Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister for Employment) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak after the architect of the mess in which we find ourselves—Australia's worst Treasurer, who delivered the largest deficits that this country has ever seen. If action were not taken, we would be heading towards 16 years of deficits. I did hear the member for Lilley claiming that our forecasts are too pessimistic. He has left the room now, but the reality is that he missed every forecast in his own budgets. He got every forecast wrong. He came into the House as Treasurer at the time, saying—I can still remember it, and I am sure you can too, Deputy Speaker—'The four surpluses I announce tonight'. That is how he opened his budget speech, but the reality was very different. He never delivered a surplus. He delivered deficits year on year on year and left us with a mess. If action were not taken on it, we would be having deficits as far as the eye could see.

The budget that this government has introduced is one that is all about setting up Australia for the future. The great challenge for this parliament is to support the changes needed to be made to build a stronger, more prosperous and more secure nation, with new opportunities for the next generation. This basic principle is behind this budget: to redirect tax dollars away from unaffordable consumption—which was the Labor way—towards investment for the future. The budget contains a range of difficult measures, and there is no running away from that. However, it needs to be done because the previous government left such a mess. Not only did the Labor government leave a mess; they booby trapped the budget with promises of significant unfunded spending increases outside the forward estimates. We had the member for Lilley repeating the insult before he left, talking about the fact that a range of programs were fully funded. They were not fully funded, they were just hollow promises with no financial basis to back them up.

To understand this budget, you need to understand the context. When Labor came to office, they inherited a budget on track for a $20 billion surplus. The government had no net debt and $45 billion in the bank. From that starting point, Labor delivered deficits totalling $191 billion and the prospect of another $123 billion of deficit to come. Treasury forecasts predicted that the budget would be in deficit for the next 10 years if we do not change direction and, as I said earlier, a total of 16 years of deficits. Labor left Australia heading towards a debt burden of $667 billion. Every month, Australian taxpayers are forced to pay $1 billion just to cover the interest on Labor's debt. That interest bill will continue to climb as a result of Labor's mismanagement and waste. Each Australian's share of Labor debt is currently $13½ thousand and, unless we take action, this will grow by $1,100 every year and reach $24,500 within a decade. That is $100,000 of debt for every family of four. To put that in perspective, the $12 billion we are paying in interest on Labor's debt would be enough to complete the duplication of the Pacific Highway, with billions of dollars left over.

It is not just the nation's finances that went backwards under Labor; almost every area of policy suffered under Labor's mismanagement. Despite explicitly promising not to do so, Labor introduced a carbon tax, which was a $7.6 billion hit on the economy in its first year. Abolishing the carbon tax would save the average household around $550 next year alone. In health, hospital waiting times for elective surgery grew from 34 days to 36 days. Labor promised 64 GP superclinics but only delivered 33, and they presided over $4 billion in cuts to private health insurance. Labor's border protection failures resulted in more than 50,000 illegal arrivals, cost blow-outs of over $11 billion and, tragically, over 1,000 deaths at sea as people attempted to reach our shores. Defence spending fell to the lowest level in real terms since 1938. In education, despite spending billions of dollars on overpriced school halls and computers in schools, student results dropped, with Australia's education system dropping from eighth best in the world to 23rd, according to the World Economic Forum. In my portfolio of employment, under Labor another 200,000 Australians joined the unemployment queue. Long-term unemployment almost doubled and youth unemployment grew by almost three per cent. Under Labor the number of days lost to strikes more than doubled and productivity decreased by an average of 0.7 per cent.

This is Labor's legacy. It is a legacy of waste and mismanagement. We did not create the mess that Labor left, but we are certainly determined to fix it. This budget make substantial steps towards setting the nation back on a sustainable growth path. Because of this budget, gross debt will be almost $300 billion lower than what it would have been under Labor. This means our interest bill will be $16 billion per year lower in 10 years. This frees up money to spend on important infrastructure projects and programs that the country needs. By 2017-18 the deficit will have been reduced to just $2.8 billion. The medium-term projections show strong surpluses of above one per cent of GDP within a decade. Importantly, this budget improves Australia's structural position. Under Labor the budget was expected to remain in structural deficit for more than a decade. As a result of this budget the structural position will be balanced by 2018-19 and in surplus in the following long years.

