Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday I was talking about small business and some of the great benefits that small business received in this year's budget—in particular the instant tax write-off. We know that the instant tax write-off will encourage small businesses to go and spend, which will create confidence within the economy. Now is the perfect time for businesses to look at their business plan and for small sole traders and partnerships to look at investing in an income-producing asset and at hiring more staff. I am very pleased that the government has introduced this $20,000 instant tax write-off.

But the budget is not just about small businesses, families and pensioners; it is also about the environment. In this budget we are continuing our strong record of supporting environmental sustainability. We can be a nation that values its environment, not through wasteful, costly and useless measures like a carbon tax, which hits the people who can least afford it through their electricity bills, but through practical measures like the Green Army projects that are currently rolling out around the Petrie electorate.

In this budget we have also seen the Minister for the Environment sign off on a historic ban on the disposal of capital dredge material in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. We inherited five major proposals from the Labor Party to dispose dredge spoil in the marine park, but since coming into government we have reduced this to zero. Now we have formally approved an amendment to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park regulations to put an end to this century-old practice once and for all. The ban applies to all past and present permits and future applications for capital dredge disposal. This will help reduce accumulated pressures on this vast and spectacular ecosystem and also aid in improving the reef's health and resilience.

The threat posed by Daesh is reaching out to Australians, as we recently saw in the Sydney siege. This is not the time to neglect our Defence Force. The government will continue to invest in the Australian Defence Force. What we saw previously under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments was a $16 billion cut, a $16 billion reduction, in defence spending as a percentage of GDP. Defence spending went to its lowest level since 1938. The 2015 budget is part of the Commonwealth government's plan to build a strong and prosperous future for all Australians. In this budget, we will continue to make a significant investment in the safety and security of all Australians. We are continuing our commitment to increase defence spending of two per cent of GDP and build on the promise to provide Defence with a stable and sustainable funding growth path. Labor's mismanagement led to 119 defence projects being delayed, 43 projects being reduced and eight projects being cancelled—risking critical capability gaps. The Australian defence industry shed more than 10 per cent of its workforce because of budget cuts and deferrals, procrastination and a lack of opportunity for local suppliers. Not only is the coalition government prepared to invest in the skills and knowledge base of the Australian naval shipbuilding industry; it is also prepared to commit to a long-term investment to make sure this important industry employs a future in Australia and these critical skills are maintained.

It is through hard work and through working together that Australians achieve economic success. When you strengthen the economy, businesses succeed, families have less pressure burdened upon them and jobs are created. Small businesses were let down by Labor, and families were facing the consequences of uncertainty in employment and job insecurity. Now is the time for the people in my electorate of Petrie and all around Australia to embrace the incredible opportunities our nation has to offer.

The 2015 budget is about small business, growth confidence and opportunities. It is about increased opportunities for families, for parents to get back to work. It is about increased funding for the majority of pensioners. It is about a better environment, and the coalition has a strong record on the environment. It is about ensuring that our Defence Force is stronger and more productive and that we have got cutting-edge equipment for our ADF men and women. Finally, it is also about returning to surplus. We are the only party that has a plan to return the budget to surplus. We all know that we cannot continually spend more than what we earn every year. I look forward to implementing this strong plan, along with the government, over the coming months and years ahead.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016. The modern economic era in Australian history—and I speak with some pride in saying that my book on the history of Australia was a best seller—started with the deregulation of the wool industry. Mr Keating, lauded as the 'world's greatest Treasurer', deregulated the wool industry. At that point in time, wool was the biggest export earning item for Australia; it was bigger than coal. Wool was worth six thousand million dollars a year, whereas coal was 5.9 thousand million dollars a year. To completely destroy what was the economic base of this nation for 170 years was a fairly remarkable achievement by the great deregulator, the father of market fundamentalism, and the other advocates of extremist zealotry of the free market in this place. That is how they started their procession of disasters.

We look, over the next 12 months, to the loss of the motor vehicle industry. When the Holden motor car came out I was only a little fella. My daddy walked around the car about seven times and he said, 'This is made in Australia. This is Australian.' That we could build a motor car! In my history of Australia it occupies nearly a 10th of the book. This was one of the greatest achievements of the Australian people.

The other great achievement was the Snowy Mountains scheme, which is still one of the 27th leading engineering achievements in world history. This parliament closed down one-third of it. The ALP and the NLP voted unanimously to flog it off to a foreign corporation. But God bless the Australian people. My history book was called 'An incredible race of people'. We rose up in rage, anger and fury, and the government got so terrified and a little bit enlightened from a decent fellow—John Howard, the Prime Minister, who was a big enough man to reverse his judgement. But it was only the people of Australia that reversed that decision. The 30 per cent taking and destruction of the agricultural production has gone and it has not been returned.

When I was a young fella we bought our motor vehicles in Australia; 62 per cent of them were Australian made. We bought our whitegoods in Australia. The fridge in our home was Australian made. Our air conditioner was Australian made. Our stove was Australian made. Our washing machine was Australian made. The television was Australian made. When computers first started, believe it or not, we produced some computers. Our clothing was Australian made. Our family owned a number of clothing stores and at the clothing store that I was involved in almost all of our clothes were Australian made. Furniture was made in Australia.

In 2002, almost all of our petrol came from Australia. We sent $1,000 million overseas to buy petrol and diesel in 2002. This year we will send $25,000 million overseas. We are going to have to find $16,000 million to buy our motor cars and our spare parts from overseas. How much money has Australia got to buy something from overseas? This is pretty simple. I am one of the few people in this place that makes money out of my own business acumen, my own energies and my three businesses I created out of absolutely nothing; there was nothing there when I started. So I speak with great authority from my own private experience and, of course, I was the minister that introduced prawn and fish farming in Australia. I will talk about that a little bit in a moment.

Where are we going to get the money to buy all of our motor vehicles, all of our whitegoods, all of our clothing, all of our furniture and all of our petrol? Talking about food, if we take out two elements, live cattle and coarse grain—you cannot eat live cattle and you cannot eat coarse grain, obviously—you are left with the food element. Actually, we are importing now almost as much as we are exporting. In actual fact, we are 50 per cent dependent, if you like, for our food from overseas. At the present rate that is a 125 per cent increase in imports every 10 years and only a 28 per cent increase in exports. You do not have to be Albert Einstein to work out that we will be a net food importing country. So we have no petrol and now we have to get our food from overseas, as well as our motor vehicles, our clothing and our whitegoods. Where are we going to get the money to buy these things? We were told we were going to get it out of iron ore and coal.

I have just had my 70th birthday so I have been around for a fair while. I have been in business for myself since I was 23 years of age. This is the first time in my entire life that there has been nothing happening. Every single year of my adult life the coal industry surged forward. The Queensland government built 3½,000 kilometres of railway line, each year opening up more and more coalfields. In the last 25 years there has not been one kilometre of railway line built—not one kilometre. So the coal industry now has to rely upon old, worn-out coalmines. They are old, they are worn out and they are non-competitive. Unless the railway line is built into the new fields, the Galilee coalfields, then that industry will continue to die. It has already shed 15,000 jobs in Queensland, and there is not a town in Queensland that is not feeling the hurt.

Mr Keating announced this free market and said that we were going to be a free and open economy. And I remember this very vividly, because in those days I used to switch my radio on and listen to the news—I do not anymore, because it is too depressing—I thought: 'Is the man mad? How can we compete against the Asian countries? The average income there is under $5,000 a year. How can we possibly compete?' People say that wages are too high in Australia. Well, what is the solution? To go down to coolie wages, is it, of $5,000 a year? I thought: 'Is the man mad? There are only two things that can happen here. Our wages must fall to their level, or we close the industries.' I thought that it was an either-or proposition, but I found out that it was not an either-or proposition—it was both. We are now seeing our wage structures going down, and we are watching our industries close down. We have scored the double!

But that is not the end of the madness. When history books are written of this century—I wrote my history book of the last century—they will record that these were the worst governments in this country's history. That is saying a lot, because the people that left us completely unarmed before the pending Japanese invasion of Australia have a lot to answer for, as do the people that drove us into the Depression. Australia was driven into the Depression and never worked itself out. We never figured out that we had to expand the money supply; we listened to an idiot called Sir Niemeyer, from the Bank of England, instead of listening to our own Treasurer, Edward Theodore, who had the solutions.

There is a lot of competition as to which is the worst government, but the governments of the last 25 years or, arguably, 30 years have cold-bloodedly destroyed each of these industries. Each of these industries has been destroyed by government action. What was the government action? In the case of the wool industry, it was deregulation. In the case of the prawn and fish farming industry—which should be worth $10,000 million a year—it was the greenie movement. They imposed conditions upon us which nowhere else in the world has to meet, and we cannot possibly meet them and compete. In the motor vehicle industry, it was the removal of tariffs and the high Australian dollar—clothing, whitegoods and furniture, similarly. In food, let me be very specific, it was the removal of tariffs. If every other country on earth has a 39 per cent tariff subsidy regime and you have four per cent, clearly your food industry is going to close down. Do you think that our farmers are 32 per cent better than the farmers in the rest of the world?

I have only been overseas for about nine days, but two of those days were spent on what they call a cattle ranch, in America. I tell you what, you would want to get up very early in the morning to compete against them. We got up at four o'clock in the morning with an axe to smash the ice. Their industry is very similar to ours; I was amazed that their station properties were about the same size as ours. They had no grass; it was the middle of winter. We have no grass at the end of the year. But they have distillers grain from the ethanol industry, so they can get through their dry period. During our dry period, our cattle just die because we cannot afford to feed them anymore. We are up against 39 per cent versus four per cent. It is impossible to compete against that.

We have only two people to sell to on the home market. This is the only country in the world in this situation. The Americans are screaming because Walmart and their other competitor have 23 per cent of the marketplace. Heavens! Woolworths and Coles have 90 per cent of the marketplace. That is not my figure, by the way; that is the ABS figure for 2002, and I am using Woolworths's and Coles's own figures for their market growth, and the AC Nielsen series figures. So that is not a figure plucked out of the air.

The third issue is the dollar. This is rather curious, and this is probably the most important thing. We once had a political party called the Country Party, and it defended the interests of the exporters and, to some degree, the manufacturers, because they compete against imports. So the dollar was crucial. As Doug Anthony said to me as a very young person: 'Don't worry about subsidies and tariffs; we don't worry about that. What we worry about is the dollar.' In his last year parliament, I think it was, he said to the Australian public, 'You bring down the dollar or I'll bring down the government.' McMahon had announced a revaluation, Menzies had announced a revaluation and he did not listen to McEwen, so McEwen threw him out on his head. He was eight years in the wilderness before he came back in again. This taught them a very salutary lesson. The Liberals learnt from the actions of the Country Party.

Now, we do not have a Country Party and so now we have interest rates that are at 2.7 per cent—the average for the last two years. That sounds pretty low, doesn't it? Well, it is pretty low until you compare it to the rest of the world, that has 0.2 per cent! Now it looks very high indeed. In fact, it is nearly 1,000 per cent higher than the rest of the world.

We are out of step on food—subsidies and tariffs; we are out of step on interest rates; and we are out of step on Woolworth and Coles—the Americans scream because they have 23 per cent, their big two. Where are we in step with the rest of the world?, I said to my son when he was very young, 'It is not very clever: take a bashing once, son, but not twice. You just figure out how he bashed you and you do it back to him, right?' It is the same with trade and business. If someone is beating you, you find out how he is beating you and you beat him back. But we belong to some sort of numbskull organisation called the Parliament of Australia. History will record that this place was responsible for the destruction of each of these industries.

I am going to help Mr Hockey out here—and I speak with authority because I was the second-ranking minister in the Queensland government, which was easily the most successfully-performing one, economically. Even our worst enemies said we were the economic superstars. We ran Queensland on $8,000 million a year. The Liberals skite about being 'small spenders'. They could not run it on $51,000 million a year! We were running it on $8,000 million and they could not run it for that. And the bunch of brainless in the ALP could not run it on $49,000 million, but they looked pretty good after the Liberals had finished and taken it to $51,000 million.

What did they spend it on? They spent it on tunnels. Let me quote Robbie Katter. My son is a member of state parliament. He asked, 'What did you spend the money on? You spent it on tunnels in Brisbane. You are the most tunnelled city in the world.' We were told there was no money for the budget next year. He said, 'We spent $5,000 million for another tunnel. What do you get for that? A few thousand people get home 10 minutes earlier to watch the television. That is a big return!' Why have they not build a railway line into the Galilee coal fields and created 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000 jobs?

If you move to ethanol, there is a $25,000 million benefit to the Australian economy. If you say that all government vehicles are to be Australian made there is a $16,000 million benefit to the Australian economy. If you build the Galilee rail line there is a $7 billion-a-year profit to the Australian economy. If you give us a fair start in prawn farming, the same as everyone else in the world, there is $10,000 million for the Australian economy. There is $4,000 million in the fertiliser industry if we get a reserved resource policy—and you will have no fertiliser industry if you do not. You will probably have no steel or aluminium industries either. If we proceed on the water development schemes for northern Australia we will get an $8,000 million benefit out of the cattle industry and 70,000 jobs.

If you applied a 10 per cent customs duty to everything coming into the country that would give you $35,000 million to spend. And I strongly suggest that you spend that in helping young people to have children. If we go towards what is a proper birthrate, where we can replace ourselves and stop being a vanishing race as we are at the present moment, then each of those babies that are born will generate one job in the Australian economy. That is 700,000 jobs, Joe, and $50,000 million that you can fix up your budget with. Listen to me, please. (Time expired)

Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to point out to the member for Kennedy that I am actually a member of the Country Liberal Party, so there is some heritage there.

John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills. In 2010, when I was elected as the representative for Bennelong, I likened it to the moment of joy when you are selected to represent your country, and then one second later you realise there is a serious responsibility. You give a vow to serve these people and in some ways you enter into a marriage; you inherit a lot of children, grandparents, parents, working people and all the challenges that a family can present you with, and you do your best to recognise the problems and find solutions.

Recently, I attended, during National Volunteer Week, our regular celebration of what you would have to refer to as the heart and soul of Bennelong. There were 300 certificates given out to people who volunteer and give their time for people who are in need. The volunteers are headed by Helen Crouch, who is an absolute treasure and a leader of this organisation. Again, it was a joy to recognise and celebrate the contribution that these people make. Another event that I have been to recently was a creation of the Ryde District Historical Society, who have put together a book, with some support from our government, called Ryde Goes to War 1914-1919. Ryde was a small, almost a farming community in 1914. There were 3,400 homes and 2,000 men and women went to war. Some 400 did not return. This book has assembled the records of all of those and some 200 biographies. Sitting, as I do, with my partner in crime, Louise Markus, she inquired whether her grandfather was in this book. We followed that up to find that TH Tyrrell, Louise's grandfather, not only went to war but also came back, and he shared that good fortune with two brothers. Louise was able to see where he had lived and where he had worked and to have confirmed her family tales.

In another moving event, I went to the launch of a book put together by Dr Robert Creelman. Again, it touched our group of representatives here, because the book was largely the story of Harvey Bawden, who is the father of the member for Murray, Sharman Stone. Harvey is now 91. He is the only survivor of a Lancaster bomber that crashed over Germany in the Second World War. Two of the crew died on impact, others survived and some were killed by marauding locals incensed by the bombing. Harvey survived, albeit with great wounds, and on this day there was a lot of pride. I am sure Sharman had pride for her father and her father certainly had pride for Sharman.

Recently, the budget has gained a great deal of notoriety. Last year's budget also gained notoriety but not always for the best reasons. This year, it is celebrated. One of the first things that we did when taking office, albeit in opposition, was to recognise the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the impact that it was having on small businesses, particularly in our villages. So we set forth and started a campaign called Bennelong Village Businesses campaign to help small businesses operate in villages for the difficult circumstances they were facing because of the economic downturn and the tough competition they were getting from the major supermarkets. We sought to get them discounts in advertising, which we were successful in thanks to the Weekly Times, who gave a 33 per cent discount, and we sought to encourage them to work together to collectively bargain. I am pleased to say that in the past couple of weeks, when we have launched our Bennelong village of the month at West Ryde, this budget has been so well received. We have had business after business tell us of their joy, their anticipation, and their optimism at the true benefits that are coming from the tax reduction and the ability to write-down a $20,000 investment.

Interestingly, in this period of time, homes need maintenance. I had had some maintenance done to my home by three different groups; I guess I had neglected it in recent times. I would call them 'Tony's tradies'. An interesting group of men, who came but—unlike other times where I have lived in the past—did not price the client but priced the job. I felt that I got great value and very high quality work done—and they left the place cleaner than when they found it, which might not have been that difficult. We have plans for our Ryde group of Tony's tradies. We are trying to assemble them so that they can take their pricing of the job to other parts of Sydney, and maybe we can help them expand their opportunities in other parts of Sydney through our BVB initiative.

Another situation we saw early on in going to schools was that a number of kids in this very diverse cultural area of Sydney were being left off the playing field. They were not being able to engage with other children, because they were not interested in playing those sports. This was a distressing thing to see—to see kids left off; not that they did not get to play the game, but they were left out of making friends through the activities of sports. I spoke to Hugh Lee, who is the head of the Asian Australian Association of Bennelong, about an idea that I had developed to put table tennis tables in all of the schools—not necessarily for the sake of playing table tennis, but to get an activity that children of all ethnic backgrounds could participate in and have fun and make friends. This has been an extraordinary success. Through the generosity of Hyundai, which gave over $100,000, we have been able to put table tennis tables in all 40 schools. Kids from all schools play in an internal competition within their schools and then they come and play in the Bennelong Cup later in the year, with over 200 kids competing in ELS Hall on the one day on some 26 tables. It is a great sight. It is a distillation of our multicultural society, and there are nothing but smiling faces. The results seem to be secondary.

This competition also accompanied the development of the Bennelong Cup, which is played at the highest level between nations in the region—China; Korea, Japan and Malaysia is joining us this year. In the year of the Anzac centenary, Australia and New Zealand will play together as Australasia, as we did at the beginning of international competition in Davis Cup tennis. We are looking forward to playing. That will be played on 12 November here in the Great Hall, with the very best table tennis players in the world competing for their country. As friendships are made on the school ground around a table tennis table, so are the friendships made between these players and between our countries.

