Information and Legal Service, the North Australian Aboriginal Family Legal Service, the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council Domestic and Family Violence Service and the Central Australian Aboriginal Family Legal Unit. All of these will have their funds cut. You can tell by the descriptors who their clients are, but no matter—inevitably, these will be many of the same people who will be affected by the FTB cuts.

So the Prime Minister is not only walking away from his responsibilities to protect their incomes; he is also walking away from his responsibilities to protect their legal rights. That is not what a responsible Prime Minister does. He can hurl as many insults, personal invective and all that sort of rubbish as he likes. But, at the end of the day, the Australian people are not fools, and they have found him out. We know by the decisions he has taken in his own party that he has been beholden to a right-wing rump, that he is no longer the man we all thought he was when he first got the job. He has changed his policy decisions on almost every conceivable area and he has made himself beholden to stupidity. That does not make him a good Prime Minister; that makes him as weak as water. I see him stand up there at the dispatch box, opening his mouth and letting the wind blow his tongue around, but he makes no sense. What he is doing is insulting the intelligence of the Australian community, and they will not tolerate such stupidity.

A final issue that I want to raise very quickly is that the bill that passed through the Senate last night would also freeze for three years the income-free areas for all working age and student payments. What is going on in this country? What is going on in this country? This would mean that, for three years, the income tests applying to payments for single parents, jobseekers and students will not keep pace with the cost of living. These people are not earning high incomes. What if they are living in a city like Sydney or Melbourne? Perhaps they are a student from Alice Springs who has to leave to get an education, who comes from a family that cannot support them, so they have to support themselves. They have to work. What we are seeing now is another effective cut to their income. This will affect 204,000 Australians on the lowest incomes. It is just ridiculous! I am almost lost for words—and that is very hard for me—in describing the disdain I feel for the Prime Minister and this government and for the attacks that they are making on Australian families and on Australian workers. They are indefensible. They are absolutely indefensible. Many of them emanate from that stupid, absurd 2014 budget. We are seeing that reflected in proposals coming before us again now in the parliament. We expect a lot more from our government. We expect a lot more from the Prime Minister. He is not doing the right thing by any of us.

See this speech in context