Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No.1) 2014-2015 and related bills. On Saturday the front page of the Bendigo Advertiser had a photo of a grade 4 Camp Hill Primary School student. She was holding a letter—a letter to the Prime Minister challenging him on the federal budget. In her letter she wrote:

We are absolutely shocked by your actions. We think that you are being so unfair and disgrace.

These are the words of a young Camp Hill Primary School student. She is upset about the co-payment. She is upset about the Prime Minister's treatment of asylum seekers and the policy on them. I agree with so much of what Rachael Hamilton had to say.

This is an unfair budget. It is a budget that targets regional Victorians and Bendigo. Central Victorians will be hit hard by a number of broken promises, cruel cuts and unfair increases in almost every aspect of country and rural Victorians' lives. This budget shows that Tony Abbott and his Liberal government do not actually care about the people of Bendigo and central Victoria. Yes, there is some good funding for local projects. Some of the projects that the community has been advocating for for a long time have been funded. It is good to see there is funding for the Ravenswood interchange upgrade. It is good to see there is funding for the Pall Mall RSL museum planning project. It is good to see there is funding for community projects like the Kyneton Community Park and small projects such as the Huntly historical society. But Bendigo was a marginal seat at the last election and the government did throw whatever they could at it to try to win the seat; so it is not surprising that some local projects did get funded.

However, the funding for these projects does not make up for the harsh cuts and tax increases that will hit the vulnerable in our community the hardest. The heart of this budget is designed to tear down everything that makes our community strong. It attacks the most vulnerable in our community: our age pensioners, our unemployed, the young, families and the poor. There is an issue of equity within this budget. Days after the budget, as part of my 'A Day in Your Shoes' program, I spent the morning with Country Cob bakery in Kyneton. It was an interesting case study: this budget will affect each of the people working there in a different way. We were talking to the chef who has worked at the Country Cob for about 10 years. He was particularly concerned about the GP co-payment. Not that long ago his wife needed a heart transplant. All he could think of on budget night, when they were talking about the $7 co-payment, was how, every day after the transplant, they went to the doctor. All he could think was, 'Will I have to have $7?'

Imagine him having to find the $7 to pay the co-payment when all he wanted to be concerned about was his wife's health and getting her to her appointment.

He said that another major concern is the increase in the fuel tax. For them, living in a country area, driving from Woodend to Kyneton, driving the kids around as required, petrol is a big expense in their budget. Any increase would hit them hard. We pay more for petrol in the regions. On one Saturday in the electorate, petrol in Woodend was as much as $1.65. When you drove up the road, the petrol was $1.55. By the time you got to Bendigo, it was $1.45—a 20c difference on the same day in one electorate. The petrol tax will just compound this effect.

When I spoke to another member of the Country Cob Bakery staff, a single mum, she said that was very concerned about the changes to her payments. She has a young teenage daughter and is concerned about losing the schoolkids bonus and about how she is going to ensure that her young girl continues to get an education. She is concerned about the cuts to Gonski and what that means for the public school which her daughter goes to. She is concerned that her daughter may not have access to a trades training centre—another funding cut by this government since it was elected.

I also spoke to the two apprentices working at the Country Cob Bakery. Their major concern with the budget was the announced cuts to the tools program. It was of particular concern for the mature-aged apprentice who, at the age of 30, decided to take up an apprenticeship in pastry-making. She already pays her own way. She pays her own rent—she does not live at home—and much of her course work is now online. She was going to use the tools bonus introduced by the former government—and now axed by this government—to buy a computer so that she would be able to do her course work online. These are the effects of this budget. These are the effects on just three or four people working at the Country Cob Bakery.

Now the owner: he said that his concern with the budget is how it will hit his customer base. He is concerned that pensioners will have less money to spend in his bakery. He is concerned that the mums will not come in and have their cake and coffee on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings. The problem is that, when you reduce the incomes of those on the smallest of incomes, they do not spend. They do not have the disposable income to spend in their local community.

The budget cuts are inherently regressive. They target the poorest parts of our community who benefit the most from government spending. Whilst the debt levy, which Labor supports, on the rich is temporary, the intended changes to Medicare, university fees, pensions and welfare payments will be permanent. There has been talk of how Labor in government produces these policy time bombs. There has also been talk about a great conspiracy theory that Labor was setting up a budget to catch out the incoming government. This is so wrong. What Labor did in government was invest in and create programs for the future: Gonski, a great program; the NDIS, a great program; and ensuring that our hospitals have adequate funding, a great program. Prior to the election, this government had no problem in standing side by side with Labor on these issues. Prior to the election, when Tony Abbott or Joe Hockey were in Bendigo, they said that there would be no cuts to health and education. They stood at the front of the Bendigo Hospital and proudly said that they will continue to invest every dollar, just as Labor had done. So it is not a conspiracy theory if, before the election, you agreed with it. And it is not a time bomb if, before the election, you agreed with it. This is a government that will say one thing to get elected and do another once it is elected. Let us be true about this budget. It is about ideology. It is about cutting back government and cutting services. It does not believe that government has a role to play in investing to build a stronger community. It does not build Australia; it tears it down.

