Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to 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.

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak on these appropriation bills for the 2015 budget. In doing so, I want to speak about the benefit the budget brings at a national level and also at a local level in the outer eastern suburbs of the Yarra Valley in the electorate of Casey that I have the honour of representing. The budget does a number of beneficial things. It continues the very important task of budget repair and, at the same time, it has critical initiatives to build a stronger economy with more jobs. As the Treasurer outlined on budget night, when this government won office it faced cumulative deficits over the forward four years of $123 billion. That has now been brought down to $82 billion over the next four years. A lot has been achieved. A lot more has to be done, as the Treasurer outlined. As a result of the legacy of net debt left by those opposite, we were borrowing $133 million a day. That is now down to $96 million. We are on the right track. There is more to be done. This is being achieved through choppy waters, with the iron ore price falling far more than anyone anticipated.

But, critically, the budget does a number of things to build a stronger economy into the future. It does this particularly by focusing on the vitally important small business sector, the backbone of the economy nationally and within our electorates. Those initiatives in the budget for small business—they are really the centrepiece—will do an incredible amount to support small business to grow and employ more people. That is the focus. It does it in a number of ways. It does it by reducing the company tax rate down to 28.5 per cent. For those unincorporated businesses, it introduces a five per cent tax discount up to $1,000 a year, which is the best equivalence. It means all small businesses below that $2 million threshold benefit from a tax cut. On top of that, from budget night, those same small businesses can claim an immediate tax deduction for each and every item they purchase up to $20,000. As the Treasurer said, that is going to benefit 96 per cent of Australian businesses. More than two million of those have a turnover of less than $2 million a year.

This huge initiative has understandably been widely welcomed by the small business sector and by many of those organisations that represent them so well. I will just take the time of the House to mention a few of them. Peter Strong, the chief executive of COSBOA, had this to say:

… the immediate deductibility for assets purchased up to $20k is as unexpected as it is welcomed. The 5% tax discount for unincorporated small business is another highlight of the budget. There are many more highlights in this budget which provides the lowest tax rate for small business since 1967. The government has promised something special for small business and have delivered on that promise.

That was Peter Strong on budget night. The Business Council of Australia said:

The small business package is absolutely excellent. It's an absolute shot in the arm for small business …

MYOB said:

Tonight is a fantastic night for small business owners who should be celebrating all around the nation. Firstly because of the financial support to assist them to invest in and grow their businesses, and secondly because of the recognition of the critical role they play in our community.

The budget does those things. It recognises the critical role small businesses play in our economy in terms of providing jobs and their prospects for providing jobs into the future. That is why the member for Dunkley has worked long and hard in crafting this package, which makes up a suite of measures designed to boost small business and boost small business jobs. In the electorate of Casey—with outer metropolitan suburbs, the Yarra Valley and the Dandenong Ranges—that breadth and depth of small businesses will benefit. In the electorate, small business owners are seizing the opportunity that the budget provides for them.

Critically, these measures build on a number of other critical initiatives. In the course of last year, the government moved with initiatives on employee share ownership to reverse the devastating damage caused by the reckless changes made by those opposite back in 2009. On top of that, it is working on new initiatives in crowd funding to boost innovation and enterprise. The other critical initiative in the budget is for businesses just starting up. The Treasurer outlined some of the immediate write-offs that those businesses get in their start-up costs. That is another critical thing for those wanting to start a business; they know that they can write-off their costs. That is something that will go a long way for those taking that step to start a business. In the electorate of Casey, these initiatives are welcomed by the many thousands of small business owners. Many have worked very hard to create their business and what they want to do is built it further and to employ more locals. These initiatives will help significantly in that regard.

At the local level, there are a number of measures that were pledged by me prior to the last election that are contained within this budget. They are helping to build a stronger local economy and a stronger and safer community. I just want to mention some of those in the time available this afternoon. On the Green Army program, the Yarra Valley landscape project has been completed in and around Healesville and Coldstream. A dedicated group of 18- to 24-year-olds worked for six months restoring parks, removing weeds and working with local volunteer groups. It was a pleasure to go out to Healesville with the Minister for the Environment for the graduation ceremony of that important project.

