Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

We are talking about the MPI on vulnerable people. Sixty-eight per cent removed annual leave loadings, 65 per cent removed penalty rates, 63 per cent removed incentive based payments and bonuses, 61 per cent removed days to be substituted for public holidays, 56 per cent removed monetary allowances, 50 per cent removed public holidays payments, 49 per cent removed overtime loadings, 31 per cent removed rest breaks and 25 per cent removed declared public holidays. The limited data revealed that 75 per cent of the 1,500 AWAs sampled did not provide for a guaranteed wage increase. Do not come in here and lecture us about vulnerable people. You created vulnerable people. We know you are in favour of vulnerable people; that is why you created so many in your 11 years in office, with your Work Choices regime, which the Australian people passed judgement on on 24 November.

It would not be so bad if the opposition had learnt their lesson. It would not be so bad if they had recognised that the Australian people had passed judgement on 24 November and Work Choices was now dead. Over the last few days we saw the unedifying spectacle of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition saying that the opposition neither support nor oppose the government’s moves to eradicate Work Choices. This is her grand plan: to neither support nor oppose the government’s moves to abolish Work Choices. Billy Snedden-like, she says, ‘I have the solution: we’ll neither support nor oppose it.’ No wonder the Australian people have come to the conclusion that the Liberal Party have lost their way.

I will say one thing about the former Prime Minister: at least we knew where he stood. At least we knew what he believed in. At least we knew—as strongly as we disagreed with it—that he believed in Work Choices. These people refuse to admit it. The opposition refuse to guarantee how they will vote on Work Choices, because they neither support nor oppose it. They just do not get it. They just do not get the message that the Australian people gave them about vulnerable people. They think that they can score a cheap political point on the backs of hardworking carers in this country. They think that they can use that as the way out of their political problems, as the way out of their leadership speculation. Well, they cannot, because the Australian people know what they really think about vulnerable people. The Australian people know what they really think about workers and working families who are vulnerable—the industrial relations system had its balance tipped so far in one direction that the Prime Minister of the day became the second Prime Minister in Australian history to lose his seat.

The Australian people see through this mob, and coming in here and posturing about vulnerable people will not work. Don’t lecture us about putting people first. Don’t come in here and lecture us about how important it is that the balance sheet includes people when you imposed Work Choices on the Australian people—the longest suicide note in Australian political history, which the Australian people passed judgment on.

We had the spectacle of the former minister for workplace relations on Four Corners just a couple of weeks ago saying that members of the cabinet, when he took over the portfolio, did not know that vulnerable people could have working conditions removed under Work Choices. He said:

Quite frankly when I took over the job I don’t think many ministers in Cabinet were aware that you could be worse off under WorkChoices and that you could actually have certain conditions taken away without compensation.

Liz Jackson said:

You’re saying to me that Cabinet colleagues were unaware that you could be worse off?

The member for North Sydney said:

Some were, yeah, yep.

Well, they have not learned.

Of course, there is another category of vulnerable people in this country. They are the people who are vulnerable because of the prospect of losing their homes. They are the people who are at the tipping point at the moment, who are wondering how many more interest rate increases there will be because the previous government could not get inflation under control—the people throughout Western Sydney, represented by the member for Lindsay, the member for Blaxland, me, the member for Fowler and the member for Reid, who are struggling in the killing fields of Western Sydney mortgages and who have the highest repossession rates in Australian history. They are vulnerable people. That is why this government is taking difficult decisions. That is why this budget, delivered in May, will increase the surplus to 1.5 per cent of GDP to put downward pressure on interest rates—something that they could never do, something they could not be bothered to do. The previous Treasurer said, ‘Inflation is right where we want it.’ Well, it is not right where we want it for the people of Western Sydney who are struggling to keep their homes, because it is putting upward pressure on interest rates, and that is not something this government is prepared to stand by and watch, which they were.

Vulnerable people are people who are at risk of losing their homes. These are the people who the current alternative Treasurer, the member for Wentworth, said on his way through the doors into the House were overdramatising a 25 basis point increase in interest rates. He said: ‘We shouldn’t get too concerned about this; it’s only a 25 basis point increase. It’s only a quarter of one per cent. It’s being overdramatised.’ That is what they think about vulnerable people. They believe that it is a small increase in interest rates that should not be overdramatised. It is pretty dramatic if you are at risk of losing your home. It is pretty dramatic if your life’s dream, the house that you have built up, is in danger of being lost forever. These guys, who come in here and have the hide, the temerity and the hypocrisy to lecture us about vulnerable people, should go and look in the mirror. They should say: ‘We never put the carers bonus in the forward estimates. We never budgeted for it. We never had the wit to put aside the money in forward estimates. We never cared about the people who we put on the heap with our Work Choices reforms’—so-called reforms—‘and we certainly never cared about the people in danger of losing their houses in Western Sydney.’

The Australian people are smart enough to see through an opposition which suddenly discovers compassion on 25 November 2007, which suddenly decides that a balance sheet should include people and which suddenly decides that carers are so important that we should put aside money for them into the future, we should put the money in the forward estimates. The Australian people understand that this government will not make those sorts of mistakes. This government has made very clear that, when it comes to improving the resources for carers, we can always do better. Carers fulfil a vital role in society, and no government, frankly, will ever do enough—no government ever could do enough—for those people. But what we can do is, for the modest support we can give them, be fair dinkum about it and make an allocation for it going forward.

We will not leave them hanging until the budget night, every year on 9 or 10 May, for the Treasurer of the day to say, ‘Tonight I announce a bonus.’ What we will do is ensure that they are no worse off as a result of this budget and they have some guarantees going forward. That is an essential difference between the approach taken by the heartless government which preceded us and the government which was voted in by the Australian people on 24 November. The Leader of the Opposition is a member of the cabinet which approved Work Choices, which did not make an allocation for carers payments and which included the Treasurer who said, ‘Inflation is right where we want it, so we will not take any action on fiscal policy.’ It is the epitome of hypocrisy for him to come in here, blush, bluster and froth at the mouth in his confected way and say, ‘It’s time for the Australian people to be shown some compassion,’ because they are the people who, for 11 years, left vulnerable people hanging. They are the people who for four years put a bonus into the budget but did not allocate it going forward. They are the people who have made cheap political points off the back of hardworking carers, who have used carers as a political hobbyhorse to get themselves out of their current political difficulty, because nobody knows what they stand for anymore. The once great party that once stood for something has been reduced to crocodile tears and frothing at the mouth about this issue when it refused to make any allocation in the budget going forward. It refused to put the money aside; it had other priorities. Vulnerable people in Australia know this government will always have them as their first priority.

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