Another issue that we became aware of was the difficulty in finding work for people with disability. As patron for Achieve, in discussions with Anne Bryce, we came up with an idea based on the Bennelong area having once been market gardens. There seemed to be a lot of land that was left over, and people just endlessly mowed it for no good reason. We came up with the concept of again having commercial market gardens in this area where land is available, but for the purpose of giving people with disability work and ownership of a business. We thought that we could encourage people who are retired and looking for active recreation and socialisation and maybe some purpose in life and marry these two groups of people together. This concept has been really well received. I went to Duncan Gay, the minister for roads in New South Wales. He was gracious and found us land. Now we are going through that red tape that you have with local councils to get a development approval to plant our first gardens at Kemp Road in Ryde. The marriage, I am here to report, is going well. We have our trials; we have our tribulations, but most of all we have great joy when we work together.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the budget we have just seen, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey have broken their promises to the families of Geelong—promises that they would not hurt them. This budget in so many ways hurts the people of Geelong by severely cutting the household budgets of Geelong. We have seen $80 billion cut from schools and hospitals in 2014 budget and re-affirmed in the 2015 budget. The inequity of $100,000 university degrees, which were put in place in 2014 budget and which remain a part of this year's budget. It creates an impossible situation for Deakin University: in effect they have to choose either providing courses that are accessible to the people of Geelong—and thereby forego the revenue that would come from higher fees to fund its research activity—or charging higher fees and thereby creating courses that are less accessible to people from Geelong who would then have to travel to places like Ballarat or Melbourne to attend university. This is an impossible situation to put Deakin University in. As I have said on many occasions, when you look at great Australian regional cities what you find within them is a great university. There is no more important institution to the future of Geelong than Deakin University. This is a budget which hurts the future of Deakin.

Geelong has gone through a difficult period over the last couple of years with decisions by both Alcoa and Ford to take their operations out of Geelong. Both have been pillars of the private sector economy in Geelong for decades—Ford had been manufacturing cars in Geelong since 1928 and Alcoa had smelted aluminium there for more than 50 years. Those decisions came as an enormous economic shock to our community. Alcoa's decision was a particular shock because its transition happened much more quickly than that of Ford. The 900 people who were employed at Point Henry are no longer working. In the aftermath of that decision everyone expected that there would be some form of adjustment assistance provided by this government to the City of Geelong, as there has been to other regions when an economic shock of this kind has occurred in the past. The Labor government provided assistance when Ford made its decision back in 2013—on the very day of that decision Labor put up $15 million. That money is now part of a fund of more than $25 million, which is helping to create jobs in Geelong. It is not a long-term solution, but adjustment assistance is an important transition measure when a city goes through a phenomenon of this kind.

We have seen a complete and stubborn refusal on the part of this government to provide a single cent of adjustment assistance to the people of Geelong in the aftermath of Alcoa's decision, and that is re-affirmed in this year's budget. Again, there is not a cent for Geelong to recover from that decision.

According to the Department of Employment, Geelong's unemployment rate stood at 7.2 per cent as of April this year. That is higher than the national average. Something like 18 per cent of Geelong's youth are unemployed and now seeking jobs. By every measure this has been a budget that does nothing for the future of the people of Geelong. By the government's own test, this is a budget that has failed. We see that spending is up considerably; we see the deficit is up considerably; and unemployment is going to rise considerably. This government has failed the tests that Labor set for it, as well as the tests that it set for itself on coming into office. It begs the very real question now: what does the Abbott government stand for, when it is prepared to spend in this way and to create deficits of this kind?

This budget was, at the end of the day, about one person's job, and that was the Prime Minister's. It was a political document. It was not a document about the nation's interest. It was certainly not a document about Geelong's interest.

In looking at a matter more specifically within the budget, I want to talk a little bit about the defence industry in Geelong and Geelong's desire to play a bigger role within our nation's defence industry. It is a sensible and clever play for Geelong to try to move into this space. The defence industry is a high-tech industry often with high-tech manufacturing as a part of it. When you look at the future for Geelong, our future has to be in the space of innovation, in research, in high-tech manufacturing, in climbing the technological ladder—doing things in Australia, in Geelong, that you cannot do anywhere else in the world, competing on the basis of knowledge and quality as opposed to competing on the basis of price and low wages. That is why we need to move down a more high-tech path, and in that context the defence industry is a great industry for Geelong to pursue.

There are many advantages about Geelong in terms of its ability to participate within the defence industry. We do have, as I mentioned earlier, a fantastic university in Deakin which does incredible work particularly with composite materials. The carbon fibre research centre at Deakin University which was funded by the then Rudd government is the highest tech carbon fibre research furnace in the world. It really is asserting Geelong as the centre of a future carbon fibre industry in this country. There is also great robotics research done at Deakin that is relevant to the defence industry. There is, of course, by virtue of all the manufacturing history that we have had in Geelong, a skilled workforce ready to play its part. We have great organisations like the Gordon TAFE which are there ready to do whatever retraining is necessary.

Perhaps most critically, we have to the north of Geelong perhaps the best transport and logistics land in the country—a place where Highway 1, the national rail gauge, an airport and a seaport all converge within just a couple of kilometres of each other and there there is land which can be used to do transport and logistics, all of which is highly relevant to any defence industry plan. So this is a great opportunity for Geelong and specifically the LAND 400 project, which is about building the new state-of-the-art Army land vehicles and is a particularly good opportunity to get into the defence industry space. This is a $10 billion project for our nation. It is about updating our land capabilities, and positioning Geelong to have a part of that future is, I think, really important and definitely the kind of thing that Labor would want to support given our history within the automotive industry and given that the design part of Ford's business will remain in Geelong beyond 2016. There are obviously synergies associated with that.

Having made those observations about the significance of the defence industry and the significance of LAND 400, we see from this Liberal government and indeed the Liberal mayor in Geelong a group of people who are prepared to talk a pretty big game but, when it actually comes to delivering runs on the board and doing things on the ground, we have seen absolutely nothing. We saw the Liberal Mayor of Geelong on the front page of the Geelong Advertiser in July last year in front of his Australian flag, brandishing a toy machine gun in front of a fake armoured personnel carrier, talking about how wonderful LAND 400 was going to be. We saw the member for Corangamite dressed up in her military gear inside a tank at Puckapunyal on the front page of the Advertiser in February of this year. There is no shortage of media releases and photoshoots which the Liberals and Geelong will go to to promote this; but, when it comes to actually delivering this project, we have seen nothing. This budget gives us no line of sight at all about future investments in the LAND 400 project in Australia and specifically in Geelong. It is important to make the observation that there is just a sense that we have seen the Liberals peddling some false hope in Geelong, because this is about climbing the technological ladder and this is about a high-tech play going into the next decade. Indeed, Dr Roger Lough made this observation at a research dinner last year:

Don't look at it from a replacement to the car manufacturing side of things but look at it as a way of expanding the intellectual … capacity of Geelong …

We need to bear in mind what this is about, but, that said, I think LAND 400 is of critical importance to the future of Geelong. Under Labor, first pass on this project would have occurred in April of last year. That was deferred and so we have seen the project slip out and first pass did not occur until the beginning of this year. In Senate estimates just this week we have heard about further slippage in the LAND 400 project. Whereas the tenderer was expected to be chosen in early 2017, there seemed to be comments made yesterday that now that may not happen until 2018. What we see under the Liberals here in Canberra and with the Liberals in Geelong is LAND 400 slipping back. The idea being promoted was that we were going to see this project produce jobs in Geelong as soon as possible—that is something Labor wants to see happen. But, while we see that big game being talked in Geelong, we see very little action on the ground indeed.

We see that also in respect of the LAND 121 project. Again, I think some false hope has been peddled here. We had the Liberal mayor visiting Canberra in recent months and talking with people in this building, as well as in the Geelong Advertiser, about the prospect of bringing forward the scheduled review of the LAND 121 project from 2018 back to this year, 2015. This was with a view to working with Mercedes to see a consolidation of their business in Geelong—which would have created a couple of hundred jobs—on the basis that the LAND 121 project review would be brought forward to this year. On 7 March this year we had the Liberal mayor on the front page of the Geelong Advertiser talking a really big game about the prospects for LAND 121 and the jobs that would be created by bringing it forward. We saw him up here in Canberra, at ratepayers' expense, seeking to lobby whoever would talk to him—but what was the outcome of all that effort? I can tell you the outcome of that in this budget is that nothing has been brought forward. We will not see the LAND 121 project being brought forward in such a way that would put Mercedes in the game and would allow those jobs to be created in Geelong.

Once again, a whole lot of photo shoots, a whole lot of big talk on the part of Liberals in Geelong and in Canberra, but when it comes to delivering on the ground, delivering jobs in Geelong, we see absolutely nothing. By contrast, what you have had from Labor over the years is a diligent, a methodical and a concerted attempt to position Geelong into the defence industry. Chemring was the beneficiary of a $1.8 million grant out of the Geelong Region Innovation and Investment Fund when Labor was in power and a further $3.7 million grant under the Priority Industry Capability Innovation Program when Labor was in power, which has been really critical in developing what was perhaps our biggest defence industry player in Geelong today.

Quickstep, a manufacturer of high-grade carbon fibre composite components which are able to be used on the Bushmaster, received a $1.76 million grant through the Geelong Region Innovation and Investment Fund—the fund I referred to earlier that Labor set up when Ford made its decision to leave Geelong. This is exactly the kind of grant which is creating jobs in Geelong, exactly the kind of grant which cannot be made by virtue of no money having been provided to Geelong as a result of Alcoa's decision.

At a state level, Labor has put the Defence Procurement Office in Victoria, which is going to be based in Geelong to position Geelong at the centre of Victoria's defence industry future. On the part of Labor you see action when it comes to putting Geelong within the defence industry. On the part of the Liberals you see nothing but photo shoots and hot air.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise to speak about the 2015 budget and the appropriation bills of the government in response to this year's budget. It is always interesting to follow the member for Corio talking about defence expenditure and Labor members speaking about defence expenditure. This budget, of course, goes a long way to restoring Labor's most significant cuts to the defence budget—in fact, the lowest level of GDP expenditure in defence since 1938—under the previous Labor government. So whenever Labor members rise to speak about the defences forces or expenditure in defence it is important to remind them that, even with significant forward investment into the defences forces this year, we are only recovering to about 1.9 per cent of GDP. This government, of course, is committed to growth in the defence expenditure over the forward estimates, restoring and repairing the budget from Labor's severe cuts to our defence forces—the worst since 1938 in terms of the level of expenditure.

The 2015 budget is a budget that boosts jobs, growth and opportunity for all Australians, and it is no different in my electorate of Mitchell and in my state of New South Wales, where we are seeing a Liberal state government returning New South Wales to the top of the economic indices in our country. We have investment in roads and rail, co-sponsored by the federal government, of course, importantly in Western Sydney and south-western Sydney, with the firm decision of the Prime Minister to build a second airport, a Western Sydney airport, for Sydney, which is being built with infrastructure up-front 20 years prior to the operation of the airport. It is a clever way to do it—a federal government that believes in investing in the infrastructure up-front for the community, making sure the roads are in place, the infrastructure is in place, well ahead of the growth of the airport and the first runway operating within 10 years.

We see in this budget the most significant investment in our small business policy of a federal government since Federation. The instant asset write-off policy of $20,000, a real instant asset write-off policy, is something that is universally being acclaimed by the small business sector and the business community in Australia as the single best policy for small business in our history. It is easy to why, because small business can now go out with confidence and invest, grow, use the money to get that extra piece of infrastructure or equipment for their business, claim the money immediately, return it to their cash flow and get on with delivering a profit for their business. Labor like to speak about their own instant asset write-off policy, which of course was at a level of $5,000. They did not understand that $5,000 is not enough for a small business to really get the key infrastructure upgrade that they need. The benchmark of $20,000 is being seen as the single best policy since Federation for small business. If you understood small business at all, Member for Griffith, you would know that $20,000—

Ms Butler interjecting—

A small business person in the Labor Party? You have really missed your calling if you are a small business person. You are in the wrong party. You would be welcome to transition any time if you believe in small business. You can also vote for this great Appropriation Bill with confidence, knowing that we support your family's small business with a $20,000 instant asset write-off. For the first time we are creating a two-tiered company tax rate. I am sure your small business family will tell you that is the best policy idea that you could come up with in the federal government. You could step up and follow this with some welcome endorsement of the government's policies and say, 'Thank you for doing it.' You could also lobby your leader, the Leader of the Opposition, and tell him that if we could get these measures through the Senate quickly, businesses could invest with confidence. It is disturbing to see that accountants have been saying to some small businesses, 'Please don't do this until the legislation is passed.' That is what some accountants have been advising businesses out there.

There is that lack of confidence, that lack of certainty and that lack of commitment from the Labor Party, and we have got the last of the Mohicans over here, the member for Griffith, who is the only small business advocate within the Labor Party—the last of the Mohicans. You should put a movie together about your struggle within the Labor Party for small business. I have never met someone in the Labor Party from small business. You should get a badge or something. It would be good if she spoke to her leader and said, 'Pass the small business measures straightaway.' If they went through, small businesses could make those investments with confidence. You know that and we know that. All we need is the support of Labor in the Senate. It will be very interesting to see how quickly they expedite those measures in the Senate or whether they are subject to committees or delays. It will be interesting to see whether your comrades in the Greens—your friends and colleagues that you support so much in the Senate and that you work so closely with—adopt your very pro-small business view. I really welcome that we have a small business person in the Labor Party. It is a great development and we should let off some fireworks.

This budget also has the Supporting Australian Families package—a $4.4 billion funding boost. These are very important reforms. I commend the Minister for Social Services, Scott Morrison, the member for Cook, who is running a nannies trial for child care. Families will receive a subsidy of a percentage of the fixed hourly rate of $7 per hour per child, for a maximum of 50 hours per week. Eligibility is based on family income and available only to families on incomes below $250,000—something I am sure members opposite can agree with. It will support the employment of about 4,000 nannies. It is for shift workers and families that have children with a disability. It is a trial. I think it is very good that the federal government is trialling this. There has been a lot of talk in this space for a long time.

An opposition member interjecting—

Qualified nannies? Absolutely. For 2,000 years of human history, we have had people who have been able to look after children—your parents, your grandparents. That has been the way human society has evolved for 2,000 years. They did not need a union to be able to do that. They did not need to be registered or certified by the union. They did not need to be a member of a union to be able to look after children.

An opposition member interjecting—

They have been able to do that job by themselves without your interference for most of human history. A nanny is a very good idea for a person who is a shift worker, because they cannot access traditional child care. They cannot go into the childcare centre during operating hours and say, 'I need to use this service.' They are working at that time. They work irregular hours and shifts, but they still need child care. That is what this nanny trial is about. It is also about families that have children with disabilities, which often means they have complex needs. They may have requirements outside the norm, requirements that are not standard.

Of course there is a benchmark that has to be met when government money is being disbursed. But equally we have to recognise the available parenting and childcare skills and not put onerous requirements on them. That would create a problem and prevent us from going ahead with a nannies program. A nannies program is a very good idea. Flexibility in child care is a very good idea. The future of this policy area is flexibility. The future is recognising that you cannot impose one set of rules on every family or every family structure in this country. You have to have multiple approaches, including nannies and other mechanisms. The government's trial in this space is, I think, a very forward-looking idea. It is a good investment and I think we are going to see some good results that will surprise some of the nay-sayers in the opposition. It will help us move to a flexible model for the delivery of child care, which is something that has been lacking. Certainly the previous Labor government spent a lot of time making child care less affordable.

Another feature of the budget that I think is exceptionally important is the $1.2 billion investment in new funding for national security, building on the $1 billion we announced in the previous year's budget. We have of course extended operations in the Middle East, in Iraq in particular but also in Afghanistan and the broader Middle East. This requires extra procurement through the Defence budget. But there is also money to restore the capability of our security agencies to do their job—restoring capability that was lost due to the funding cuts made by Labor to many of our national security agencies, including Customs and Border Protection. The rate of container inspections in Australia was reduced, which is now seen to have been a major error of the previous government. Other border protection agencies were also cut under Labor—at a time when the terror threat was increasing, at a time when we needed our border protection and customs agencies to be better resourced. Security is a prime function of government. One of the first functions of government is to protect the nation and keep it secure. Without these agencies being well funded, without that funding being well targeted, without those agencies being able to do the job at the level we need them to do it at, we have more illegal goods entering the country and more criminal activity, and we become more susceptible to terrorism. The previous government's cuts to the funding of our national security agencies had a range of implications. This government's $1.2 billion investment in this year's budget goes a long way towards restoring some of the damage done by the previous government.

The most important element of this year's budget is the credible pathway to surplus that has been established. This is not a government which puts out rhetoric claiming to have delivered a surplus when we have not—as we know the member for Lilley was so found of doing. During the last government, the then member for Lindsay famously put out a budget newsletter to his electorate telling them that he had delivered a budget surplus. I think the electorate told him what they thought of him at the last election after he told them that there was a surplus when there was no surplus.

Most importantly about that, we have seen—

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Your government's surplus, Alan!

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will speak to our government's surplus. We are on a credible pathway back to surplus—very credible.

Ms Butler interjecting—

I think the key word there is 'credible'. You would be very interested to know, Member for Griffith, that we are reducing the deficit each and every year from $35.1 billion down to just $6.9 billion. What always amazes me about the Labor Party is that they come into this chamber on the appropriation bills and say, 'Oh, the debt, the deficit: you've doubled the debt; you've doubled the deficit,' when they well know that when they were in government they locked in government expenditure. Government expenditure was growing at an unsustainable rate. They continued to promise the world and not fund it. They made promises in education that they could never fund beyond the forward estimates. There was simply no money. They made promises in relation to the National Disability Insurance Scheme, without allocating the money. Whenever you make promises but do not allocate the money, you really are not making a legitimate promise. It is on the never, never.

Of course, what the government is left with, what we inherited when we came to office, is a substantial debt and deficit. In fact, it is the largest single debt that any Australian government has ever inherited in the shortest space of time—six years. Considering the position the previous Labor government started from—

Ms Butler interjecting—

We warned you in the global financial crisis not to spend as much as you did. We actually told you that you were spending too much. You were spending too much. You did spend too much. The rate of stimulus was out of all proportion with what was needed in Australia. It is easy to spend it when it is not your money. It is easy to spend it when you do not earn it. It is easy to spend it when you have no intention of paying it back.