On the same day, I was able to show the minister the beginnings of the work at the next Green Army project in Casey. That is the Mount Evelyn aqueduct. A group of dedicated participants have started work there and are working for the next five or six months restoring that important area for the natural environment in and around Mount Evelyn. There are two other projects that will occur in the coming months. They are a project in Monbulk and a project along the Warburton Rail Trail. This is a very important program that the government pledged prior to its election and that is being rolled out with great success in the Casey electorate.

A number of sporting groups do so much not just in terms of bringing the community together but also at a wider level as well. I just want to mention some of those. The Mount Evelyn Football Netball Club do a lot for the Mount Evelyn community. One of the things that I pledged prior to the last election was to provide funding with council for a netball change room facility to be installed there at the Mount Evelyn Football Netball Club. The club is quite innovative in how they have gone about funding this. They have used the Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE to construct it, so it has been a great project for the students involved. We pledged $45,000, which has been delivered. The council matched that funding and the club contributed as well. In the coming weeks, that will be fully operational. That will be a great win for the Mount Evelyn netballers.

In Monbulk, we pledged that we would co-fund the resurfacing of the netball court and the construction of new shelters to the tune of $15,000. It was great to go to the Monbulk Netball Club and see the finished works just a week or so ago. The Monbulk Soccer Club is receiving significant federal funds, state funds and council funds to construct a huge facility that will have three full-sized synthetic pitches, a pavilion, lighting and a car park. It was a pleasure to see that project get underway.

In the Yarra Valley in particular the tourism industry is absolutely vital—many small businesses in the tourism sector and many small business who would not see themselves as part of the tourist sector are of course very much a part of it. The small business initiatives are very beneficial to the tourism industry, but on-the-ground infrastructure matters incredibly as well. That is why before the last election we pledged that we would contribute $3.5 million to the construction of the Yarra Valley Tourist Railway. This will reconstruct the railway between Yarra Glen and Healesville as a tourist railway. The money has been provided and the bridges are being constructed as we speak. When it is concluded it will do so much to bring more tourists into Yarra Valley—day tourists from across Melbourne but also international tourists. It is all part of building the tourism sector to build a stronger economy. Those communities in the Yarra Valley know that getting the right policies in the budget matters. They welcome the small business tax initiatives and the immediate write-offs but they also welcome getting more customers, and this important infrastructure will help to deliver that. The railway is one of a number of pledges that were fully funded and are being rolled out in this budget.

In the time available I will mention a few more. One is the $110,000 to the Metropolitan Traffic Education Centre, METEC, in Kilsyth. This is a volunteer-run organisation set up more than 40 years ago by a group of dedicated parents. It is a safe off-road driver training school. The grant that we have provided has enabled them to double the size of their car control skid pan area so they can train more young drivers in a safe off-road environment. For an electorate such as Casey, where you have many dangerous roads in the Dandenong Ranges and the Yarra Valley, this facility and those who run it do a wonderful job.

The other thing I mentioned was initiatives to create a safer community, and one of the initiatives that I took to the last election was more security cameras in and around some of the key areas in the Yarra Valley, such as Lilydale, and the installation of security cameras in Yarra Junction and in the town of Healesville. Those security cameras will come online in the coming months. The work is being done at the moment and contractors have been appointed. It is something those towns will welcome. It is an important initiative in the budget that has enabled communities to be safer and it has a proven track record, particularly in Lilydale, where we had one of the first sets of security cameras installed back in 2004. This will add to that and it will add to the safety and security of those other towns that I have mentioned.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the appropriations bills that are before us, we are effectively dealing with what at times in our history have been quite heated debates—they used to be called supply bills—and some of the most extraordinary moments in Australian politics have found their way into these debates. These days, given that we are not currently in a situation where oppositions are behaving quite the way they did in 1975, we find ourselves in a more measured debate but also with an opportunity of taking advantage of the standing order that applies only to these bills and to the Governor-General's address-in-reply where we are able to speak in a very broad-ranging way. It is necessary when you deal with this budget to speak in a broad-ranging way simply because the entire fiction of the fiscal approach of this government is made clear with the bills that are before us.