There are other examples of how this budget is bad for the economy and bad for the Bendigo electorate. Let us look at the health cuts that I referred to. On budget night, it was revealed that $25 million would be cut from Bendigo Health between now and the next five years, because the government had torn up the national partnership on hospital funding. This is a lot of money to be lost from one particular hospital. The funding cuts to our regional hospitals may force some of our smaller hospitals to merge; it may force some hospitals to close. We have an issue in providing quality, affordable health care in our region. There is no point building a brand-new hospital if they do not have the operating budget to keep it open.

Another health cut that will hit the community hard is the GP tax, the $7 per visit. We have heard today the private Brooke Street clinic in Woodend blast the $7 per visit payment. Dr Richard Bills has said that this would deter people from seeking help. He was also critical of the fact that they have will have to charge it when they turn up to nursing homes. In regional communities our doctors do their bit to help in hospitals and nursing homes and do the after-hours clinic services. If you are a distance from a hospital, you need GP clinics and you need GPs to do this work. Now they have to make sure that they have got their accounts and have change for the $7 co-payment.

Another thing that will hit the electorate hard is the cuts to education funding. Bendigo schools were going to be big winners under the former federal Labor government's Gonski plan. Over $100 million was going to be invested in our schools to ensure that they had the resources that they need. It was not just a splash for cash; it was built on the principle that every school, regardless of where they are, would have the resources they need. The funding was going to follow the child. It would have given families choices. Under this budget we have seen funding to our local schools in Bendigo cut.

The changes to higher education are also a disaster for the region. It is not just about the HECS debts that will now not be subject to the CPI but subject to up to six per cent interest rates; it is also about the low-socioeconomic students attending a local university. This will be a barrier for them to attend university. Currently 25 per cent of people enrolled at Bendigo's La Trobe University are from a low-socioeconomic background. The cuts this government has made to the programs that encourage students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds will see that number fall.

The changes to higher education will also hit country kids who move to the city to go to university. Not too many people from the country have the economic needs to support a household in the city for children going to university and a household in their home electorate. Skye, the City of Greater Bendigo's Youth Citizen of the Year, is studying her third year of medicine at Monash University. Just on the weekend she said that, if these changes were in five years ago when she was considering to studying medicine, she believes that her family or she would not have been able to afford it. Skye grew up in North Bendigo. It is not an area of wealth. Skye would have to pay $200,000 for her medicine degree, and that is a debt that she or her family could not have taken on board.

Another thing in this budget that will have a big impact on Bendigo is the public sector job cuts. We are not immune to the over 16,000 job cuts that will occur in our electorate. The ATO in Bendigo will go. That is about 10 jobs. Jobs at the Australian Emergency Management Institute will also go. That is 60 jobs, including contractors. Why on earth would you cut funding and close the Australian Emergency Management Institute when in regional Victoria we are trying to get on top of emergency management? It is a silly decision to make. It is a reckless decision to make. This institute ensures that when disaster strikes, when there is an emergency, the people in charge are prepared and have the skills. It brings together our SES, our CFA, the departments and the people in charge to ensure that when there is an emergency they are prepared and ready.

Bendigo deserves its fair share of public sector jobs, yet in the budget we have seen jobs cut. This budget has no plan for jobs. All it does is cut jobs, whether they be jobs in the public sector, the not-for-profit sector or associated with support programs like Youth Connections and family counselling. This budget is an attack on jobs and good jobs. It sees more job cuts in our region.

On debt, any high-school economics student can tell you that to counter a recession a government needs to spend during the downturns to ensure that the recovery is sooner, to save during the booms and spend during the downturns to give the private sector the best opportunity to pick itself back up. Governments have historically gone into debt to fund social programs to avoid recessions. This is nothing new. This is ensuring that we do not have a period of austerity which just prolongs a recession. I do fear that our local community and our local economy will fall into recession as a result of this budget.

No-one's personal success is completely independent of the society in which they live. The funding cuts, the job cuts, the job losses, the changes that will occur from this budget will see an economic downturn and may hit the Bendigo economy very hard. In terms of the economy, this budget is simply bad economics. We have seen austerity overseas. As we have seen overseas, it will not result in a growth of the market, it will not result in a boost in our jobs and it will not ensure that we survive the last of the global financial crisis.

Some are saying that everyone will need to do the heavy lifting in this budget, but this is simply not true. What we are seeing are that the most vulnerable, those with the least income, have to pay the most. We have seen that for a young job seeker on an income of $13,000, this budget will cost them $7,000. We have seen that for an age pensioner on an income of less than $22,000, this budget will cost them $7,000. As young Rachel said in her letter to the Prime Minister about this budget: 'We are absolutely shocked by your actions and we believe it is unfair and a disgrace.'

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