This government is fiscally responsible. We are on a credible path to surplus. Over the forward estimates there will be a $7 billion deficit. We will still be in deficit—that is absolutely true—but we can look any Australian in the eye and tell them that we have taken government debt left to us by Labor, a deficit year on year, down to a $7 billion deficit. That is pretty good progress, considering that the iron ore price continues to drop, leaving a revenue shortfall—which, of course, the former government was so keen to speak about—and it is at a time when the global economic outlook is quite poor and revenue is falling. So it is good progress to reduce the deficit to $7 billion over the forward estimates. And that is before we get to the point of starting to pay down Labor's debt, which, of course, is a whole new proposition in itself. We are borrowing every day $100 million just to fund the ordinary services of government—but, of course, for Labor that is not a problem. There is no spending cut that they approve of and no spending that they do not approve of. They want to keep spending and they do not want to make any cuts. It is easy when it is not your money. It is easy when you are borrowing it. It is easy when you have got no intention of paying it back. That is very, very easy. What a job to be given! People in this country would love to be in an organisation that can borrow money at will, spend it anyway they like and have no intention of ever paying it back. Nobody could operate like that. No business, no family, no budget structure in this country could sustain a Labor Party approach. I think every Australian inherently understands that. Every single Australian understands that.

Ms Butler interjecting—

I will take that interjection. The member for Griffith says that this debt is cheaper than equity, or she is making a point that you can use debt to finance various projects. That is absolutely true. But if you spend $667 billion of debt—

Ms Butler interjecting—

And what do you have to show for it, Member for Griffith? What is it? Do you have a new defence force? Do you have new submarines? No, you don't.

Ms Butler interjecting—

Yes, it is a $676 billion deficit. We could have 100 submarines for that price. We could have a whole Joint Strike Fighter fleet funded. We could have every piece of critical infrastructure in the country funded. Yes, the trillion-dollar backlog in infrastructure in Australia would almost be completed with that level of debt. Was that what was funded by the previous government? No. Can the member for Griffith give me in five seconds a list of things that were funded with that debt? Of course not. You racked it up. That was what was really wrong with the previous Labor government. You racked up debt, you racked up deficits but you had very little to show for it. That, of course, is the biggest problem that we have got, because if you do infrastructure that is enhancing for the economy, if you are financing things that make a difference, that is absolutely right. But this government was left with a debt and deficit legacy like no other—and we are taking steps to fix it in this budget.

So I fully support this appropriation bill. We are reducing the size of government over that period from a high under the previous Labor administration. Given the fact that we have been left with the worst set of numbers that any government has ever been given, it is pretty rich of members of the former government to look at us and say, 'Why haven't you fixed it?' Well, why haven't you helped us to fix it? They are the people now blocking the solution, and they are the people who created the problem. So why don't they come to the party? Either help us fix the problem or get out of the way.

Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am glad for the opportunity to address the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills and the budget they underwrite, because there are a number of measures within the government's plan that are of great concern to me and to the people I represent.

In broad terms, this budget fits the government's established practice of making a big noise about fiscal responsibility yet doing virtually nothing to demonstrate that responsibility, and then producing a lot of harm and uncertainty on the way through. In many areas, this budget reinforces the disappointment and negative impacts delivered in last year's budget.

In the case of Indigenous affairs, for example, the cuts of more than $500 million last year persist, and are exacerbated by uncertainty involved in the government's Indigenous Advancement Strategy. This runs against the national imperative and is contrary to the rhetoric of the Prime Minister in terms of the urgent need to do more in closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Kirstie Parker and Mick Gooda, co-chairs of the Close the Gap Campaign, expressed concern that the impact of last year's cuts have not been acknowledged or reversed. They noted:

The nation wants continued focus and action to close the unacceptable health and life expectancy gap. We need bold policy initiatives supported by long-term investment in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.

The same can be said in relation to policy and programs that cover pensioners and the unemployed.

The Salvation Army released data from the latest economic and social impact survey on 27 May that showed couples with no children on Newstart allowance were living off only $9.57 a day after accommodation expenses. From the survey of more than 2,400 people it was found that 56 per cent of respondents said their financial situation was worse than last year, 78 per cent of respondents in private housing were experiencing extreme housing stress, 62 per cent of parents could not afford an internet connection and 43 per cent could not afford to give children fresh fruit or vegetables daily. There is nothing in this budget that goes to ameliorating this kind of serious disadvantage.

In some areas this budget provides fresh disappointments. At a time when the Australian community is seized by the importance of addressing domestic violence, the government has totally missed the opportunity to provide meaningful resources or programs to achieve change. It is true that any government's first obligation is to ensure safety and peace for its citizens, but it is wrong only to trot out that line in respect of an overblown threat of harm from terrorism, when harm of much larger scope is occurring on a widespread basis in Australian homes, done by Australians to one another.

The only budget spend in this regard is a contribution of $16 million to an awareness campaign that will cost $30 million. Not a single one of the nine critical areas of funding identified by family violence experts has been provided the resources necessary to see change—the resources that are needed to provide shelter, advice, counselling and legal assistance. Renee Carr, executive director of Fair Agenda, responded to the budget by saying:

Last night was a test of the government's commitment to dealing with Australia's domestic violence crisis, and it's a test they failed.

As reported in The Sydney Morning Herald, we know that thousands of women are being turned away each year from crisis centres and refuges. We know that thousands of women are turned away from community legal centres and that thousands of calls to domestic violence hotlines go unanswered. Karen Willis, executive director of Rape & Domestic Violence Services Australia, has said that they need $2 million to ensure that one in four calls do not go unanswered.

At the risk of being howled down by those who believe that any criticism, however reasonable, of our approach to the threat of terrorism marks you as some kind of soft-hearted traitor, it is ridiculous that the government is applying $1.2 billion to meet that threat and only $16 million—or a bit more than one per cent of that amount—to address a scourge that kills a woman in Australia every week. It affects one in three women over the course of their life and it is the leading cause of death, disability and ill health in women between 15 and 44 years of age.

Good government requires a focus on substance, not surface, and if we are serious about reducing harm and violence there are several areas of much greater concern than terrorism per se. Of course, we need to be wary of the potential for such acts and properly resource our law enforcement and intelligence agencies. But when we take the imperative to protect our citizens and residents from harm seriously, we cannot apply such a disproportionate focus on terrorism when much more frequent and harmful kinds of violence are being ignored and neglected.

What the Lindt Cafe siege showed is not a failure to deal with a potential terrorist but rather the failure to deal with a man who perpetrated serious domestic violence and, to some degree, the failure to take account of a person who was likely suffering from a mental illness and who had a history of strange behaviour. I am very sorry that this budget further perpetuates the government's inclination to beat the national security drum while failing to combat more immediate and harmful dangers in our society.

Another area of fresh disappointment is the decision to take $100 million, or 15 per cent of the total budget, out of the Australia Council for the Arts. There has been no justification for this cut, and it flies in the face of the reform process the Australia Council has undertaken, the outcomes of which were announced, with the responding strategic plan launched by the current Minister for the Arts.

The decision to pull more than $105 million into an arts fund that will be run by the minister and the federal arts ministry is not based on any review or analysis that indicated the need or value of such a move; nor was it done on the basis of any consultation with the Australia Council or the broader arts sector. It would appear to be a politically motivated decision aimed at giving the minister the unstructured and unsupervised power to reward friends and pick winners—perhaps a grand opera cycle by Andrew Bolt or a set of interpretive dances about the ways in which data retention is good for one and all!

The point is that what should be out of the question in an independent process could potentially be approved solely at the discretion of the minister. This is terrible decision-making and it will impact heavily on Australian arts and culture. The minister himself has previously argued that art will always provoke debate, saying:

… that's why we have an arms-length and peer-reviewed structure for the allocation for the funding.

Now he has altered that sound practice.

The Australia Council will lose more than 25 per cent of its discretionary funding outside the support provided through its major programs. In response to the surprise cuts, it has already been forced to announce the cancellation of the ArtStart, Creative Communities Partnerships Initiative and Artists in Residence programs.

In this budget, our international development assistance is further hammered, with aid to Africa slashed by 70 per cent, abandoning the Labor government approach of being prepared to help people in the poorest and most disadvantaged nations.

The Minister for the Arts and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, rather than safeguarding the interests of their sectors of responsibility—whose best performance and function you would think they would understand, represent and support—instead appear to be presiding over their ransacking. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

On a similar theme, this government's approach to retarding creativity and innovation, it is sad to see the ongoing uncertainty around the operation and support of Australia's cooperative research centres. Sadly, this is entirely in keeping with the Abbott government's tendency to hamstring scientific research in Australia. Previously, it has been cuts to the CSIRO, with $111 million chopped out over four years, in addition to reduced funding for the Australian Research Council and the Australian Institute of Marine Science, among others. Taken all together, the Minister for Industry and Science has presided over $3 billion of cuts to science, innovation and industry programs.

In Senate estimates yesterday, it was confirmed that, in the health field, the Abbott government has cut $600 million from drug and alcohol, mental health and chronic disease services. Of course, the Treasurer did not think to mention these cruel and counterproductive cuts during his budget speech.

There was not even one mention of climate change in the Treasurer's budget speech, which is bizarre in itself, but of more concern is the fact that, through this budget, government spending on climate change measures is being halved, from $1.35 billion in 2014-15 to $700 million in 2015-16. Specific cuts have been made to the National Landcare Program and the National Low Emissions Coal Initiative. The electorate I represent wants to see action on climate change; it wants to see Australia make rapid progress towards a low-carbon economy and take advantage of our natural conditions and our human capital, when it comes to science and innovation, by developing world-leading renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies.

Other matters that did not rate a mention in this budget but that are of enormous concern to the Australian community are affordable housing and urban public transport.

The electorate I represent is not interested in overheated rhetoric about terrorism and cybersecurity; it wants to see real action on domestic violence, social disadvantage, affordable housing, public transport, mental health, and climate change. The electorate I represent is happy to consider sensible reform in areas like superannuation, capital gains tax, negative gearing and corporate tax avoidance, in order to improve our capacity as a nation to invest in the things we share: health, education, the environment and essential community infrastructure like public transport. This budget unfortunately staggers on in a kind of pale imitation of last year's budget. It is timid and ineffective on the question of a path to surplus and it does nothing to chart a path towards a fairer, smarter, healthier, more creative and more sustainable Australia.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last year I began with the iron law of economic history as laid down by Niall Ferguson, the great Harvard economics historian, and as relayed through the history of the Medicis, the Ottomans, through so many different empires—from the Spanish and others—and that was the simple point: those societies, those states, those nations that live beyond their economic means will ultimately suffer an enormous reckoning. To put it another way, to paraphrase Charles Dickens's Mr Micawber, if you spend more than you have, the answer is simple—unhappiness.

In the end, the idea that we can perpetually spend more than we have, more than we earn, leads to a fundamental problem: the generation that expends is engaged in intergenerational theft, and their children and their children's children will pick up the bill, and they will pick it up in the form of lower living standards, greater pressure and fewer funds to achieve the things that are important. In other words, as each family knows, as each business knows, if we do not budget prudently now, the reckoning that shall come in the future will not necessarily be borne by us but by those that come after us, and that I would think is a matter of deep regret for each member of this House.

Where there have had to have been difficult choices in recent budgets, that is because there were bad choices in previous budgets. It is a very important thing to understand. Having lived through the Home Insulation Program, foreseen, forewarned and sadly having to pick up the pieces, I can recognise that there are profound social consequences of bad policy. Right now, we are going through the process of compensating the businesses that suffered from the Home Insulation Program. I personally talked with, met with and finalised compensation for many of the families. Indeed, we dealt with all of the families of the four young men who were involved with the Home Insulation Program. The grand point here being: bad choices lead inevitably to hard choices, and that is the great historical situation in which we find ourselves.

Fortunately, we have made hard choices, and that means that we are able to better manage our circumstances. We can see the decline in the budget deficit from $36 billion to $26 billion to $14 billion to $7 billion over the out years, and then heading towards a long-term sustainable position. This comes against a budget which we inherited which, over its previous six years, had gone from a surplus of $20 billion to deficits of $27 billion, $54 billion, $47 billion, $43 billion, $18 billion and $48 billion, by my recollection. What does that mean? It means that we went from a position of profound national economic security to profound expenditure. Of course there were external events, but what was extraordinary was the degree of inbuilt ever-growing expenditure beyond the capacity of the budget to meet it, which had been left as a legacy when the Rudd and Gillard governments were voted out. That inbuilt expenditure was enormous.

So, to the extent that we are going through the process of bringing Australia back to a sustainable economic position, it is also important to understand that we have had $90 billion of write-downs over the four years of the current forward estimates in revenue. That means, had we not made the changes we did, not only would we have not been able to have made the reductions; we would have been an additional $90 billion worse off than the budget papers now indicate. So it is the comparison with the counterfactual, not just the absolute, which is critical here. We have closed that $90 billion and we are making real reductions in the annual deficit. That is an extremely important intergenerational legacy, a fundamental intergenerational legacy.

When you look around the world, whether it is Greece or Ireland or Iceland, whether it is Italy or Spain, whether it is the example from Asia or from Latin America, in the end time catches up with everybody who spends more than they have. In the case of families and businesses, it is earlier. In the case of nations and budgets, it is later. But the iron law of economic history, as outlined by Niall Ferguson and so many others, is inevitable. If you indulge beyond your means, no matter how worthy the seeming cause, in the end you will have disrupted that cause. You will have left a legacy which is unsustainable and unattainable in terms of allowing future generations to experience the same outcomes. Where there have had to have been hard decisions, I repeat, it is because previously there were bad decisions.

Having said that, I think we have achieved an extraordinary outcome in this budget. I want to address it briefly from the perspective of my own electorate of Flinders, with regards to the Roads to Recovery program, something that is of extreme importance in a semirural electorate. Across the councils that I represent we have seen a double payment—more than $8.1 million across the electorate: for Bass Coast Shire, $1.33 million; for Cardinia Shire, $2.34 million; for Casey city, $2.12 million; for Mornington Peninsula Shire, $2.29 million; and for French Island, which is unincorporated, $38,000, and that will assist, I hope, in grading and maintaining the central spine on that road.

Through the $1 billion National Stronger Regions Fund, which deals with national infrastructure projects in regional areas, I am absolutely delighted that the Casey Cultural Precinct, or Bunjil Place, just outside of my electorate admittedly, received $10 million in the budget. It is an area that effectively encompasses both the seats of Holt and La Trobe. It is a tremendous outcome for the City of Casey. The Commonwealth money should leverage state money. I call on the state to match or exceed the Commonwealth's funding, as well as to support the great work of the City of Casey. This cultural precinct, I hope—and it is something I will work towards—will be a brilliant architectural outcome and a magnificent community asset.

I would like to see, whether it is the National Gallery of Australia or the National Museum of Australia, whether it is the National Gallery of Victoria or the Museum Victoria, place some of their holdings in the Casey cultural centre as a Victorian regional precinct. Each of these institution holds far more in their stocks than they are able to display for the public. That additional holding should be available. I would like to work with each of those four institutions to find one that will establish a regional outpost, or regional centre, in this magnificent, new Bunjil Place. That, for Casey, one of the fastest-growing precincts in Australia, would be a wonderful vote of confidence and a real destination maker.

In addition, the Stronger Communities program, announced in the budget, will provide $150,000 a year over two years to fund small capital projects in local communities. I will be establishing a local community advisory panel, which will operate in exactly the same way as the panel for the Anzac Centenary grants, and they played a tremendous role in advising on critical projects. Soon enough we will be calling for panel members, and soon after that we will be calling for projects.

Against that background, at the end of the day, the heart and soul of this budget was about jobs both for families and created by small businesses. Elsewhere, the small business package has been covered. But for the thousands and thousands of small businesses in the electorate of Flinders, the instant asset write-off is something which they have talked to me about each and every day that I have been in the electorate since the budget.

The tax deductions for small businesses are of tremendous merit, as is the recognition of sole traders and unincorporated entities. These have received a great deal of positive approval. At the end of the day this budget is about giving people the chance to be their best selves by giving them the chance to employ, and by giving them the chance to be employed. For that, I commend the budget and I commend the general direction of giving the future generations the best chance to live the life of their choice.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I just listened to the member for Flinders with interest, and I want to pick up on one point he has made. He referred to the intergenerational theft. As Minister for the Environment perhaps he should consider his government's lack of action, and his personal responsibility in that as Minister for the Environment, with respect to the intergenerational theft of our lack of a response to the issue of climate change.

As I have said on other occasions, the budget reflects a government's priorities and its values. Budgets do not lie, and the figures within them speak for themselves. Last year's budget, the 2014-15 budget, exposed the Abbott government's values, its election spin and its true agenda. It also exposed a government that could not be trusted, that was arrogant and out of touch, and that clearly lacked compassion.

The Australian people showed their discontent after they quickly learnt about the government they had elected. Indeed, only earlier this year, we saw that the Prime Minister, and, I suggest, the Treasurer, hold onto their jobs by their fingertips. As a result of that, the 2015-16 budget, as contained in the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and cognate bills, has a very clear objective. Its objective is to secure or save the job of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer and to win back political goodwill that was lost as a result of the government's 2014-15 budget.

The centrepiece of the 2015-16 budget is the policies relating to small business and child care changes. However, when one digs deeper into those policies and looks beyond the government's media spin in respect to the budget, what we continue to see is a budget that is filled with unfair and heartless policies. Indeed, it is those policies that underpin this budget. It is a budget that the government has tried very hard to sell as one that is good for Australia. Yet, simultaneously, we see that the government's own messaging has had to be changed. In fact, they have made a 180 degree backflip with respect to their debt and deficit rhetoric, which they had clung to for six years whilst they were in opposition. As soon as they came into government, within in a very short period of time they have had to do a complete backflip on that, as we saw in this year's budget. The hypocrisy of that flows right through to everything else we see in this budget.