Prior to the last election in a budget reply when the now Prime Minister was Leader of the Opposition—at this very dispatch box here—he said:

People can be confident that spending, debt and taxes will always be lower under a coalition government.

We have a budget now where spending is higher, debt is higher and taxes are higher; notwithstanding that the guarantee from the then Leader of the Opposition was:

People can be confident that spending, debt and taxes will always be lower under a coalition government.

Then, after the previous budget on 19 May last year, he said:

but every day in the lead up to the last election, I said to people, 'We are going to get the Budget back under control.'

The form of control has been to double the deficit in 12 months.

Let us look at what the then Leader of the Opposition now Prime Minister said in that first quote. He said that spending would be lower under the coalition, debt would be lower under the Coalition and taxes would be lower under the coalition. In terms of spending, in the four years that followed the global financial crisis while Labor was still in government, we established a rule on spending growth that spending growth would not exceed two per cent and applied that year-on-year. Over those four years, we did not simply have the rule in place that spending growth would not go to more than two per cent, we more than met it. Over those four years, spending growth in fact remained on average at 1.3 per cent year-on-year. Under the coalition, spending growth over the next lot of forward estimates, averages 1.8 per cent. They said spending would be lower under a coalition government. Labor had a rule it had to stay below two per cent and actually delivered 1.3 per cent. The coalition, looking forward, is at 1.8 per cent over the forward estimates. Spending is running at 25.9 per cent of GDP—almost as high, within about 0.1 of one per cent, as it was during the global financial crisis. We had a need which was initially supported by both sides of politics but they then walked away from it. Had we in government walked away from the stimulus measures, if the then opposition had had their way, Australia would have gone into recession. The spending levels as a percentage of GDP are now nearly at that level again, without a global financial crisis.

When the Prime Minister was the Leader of the Opposition he said the debt would always be lower under a coalition government. Well, under the coalition Australia's net debt is now $285.8 billion—the highest it has been in the history of the nation. When people promise that something will be lower, it usually means delivering a smaller number than the previous one. For all this government have said about debt and deficit, year-on-year they have doubled the deficit and Australia's net debt is now the highest it has been in the history of the nation. Net debt under the coalition continues to grow in nominal terms each and every year over the forward estimates.

The Prime Minister when Leader of the Opposition also promised taxes would always be lower under a coalition government. Over the period Labor was in government tax receipts averaged 20.8 per cent of GDP. Under the coalition today, tax receipts will average 22.6 per cent of GDP over the budget forward estimates. So under Labor, 20.8; under the coalition, 22.6. Tax receipts as a percentage of GDP are forecast to be at levels which have not been seen since the years of the Howard government. Through the entirety of the period, from the peak in the Howard government through to now, with all those years that Labor was in office in between, tax receipts were lower. This is not some small, tiny, marginal gap—it is from 20.8 per cent to 22.6 per cent of GDP. This is a marked shift by this government—spending growth is higher, taxes are higher, debt is higher.

As I said, the deficit has doubled year-on-year. There has been an argument about how you view the figures for Labor's final budget and final period in office. But you do not need to get into that argument to see whether or not the deficit has doubled—you only have to look at what this government presented last year in its budget, where the deficit for this year was estimated to be $17 billion, and the budget they presented this year, where the deficit has turned out to be $35 billion. They were meant to have $17 billion last year and now we get to this year and we discover no, it is not $17 billion, it is $35 billion. For all their talk, they have come through and doubled the deficit. Ever since the pre-election forecasts made under the Charter of Budget Honesty in 2013, the deficit has blown out by $95 billion. That is the extent of it.

The Treasurer will say, regardless of everything he said when he was in opposition, 'Oh no, you can't blame me for revenue write-downs, you can't blame me for the iron ore price'—he will come forward with all the excuses that he would never allow his predecessors to use. We need to understand two things about this. First of all, the shift in the iron ore price does not completely explain the blow-out in the deficit—not for a minute. Secondly, it also needs to be remembered that if Peter Costello could handle an Asian financial crisis and Wayne Swan could cope with a global financial crisis, why can't this Treasurer deal with a change in the iron ore price? All Treasurers have to deal with changing global circumstances. You think of the enormity of the Asian financial crisis and you think of the enormity of the GFC, yet we now have a Treasurer who will allow the deficit to be doubled under his watch because he cannot handle a shift in the iron ore price.

