Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

I will take that interjection, Senator McGauran. Yes, I have; and that is why Labor says that we should be investing in those things which will drive Australia’s future prosperity and future productivity. Yet we have instead a government that continues to fail to invest in skills but rides the commodities boom without any plan for the future. That is the reality, Senator McGauran.

I want to go back to the questions that were answered—or not answered—by Senator Kemp, about the people who were forgotten in this budget. It is not very fashionable to talk about those who are in poverty. It is not very fashionable to talk about poor people in this country. The reality is that those people on income support—the many parents who are struggling to bring up children on income support, people on disability support pensions and the like—get nothing out of this budget. Senator Kemp knows that, and that is why he would not answer the questions. Those people have been forgotten. They are the poorest people in Australia.

It appears that this government does have a habit of forgetting some of the poorest people in Australia. Senators will recall, despite protestations to the contrary, that on the occasion of the last budget, 80 per cent of Australian taxpayers missed out. At least now the government has got tax cuts going to 50 per cent of taxpayers. But the fact is that people with a disability, people on the parenting payment and parents on income support who are struggling to bring up children have been forgotten. Judging by some of the answers that Senator Kemp gave, perhaps they have been forgotten so much that Senator Kemp did not even know that they had been forgotten. Around two million Australians rely on income support and they do not really share in any of the real benefits provided in the budget.

What is perhaps worse is that this is the same group of people who will receive a substantial reduction in income support payments on 1 July, as Senator Evans outlined. We know from statistics that the type of family most likely to live in poverty in this country is a family headed by a single woman. That is the case. Those are the people who, as a result of last year’s budget, face a reduction in their income support payments on 1 July—at the same time as the rest of Australia receives from this budget very substantial tax benefits. We on this side of the parliament do want to make a point about the vulnerable and poorer people in the Australian community who are not going to share in the benefits that are provided in the budget.

I want to talk very briefly about some of the challenges that have been forgotten in this budget. There were four things which were not mentioned in the Treasurer’s speech: productivity, education, participation and the current account deficit. I want to talk about participation, because one of the answers given by Senator Kemp in relation to child care really demonstrated this government’s failure to grasp the challenge of participation.

There are three things that need to be addressed if we want to tackle participation in this country. The first is the disincentives in the taxation system through the effective marginal tax rate, the second is skills and the third is child care. The disincentives which are faced by people moving off welfare into work, the program which the government has in place, have not been substantially altered at all by this budget. There will be people with a disability or parents moving off welfare into work who will face effective marginal tax rates of 64c in the dollar. They will actually be paying more back to the government for the privilege of working than they will receive in their own pocket.

Perhaps one of the worst cons in this budget is the con on child care. We heard a great deal of fanfare prior to this budget that child care was going to be a priority and that parents were going to get some relief from the fact that child care is either not affordable or not accessible for too many families in this country. The fact is that this budget does not guarantee a single extra place, it does not take a single dollar off their bills, and it does not save a single minute for parents who drive children to and from child care. Uncapping the out-of-school-hours places in the context of the government already sitting on almost 100,000 unallocated child-care places is clearly not the sort of systemic change that parents in Australia were hoping for. The fact is, if you do not have a child-care system that is working, if you do not have a child-care system that is affordable and, perhaps more importantly, if you do not have a child-care system that is accessible, you are not going to deal with the participation challenges that our economy and our society face. (Time expired)