Concerningly, this is a budget that has no plan and no vision for the future. Indeed, the government's spin has not fooled the Australian community broadly, and it certainly has not fooled astute business leaders or economic analysts. We have seen that even since this budget business confidence continues to fall. Only last week there were reports of capital expenditure across the country declining quite significantly. Capital expenditure, as we all know, generates economic activity throughout the country. And there have been other reports that point to similar trends.

Clearly, the government has not won back the confidence of the Australian people. The problem with this budget is this: if the budget does not have a vision and a strategy for the future of Australia, and if the budget deficit continues to be at levels that are unacceptable—and the fact is that this government has been in office for almost two years—the government can no longer continue to point to the past government and blame all of the woes on the past government. It has had plenty of time to change direction as a result of implementing, supposedly, policies that would work better. The truth is that the government is unable to do that. But if the economy continues to remain weak, as it is, then what happens is that unemployment rises, hardships continue to increase, small and medium businesses struggle, and tax receipts fall and then we see the Abbott government, by necessity, having to impose more unfair cuts on the broader community. Unfortunately, those unfair cuts, inevitably, add to the suffering of the most vulnerable people in this country, as we saw them attempt to do with their 2014-15 budget. Even worse, we have seen in this budget some of the measures that the Abbott government clearly understood were not popular and clearly understood that the Australian people were not going to support rebadged in a different way. The attacks on the pensioners that we saw in 2014-15 have been recrafted. Now, instead of doing away with the indexation change that the Abbott government wanted to implement, what they have come back with is reducing the limit on the assets that pensioners are allowed to hold before their pension gets cut. The truth of the matter is that that is going to take away $2.4 billion from pensioners over the forward estimates—that is the bottom line. That is $2.4 billion that most pensioners would spend in this country and add to the economic stimulus that they would have been able to do had those funds not been cut.

We see that also with the Medicare tax that the Abbott government wanted to introduce and all of its different versions of it. Yes, they appear to have sidelined that, but what they are going to do now from this budget is freeze the MBS payments to doctors. The net effect of that is that doctors will get less money from the Commonwealth for their service and in turn it will force them to put up their costs to their patients when they come through the door. It is a backhanded way of bringing in a Medicare co-payment. But probably the most pretentious spin of all in this budget is about the changes it wants to make to the childcare rebate and the pretence that this government cares about young families It wants to pay for those changes once the child gets to six-years-old and above by taking away the family tax benefit B payments that are currently available to families. In other words, we will give you a bit more money in the early years—this is what the government is saying to families—but we will take it away from you in a few years' time. In other words, you are going to pay, you the families, for this so-called beneficial change that we are bringing in. In my view, that is blatant deception because every child will grow through its early years and eventually turn six-years-old.

There are other matters about this budget which are deeply concerning. Some of the most unfair parts of the 2014-15 budget have been carried over into this budget: the $1.3 billion of pensioner concessions; the cuts made to the states, forcing them to impose additional costs on the people of their respective states; the nearly $1 billion dollars of cuts to local government as a result of freezing the Financial Assistance Grant program to local councils across the country; the $80 billion of health and education cuts—and I believe that the health cuts have had another $2 billion added to them; the $500 million cuts to Indigenous programs; the further cuts to Australian foreign aid, taking Australia's foreign aid spending to 0.22 per cent of GNI, which is, I understand, the lowest level on record. Then we have had the billion dollar cuts to schools and apprenticeships funding and another billion dollars of cut to industry assistance programs. These are all still in this budget. The people of Australia have to wear all of these cuts. And then we turn to the additional new cuts that the Abbott government has made in this budget and the 80,000 women who are likely to lose eleven and a half thousand dollars of paid parental leave. This was brought in as part of the legislation five years ago. I have never heard a word of criticism about it but all of a sudden these women are accused of double dipping. If the government members genuinely believe that they are double dipping, why did they not raise it five years ago when the legislation was first discussed and debated in this place? Then we have $125 million of cuts to the child dental benefits scheme; $144 million of cuts to the Medicare Benefits Schedule for child health assessments; $69 million of cuts to dental and allied health for our veterans; plus another $20 million of cuts to dementia and aged-care funds. The point I make about all those cuts is that they go to the heart of families in this country. They are direct cuts on the weekly budget of families across this country. One    that has not attracted much media attention is that fees for partner visas in this country, under this government, have gone up from $3,000 to $6,865 over less than two years. Those are partner visas—in other words, families trying to reunite and come together. It is totally unfair.

Then we also move on to the young people of this country and the 22- to 24-year olds that are being told, 'Instead of getting Newstart, you will be put on youth allowance and you will have $48 per week cut from your income'. Families are being told, 'We will freeze the family payment rate for the next two years'. Again, that is going to heart of hurting families in this country. This is not a family friendly budget. Indeed, this is not a family friendly government. The spin about childcare assistance and small business support is nothing but a smokescreen.

I want to turn briefly in the time that I have to how this budget affects South Australia. It is clear to me, and to many South Australians, that the Abbott government have little regard or concern for the people of South Australia. In their first year of office, they took away the supplementary local road funding of $18 million a year. Then in the same year, in their supposedly big infrastructure package of $50 billion, South Australia received $2 billion of that, which represents four per cent of the national infrastructure spend. I heard today the member for Grayndler talking about the fact that in this year's budget $360 million—I believe it was—was cut even out of that. Then we have $650 million cut of out of the water buyback program, which was directly targeted and put in the budget to assist with ensuring that the water flowed to South Australia and to restoring the extra 450 gigalitres of water that South Australians had asked for as part of the agreement. That was done away with as well.

But it goes further than that, because they are not just happy to hit South Australia with those cuts; this government that have turned their back on South Australia with respect to assistance to the auto industry. They took that assistance away from the auto industry, and we saw the collapse of the auto industry across Australia as a result. That, in turn, decimated what I call the Edinburgh Parks precinct of northern Adelaide, where many of the car component firms had established their businesses. They are all winding down as a result of Holden's closing in the next couple of years. On top of that, we get a massive hit to South Australia, because the government will not commit to the pre-election promise of building the 12 submarines in South Australia.

So when you put all that together, it is understandable that the South Australian government is saying to the federal government, 'It is time that you did the right thing by South Australia, because your policies are directly hurting the people of South Australia in a way that perhaps no other state is being hurt.' I say again: the federal Liberal members from South Australia in this place need to show some backbone, stand up for the people of South Australia and stand against the cuts that the Abbott government are bringing in, which they know directly impact on the people that elected them to this place.

In respect to South Australia, I know that the health cuts that are being proposed will take away some $655 million over the next four years. The failure of the government to commit to the Gonski education reforms means that South Australia will be particularly hard-hit. It will be hit worse than other states, because it was in years 5 and 6 that South Australia was going to pick up most of the Gonski funding. So when you then go to CPI increases on your funding, South Australia starts with a much lower base than it would have if the Abbott government had committed to the Gonski funding. So it will be particularly disadvantaged. This point was very much made to me last week when I met with several of the principals of the schools, when they were here in Canberra.

I said from the outset that this is a budget with no vision and no strategy. I contrast that with the response from opposition leader, Bill Shorten, in the budget reply speech that he made on the Thursday night. Certainly, he has not announced all of Labor's policies, and nor would I expect him to. But what he made clear was that the future of Australia rests in a government that has a long-term strategy, a government that looks at the young people of this country and what is required to ensure that they too have a future, and a government that actually has a plan—not just a one or two-year election plan—but a plan for a future of the nation. This budget simply does not do that.

Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise tonight to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and cognate bills, a day after Western Australia Day. I hold the member for Makin in high regard but I would disagree with many of his comments, because over the two proceeding periods of this parliament his government had the opportunity to remedy many of the issues he raises in this chamber. In that sense, there are matters that should have been addressed that the Abbott government is now left to clean up and address in order to develop the strong economic base this country needs.

Western Australia Day is a day to celebrate all things West Australian. We have a lot to celebrate being in WA, particularly after this budget, which has a lot in it for WA and Hasluck to celebrate. Like everyone in this House, I was here on the Tuesday night that the budget was delivered and could not wait to get back to my electorate of Hasluck to talk to people about how the budget would benefit them and our region. That Sunday I went to the Midland Markets. For those of you who are not familiar with the great state of WA and the electorate of Hasluck, Midland is located to the east of the Perth CBD and in the northern end of my electorate. Midland is home to a rapidly growing population and a strong small business community, but that is evident right across Hasluck. When I visit the Midland Markets each month I speak with a lot of the small-business operators, who consistently tell me how each day, each week could be the last for them.

It is tough out there for small businesses. That is why when I visited the Midland Markets on the Sunday after the budget, I was thrilled to have small-business owners from the region approach me and tell me that because of this budget and our Growing Jobs and Small Business package, they have renewed confidence and the ability to, in many cases, expand their capacity, which means more jobs, more businesses and a stronger local economy.

The Growing Jobs and Small Business package is unprecedented and has been welcomed by small businesses on the ground. We know that small businesses are the engine room of the economy and this is particularly true for Midland, and indeed across Hasluck. That is why the package is not just great for small businesses but for the local economy and local region. This means that Hasluck will thrive due to this coalition budget.

The Growing Jobs and Small Business package includes for small businesses with annual turnover under $2 million a 1.5 per cent tax cut for incorporated small businesses, and for unincorporated small businesses a 5 per cent tax discount, up to $1,000 a year. This means that small businesses will have more money to spend on their businesses. In addition to this, small businesses can now claim an immediate tax deduction for each and every asset purchased up to $20,000 each. A hairdresser in Midland was telling me that due to this initiative she is now able to purchase new chairs and equipment for her premises—a real impact on the ground, where it matters most. I cannot see a better way to assist small businesses to get ahead. As a result of this new investment, the hairdresser was telling me that she will consider hiring a new apprentice. These measures have flow-on effects throughout the local community. Small businesses will also be supported through depreciation write-offs.

Because we know the positive impact small business has on our local community, we want more people to take the leap of faith and start a small business. It is a risk to start small businesses and that is why we are helping start-ups by cutting red tape and making it easier to start a business, and by allowing start-ups to immediately deduct professional expenses for starting their business.

As you can probably tell by now this is a budget for the future, preparing us as a nation for the challenges ahead. In that vein, another key initiative for the future is the recent announcement that the coalition government will support the establishment of the Curtin medical school in Midland. Since my election in 2010, I have been fighting for the people of Midland to establish a university campus in their region. The eastern suburbs of Perth have been underserviced for far too long. When I was first elected it took a student in Midland over two hours on public transport and over an hour on the road to travel to the nearest university campus. This is simply unacceptable. That is why I am committed to fighting for better access to tertiary education in Midland and why I am thrilled that it is a coalition government that has delivered this to the people of Midland.

The Midland medical school will offer a five-year direct entry medical program and will select and train students to deliver better health outcomes in the regions that need it most. Sixty Commonwealth-supported medical places will begin in 2017 and will ramp up to 110 new places per year in 2022. I must acknowledge the tremendous support of the WA state government, led by Premier Colin Barnett, and Curtin University who are funding the infrastructure to host the school. Many people have worked towards this positive outcome and I must thank and acknowledge the Hon. Alyssa Hayden MLC, City of Swan, Swan Chamber of Commerce, the Hon. Christian Porter MP and the numerous stakeholders and activists on the ground that have been fighting for a university in Midland since the 1980s. The medical school is good for Western Australia and good for Hasluck.

The naysayers out there want WA to have fewer medical practitioners and GPs per capita than every other state. Having worked in the health system, I am cognisant of where the gaps are within both the urban regions of the Perth metropolitan area but, more importantly, out in rural WA where there are many doctors on 457 visas. They want us to have the highest reliance on overseas-trained doctors in the country and they want us to remain at the status quo, which is a current doctor shortage of 950 doctors. This is simply unacceptable and that is why the coalition is planning for the future, planning for the health needs of the future. The WA state government also recognises this and will fund adequate clinical training places, including internships and specialist training places—debunking the myth that there will not be training places for these new medical graduates; there will be.

Conveniently, the Midland medical school will be situated across the road from the new Midland public hospital, set to open in November this year. The students at Midland and those across Hasluck will soon have access to a new educational pathway and opportunity to study higher education that they did not have before. As I said before, this is good for WA, good for Hasluck and good for our future.

I have spoken about Midland and it would be remiss of me focus on just that area of my electorate. This budget benefits the entire region of Hasluck through the record investment in infrastructure. Deputy Speaker, if you come to Hasluck there is construction going on everywhere—construction to make our roads safer and to ease congestion in the region. The major projects in Hasluck include: $18 million for the Nicholson Road grade separation in Thornlie, with $8 million allocated in the next financial year; $612.4 million for Gateway WA Perth Airport and Freight Access or, as I like to call it, the gateway to Hasluck, with $139.5 million allocated next financial year; $36 million for the Roe Highway-Berkshire Road grade separation, with $8.2 million allocated in the 2015-16 budget; and $10 million for the Lloyd Street upgrade, which is on track to be completed at the end of this year.

Through the coalition government's nationwide infrastructure program we are creating thousands of jobs, reducing travel times and boosting economic growth. In WA overall, the government is investing $5.2 billion to 2019-20 in infrastructure, which is a record investment. They are the big projects, but many more local roads are set to benefit from the budget. Hasluck's local councils are set to benefit from the government's doubling of the Roads to Recovery program next financial year. Over $6 million is being invested in local roads.

This budget is the next step in our plan to build a stronger, more prosperous future for all Australians. Unfortunately, the legacy of the Labor government is still lingering—a legacy of debt and deficit. We are cleaning up the mess and, through the budget, we are reducing Labor's deficit from $48 billion last year to $7 billion in four years. I do not want my children or their children to be burdened with the debt of an irresponsible Labor government. That is why we need to ensure that everyone who can work is working and that welfare is used properly by those who actually need it. Welfare is not a right; it is a privilege, and I want to make sure that all of our welfare system is sustainable now and into the future. Those on the other side are no longer the working party; they are the welfare party. Such a shame.

We need to support those who can work into jobs and support those who want to work. Our new childcare subsidy will help families get into work and stay in work. Working families with incomes between $65,000 and $170,000 will be around $30 a week better off, and families earning around $65,000 or less will receive a subsidy of 85 per cent of their childcare fees up to an hourly cap. With the child care safety net, lower income families will still get access to early childhood learning even if they do not meet the activity test. In addition to this, we are also trialling new ways to support families, giving more choice and more access.

Children should be safe in the playground and should not be exposed to any unnecessary risk posed by contagious diseases. As a former health department executive, I am particularly pleased that the coalition government introduced the no jab, no pay policy. Parents who do not immunise their children will not receive childcare subsidies and family tax benefit part A supplements, with only a few exemptions. As a parent myself, I know how practical and positive these measures will be for families with young children.

This budget is responsible, measured and fair. This is evidenced in other budget measures such as pension certainty with increases twice a year, record funding for hospitals and schools, helping farmers doing it tough dealing with drought and, as I said before, support for small businesses and job seekers. We are also ensuring that we keep Australians safe through our national security and border protection measures.

Those on the other side of the House need to approach this budget in good spirit, stop playing politics and start constructively working not only to improve the budgetary fiscal position of this nation but also to support the jobs, growth and opportunity of the future.

The consistent feedback that I am getting on the ground is that this budget is what is needed. It is what will make a difference for the long-term future of our nation. Australians understand that we all need to work together, we all need to contribute to the future of this great nation and governments should get out of the way of their opportunity to succeed.

Those on the other side are out of touch with everyday Australians and the people of Hasluck. Time and time again they showed that they do not have a plan for their future; they just want to increase taxes and repeat the waste and ineptitude of the Rudd-Gillard governments. I will continue to fight for the future security of our nation and will not rest in the face of such negativity and short-sightedness from the Labor Party.

It gives me great pleasure to support the appropriation bills, and I commend the bill to the House.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The budget is a great opportunity for the government to reset and to focus on the problems that ordinary Australians are facing, and never was there a greater opportunity squandered than when the Treasurer stood up before Australia a little over a fortnight ago and delivered his second budget. After a year and a half of overpromising, underdelivering and absolute downright deception, what we have seen is another lost opportunity for the people of Australia and for this government to do something to help the people who really need it. They have failed in their fundamental mission. They have failed in the test that we set for them, and that was to deliver a budget which was going to kick-start economic growth, drive employment, deal with unemployment, boost confidence and get back on track. Instead they have delivered a budget which does none of those things, increases debt and increases deficit. So it has failed the test that they set for themselves, but it has also failed the test which we set for the government, and that was to deliver a fair budget.

There are many people in my region who are forgiven for thinking that the Treasurer needs a map to find his way down to the Illawarra, because there is little evidence within the budget that they know the region exists. This is a time when the people of the Illawarra were looking for some assistance and for some recognition of the struggle that they are facing. Two weeks ago the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its latest unemployment data. People picked up the local paper and saw emblazoned across the front page 'Unemployment hits 9.4 per cent'. You may not be aware of it, but this is the highest rate in over five years, from a Prime Minister who said unemployment was going to be his No. 1 priority. They like to say that they are a government of work, not welfare; the truth is that they are a government of neither, because the jobs are not there for the Illawarra—9.4 per cent unemployment—and there is no hope of any strategy to turn it around in this budget.

Let's contrast this to the steps that we put in place when we were in government. Labor understands the needs of regions like the Illawarra and like the electorate of Throsby, which I represent. In going through the global financial crisis, we understood the pressure that the region was going to face. We put in place stimulus measures which ensured that people remained in jobs but also that much-needed infrastructure projects were attended to. We brought forward what would probably have been in normal times around a decade's worth of infrastructure spending, whether that was on school infrastructure, civil works projects, works at the university or other nation-building projects. We put those things in place.

We put in place a local employment coordinator. The Illawarra was designated as a priority employment area because of the higher-than-average levels of unemployment. A coordinator was in place to connect job seekers with job opportunities and to ensure the people who were looking for work were actually ready for work and had the skills and ability to meet the needs of the labour market. If you think that you are a party of work, not welfare, then one of the things you would have done is said that position is absolutely critical, but in one of their first decisions they defunded those local employment coordinators. There was no priority for helping people in struggling regions—particularly areas of high youth unemployment—in coordinating that work and ensuring people found their way from school to work, from unemployment to work.