One of the things that characterise public discussion of the budget, and understandably, is that people go to the budget documents and look at what is in there but they often miss one key point—anything that has not changed from the previous year's budget is not reported. The reporting of a budget is a reporting of the changes. Therefore, while it is not referred to in the budget documents, this budget still demands there be a shift to $100,000 degrees. This budget still demands cuts to family payments—we have seen even today analysis from NATSEM showing that families are set to be up to $6,000 worse off through a combination of measures from last year and this year. This budget still demands that people work until they are 70 years of age before they are able to retire, and this budget still infers a GP tax because it is brought in by a freeze that means over the course of four years we get to a similar cut in income for GPs as the government was previously trying to do in one hit. Be in no doubt, the GP tax is alive and well in this budget.

It is also the case that there are a number of new measures in this budget. We have already indicated through the shadow Treasurer's comments at the National Press Club last week that we will be supportive of some of them, and when the Leader of the Opposition spoke at the dispatch box last Thursday he made clear there would be a number of measures we would support.

It comes as no surprise that we are willing to support the small business measures, given that they were pretty close to measures that we had in place that this government abolished. They abolished some of them only in the last budget. So we apologise for not getting too excited in the fanfare about these being reintroduced. They were in fact our measures. In the case of the business tax cut, that was one that we put to the parliament and the coalition combined with the Greens to prevent it from going ahead. The instant asset write-off we did get through, and that was abolished in last year's budget. But there is a song and dance now, as though these are brand-new ideas from the coalition. Yes, they are good measures. Yes, we had them in place. I hope the government has the competence to make sure that they are implemented carefully and prudently, and obviously we will be watching that very closely.

There are also a number of measures which contribute $2.4 billion to the bottom line over the forward estimates which the shadow Treasurer has indicated that we will support. These were made up of the zone tax offset, tax changes for temporary working holiday makers, work related car expense deductions, the cessation of the large family supplement of family tax benefit part A and the 'no jab, no pay' immunisation changes. We trust that the costings of those put forward by the government are all accurate, but those are all changes that contribute to the budget bottom line that we have already indicated we will support. There are a number of other changes that we are still working our way through.

It is often forgotten by those opposite that in the last budget more than $20 billion worth of improvements to the budget bottom line were facilitated by the opposition. More than $20 billion worth of improvements to the budget bottom line went through without opposition from Labor. Similarly, though, Labor has gone further in putting forward more than $20 billion worth of additional improvements to the budget bottom line over the next decade through our new policy on multinational tax avoidance and our proposals to deal with high-income superannuation. The government has knocked them out straight away, notwithstanding that they would improve the budget bottom line over the decade of another $20 billion.

Why have they knocked them out? They have knocked out the changes on multinational tax because they have their own idea, with no numbers attached to it—just an asterisk in the budget papers. On high-income superannuation, they are willing to go after pensioners but they are not willing to get an additional contribution from people earning more than $250,000 a year—an extraordinary approach when cooperation is offered across the table but pretty symptomatic of how this government operates.

I want to conclude by referring to one specific change in this year's budget, because it goes to something that was part of a particular budget debate I was involved in at the time of the last election. At the last election, as some members may be aware, among my portfolio as I was Australia's Minister for the Arts. I had a debate against Senator Brandis. It was sort of a debate: we arrived separately, left separately and were never at the podium or near each other at any point in time. It probably worked fine for both of us. But in that debate I made the comment that I had a view that Senator Brandis did not believe in arms-length funding for the arts. He responded, and it was published, by describing what I had said as a 'spectacularly brazen lie'. Yet all I was predicting was exactly what has happened in this year's budget.

