Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is always a great privilege to have the opportunity to speak on appropriation bills, because not only can you speak about the areas of funding contained in the particular bills but you can also, as is customary in this place, range a little wider about general appropriation and some of the key issues that face the Australian people—and today is no different. The purpose of Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and the cognate bills is to provide the funding that is necessary to implement measures described in the nation-building and stimulus plans—two essential planks in the Rudd Labor government’s strategy for ensuring Australia’s economic future and that of ordinary working Australians and their families. Today’s national accounts reflect exactly that. Our strategy, while it is difficult and will involve some pain, is having the right effect, and it is benefiting all Australians.

Indicators show that the nation-building projects are having a positive effect on the country. Unemployment dropped by 0.3 per cent in April this year in comparison to April 2008, which was well before the world financial crisis began to impact at the level that it is now. Australia’s strong position relative to other economies can be seen in the growth figures for the last quarter. As the Prime Minister said, Australia is now the only advanced country not in a recession. This is not something that should be taken lightly, nor is it something that should be deemed to have just happened by accident or chance. This is actually part of the very strategic approach that the Rudd Labor government and the Treasurer have taken to ensure that the Australian government minimises the impact of the global financial crisis on ordinary Australians.

The impact of this crisis is no different in the electorate of Oxley from that of any other electorate in this country, except perhaps for a few things. The electorate of Oxley is disadvantaged in many ways, and that shows up in national statistics. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the electorate sits in the top five most disadvantaged communities in Australia. Disadvantage is not evenly distributed throughout my electorate. There are pockets of people who are well off and who can manage to look after themselves but, at the same time, there are also pockets of individuals who struggle with day-to-day living expenses and who feel it most when economies begin to falter. It is those people whom I am concerned about. I think all of us should work very hard to ensure that these communities do not unfairly bear the weight of the global financial crisis on their shoulders. I refer here particularly to people who are unemployed, who are in the lowest income levels and who struggle to make a living—the working poor.

We are lucky in this country, but we are not lucky by accident. We are lucky by design, by strategy and by the measures that I have already mentioned. We have worked hard, we have planned hard and we have taken the tough but necessary decisions to ensure that we minimise the impact of the global financial crisis. I want to congratulate the Treasurer and the Prime Minister for having the courage in what are very difficult and challenging times to make those difficult decisions and to stare criticism in the face. The opposition merely want to destroy what the government is trying to do while, at the same time, not put forward any positive proposals themselves.

Our strategy is well documented. It is a strategy to assist families and working people. It is a strategy that included a stimulus package of $10.3 billion over the Christmas period last year to make sure that retail did not falter and that it did not feel the full shock of what was happening around the globe. The evidence today speaks for itself in terms of the impact that had. Nobody can argue about the figures and nobody can deny the outcomes of that particular stimulus package. We have gone further because we feel it is necessary to do the things that were left undone for more than a decade—the great lost opportunities that I have talked about in this House many times. We wanted also to assist pensioners with a substantial and real increase to their income levels. It is above what was deemed by many to be the threshold level of $30. We went slightly higher than that—$32.50 per week for a single pensioner—because we recognise, acknowledge and understand the difficulty that a single pensioner faces in trying to meet their cost of living. We went further to make sure that couple pensioners were not disadvantaged, and, while they did not need the same sort of increase, they still needed some recognition of the difficult times that they face, so couple pensioners got a bit over $10 per week, which was a substantial amount for them as well.

We did not stop there. For our strategy to have the broad impact that we wanted across the Australian economy—to assist families, pensioners, industries and small, medium and large business—we made sure we included packages in our automotive and manufacturing sectors in infrastructure, which is a major plan in our strategy moving forward. About 75 per cent of our economic strategy has been aimed directly at infrastructure. This does two things: one is to make sure that employment and jobs grow in skilled areas, and the other is to provide legacy infrastructure for this country—infrastructure that will benefit our children and infrastructure that will deliver well into the future for future generations and for the Australian economy.

We have also provided and ensured that there is confidence in the markets, confidence in our banking system and confidence that Australia is in a position to have enough liquidity to continue to do what it does. We had to make sure that our banking system, our financial markets and the things that underpin our economy did not falter as they have done in other places around the world. But there is a lot more that needs to be done. We do these things at a macro level, but we also do these things at a micro level—at a local level—where it affects people directly. It is not necessarily always based purely just on economic terms. There is an important element to social infrastructure and that is to look after those people that rely and depend on us to look after them because they are not in a position to do that for themselves on their own. The government has, in that vein, invested $6.4 billion to build around 20,000 social housing dwellings across the country. This will stimulate building and jobs in the construction industry. It has been estimated by Treasury that it will support some 15,000 jobs nationally over the next two years. It is a very important part of the puzzle in terms of delivering for the Australian people and the Australian economy.

In Oxley in particular, the government will be building 21 social housing units. I welcome those very much. I appreciate the work of the minister. I understand that, with 150 electorates, a lot of work needs to be done, so I appreciate any effort that is done in the western suburbs and the western corridors of Brisbane and Ipswich. We are also providing support for existing social housing through the repair and refurbishment of existing houses—281 homes in the electorate of Oxley will benefit from such refurbishments—which I think is a good way forward and delivers right across the board. The way I see it is that it is the government adding value and it is the government taking its housing responsibility seriously. For the first time in a very long time, it is the Commonwealth, once again, taking on board its responsibilities in infrastructure and housing and playing a key role in what has been shoved off to the states by the previous government for far too long.

The government is also committed to helping the most marginalised people in our community. We have already seen this through our decisive action in a variety of areas including people who are on very low incomes, pensioners and the homeless. I do not know whether it is ever necessary to say it, but we can always do better, we can always do more and we can always strive to provide in those areas where we fail. There is no doubt that housing is one of those areas where we must do everything we can to improve the circumstances of people currently living rough or without a home or who, for some reason outside their control, find they no longer have a place to live or perhaps even a family to share a home with.

The government takes very seriously its commitment to small business. We did so while we were in opposition and we continue to do so while we are in government. The government will be assisting small businesses by giving them some crucial tax breaks. I heard the calls from the Liberal and National parties when they were in government about all the things they could, would or maybe should do for small business. We did not actually see a lot of it. We heard a lot of talk.

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