In fact, they have gone even worse than that. In our last budget Labor made provision for some major infrastructure projects within the Illawarra. I have in mind in my own electorate and my colleague the member for Cunningham's electorate the Maldon-Dombarton rail link, a critical piece of infrastructure. Labor wanted to harness the excitement of the private sector to invest in this project by putting up over $50 million worth of seed funding to get started on a public-private partnership to get that crucial piece of freight rail built to join the inland rail network to the port of Port Kembla. And what does the government do? It cancels the funding. The project has not gone ahead.

We can contrast this government's cuts to higher education with over $150 million worth of capital works which were put in place in the University of Wollongong alone to ensure that that institution was fit to change to educate the workforce of the future.

Everywhere you look throughout the Illawarra, whether it is schools, whether it is hospitals, whether it is TAFE, whether it is the university, you can see an attitude of either neglect or indifference to the situation facing the Illawarra. But, if there were an area needing attention—if there were an area where the government needed a pivot, if you like, to stop, reconsider and change direction—it would be in the area of health. I want to talk on two areas in particular.

At the 2014 budget, in relation to primary care, the cornerstone of the government's budget strategy was a fundamental alteration to the way that Medicare rebates and GP visits are dealt with. The first part was a $5 co-payment which would have costed consumers close to about $3 billion over four years. The second part was a freeze on Medicare rebates, which meant a cut of around seven per cent between 2014 and 2018. According to the Medical Journal of Australia, the cost of that measure alone would have been about $8 a visit by 2018.

The government has dumped the first part of that proposal—for now. They have changed their strategy, not their minds. The health minister has confirmed this. They have dumped the co-payment—the dreaded GP tax—but they remain committed to the second part of this radical re-alteration, and that is the freeze on the GP rebates. As I said, over $8.40 per visit will be the net impact of this by 2018.

So that was the first part. The legacy of those decisions is to render many medical practices financially unviable. There will be parts of Australia—and particularly in regional and rural Australia—where medical practices will simply not be able to survive because of the impact of these freezes on Medicare rebates. Doctors in these areas know that they are simply unable to pass the costs on to their patients, because the patients cannot afford them.

So the first legacy of last year—we were looking for some change in this policy but it simply does not exist—puts a big question mark over the economic model which drives GP practices around the country. If you say you are interested in doing something about small businesses, well here is a small business which is crying out for some help. It is a small business which provides an absolutely critical service in over 12,000 places right throughout the country and there is no salvation on the horizon.

The second area in the last budget went to hospital funding. Deputy Speaker, this is an area which I know your own state government in Victoria has been highly critical of. In fact, the last two Victorian governments have been highly critical of decisions taken by the federal government in relation to hospital funding. We need to go back a few years to understand the importance of this. Under the previous government an agreement was reached—a hard-fought agreement—with all the states and territories. It effectively broke the cycle of the periodic healthcare agreements, where states and territories would come cap in hand to the Commonwealth, seeking an increase in their funding for hospital costs, and put in place a rational formula which dealt with the increases in hospital costs and which built in a sustainable formula upon which states and territories could do health system planning well into the future.

One of the first decisions of the Abbott government was to tear up the health and hospitals agreement with the states and to restrict Commonwealth funding to CPI funding plus growth. Now, as anybody who knows anything about health system funding, health price increases are always significantly in advance of general CPI increases. The net effect of this decision is that we have built in unsustainability into our hospital systems around the country. Over the next few weeks, as state and territory treasurers are standing up around the country delivering their budgets, they will either have to find cuts and savings from other areas of their budgets—which means cuts to other state services—or they will be cutting their health and hospital funding to accommodate the federal government's cuts. Those are $57 billion worth of cuts. Instead of reversing this decision, it has actually been built in and added to in the budget bottom line.

In the week after the budget the Minister for Health made a great song and dance about an agreement that she has reached with the pharmaceutical industry, including the Pharmacy Guild of Australia. She said that the result of this agreement was going to be that the Commonwealth and people who were seeking to get their prescriptions filled in pharmacies were going to get access to cheaper medicines. Well, nothing could be further from the truth.

It is true that within the medicine and Pharmacy Guild agreement that the government has achieved savings. But those savings have not been passed on to the consumer. At the same time the government introduces a bill to give effect to the pharmacy agreement and the medicines agreement in the House of Representatives, over in the Senate, in the other place, there is a bill, which you are still committed to, that will increase the cost of pharmaceutical benefits to all Australians—an increase of up to $6—and restrict access to the PBS safety net. The net effect of this is that, far from helping health consumers, you will be paying the medical and pharmaceutical companies less for the drugs, but you will be charging the consumers more for them. You have to ask yourself: how is that fair? You will be paying the pharmaceutical companies less for the drugs that we are purchasing through the PBS, but you will be charging the consumers more through the increased co-payments and the restriction in access to the safety net. These are just a few of the cuts and the inconsistencies that we saw in the government's first budget that are reinforced in this budget.

When families hear the government say the word 'fair', they know they have to beware. Entrenched in this budget through a range of cuts, through independent modelling, we have seen families who can afford it least slugged with cuts. A family with a single income of around $65,000 a year and two children will be, on average, $6,000 a year worse off by 2018 under the measures built into this budget. A single mother with an income of $55,000 a year and two children will be around $6,100 a year worse off. This is just an example of where the government failed to use this budget as an opportunity to atone for the sins of its first budget, to reverse direction and to put in place the measures that the country really needs.

Thankfully there is an alternative. In his budget speech in reply, the Leader of the Opposition set out the beginning of a plan which deals with putting in place a fair tax system, tackling loopholes in superannuation, putting in place measures which will crack down on multinational tax avoidance, ensuring that we have an education system which is fit for the future, and encouraging innovation through a $500 million new smart investment fund which will back great ideas that we think are out there ready to innovate and build the new industries and the jobs of the future. There is an alternative. The government has missed an opportunity, and the people of Australia will not miss the government when it comes to the next election. (Time expired)

Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Throsby talked about lost opportunity. If he were speaking to his small businesses in his electorate, he would know that they think it is Christmas. They think the instant asset write-off, or the tax cut, is fantastic news. They are incentivised. They have gone out there and purchased. They are looking at investing. He talked about fairness. If he has talked to families needing child care in his electorate, he would know that they are more than happy with the extra support that they will be getting from the government. We heard before from the member for Makin, from my state of South Australia. As usual, he talked about the unfunded promises of billions that were not there, the revenue that was never accounted for and the usual story that Labor cannot manage money. I will come back to that later in my address on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills as to how the federal government is supporting South Australia in this budget. Labor, as usual, reverts back to their planning system, their command economy that failed Europe—Eastern Europe in particular—so many years ago, that has been discredited. Stalin would be very pleased with what Labor propose and with what we hear from Labor.

Let's go on to some positive news about what we propose. This year's federal budget has been a huge boost for small businesses in my electorate. I have spoken to countless small business proprietors and heard firsthand the benefits this will have for them. From plumbers buying cement saws, to painters buying paint guns and cafes expanding and redeveloping, small businesses in Hindmarsh are looking to take advantage of the opportunities that the federal government has provided to them. Recently, when the Treasurer, the Prime Minister and the small business minister came through my electorate, this was the constant message for the small businesses—the cafes, the retail shops—that talked with them as they toured through. This budget will grow jobs. South Australia has the highest business taxes in the country and South Australian businesses are crying out for help. They are not getting that help from the state Labor government as they continue to tax businesses, whether that be through the emergency services levy or the payroll tax. But we have listened to small business concerns, we have acted and we are implementing the assistance they need from us. Business SA has come out strongly in favour of the budget and has said:

The Budget has delivered a much needed boost to small business through targeted taxation measures. It is clear that the Government is focused on the task of growing the economy by supporting small business to grow and help create new and sustainable jobs.

The new $5.5 billion Growing Jobs and Small Business package will help small businesses invest more, grow more and employ more. This is the biggest small business initiative in our nation's history. The government is committed to ensuring Australia is the very best place to start and grow a small business. We have heard before how important small businesses are—the engine room of our economy; 96 per cent of all Australia's businesses are small businesses, employing over 4.5 million people. As our economy changes, the role of our small businesses will be even more important. With the economy in transition we are freeing up small businesses to create new jobs.

The budget delivers $3.25 billion in tax cuts for small business and $1.75 billion in accelerated depreciation measures in addition to the benefits Australian small businesses are gaining from the abolition of the carbon tax. Recently we heard from a cafe who said that their electricity bills had decreased by around 15 per cent—another great story from the abolition of the carbon tax. From 1 July 2015, the government will cut the annual company tax rate for almost 800,000 incorporated businesses with annual turnover up to $2 million by 1.5 percentage points to 28.5 per cent. From 1 July 2015, the government will also provide a five per cent tax discount for over 1½ million sole traders, trusts and partnership structures which are unincorporated businesses with annual turnover up to $2 million. We are ensuring that no-one in small business does not have the ability to benefit from these measures. One of the greatest initiatives is tax deductibility, up to $20,000, for new equipment and investment in goods. This is a substantial increase from the previous $1,000 threshold. Australian small businesses will have the lowest company tax rate for public and private companies since 1967. This is significant and will only further stimulate their ability to go out and expand.

The Growing Jobs and Small Business package also includes measures to reduce red tape and regulatory impediments. This is one of the major focuses and objectives of the government and I know, being part of the Prime Minister's Deregulation Taskforce and working with my colleagues, that we are getting results here—around $2 billion in unnecessary red tape, a major hindrance to businesses, has been removed. Entrepreneurships and business start-ups will immediately benefit from the ability to deduct professional expenses incurred when a business is begun, such as legal expenses on establishing a company, trust or partnership, rather than writing them off over five years. This will provide immediate cash flow benefits for small businesses. Streamlined business registration processes will make it quicker and simpler to set up new businesses. The government will remove obstacles to crowd-sourced equity funding to help promote small business access to finance. These are all important initiatives—as are the employee share scheme provisions I spoke about last week. These measures will help encourage investment, innovation and the start-up of new businesses. These initiatives will help the next Atlassian, Cochlear or Westfield—and every success story in Australia starts as a small business.

Since the government was elected, around a quarter of a million new jobs have been created—but there is more work to do. New measures will focus on making job seekers more employable, reducing the costs of taking on new staff, and bringing job seekers and job providers together. The government is investing close to $7 billion to establish jobactive to improve the quality of services delivered to job seekers and employers.

We are also delivering a $331 million Youth Employment Strategy, an $18 million National Work Experience program and changes to Restart to make it easier for small businesses to receive government support when they employ older workers. One of the great things about this budget is the $4.4 billion Jobs for Families package to give parents more choice and opportunity to work. It delivers on our commitment to support families by making child care simpler, more affordable, more flexible and more accessible. I have worked on this previously with the member for Corio. I am sorry, I should have said the member for Corangamite. I doubt the member for Corio would have been so accommodating.

Over the last two years I have visited childcare centres and also undertaken a survey with parents using child care. Affordability was one of the major issues, and this is something that we have addressed in this budget. We know that families are faced with costs when parents decide to return to the workforce. This package gives families greater choice. In terms of practicalities, it focuses on families with an income of between $65,000 and $170,000 per year who will be around $30 a week better off. Families on less than $65,000 per year will receive ongoing access to early childhood learning and can be eligible for additional financial support through the childcare safety net. Focusing on lower and middle income earners is where fairness comes into play. That is something Labor fails to acknowledge.

The government is also trialling new ways to support families, a home care, or nannies, pilot program to help shift workers such as nurses, police—men and women—and those in rural and regional areas who find it difficult to access mainstream childcare services during normal office hours.

The budget also delivers $840 million over two years for preschool programs. I know, through having children that have recently gone through the early childhood years, how important those years are in a child's development. I have worked hard with my colleagues and also the relevant ministers to get this outcome. This is good news for children, families and preschool providers.

The government is also working to fix Labor's mess in the area of defence. After years of cuts, the federal government remains firm on its commitment to increase defence spending to two per cent of GDP within a decade, building on our promise to provide defence with a stable and sustainable funding growth path. Ongoing reform means that defence will be able to invest smarter and where we can find cost savings they will be reinvested in our defence forces. This is in stark contrast to Labor, which ripped around $16 billion from defence, reducing defence spending to its lowest level as a percentage of GDP since 1938. We are repairing this damage. We are investing in areas of defence to have a strong and sustainable industry.

We also announced last month that one of the options being considered is the feasibility of a continuous build strategy for naval shipbuilding, which would sustain a shipbuilding industrial base and avoid the peaks and troughs currently being experienced. I know, through talking with the defence sector, that back in 2011 a decision had to be made by the then Labor government in order to negate job losses in the defence sector around Australia in terms of shipbuilding.

South Australia, my state, is set to benefit from the government's investment in defence, and I will go through a few examples. The government has already invested over $1.7 billion in support of personnel costs, equipment and services and facilities in South Australia. Some of the major projects outside of defence shipbuilding in terms of submarine maintenance and support, and also the air warfare destroyer, which amounts to $1 billion alone, include around $60 million to support the maritime patrol aircraft at RAAF Base Edinburgh, $34 million to support Enhanced Land Force construction works at the Cultana Training Area, and $11 million for the construction of facilities for the Joint Counter Improvised Explosive Device Capability at Woomera.

The member for Makin—all South Australian federal members would be interested in these points—should note that the Commonwealth government is providing increased funding to South Australia across many areas. Over the next four years, Commonwealth funding for South Australia will increase in each and every year, rising by 30 per cent, or $2.4 billion, over the forward estimates, bringing the total Commonwealth spending in South Australia over that period to just under $40 billion. In terms of specific percentage increases, that is a 36 per cent increase in GST revenue, or $1.8 billion, over four years and a 19 per cent increase in funding for hospitals, or $208 million, over four years. I am sure the member for Throsby would have similar or higher increases in terms of dollars in his state of New South Wales. But, no, Labor cry out for more money which is unfunded. In terms of education, something very close to my heart, there is a 26 per cent increase in schools, or $280 million over four years. Infrastructure will receive $2 billion, including millions of dollars for South Road—which borders my electorate—including the $1 billion North-South Corridor program along South Road. Even under the South Australian Premier's calculation of GST receipts, South Australia will receive an additional $600 million—a massive benefit for my state of South Australia.

In closing, South Australia is doing well from this budget and so is Australia. This is a good budget for Australia, a good budget business and a good budget for families. We are heading in the right direction and the people of Australia know that. I commend this bill.

Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me pleasure to rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills before us today. The 2015 budget delivers for Tasmania as it delivers for the people in my electorate of Lyons. The Jobs for Families package will give parents more choice when work-family commitments are being balanced. Low- and middle-income families using the childcare system will be $1,500 per year better off as a result of the initiatives in the budget. From 2017 families on a combined income between $65,000 and $170,000 a year will be $30 a week better off as a result of the Jobs for Families package. As the member for Hindmarsh also mentioned, the introduction of trialling nannies will be of great benefit to people working in the police force and the fire department and people working unsociable hours in the agricultural space. This will provide an enormous opportunity, as well as potentially being able to drive down the cost of child care, which went up enormously under the previous government.

The big-ticket item—and this is certainly the feedback that I am getting from my electorate—has been the small business package. Some would describe it as a game-changer. Here is a government, finally, that is prepared to give back small business some of their own money. We should never forget that the taxes which government is charged with spending come from the dollars that were earned by people paying income tax or small businesses paying tax. We know that many of these are family businesses and we know that they will spend this money better to grow business and create jobs in regional Tasmania than any government could ever do. We welcome the Labor Party's support to back small businesses across Australia. The damage done, though, to small business under Labor was extraordinary. They do not 'get' small business and they do not 'get' independent contractors; we do on this side. I spent a lifetime working with farmers, many of whom are indeed small businesses.

Going back a couple of weeks, it was the Saturday morning after the budget was delivered and I happened to be in the town of New Norfolk in southern Tasmania. I had my little brochures and I was taking the information there, not quite knowing what the response would be. As I walked up the street and started going into the hairdressers, the cafes and the other small businesses up the main street, I very quickly realised that the word had got around. They were absolutely overjoyed, particularly with the instant asset write-off, which I will touch on in a minute.

Mr Tehan interjecting—

Indeed. We have the lowest tax rate in 50 years for small business—28½ per cent, down from 30 per cent—thank you, member for Wannon—has been very much welcomed. But, of course, only a minority of small businesses are incorporated. For the unincorporated businesses, we will see a five per cent deduction—that is for 1.7 million small businesses around the country. The deduction is capped at $1,000. There is, as I mentioned, the accelerated depreciation to increase the threshold for immediate deductibility, from $1,000 to $20,000, and doesn't small business love the instant a write-off.

In the agricultural sector, farmers—who are so important to Tasmania, so important to our country, so important to my electorate of Lyons—absolutely welcomed the immediate deductibility for water infrastructure, fencing, fodder storage and conservation with the three-year depreciation schedule that has been included in this budget.

Small business employs 4.5 million Australians; 96 per cent of the businesses in our country are small businesses. As the Prime Minister often reminds us: this was the best budget ever for small business. Can I also remind my electorate particularly that funding for health in the state of Tasmania over the four years of the forward estimates from budget 2014-15 goes up by nearly 35 per cent. That is an extraordinary amount of money; despite what those on the other side say—out into the never-never. The figures that were never put down in black and white—we cut spending. The facts are that, over the forward estimates funding for health in Tasmania has gone up, as has funding for schools. In fact, funding for schools in the state of Tasmania—Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be astounded to know—has gone up by 37 per cent—

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How much?

Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

37 per cent, Member for Wannon. If you listened to those on the other side, and some of the media indeed, you would believe that funding for education had been cut. But in fact these were figures out in the never-never. These were never figures that were committed; these were Labor promises on the magic pudding—or, as we have discovered in more recent days, the money tree.

In the time that is left to me, I want to go over a few of the highlights that I would like to put on the record about the last year and the work that I have done along with my colleagues—the member for Braddon and the member for Bass. The three of us worked collectively to deliver some outstanding results for our state, I believe—not least of all, the $203 million to expand the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme to include exports going through the Port of Melbourne. This is our highway to the world.

We all know that Tasmania can produce high-quality products, high-quality goods. But it was not a level playing field that we were competing on. The expansion of the Freight Equalisation Scheme, which was first introduced by a Liberal government. It was Malcolm Fraser's government in the 1970s that first introduced the Freight Equalisation Scheme and it was the Abbott government that has put another peg there to make the scheme equitable for Tasmanian primary producers, exporters and manufacturers. It has indeed been welcomed.