Be in no doubt about the level of arrogance of an arts minister who thinks that he will be able to pick and choose more effectively than the arms-length funding arrangements for the Australia Council put in place under the Fraser government, expanded under the Whitlam government. We have an arts minister so arrogant that he thinks he can get away with calling an accurate description of his policy a 'spectacularly brazen lie' before the election, and now he goes through and delivers just that. Senator Brandis needs to know, and the public will know, arrogance does not get missed.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister for Employment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The budget that the government has delivered is a budget for confidence and it is a budget for families. It is a plan for jobs and it is a plan for growth. It is a plan for opportunity that will build a strong, safe and prosperous future for all Australians. Our economic plan is working. The economy is growing and jobs are being created in a fair and responsible way. Labor's projected debt and deficit have been cut in half, which has made Australia stronger and is allowing the coalition to invest more in better services for all Australians.

The coalition has a credible plan to get the country back to surplus despite tough economic challenges ahead. The budget is good for families, the budget is good for small business and the budget is good for jobs. It delivers a small business tax cut which will help drive investment and deliver jobs, creating prosperity for all Australians. It delivers a better childcare system that is simpler, more affordable, more flexible and more accessible. It provides parents with greater choice in balancing work and family, making life easier for working mums and dads.

The coalition's longstanding and ongoing commitment to jobs, particularly for young Australians, is also embodied in our $330 million Youth Employment Strategy. When I travel around the country, I meet with many young people who are having a tough time getting into work. I hear the same thing time and time again. Young people say, 'You can't get experience when you don't have a job, and if you can't get a job you can't get experience.' This is a simple and sensible proposition that young people put forward: 'How can I get a job if I don't have experience? How can I get experience if I don't have a job?' That goes some way to explaining that the youth unemployment rate is twice the national average, at 13.6 per cent. If you cannot get your first job, how can you get that experience?

The coalition acknowledges that the youth unemployment rate is too high and we are taking the problem of youth unemployment seriously because we know that the best form of welfare is a job. While the best thing we can do to create jobs is to build a strong economy, the government recognises that young people need extra help. That is why we have announced the Youth Employment Strategy in the budget, because it will take a work first approach to Australia's youth.

The coalition's $330 million Youth Employment Strategy has three key components. First is the $212 million Youth Transition to Work program, which will deliver intensive pre-employment assistance to young job seekers who are at high risk of unemployment. This program will assist around 19,000 job seekers every year with basic skill development that employers often report young job seekers are lacking. This includes mentoring and coaching to address personal issues; developing literacy, numeracy, teamwork and communication skills; providing access to work experience; and helping young people to get driver's licences, apprenticeships and traineeships. As part of this strategy, the coalition has also committed more than $105 million to support vulnerable job seekers, including young parents, young people with a mental illness, and refugees and migrants, as they make the transition to work. This includes an innovative youth program which will fund up to 40 community trials to explore better ways of getting young people who are at risk of welfare dependency into jobs.

In addition to this support, we are also raising expectations of early school leavers who are receiving welfare. Early school leavers who do not want to study will be subject to new job search requirements, and those who choose to study will be required to reach at least year 12 or certificate III standard, instead of the current year 12 or certificate II standard. This will substantially increase the employment prospects of early school leavers, because those with a certificate III or higher have a 4.9 per cent unemployment rate, as compared to those with a certificate I or certificate II, who have a 12.7 per cent unemployment rate.

In addition to the Youth Employment Strategy, the coalition is creating a $1.2 billion wage subsidy pool to make it easier for employers to hire people from disadvantaged groups. Tens of thousands of Australians, including mature age, young job seekers, parents, the long-term unemployed and Indigenous Australians, are expected to access this subsidy. The subsidy pool will kick-start another 2015 budget initiative, the national work experience program. This program supports job seekers, who can volunteer to do four weeks work experience for up to 25 hours a week in either a for-profit or a not-for-profit business. Employers that hire a new employee who is eligible for a wage subsidy through the work experience program can access subsidies through the $1.2 billion pool we are creating. This is a great initiative for all job seekers, because the existing work experience arrangements show job outcome rates of around 50 per cent for those people who participate in work experience programs. The new initiative announced in the budget will build on the existing coalition commitments to help Australia's youth get jobs. The coalition is committing $6.8 billion over the next four years to a new employment service model called jobactive, which reinvigorates Work for the Dole, reduces red tape for job seekers and reduces red tape for employment service providers and employers.