Can I also mention the $60 million that has been committed for the Tasmanian Irrigation tranche 2 projects. There are five around the state; three of them are in my electorate of Lyons. I think particularly of the Southern Highlands scheme. It has been oversubscribed as far as water sales are concerned, which reflects the confidence that is growing within the agricultural space in Tasmania.

I mention the Swan River scheme on the east coast, which will be a high-value scheme that will be growing viticulture and horticultural products there and expanding the opportunities for jobs in that part of Tasmania, in what is traditionally a very dry part of my state as well.

Finally in Lyons is the Evandale or North Esk irrigation scheme, based at Dalness, just outside of Evandale. This will allow more intensive cropping—grain production, poppy production—and possibly even dairy production in that part of the state; reliable water, 95 per cent secure.

I think the other story, though, is also the infrastructure spending that we have seen. In my electorate I think particular of the Bridges Renewal Program. We were very fortunate indeed in my electorate. The Northern Midlands Council received a $922,000 contribution for the new Westmoor Bridge on Powranna Road between Cressy and the Midland Highway. If I might describe it to you: there are three extraordinary businesses that are based on one end of Powranna Road. I think of Tasmanian Quality Meats, the Regional Exporter of the Year in 2013; I think of Petuna Seafoods, which has its hatchery there; and I think of Burlington Berries. Between them, the three businesses are employing an enormous number of Tasmanians. They are growing businesses and they are wonderful businesses, and it is this sort of investment in infrastructure, in collaboration with the Northern Midlands Council—and I thank Mayor Downie for joining me when we announced this funding—that is the sort of thing that builds the productive infrastructure that our state of Tasmania desperately needs.

There were two other bridges as well, on the Esk Main Road at Avoca, on a state government owned road, and also further down the Esk Main Road at Fingal. This is about allowing, for example, cranes to access the east coast of Tasmania without having to do pretty well a lap around the state. So there is $3.3 million for those two bridges on the Esk Main Road.

We have also heard much about the Roads to Recovery Program funding that has been doubled this year and will be doubled again next year. Substantial amounts of money are going into local councils there to be used at their discretion as they see fit to upgrade local roads, which benefits small businesses and households in my electorate and allows councils to get on with the constant job of upgrading and maintaining roads in those municipalities.

I have the privilege of being the chair of the Tasmanian roads black spots committee. I congratulate the work done by Donald Howatson from the Department of Infrastructure, Energy and Resources in Tasmania. There is an outstanding list of projects. A number of those have been successful in the electorate of Lyons. I recently had Assistant Minister Jamie Briggs in my electorate at the Perth Primary School there. Anybody could see the dangers that are occurring at drop-off time, where mums are coming to drop off their little kids at the primary school in a cul-de-sac and there are kids and teachers walking here, there and everywhere. A rather modest contribution of $50-odd thousand dollars from the Commonwealth government will rectify this and will make it much safer for mums picking up and dropping off their kids.

In the time left to me I will mention the solar community fund. This has been a $300,000 rollout around my electorate. I am very pleased to say that the beneficiaries included the New Norfolk District Football Club, the Gagebrook Community Centre, the Bagdad Community Club, the Sorell RSL Club, the Tasman Civic Centre at Nubeena, the Oatlands RSL Club, the Bicheno Golf Club, the St Helens Healthy House, the Longford RSL Memorial Club, Aged Care Deloraine, the Port Sorell Men's Shed and the Deviot Community Association hall.

There have been a number of other projects over the last 12 months that I would like to mention as well. In particular I was very pleased to announce $820,000 which went to the Inland Fisheries Service. In my electorate, there is Lake Crescent and Lake Sorell. The Inland Fisheries Service have done an amazing job. People said it could not be done, but through persistence and through science they have been able to eradicate carp from Lake Crescent. The next job now is Lake Sorell. It is an outstanding piece of work. I have never seen such commitment as that shown by these people, who are so keen and committed to the work that they are doing. I was very grateful for Minister Hunt's support of something that I advocated very strongly for.

The other day it was a privilege for me to open the Dunalley community hall. This was a tragedy that occurred during the 2013 bushfires. I realise that it was a commitment by former Prime Minister Gillard and the former member for Lyons Dick Adams. It fell to me to open this, but I wanted to mention the $250,000 to what is the benchmark for community halls—I will say that, Member for Wannon. This is an amazing building that will bring together the performing arts and the RSL club, which I know meets there, and many other community activities in what is a wonderful, wonderful facility. I congratulate them on it.

In the ACAR round last year, we were successful in the Corumbene Nursing Home, again in New Norfolk, which received just over $1 million worth of funding for not only aged-care places but also a capital grant. Tandara Lodge Community Care at Sheffield in North West Tasmania also received $995,000 for their capital grant to expand the facility there, and there was $130,000 for Toosey Aged and Community Care in Longford for 15 home care packages.

It has been a year of delivery. We are delivering. I believe, with the support of my colleagues the member for Bass and the member for Braddon, we are delivering for our state of Tasmania. It is a pleasure—it is a privilege—to be representing the wonderful communities that make up my electorate. I will continue to work as hard as I can. I have not had time in this contribution to mention the Centenary of Anzac grants. There were numerous ones around my electorate. I will continue to fight hard for the people and the communities that make up this amazing electorate that is the electorate of Lyons.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, it is a pleasure to see you here in the chamber. Can I also commend the member for Lyons for his excellent speech. The way he is representing his electorate and delivering for his electorate is quite extraordinary. The people and the constituents of Lyons are being well and truly looked after by their wonderful local member.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I am sure the people of Wannon are by the member for Wannon.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I do my best also to try and represent, to the best of my ability, the people of Wannon.

Once again it is a pleasure to be here tonight to talk on this cognate debate on the five appropriation bills. It gives me a chance to talk about what the budget did for the electorate of Wannon but also what it did for the nation and what it did for your wonderful electorate as well. It is a budget which delivers for the nation. It really contrasts how a coalition government delivers for Australia with how the Labor Party failed to deliver for the nation. It is important, as we approach the midway of our first term in government, that we look at that and we start to contrast. Those opposite are over there reading their books. They are not interested in debating the appropriation bills. They are more concerned with fiction than with fact. I can understand why they would be more concerned with fiction than with fact. If you look at what was in the budget reply speech, I would be a bit worried about the fiction and the facts as well. I do not think the Leader of the Opposition's mathematics on STEM was all that good. I think he might have left off a few zeros. I think there was a little bit of a concern that he might not have understood that what he was talking about on STEM came with a $2.25 billion cost figure. He had the facts and the fiction a little bit confused, and that must be very concerning for those opposite. But enough on that.

What was this budget about for the nation? That is what the Australian people want us to focus on. The first clear message out of the budget was that the government remains committed to returning the budget to surplus as soon as possible—and I will just farewell the member for Lyons, who is leaving us, and once again commend him for his wonderful contribution. The budget at its heart was about returning the budget to surplus as soon as possible, because the fundamental premise of this government is that we have to live within our means. We saw six years of some of the most reckless spending that you are ever likely to see when the Labor Party was in government between 2007 and 2013, and once again it has been left to the coalition to fix the mess that Labor gave us—and that is what we are doing.

The budget will slowly head towards surplus over the forward estimates. That is something that I think is incredibly important, because we cannot assume that good times will roll on forever. We cannot assume, in the current economic climate, that we will not be buffeted again. We have to ensure that we have put the protections there so that if some ill-headwinds blow our way we are prepared to combat them and we have the economy in a state in which it can deal with them. That is why it is so important that we live within our means.

We have done this. We have been able to head the budget into surplus, even though we have seen a write-down of $52 billion in tax receipts due to what has happened with the iron ore price. This is the largest fall in the terms of trade in over 50 years, yet we are still on a trajectory to get the budget back to surplus. This is an achievement. I see those opposite raise their heads from their book of fiction, and it makes me a little bit curious, because it reminds me of a budget speech given by the then Labor Treasurer, Wayne Swan. As I recall, in four forward estimates he promised a budget surplus, yet he was never able to achieve it. The budget speeches in which he promised four surpluses in the forward estimates will go down as the greatest pieces of fiction this parliament has ever witnessed. It probably will not be quite as interesting as whatever the honourable member opposite is reading at the moment, but it was one of the greatest acts of fiction we have seen in this place.

But the government is not about that. We want to see the budget deficit narrow from $35.1 billion, or 2.1 per cent of GDP, in 2015-16, to $6.9 billion in 2018-19, or 0.4 per cent of GDP. How are we doing this? This is the important aspect of it. We are putting constraints on spending. That is what those opposite could not do, but that is what we are determined to do.

When you listened to the budget-in-reply speech from the Leader of the Opposition, spending announced already totalled $52 billion, and, after the budget reply spending spree, they now have a $58 billion black hole. That means that in his speech the Leader of the Opposition was blowing $200 million a minute. I know my good friend sitting opposite remembers a certain appearance on Sky channel where I mentioned the quote from Jerry Maguire: 'Show me the money.' This is Bill Shorten's jerry maguire moment. Come on, Bill, show us the money. Until you can do that, the Australian people are never going to take you seriously. In the budget-in-reply speech, once again he could not deliver. His jerry maguire moment disappeared—$200 million a minute in spending, but when it came to 'Where's the money coming from?', Bill Shorten could not answer and will not answer. In the next 18 months, as we lead up to the next election, let's put the warning in there: Leader of the Opposition, we are going to hold you to account on this issue. On a daily basis we are going to ask you where the money is coming from. As you have heard, there is no magic pudding. There is no money tree in the Parliament House garden. You actually have to be able to produce the figures and show us where the money will come from. Until you can do that you have no credibility.

What else was in the budget that was important? The small-business package obviously was incredibly important. This budget was not only about making sure that we are getting the budget back into surplus, but it is also about encouraging small business, the absolute engine room of our nation. Small business represents 96 per cent of all businesses in Australia, and most coalition members, in one form or another, come from a small business background. We get small business. We understand it, and we understand how important it is. We understand how important it is that small business invests, that small business employs and that small business provides confidence into the economy to help the economy grow.

What are we doing for small business? Obviously, for those businesses that are incorporated, there is the 1½ per cent tax cut for those with a turnover under $2 million. There is a discount of five per cent, up to $1,000, for the 1.7 million small businesses that are unincorporated. Once again, we understood that if you are going to have a package for small business in your budget, you have to understand that you have incorporated small business and you have unincorporated small business. Once again, the Leader of the Opposition showed us that he does not understand this. He talked about some potential tax cut which Labor might provide, maybe in a bipartisan form, of five per cent to those incorporated businesses; he did not even talk about unincorporated small businesses. It was just complete fairyland stuff.

The budget delivers the lowest small business company tax rate since 1967. I do not know whether Mr Deputy Speaker Irons will remember this, but 1967 was when Richmond broke their premiership drought of over 40 years. It was great to see the tigers win the flag, but 1967 is quite some time ago now. That was the last time that the small business company tax rate was lower. We are providing accelerated depreciation arrangements to small businesses and primary producers. We are simplifying depreciation rules in the tax law in order to increase the threshold for immediate deductibility from $1,000 to $20,000. The small businesses and farming community in my electorate have welcomed this with open arms. The fantastic thing about it was it meant that these small businesses and farming businesses could access it immediately. It came in once the budget was announced: budget night—bang—'You can take advantage of this'. I can tell you that I have been around my electorate going into small businesses and talking to farmers; they are excited about this potential, and they want to act on it.

Farmers are also able to immediately deduct all eligible capital expenditure on fencing and water facilities. Fodder storage assets will be deductible over three years. Once again, this is the coalition recognising the important contribution that farming makes to our nation. Not only that, we are backing up what we have done with the free trade agreements with South Korea, China and Japan. We are saying to farmers: 'We want to make life easier for you, we want to put a bit more money back in your pocket and we want you to be able to capitalise on these three wonderful free trade agreements which are going to set up not only our agricultural sector but our services sector for now and into the future.'

Of course, Mr Deputy Speaker Irons, as you are well aware, there is the families package as well. It is a terrific families package focused on child care and making sure that more people can get access to child care, and that will help those people access the workforce. We, on the side, believe that the best thing that you can do for people is make sure that they have a job. We are not like those opposite, who are quite happy to encourage welfare dependence; we want to make sure that people are out there working.

There were also significant contributions in this budget specifically for projects in my electorate, such as the Grampians Peaks Trail. That will be a wonderful tourism trail and encourage tourists from all around the world, and there is $10 million to complete that. People will be able to walk from the southern end of the Grampians to the northern end of the Grampians, staying, camping and just having a wonderful tourist experience. I am looking forward to walking along part of the proposed trail on this coming long weekend, when I will be entering the Serra Terror. We will be walking 80 kilometres over two days through the Grampians to raise money for the local Dunkeld community. I am very much looking forward to that.

There was the Port Fairy waterfront development of $1.425 million. That will be a wonderful project to give a new uplift to the Port Fairy waterfront, and I look forward to working with the local council there to see that development. There was also, importantly, funding for roads and funding for other important assets in the electorate.

I must commend the Treasurer for this budget because he has been able to combine two significant things. Firstly, he has been able to start dealing with the debt and deficit legacy that we have been left by those opposite. Secondly, he has also been able to set up this budget to give confidence to the Australian community, and especially to the small business community, that we believe in you, we believe in your enterprise and we believe that you can grow our economy to help it prosper—and not only help it prosper but ensure that the families and individuals of Australia continue to prosper because that is what this budget is all about, it is all about people.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If my memory serves me well, Roger Dean, Paddy Guinane and Dick Clay were members of that famous 1967 side.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, your memory serves you extremely well—Roger 'The Dodger' Dean was the captain. You are a good man.

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always good to follow my good friend the member for Wannon, especially on such a cold night in Canberra. His stories of dedication to both his football club and his electorate always warm my heart. I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) and related bills. Before I get into my speech I want to drill down a little bit on some detail that the member for Wannon used in his speech. The Labor Party proposed to spend $80 billion more than us on health and education. They do not want fuel excise, which is worth $19 billion. All of these figures are over 10 years. They want to increase foreign aid by $16 billion over 10 years. There is a $58 billion black hole in what was announced in the budget reply speech. That is over four years—and I do not know if we have modelled that yet—but let us apply simple mathematics and apply a factor of 2½ and make it 130 or 140—you are approaching $250-$300 billion. They very conveniently move between four-year and 10-year time frames. Forward estimates are always so unimportant when in government because they put everything outside of those but so important to them in government so that they cannot have exposed the breadth and depth of the gap in their financial figures, modelled over 10 years. On the flip side, they model the revenue of proposed tax increases, so-called reform, in 10-year multiples. If you drill down that figure of $250-300 billion, we have $14 billion which will come from superannuation tax changes that they are proposing and tax increases.

Effectively for the first time in our country's history we will now run two systems of tax indexation—one for when you are working and one for when you are retired. Excellent, a fantastic initiative! It seems to me the more progressive the taxation systems, the better we all will be—not! Then they have $9 billion from taxing multinationals. There is this net sum total of $23 billion, and, like the member for Wannon, I do look forward over the next 12 to 18 months hearing from the Leader of the Opposition and his crack team—that were there for the six years of the debacle that we inherited—how they will fund over 10 years the further $220-$250 billion on the back of an envelope. Of course, the sad part is that, as the Minister for Social Services so beautifully said, they reach into the bucket, but the problem is there is nothing in the bucket, they have emptied the bucket. I am surprised we have a bucket left.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think they tried to sell it.

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They probably did. All that said, it is always good to follow my good friend, especially on a cold night in Canberra. I am delighted to speak on these bills. The key to the 2015 budget in the electorate of Reid is that it focuses on families and small business. Reid is a young electorate, with an average age of around 33 or 34. Families are obviously very important. It is not a big home of major industrial and retail hubs—strip shopping centres dominate the landscape, from Auburn to Drummoyne. Obviously small and family businesses dominate the landscape. As the Prime Minister has said, this budget will deliver jobs, growth and opportunity in a way that is responsible, measured and fair. It is the next step in the coalition government's plan for long-term changes and fixing the mess that we inherited.

We have achieved many good things in the first 20 months—250,000 new jobs since the election; retail sales and new dwelling approvals are at record levels; and deficits over the forward estimates are reducing each and every year, from $35.1 billion this financial year to $6.9 billion in 2018-19. Particularly exciting for both me and many people in my electorate are the measures within our Growing Jobs and Small Business package. More than anything, this budget is about building jobs and supporting our family and small business sector. The new $5.5 billion Growing Jobs and Small Business package will help small businesses in my electorate to back themselves, take on bank debt, grow more and employ more people. Be in no doubt, this is the biggest small business initiative in our country's history, and I am proud to be part of the government that is delivering for small and family business. None of us in this place should ever forget that 96 per cent of all Australia's businesses are small businesses, employing over 4.5 million people and producing over $330 billion of our nation's total economic output.

This budget delivers $3.25 billion in tax cuts for small business and $1.75 billion in accelerated depreciation benefits, in addition to the benefits Australian small businesses are already gaining from the abolition of the carbon tax. From 1 July 2015 this government will cut the company tax rate for up to 780,000 incorporated businesses with annual turnover of up to $2 million by 1.5 per cent, bringing the rate down to 28.5 per cent. Providing incorporated small businesses with a reduced rate of company tax will improve small business cash flow and assist them to grow and compete more effectively with larger businesses and—here is the kicker—create jobs. From 1 July 2015, this government will also provide a five per cent tax discount for over 1½ million sole traders, trusts and partnership structures which are unincorporated businesses with annual turnover of up to $2 million, capped at $1,000, through their end of year tax return. Reducing the tax payable by small businesses will allow them to retain more earnings for reinvestment. Investment is important as it leads to existing output being produced at a lower cost, and the new and improved ways of doing business improve our nation's productivity. As a result, higher investment can lead to higher employment and wages over time.