Since July last year nearly 24,000 people have commenced Work for the Dole in selected locations around Australia as part of phase 1. Come 1 July, the Work for the Dole program will be expanded nationwide. Job seekers, young job seekers in particular, can benefit from the Relocation Assistance to Take Up a Job program, which provides financial assistance to long-term unemployed who are moving to take up a job. They can also access the job commitment bonus, which provides cash bonuses to successful job seekers after they have stayed in a job and off welfare for 12 or 24 months.

Put simply, the Abbott government has committed billions to addressing unemployment, and youth unemployment specifically. This is a longstanding and ongoing commitment. It is in stark contrast to Labor. In his budget reply speech, the opposition leader, Mr Shorten, did not even mention youth unemployment, and to date the opposition have only committed some $21 million to help some 3,000 unemployed youth. Compared to Labor, the coalition has committed 15 times the money to help 15 times the job seekers into work. Through our Youth Employment Strategy, the coalition is taking a work-first approach to tackling youth unemployment, because everyone knows the best form of welfare is a job.

But we also know that the best way to grow jobs is to have a strong economy and we know that a thriving small business sector is the centre of a strong economy. That is why the coalition's budget is great for small business, particularly for small businesses in my electorate of Cowper. On 1 July 2015, all small businesses, even those that are not incorporated, will receive a tax cut. Incorporated small businesses with a turnover of up to $2 million will benefit from our cut to the company tax rate by 1.5 per cent to 28½ per cent. Unincorporated small businesses will get a five per cent tax discount, with those businesses with an annual turnover of up to $2 million receiving up to a maximum tax discount of $1,000. From budget night until 30 June 2017, small businesses will be able to immediately deduct every asset that they acquire which is valued up to $20,000.

As the member for Cowper, I have seen small businesses in my electorate grow and evolve over time, creating more jobs and opportunities for the people in the area that I represent. Through the Growing Jobs and Small Business package, the coalition is freeing up small business to create more jobs in my electorate and across the country.

When I meet with mums and dads in my electorate, time and time again they tell me that our childcare system is too complicated, too expensive and too hard to access when they need it most. Having two parents in work has become essential for most families because of changes to society and the economy in recent decades. Many families, in particular mothers, now have to juggle caring responsibilities with paid employment. This juggling act is made all the more difficult with the challenges they face in accessing affordable and suitable child care. That is why the coalition's $4.4 billion Jobs for Families package is such a great initiative. It will deliver a childcare system that is simpler, more affordable, more flexible and more accessible for Australian families who want to work more and set themselves up for the future. The coalition's families package will provide greater choice to more than 1.2 million families, including many in my electorate of Cowper. It will put downward pressure on the price of child care—a very important measure, as the cost of child care is a major inhibitor to people getting into work.

The budget will not only deliver for families and small business, but also continue the upgrade of the Pacific Highway at a pace. Since the coalition has come to office, the rate of work on the Pacific Highway has increased significantly. The previous government had backflipped on its commitment to 80-20 funding for the Pacific Highway, instead insisting on a 50-50 funding mix. Had the Labor government been re-elected at the last election, the Pacific Highway completion date would have been delayed by some seven years. So, as a result of the election of the coalition government and the continued funding that is available in this budget, the Pacific Highway will be completed by the target date of 2020—some seven years sooner than it would have been completed under Labor. We have a range of projects currently underway in the electorate. Frederickton to Eungai section is being completed at a pace. Kundabung to Kempsey is underway; Urunga to Nambucca Heads is well on target; and we have new work recently started on the Warrell Creek to Nambucca Heads section and the Arrawarra to Ballina section. These are huge infrastructure projects, creating thousands of jobs—many local jobs and thousands of indirect jobs, which are important for the local economy as an employment generator and important to our national interest to ensure that freight can move quickly and efficiently around the country.