Of course, most celebrated by small business owners throughout my electorate is the measure that allows small businesses with turnover below $2 million to claim an immediate tax deduction for every asset they acquire that is valued up to $20,000 for business purposes—a substantial increase from the previous $1,000 threshold. Assets that cost $20,000 or more can be grouped together and depreciated at 15 per cent in the first year and 30 per cent every year thereafter, and should the value of this pool fall below $20,000, at the end of that financial year during the same period, the pool itself can be immediately deducted. Small business in my electorate has warmly welcomed these changes. I had the Prime Minister there a couple of weeks ago at a local restaurant—200 small business people, with 24 hours notice, out to a database, wanted to come and say thank you. The message was received loud and clear by the Prime Minister.

Also included are measures to reduce red tape and regulatory impediments that hinder small-business growth. Changes to the fringe benefits tax system will expand the exemption for work related portable electronic devices, both phones and tablets. Reforms to capital gains tax rollover will enable small business to change the legal structure of their business without making it a CGT event. This government will consult on potential changes to the Corporations Act to reduce compliance costs and make it easier for small proprietor companies to raise new capital.

In addition, this package of measures will encourage business start-ups and entrepreneurship. Start-ups will be able to immediately deduct professional expenses incurred when they begin a business, such as legal expenses on establishing a company, trust or partnership, rather than writing them off, as was historic, five years. This will provide immediate cash flow benefits for small businesses. And it is not rocket science; the hope is that they will reinvest in their business and create more jobs.

Streamlined business registration processes will make it quicker and simpler to set up a new business. A single online registration site will be developed for business registration, including company registration, and from 1 July expanded tax concessions for employee share schemes will make it easier for small start-up companies to attract and retain the skills and talent they need to grow. My electorate of Reid has over 19,000 small businesses and these measures will help encourage investment, innovation and the start-up of new businesses, which will help Australia's economic future. The businesses in my electorate recognise this and members of the opposition should as well.

However, I am not confident that members of the opposition will recognise this, because Labor's attitude to small business is well known. We should never forget that in July 2000, when he was Labor leader, Kim Beazley acknowledged that the Labor Party is not the party of small business. In a frank confession, Mr Beazley admitted: we have never pretended to be a small business party. The Labor Party has never pretended that.

After six years of Labor, around 519,000 jobs were lost in small business—that is, 1,544 each week. Labor had six different ministers in five years—a measure of how little real commitment it had to the sector. Our small business minister, the man of the moment, is not only the same man that we went to the election with and had through opposition but also now a member of cabinet. That is a measure of how important we find this sector to be.

Families are also a key focus of this budget. Here we deliver a $4.4 billion Jobs for Families package to give parents more choice and more opportunity to work. We are delivering on our commitment to support families by making child care simpler, more affordable, more flexible and more accessible. We understand that families are faced with costs when parents want to return to the workforce. This package gives those families greater choice.

A fact of modern day life is that having two parents in paid employment has become a necessity for most families because of changes that have taken place in our society and economy over many years. This government will invest an additional $3.5 billion over five years reforming childcare assistance to establish a new and simpler Child Care Subsidy from 1 July 2017. This Child Care subsidy will provide assistance to meet the cost of child care for parents who are working, looking for work, training, studying or undertaking any other recognised activity such as volunteering.

Families using child care in 2017 on family incomes of between $65,000 and $170,000 will be around $30 a week better off. Families on incomes of less than $65,000 per year will receive ongoing access to early childhood learning and can be eligible for net financial support through the childcare safety net. This is great news for the families of Reid.

A simplified Child Care Subsidy will also replace the current Child Care Benefit, Child Care Rebate and Jobs, Education and Training Child Care Fee Assistance programs. This simplified subsidy will include, amongst other measures, the introduction of a single means tested Child Care Subsidy for all families, subject to a new activity test for up to 100 hours of subsided childcare per fortnight, paid directly to approved care service providers to make it easier for families. Families on incomes under $185,000 will no longer have a cap on the amount of subsidy they receive whilst a cap of $10,000 per child will be established for the total value of subsidies for families on incomes of $185,000 and above. These measures will deliver significant reform, putting downward pressure on childcare costs, and stand in stark contrast to the inflationary system in place under Labor, which saw childcare fees increase by over 50 per cent between 2007 and 2013.

Our nannies pilot is an exciting program, recognising that modern families work in different ways. It is a new initiative and I look forward to seeing how families in Reid take it up and how it works. This government wants these families to be able to choose to work. We do not want that choice denied because of complex, inflexible and unaffordable childcare arrangements. The budget also delivers $840 million over two years for preschool programs. This will ensure families in my electorate of Reid can continue to access up to 15 hours of preschool education a week.

This budget also supports the senior members of our community by making the aged pension fairer and more sustainable. These changes mean that more than 170,000 pensioners with modest assets will have their pensions increased by an average of $30 per fortnight. It is clear to everyone that we have an ageing population, and this budget seeks to put us on a sustainable path so that we can continue to support those who have built our great nation.

We are also looking to support small capital projects in our local communities right across the country. Electorates across the country will receive funding of $150,000 per year over two years to support projects that deliver clear social benefits. It will empower people on the front lines who are providing incredible service to their communities to achieve even more. It is a great example of how government supporting those who work on the front lines, improving communities in tangible ways, can work.

These measures outlined in these bills provide the next step in our long-term economic plan. It is a budget that recognises that government does not create jobs; business does. It is a budget that recognises that small business is the backbone of our economy and that families and our elderly need to be looked after. It is a budget that recognises that those great people who work on the front lines of our communities are in the best position to identify what government should allocate spending to.

I commend these bills to the House.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise on this year's Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-16. I wanted to address a couple of subjects during my speech.

The first one I wanted to touch on is Commonwealth funding to South Australia. Residents of Boothby—residents of South Australia—will have seen any number of taxpayer funded ads coming from the South Australian government, and I would like to set the record straight on Commonwealth funding. It is a simple fact that over the next four years the total annual Commonwealth funding to South Australia is increasing by around $2.4 billion including GST. Despite tight budget conditions, the Commonwealth is increasing annual funding to South Australian hospitals by 19 per cent over the next four years on top of growth of 12 per cent in 2014-15. That is a $208 million increase over the next four years. We are also increasing funding to South Australian schools by 26 per cent over the next four years on top of growth of seven per cent in 2014-15. That is an extra $280 million for South Australian schools.

In addition to that extra money for schools and extra money for hospitals, we are investing $2 billion to build the infrastructure of the 21st century for South Australia. That includes $944 million for the upgrade of the north-south road corridor and also $232 million for the Goodwood and Torrens Junction rail upgrades. These are some of the benefits that South Australia is seeing from the budget.

I wanted to speak on a particular local issue because, at the same time that the South Australian government is receiving more money than ever before for their hospitals—they are seeing their hospital funding going up by 19 per cent—the response of the South Australian government has been to close hospitals. This has been particularly felt in my electorate, where they have made a decision to close the iconic Daw Park Repatriation General Hospital. This is a 300-bed local hospital. It employs 1,250 staff. The South Australian government are shutting it down, selling the land, walking away and vacating the site.

Despite what the state government says, everyone knows that this is a cost-cutting exercise. There are currently 300 beds at the Repat. Under the Weatherill government's proposal, when the Repat is closed, 55 rehab beds will be added to the Flinders Medical Centre. So they are taking almost 300 beds out of the southern suburbs. David Pope has said that there are 41 clinical services at Repat and they simply will not all fit into the Flinders Medical Centre.

I will give you an example. We have the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program. It is a very good program, and we would like more people to do it. If you have a positive test, it does require follow-up by colonoscopy. At the moment, the Repat is providing the role of doing the overflow colonoscopies from Flinders Medical Centre. When the Repat is closed, what will happen to that extra work? This is an important part of the follow-up from the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program.

What we see is a net loss of anywhere between 180 and 250 beds, and that is a big drop in the number of beds. The opinion of my electorate has been very clear: they would have preferred to see the hospital upgraded rather than closed. The Australian Medical Association has warned that other hospitals do not have the capacity to absorb the extra workload, because they are already overstretched. When you look at the fact that hospital funding is going up 19 per cent and there has been a 36 per cent increase in GST funding over the next five years, it really does make local residents wonder why the state government has not continued to upgrade the site. Over the last decade, the federal government has given South Australia tens of millions of dollars to fund new facilities at the Repat. For that matter, they have spent some of their own money as well. Most recently the federal government invested $40.3 million to fund 20 brand-new subacute beds at the Repat. These are state-of-the-art facilities. They were only opened last year. The irony is that, within six months of them opening, the Minister for Health announced that the hospital would be closing, and now those beds and that facility will be sold to the highest bidder.

The new fourth-generation rehabilitation clinics, the recent rebuilding of ward 18—these are very modern facilities at the Repat. State Labor continually says that this is an old, run-down facility. That is not true. When you walk through, you are amazed by how good the rehab facilities are. There are old buildings there, and many of them are used for office space, not for clinical work.

Last year, the Repat provided more than 136,000 outpatient consultations across a broad range of specialist clinics. The clinics treat conditions like heart disease, sleep disorder and arthritis. That equates to more than 2,600 South Australians getting help as a Repat outpatient every week. Also last year, a quarter of all orthopaedic and neurological elective surgery performed in Adelaide was done at the Repat. It also plays a very important role, as I said before, in those overflow colonoscopies from Flinders, which is a critical step in the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program.

Not only has the Commonwealth government spent tens of millions of dollars at the site; but Flinders University has as well. One of the frustrating things about this closure has been that all the partners—the Commonwealth government, Flinders University—have been investing significant money at this site. The Repat is a major site for clinical placements for Flinders University students. Something like 60 per cent of health science students at Flinders University will rotate through the Repat. Flinders University researchers based at the Repat have attracted more than $75 million in research funding.to South Australia.

I could go on and on about this, but it is very clear that this is one case where the state government is not interested in the opinion of the local community. I have had listening posts, we have done surveys and we have run petitions, and it is very clear that my constituents do not want to see the Repat close. More than 80,000 people have signed a petition calling on state Labor to keep the Repat open.

As I said before, the Repat has seen many upgrades over the last decade, and everyone else had been working on the basis that we would continue those upgrades rather than shut down such an important part of our health system.

I next want to turn to one of my pet projects, which is the Darlington upgrade. I have had a longstanding interest in the upgrade of South Road and particularly in the upgrade at Darlington. I first started lobbying for funding for this eight years ago during the Howard government. It was an idea that was originally proposed by the major motoring organisation of South Australia, the RAA.

The government is strongly committed to the north-south corridor, and we are giving the South Australian government $162 million over the next year to get construction moving on this important project, including $82 million for the Darlington upgrade.

The Darlington upgrade—and the north-south corridor more generally—is a great example of what can be achieved when the state government works with the federal government. We see the South Australia Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Stephen Mullighan, working with the federal government, with Assistant Minister Briggs, instead of constantly picking fights with us, as some of his colleagues like to do.

In that plan, what has happened is that a good plan has been improved—through consultation and through the expert advice from traffic engineers—for the same investment. The previous design only gave motorists coming off the Southern Expressway access to the non-stop motorway, but this new design allows motorists coming from Flagstaff Road and Main South Road to also access the motorway and avoid three sets of traffic lights. That involves something like 15,000 commuters every day. So I welcome that revision to the plans.

For my electorate, this means that constituents living in Aberfoyle Park, Flagstaff Hill or anyone who uses Flagstaff Road will see a much improved and smoother commute, whether they are going into the CBD or even if they are just going to the inner southern suburbs.

The government has a strong commitment to the north-south corridor and the $620 million Darlington project in particular—to the extent that we have funded 80 per cent of this cost, or $496 million. Normally, we would expect a 50-50 split with state governments. But, even though we had to drag the South Australian Premier and the South Australian Treasurer kicking and screaming into this project, we did; because we deliver on our election promises, and our election promise was very clear in 2013. We were committed to the Darlington upgrade.

Contrast that with the previous government. They had been promising to upgrade Darlington since 2007. They promised it in 2010 and they never delivered. This is an important investment in South Australian jobs and economic growth. It will support about 370 jobs a year during construction. It will reduce travel times and it will boost freight efficiency. We expect some further announcements coming up over the next month or two. A shortlist of tenderers will be announced and a major contract will be awarded later this year. Major works are expected to commence by the end of the year, with construction to be completed by the end of 2018.

They are some of the important projects that are being delivered in the electorate of Boothby. I commend the Treasurer on a very sensible budget. This budget has a focus on small business, on families and on really supporting pensioners. I think it is very telling that the opposition attack on the budget faltered after a few days; they have already moved on to other issues.

The support for small business has been very well received in my electorate. I had Bruce Billson visit, and we were able to talk with small businesses at the Marion Shopping Centre. We found a high level of awareness about the changes, specifically the accelerated depreciation change and the five per cent reduction in taxation up to $1,000.

Similarly in child care, we reformed the delivery of child care so that now there will be a childcare subsidy which will cover, for lower income families, 85 per cent of the cost of childcare, tapering down to 50 per cent on higher income families. This budget is good for small business. It is good for families, and ultimately it will be good for jobs.

Russell Matheson (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the appropriation bills, and how they will help build a strong, safe and prosperous future for all Australians. The government has delivered a budget for families by providing a $4.4 billion Jobs for Families package that will give more than 1.2 million families more affordable access to quality child care and early childhood learning, especially for low- to middle-income families.

There is a budget for education that increases Commonwealth funding for schools across Australia by $4.1 billion, a 27.9 per cent increase from 2014-15 to 2018-19.

It is a budget for states, in particular my home state of New South Wales, increasing total annual funding over the next four years by around $5.6 billion. New South Wales hospitals will receive 25 per cent more funding on top of the growth of 12 per cent in 2014-15. Schools in New South Wales will have their funding increased by 26 per cent over the next four years on top of the growth of 10 per cent in 2014-15.

It is a budget for infrastructure, with the government investing $15 billion to build the infrastructure of the 21st century for New South Wales. That includes a $2.9 billion Western Sydney Infrastructure Plan that will dramatically reduce travel times and boost productivity in my electorate of Macarthur. It is a budget for rural communities, in particular farmers and farm businesses in drought-affected areas across Australia, who will receive more than $400 million in targeted support. This budget is for small business, providing a $5.5 billion Growing Jobs and Small Business package that delivers $3.25 billion in tax cuts, which means Australian small businesses will have the lowest company tax rate since 1967, as well as $1.7 billion in accelerated depreciation measures.

It is a budget for families, providing a $4.4 billion Jobs for Families package that will give more than 1.2 million families more affordable access to quality child care and early childhood learning, especially for low- to middle-income families. This budget is the beginning of our children's future. The actions we take today will have a long-term legacy for our children. This budget will directly help young families in ensuring that mums can return to work almost immediately after their children are able to be in a childcare service. The 2015 budget has delivered on the government's commitment to support families by making child care more affordable, accessible and flexible for parents. The family package will provide greater choice and opportunity for parents in Macarthur who want to re-enter the workforce by delivering more affordable access to child care and early childhood learning. The coalition understands that child care plays a pivotal role in parents being able to re-enter the workforce. The government is committed to investing $3.5 billion over five years on childcare assistance for families.

I recently had the pleasure of hosting the Minister for Social Services, the Hon. Scott Morrison, in my electorate of Macarthur. We visited Pied Piper Kindergarten in Campbelltown and Bambinos Kindergarten in Oran Park to meet with parents to discuss how the Abbott government is improving the childcare system by providing quality early learning for low-income families and disadvantaged and vulnerable families in my electorate. Children are our future, and early childhood learning is crucial for a child to reach their developmental targets. We want to ensure that our children have the best possible, strongest start in life, which is why the government is investing $843 million in 2016 for preschool programs right across Macarthur and Australia.

We also need to encourage parents to re-enter the workforce so that more people are contributing to our wonderful country and the economy. Now, thanks to the Abbott government, more parents are able to work and receive affordable access to child care and early childhood learning. Parents in Macarthur will now be able to maintain high quality standards for their children. The government is also committing over $400 million in the new inclusion support program. The program will benefit parents in Macarthur and across Australia who have children with additional needs to access child care much more easily. Families need our support more than ever. With the government's commitment, families will be better off.

In this budget, we have also taken positive steps to create a healthy operating environment for the two million plus small businesses in our country. Small business is the backbone of our economy and must be supported by the Commonwealth. Since the coalition came to office, around a quarter of a million new jobs have been created. But we recognise that there is always more we can do to improve the economy. It is through the responsible actions of the coalition government that Labor's debt and deficit have now been cut in half. The coalition is now able to focus on providing Australians with better services and more opportunities for economic growth and development.

The government is reducing the tax rate for more than 90 per cent of incorporated businesses with a turnover under $2 million. These small businesses will have their tax lowered from 30 per cent to 28.5 per cent, and unincorporated businesses will get an annual five per cent tax discount up to $1,000. By the government doing this for small businesses, cash flow will improve and their capacity to participate in the economy will increase. Small businesses in my electorate will also get an immediate tax deduction for any new asset up to $20,000. In Macarthur, the growth centre of south-western Sydney, small business provides the bulk of employment. Nationally, over 95 per cent of businesses are small businesses. Small business is vitally important to Macarthur's success as a region and Australia's success as a nation.

I had the honour of hosting Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in my electorate last week. We had the pleasure of speaking to many small business owners in Macarthur. There is no doubt that small businesses are at the forefront of Australia's jobs and growth. We want to guarantee that Australians with small businesses can continue to develop and grow, to create jobs and build a thriving economy that inspires business confidence. By our continually helping small businesses to become profitable and viable, small businesses will be getting on the front foot by creating more jobs for the people of Macarthur and Australia. We all know that the men and women of Australia with small businesses are the main force driving a strong economy. We need the men and women of Australia to take risks and develop new products and new business ideas. We need to attract new customers and create new markets. On the back of the success of small businesses, the economy will thrive as more jobs are created, and we will be building a safe and wealthy future for all Australians.

The youth unemployment rate in Macarthur was 13.2 per cent in April 2015. The coalition is committed to supporting young Australians to find jobs, and the $330 million Youth Employment Strategy will see the 13.2 per cent youth unemployment rate in Macarthur decrease over time. The Youth Employment Strategy will take a work-first approach to Australia's youth, and the program will assist over 19,000 job seekers a year with job development and skills within the workforce that many young Australians need.