Local roads are also vitally important. Whenever I speak to constituents, they often raise the issue of the importance of local roads. This budget will deliver record local road funding for councils in my electorate through the Roads to Recovery program. Following on from the Deputy Prime Minister's announcement that Roads to Recovery funding would be doubled in 2015-16, more than $8 million will be given to five local councils in my electorate. Great work is being done by my local councils in delivering with Roads to Recovery funding. We have also continued funding for the project at Riverside Drive in Nambucca Heads—an important local arterial road that has become unserviceable due to geotechnical problems. Five million dollars from the federal government allows the local council to repair that important piece of road infrastructure.

The budget has important measures in health, providing the continued funding for $80 million redevelopment of Kempsey Hospital. The new hospital will ensure that the Macleay community has local access to a new emergency medical unit and new integrated community care. It also ensures new medical equipment, such as X-ray, ultrasound, medical imaging, as well as new acute hospital beds, an expanded coronary care unit and new operating theatres, will become available. The development of Kempsey Hospital is being done in partnership with the state government, and this budget delivers the Commonwealth contribution to that hospital. It builds on the commitment by the New South Wales coalition government of $50 million for the redevelopment of Macksville Hospital—a project very passionately supported by the new state member for the seat of Oxley, Melinda Pavey. Kempsey and Macksville redevelopments are both examples of the coalition delivering on health and hospitals in regional Australia.

There is an important new program in the budget—$45 million for the Stronger Communities program. My electorate of Cowper will receive $150,000 a year over two years to support local projects to deliver social benefits. This is vitally important to support the many organisations that do great work in our local areas. In conclusion, this government inherited from Labor a multibillion dollar deficit problem; it inherited a budget that was out of control—

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How are you going with that?

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister for Employment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are working on it. We are fixing up your mess! It would be a mess if you were still here, that is for sure. Despite the reduction in revenue, we are charting a credible path back to surplus—unlike Treasurer Swan who said 'the four surpluses I announce tonight'—but we still have not seen a surplus. This is a very important budget; it delivers on our commitment to build a stronger and fairer Australia and to bring the budget back into surplus in a credible time frame.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the brief time available, I intend to speak today about the impact of the second budget on the great electorate of Fraser. The electorate of Fraser is now the largest electorate in Australia with nearly 145,000 electors. This year's budget contains the same cuts in funding to health and education as last year's budget. That is $80 billion across the country—a $600 million loss to Canberra's schools, hospitals and health centres over the next decade as a result of this budget.

Earlier this year, community groups around the country celebrated when the government backflipped on plans to cut $25 billion from the national legal assistance budget, but it turned out that that reprieve was only temporary. The government is drastically cutting funding for Community Legal Centres from 2017 onwards. In Canberra the ACT Women's Legal Centre and the Welfare Rights and Legal Centre are set to lose $300,000 from 2017. That may seem like a small amount of money, but to the Canberra women fleeing family violence and domestic abuse it may make the difference between being able to access the help they need and not being able to access that help.

The Minister for Education, that noted fixer, claimed that he had fixed the funding of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. His fix turned out to be to take $150 million from another tertiary research program to be plough into NCRIS. That, of course, leaves universities around Australia, including the Australian National University and the University of Canberra, facing new research cuts over the next few years—$150 million this year, $37 million next year, $74 million the hereafter. The fixer has not fixed it; he has simply plugged one hole by ripping open another one.

Then there is the impact on Canberra of the cuts to Family Tax Benefit Part B. This is a government that is offering more resources to parents of two- to three-year-old children in child care on two conditions: firstly, they have to back cuts to families with six-year-olds receiving Family Tax Benefit Part—on the bizarre notion that kids get cheaper, not more expensive, when they turned six. The second ransom hanging over the heads of these parents is that the only way they get more money for kids aged two or three is that they are willing to back money being taken away from new parents. This is a government that is pitting mum against mum. It just is not reasonable to call families 'rorters' and 'double dippers' because they are receiving a government funded scheme, as well one that they fought for in their workplace. In this budget, there also cuts to low-income families. There are cuts to health programs, including the Inborn Errors of Metabolism Programme, about which constituents have contacted me already since the budget came down.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member will have leave to continue his remarks at that time.