Last week I also had the pleasure of having Assistant Minister for Employment Luke Hartsuyker in my electorate of Macarthur visiting small businesses and speaking with small business owners and apprentices. It was a great opportunity for the assistant minister to speak with the people who employ the youth of Macarthur. These business owners understand the trouble that youth go to in finding jobs, and they feel the need to do their part and employ these valued young Australians and give them an opportunity that other employers may not. They, too, acknowledge the fact that the youth unemployment rate in Macarthur is too high. While speaking with many apprentices and young Australians in my electorate of Macarthur, we found that the consensus is that it is very hard to find employment. Many employers want experience, but how can you get experience if no-one gives you the opportunities to get it? Our budget is all about opportunities.

Panarottis Restaurant in Campbelltown and Clintons Toyota in Narellan take on many young Australians for work experience and as apprentices. These two businesses understand the struggles that youth in my electorate of Macarthur go through in trying to find a job. There need to be more businesses out there following in the footsteps of the small businesses in Macarthur willing to take on young Australians for work experience and as apprentices. As I mentioned earlier, small businesses provide the bulk of employment in Macarthur and Australia. We met with the youth who were completing a work experience course at Panarottis Restaurant in Campbelltown and apprentices at Clintons Toyota in Narellan, and all of them are grateful to their employers for giving them the opportunity to gain the relevant experience needed for future employment.

Youth not only in my electorate but in all electorates across regional Australia are finding it hard to get experience. The coalition's $330 million Youth Employment Strategy will deliver intensive pre-employment assistance to young job seekers—something that the Labor government was unable to do.

The Abbott government has committed $50 billion in road upgrades in every state, and my electorate of Macarthur is currently receiving major infrastructure upgrades. $293,000 has been announced for my electorate of Macarthur to fix dangerous black spots on local roads. Camden, Rossmore and Wilton are all receiving upgrades where major black spots were found. These black spot projects are projected to save an additional 13 lives and prevent over 650 injury crashes over 10 years.

Another major investment for infrastructure upgrades in Macarthur—never seen in the Macarthur region in the history of parliament—is for the upgrades to the Bringelly Road, which is a $509 million project; to the Northern Road, which is a $1.6 billion project; and to Elizabeth Drive, which is a $1.25 billion project. That is 80 per cent funded by the federal government and 20 per cent funded by the state government, with a total of $3.6 billion being spent over the next 10 years to deliver world-class transport connections for south-western and Western Sydney.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Russell Matheson (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely—and never seen before in the history of parliament. We have definitely got the infrastructure Prime Minister. The Bringelly Road upgrade will support around 400 jobs—

An honourable member interjecting—

with approximately 4,000 direct and indirect jobs created during the 10 year Western Sydney infrastructure plan. This will mean more job opportunities for the youth of Macarthur.

I heard the member for Werriwa having a bit of a whinge, but he has never seen it before himself and obviously should be proud of what is happening in the Macarthur region, in and around Werriwa. The large majority of people employed in Macarthur have all spent several hours commuting to and from work. The upgrades that Macarthur is receiving will not only save lives but also will give many workers a better work-life balance and less time on the road. Obviously, this major infrastructure is leading to the Badgerys Creek airport and, in turn, will create another 30,000 jobs for the people of western and south-western Sydney—something that Labor could not deliver.

Another outstanding investment that will cut travel times for people employed in Macarthur is the Narellan Road upgrade, which is another $100 million project that is much needed in my community. That is being jointly funded by the state government, fifty-fifty. So that is another $100 million for the people of Macarthur—unbelievable!

This much-needed investment demonstrates the coalition's commitment to improving infrastructure in the south-western Sydney growth corridor. Together, we are working with the New South Wales government to provide the road infrastructure that Macarthur residents deserve and need. The coalition will also be investing $1.9 million to upgrade Argyle Street in Camden that runs through Camden town centre, as well as the Camden Valley Way corridor and the Macarthur Road intersection upgrade. There is another couple of million dollars there.

All levels of government are delivering the infrastructure that Western Sydney and south-western Sydney so badly need to develop and grow. This has never happened under the previous government. In six years of Labor I did not see a cent, not one cent, spent in Macarthur. Macarthur has been neglected for too long and now Western Sydney, south-western Sydney and Macarthur residents will benefit from the greater investment and jobs growth.

I am pleased to say that Macarthur has received funding from the Abbott government for various issues in the community. The funding received will build economic growth and development in the Macarthur region, as well as much-needed funding for community groups and organisations.

Drugs and alcohol are major issues not only in Macarthur but also right across Australia. The Odyssey House McGrath Foundation and the St Vincent de Paul Society drug and alcohol treatment services in Macarthur are now able to offer long-term treatment and rehabilitation as a result of the government extending funding. That was not in Labor's forward estimates either.

The federal government will also be paying over $2 million in my electorate of Macarthur to Campbelltown City Council, Liverpool City Council and Wollondilly Shire Council for the Roads to Recovery program that will assist councils with local road funding where it is most needed. Our councils rely on Roads to Recovery funding to ensure that the best local roads are delivered.

Funding has also been extended to my electorate of Macarthur for Giant Steps Sydney: Beverly Park special needs school, Campbelltown and Sylvandale Foundation, Rosemeadow to deliver services under the Outside School Hours Care for Teenagers with Disability, OTD, program. The previous government did not put money in the forward estimates for that. This funding extension is great news for the people of Macarthur with disabilities and carers as they will be able to continue to access these wonderful services.

Indigenous communities across Macarthur will also benefit from a $7.5 million investment in primary and preventative health care. The Tharawal Aboriginal Corporation will have their funding extended for another three years, thanks to the Abbott government, which Labor forgot to do. With this funding they will be able to continue to deliver important information on health care and treatment right across Macarthur. We will continue working hard for the community to ensure that vital services are delivered to those who need them the most.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Proceedings suspended from 20 : 02 to 20 : 20

Through this fair and responsible budget, and through the success of the government, the people of Macarthur, young and old, will be better off. Families, small businesses and young Australians will benefit from this positive and confident budget that has been delivered. I congratulate the Treasurer, the Hon. Joe Hockey, on a wonderful budget. When I walk down the streets—Argyle Street in Camden, Queen Street in Campbelltown—I actually see a spring in the step of the local community. They have really enjoyed this budget that has been delivered. I am looking forward to working with my local members, Jai Rowell, the member for Wollondilly, and Chris Patterson, the member for Camden, and local mayors from the Macarthur region, Lara Symkowiak, Paul Lake and Col Mitchell, in delivering the infrastructure of the 21st century and delivering positive outcomes for our communities into the future.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Macarthur for a wonderful presentation. I think it was remarkable.

Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

  They say a week is a long time in politics. That must be why it is hard to envisage just how far we have come since a year ago.    On coming into government, we inherited $123 billion of deficit from our friends from the Labor Party.    We saw how this resulted in a decline in business confidence, rising cost-of-living pressures and endless media reports of doom and gloom, particularly in my electorate of Leichhardt. After an admittedly tough budget in 2014-15, in the past 12 months we have looked down the barrel of lower commodity prices, falling revenue and weaker-than-expected global demand for our Australian products. But, despite all these odds, the tide has certainly turned.    We are now on track to bring our deficit back to $82 billion over the next four years. We are on track to bring Australia's bottom line back—in time—to surplus.

So today I would like to focus on some of the measures in this 2015-16 budget that will mean the most to my constituents in Leichhardt.    The measures in this year's budget are concrete evidence of this government's commitment to the development of northern Australia. There were 42 recommendations in the Pivot north report, and a number of these have already been taken up prior to the launching of the white paper. One of them is the $101 million for the Northern Australia Beef Roads Fund. This is a recommendation that we made, recognising that the beef roads right across northern Australia—or the development roads, as they were called—built 50 or 60 years ago, no longer have the capacity to carry the vehicles of today. The vehicles are too wide, too long and far too heavy, and this road network is shut down for a long time during the wet season. These roads are really the arteries of the heart of northern Australia. This is a first investment in upgrading these roads. Rather than just starting in an ad hoc manner, we will be using the CSIRO to analyse where the priorities are and where we can get the maximum return for the investment. We will start at that point and work our way through.

Two other key highways that have been recently announced are the Hann and the Gregory highways. The Hann Highway, from my perspective in Leichhardt, is critical. It will be a parallel highway to the Bruce Highway, cutting significantly travel time and distance from the Atherton Tableland and Cairns to Melbourne. More importantly, it will give access 365 days a year, basically giving us a flood-proof route to Melbourne, which is critical, because it does not matter what we spend on the coastal highway; there will always be an issue in relation to extreme flooding. This, of course, will alleviate that and it will be very much welcomed not only by the Etheridge and the Flinders Shires, but also by my area in Cairns—by Advance Cairns, the Chamber of Commerce and others who have been calling for this for a long time. It will be of significant benefit to us.

Tuberculosis has been another ongoing challenge for us, and I have been talking about it in parliament for a long time. The budget has offered a $15.4 million investment and a vital opportunity for James Cook University, which hosts the Australian Institute for Tropical Health and Medicine. There are two funding streams: one is for $6.9 million to build Australia's primary research capacity, funding projects focused on priority diseases, including dengue, malaria, Hendra and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis—all these tropical diseases that are of such concern. Another $8.5 million will commercialise research in new tropical therapeutics and diagnostics undertaken in Australia. It is a very important investment and it is a down payment, if you like, into tropical medical research.

Another area that I have been raising serious concern about over the last four and a half years is the skyrocketing and unaffordable price of insurance in Northern Australia. It is great to see that $2.1 million has been allocated to establish the Northern Australia Insurance Premium Taskforce. This will identify the best way that government can invest and support the residents of Northern Australia in bringing back to parity and affordability insurance across the region. The intention is to have the recommendations handed down by November this year. I applaud this decision because it is the one thing that will stop any opportunity for development in Northern Australia. If we do not have access to affordable insurance, we are in all sorts of trouble. I also applaud the setting of a timeline for when we will see some change.

There was also $3.7 million allocated for the development of a new infrastructure project pipeline. This will inform us of the priorities identified in the Infrastructure Australia's Northern Australian infrastructure audit as to where we can start to invest to get the maximum benefit and to prioritise those projects. The money will go to areas where we know we will get the maximum benefit.

Another change was Amending the Zone Tax Offset to exclude fly-in fly-out and drive-in drive-out workers. People who are eligible for this tax offset must bring their families into these communities and live there. If they want to remain in metropolitan areas, they will not be entitled to it. It is an important way of getting people back into remote communities.

There was also a most significant $5 billion concessional loan facility, which is aimed at increasing private sector investment in port, water and pipeline infrastructure across Northern Australia. To me, this presents opportunities for projects like the Nullinga Dam, the O'Connell Creek Water Storage Project, Urannah Dam, Cloncurry Dam, Elliot Main Channel and others. There is an opportunity to source some money through this project and that in turn will accelerate the development of these projects that are critically important for the development of the North. In feedback on the development fund, the CEO of Advance Cairns, Mark Matthews, said:

It is a clear and positive indication of the Federal Government's recognition of the important role that [Northern Australia] has to play in the nation's growth and their commitment to supporting development in the region.

I certainly endorse those comments. Organisations can start to apply from 1 July 2015 for access to the first tranche of this funding, which is $388 million. The development of northern Australia is a 20-year plan. This is certainly a down payment for that. It was disappointing to see that the Queensland state treasurer, Curtis Pitt, did not quite seem to understand the concept of these concessional loans as being part of the overall white paper when he came out criticising and saying, 'Oh, it should have been grants rather than concessional loans.' He needs to understand that this is something that a state government could actually access and that it is not too late for that to happen, rather than using the excuse of cost as a reason not to go ahead with the dredging of the Cairns inlet. He could, in fact, look at accessing some of these funds to be able to start the Cairns port dredging project, which is critically needed for the long-term development of Cairns.

On the small business package: of course, we know that small business is the engine room of our economy. In the past we have had very high rates of business failure in Cairns. It was the highest in Australia at one point, together with our very high unemployment and the highest youth unemployment in mainland Australia. This budget recognises that our economy changes and that the role of small business will be even more important. Tax cuts for over two million Australian small businesses will help to drive investment in employment. Australian small businesses now have the lowest company tax rates since 1967. Small businesses can now fully and immediately deduct every asset they acquire that is valued up to $20,000 for tax purposes, a substantial increase from the previous $1,000 threshold. This can be used for new tools, home computers, vehicles, kitchen equipment, machinery or whatever.

Linda Smart, from the Village Herb Farm in Kuranda feels that small business is the often-forgotten industry in Australia. She is very happy that they are being recognised in this year's budget. The comment from Linda was:

Anything we can get back that allows us to put more back into our business and employ more people is appreciated. It's also productivity benefits — we can spend money on technology, or other things to improve our business, sooner than we would have otherwise.

Of course, this feeds into the opportunity to employ more people.

Information will also help businesses to capitalise on the new free trade agreements with South Korea, China and Japan. An example of this is a local success story. In March, MSF Sugar in Gordonvale shipped 52,000 tonnes of Brand 1 high-polarity raw sugar to Japan for the first time. MSF CEO, Mike Barry, told me that they could not have accessed this Japanese market with their premium product without the FTA. The first shipment was considered to be so significant that Japanese officials flew to Cairns to celebrate the event. The government's Growing Jobs and Small Business package will create the right conditions for Australian small businesses to thrive and grow.

The budget also continues our government's commitment to stronger communities by focusing on building the infrastructure we need. There was additional money there for the Bruce Highway, with $31m for the Cairns Southern Access Corridor stage 2—the widening of Robert Road to Foster Road; money for the Cape York Regional package was confirmed—the $208.4 million, with $48 million to be provided in 2015-16; and, of course, there was nearly $3 million continuing for the Torres Strait sea wall project.

There was close to $10 million for upgrades to local roads and bridges. This included a double payment for councils under the Roads to Recovery program. There was funding for upgrades to remote airstrips, vital to maintaining connections with our regional communities. And, of course, there is the Stronger Communities Program, in which every electorate, including Leichhardt, will receive $150,000-odd a year over the next two years to contribute to small capital works projects. We often come across projects that could use a kick-start grant of between $1,000 and $20,000, and I am certainly looking forward to consulting with communities as to we where we can support on that.

Another area that we are very much involved in is in removing the uncertainty on pensions for veterans and families by making sure that increases are in line with the highest indexation measures possible. This is going to be great news for 2,344 Leichhardt residents.    The age pension will continue to increase twice a year at the highest-available indexation rate, and the family home will always be excluded from the pension assets test.

The revised childcare subsidy will see medium- to low-income families better off, and we will be trialling new ways to support families using pilot nanny programs to help shift workers, for example, access affordable and appropriate care. We are ensuring, of course, that nobody misses out on receiving a period of paid parental leave. There is $20 million to renew the National Drugs Campaign, focusing on young people and their parents and seeking to raise awareness of the harm caused by illicit drug use, particularly ice.

As I said earlier, it is amazing just how far we have come in a year. This budget reflects our responsible, measured and fair fiscal policy. Nationally, our economic plan is working. Growth is up. Jobs are up, with nearly 250,000 new jobs since the election. Retail sales are at record levels, as are new dwelling approvals. Locally, there is confidence in the far north, where there is news that construction has started on stage 1 of the $400 million Aspial seven-tower development; the EIS for the $8 billion Aquis integrated resort and casino project has been approved; and renewable energy projects such as Mount Emerald wind farm and Local Energy solar projects can progress now that the RET has been sorted.

It is a very, very positive time. I am excited, and there is only more to come, with the release of the white paper later this month. We have a vision for where we want to be. We have a plan for how we are going to get there. Let's bring it on.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is an absolute delight to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016. The 2015-16 budget is good for Brisbane, it is good for women, it is good for families, it is good for the environment and it is good for the country. I congratulate the Treasurer on a budget that has delivered new hope and confidence to small businesses and families. But I do not envy him his job, which has to rate as one of the most difficult in the country. Having to deal with inheriting a set of books drowning in debt after six years of Labor being in office, with gross debt projected to rise at the time to $667 billion and with $123 billion in cumulative deficits does not sound like my ideal job description. But that is the mess, the Labor mess, that the Treasurer was asked to fix, and that is exactly what he is doing—and we are on our way to a surplus.

But who better to take on this important job than someone who grew up in a small business family? That is very much something that the Treasurer and I have in common. The Treasurer started working in his family's small business, sweeping floors. My parents promoted me straight to customer service as an eight-year-old, spruiking the price specials on the size 9 frozen chickens. Growing up in a small family business taught me the value of hard work. It also taught me that real initiative and the real wealth generation in this country come from the men and women who run small businesses, who are prepared every single day of the week to have a go. That is why the government's 2015 budget is historic, it is unprecedented and it is a game changer, with our Growing Jobs and Small Business package, the biggest economic recognition of the sector in Australia's history.

The new $5.5 million Growing Jobs and Small Business package will help small businesses in Brisbane invest more, grow more and employ more people. It will help employers in Brisbane create jobs and assist Australia's unemployed, particularly unemployed youth, to build on those skills to get into work. Ninety-six per cent of Australian businesses are small businesses. They employ 4.5 million people and they produce over $330 billion of our nation's total economic output.

At the heart of the Growing Jobs and Small Business package are tax cuts for more than two million Australian small businesses that will help drive much-needed investment and employment across our economy. The $20,000 asset write-off is a fantastic initiative. That is why 30,000 small businesses in my electorate of Brisbane applaud this budget—businesses like Dolci Sapori, whose owner Aladino Pozzobon will now be able to refrigerate his van. He already has another van but he has one that is not refrigerated. He will be able to expand and deliver more of his beautiful Italian sweets to all of the coffee shops and restaurants that he supplies. He is very excited about taking his business to that next level.

As a result of this package, almost overnight business and consumer confidence has been transformed. This is the message that I am getting everywhere I travel. When I talk to my constituents, whether they have a little coffee shop on the corner, a deli, manufacturing business, IT business, health business or restaurant, they are all terribly excited by this small business package. To this point, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Queensland, which is based in my electorate, was absolutely delighted with the budget. It was delighted that the budget recognised that small business is the backbone of the economy. CCIQ Director of Advocacy, Nick Behrens, said the budget had firmly placed responsibility for job creation at the feet of small business through the $5.5 billion Growing Jobs and Small Business package. More specifically, Mr Behrens said that this federal budget will materially benefit many people—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Federation Chamber adjourned at 20 : 41