It is important to recognise that getting the budget back under control is not an end in itself. As a government, we want to build a strong and prosperous economy. A strong economy means more jobs. A strong economy means more opportunities for our young people, higher wages and a better standard of living. But you cannot build a stronger economy until you fix the budget, which is what these appropriation bills are all about.

In my portfolio this budget includes programs to build on the work done since MYEFO. We have previously introduced the job commitment bonus to reward those young Australians who demonstrate a commitment to the world of work rather than the world of welfare. We introduced the Tasmanian Jobs Programme to provide an incentive for Tasmanian employers to take on new staff. We also introduced new relocation assistance to provide long-term unemployed job seekers with the opportunity to move to where the jobs are, with assistance of up to $9,000 for a job seeker with dependants.

In this budget we introduced a program called Restart, offering up to $10,000 to encourage employers to put on mature age workers so that their businesses can gain the benefits that older workers can bring to an enterprise. As a nation we need as many workers participating in the workforce as possible, and these measures will help job seekers get into the workforce.

Last week I announced the details of phase 1 of our new Work for the Dole program. Some $14.9 million has been allocated to fund this measure. Starting in July, young long-term unemployed job seekers in receipt of Newstart or youth allowance will be required to do work for the dole of around 15 hours per week. This will apply in 18 selected locations around the country. Employers are telling me that many young job seekers are presenting at the gates of their business without the necessary basic skills that would allow them to get by in the workforce. Work for the Dole has the potential to provide these skills that so many young people desperately need.

A recent survey by my department has revealed that employers believe improvements in basic things, like attitude, appearance and communication skills, would improve the employment prospects of young job seekers, and I could not agree more. Work for Dole equips young job seekers with these skills and often provides a link to the local labour market. Last week I visited a Work for the Dole project in the electorate of Dobell and spoke to several participants. Two of the participants have now secured jobs, and they credit Work for the Dole with giving them the motivation and attitude needed to get into the workforce.

The budget also introduces tough new measures to ensure that young job seekers are earning or learning. There are too many young people who are falling prey to the welfare trap. Fit, capable young Australians should not have the option of becoming welfare dependent and descending into the despair that comes with a life on welfare. It is in no-one's interests to have our young people not participating in the workforce. Under the changes within the budget, young Australians need to be either working or studying. Leaving school and becoming welfare dependent is not an option.

To ensure that young people have every opportunity to study or train, we have introduced new support for apprentices, expanded the range of courses subsidised by the government and deregulated our university system. These changes will give young Australians greater choice, and in most cases there will be no up-front fees for those who choose to study.

I would now like to turn my attention to the impact of the budget on regional Australia, particularly my electorate of Cowper. This budget will see works continue on key Pacific Highway projects, and we are aiming to complete the duplication by 2020. The federal government's commitment to deliver $5.6 billion to complete the upgrade, working in partnership with the state, provides sufficient funding to allow the project to be completed on the 80/20 basis that was always envisaged.

More than $4 billion in Pacific Highway works are either now under construction or tenders have been awarded. This is great news for our local area. Since September last year the federal coalition has announced almost $2.5 billion in additional Pacific Highway works. Make no mistake: we will get this job done, so vital to the people of the north coast, to ensure that people can travel between Brisbane and Sydney in a safe way, to provide safer motoring, faster travel time and a more efficient transport system.

Drivers in Cowper will also benefit from the millions of dollars in Roads to Recovery funding. Nationally, Roads to Recovery will be doubled for 2015-16, allowing local councils to properly fix roads they often cannot afford to maintain.

The budget also includes $565 million for black spots funding and $248 million for heavy vehicle safety projects. A $300 million program for bridges renewal is so vitally important, with so many councils in my area having a long list of timber bridges which require urgent repair or replacement.

This budget also delivers on our election commitment with regard to the Community Development Grants fund, which is supporting 300 projects around the country. In Cowper, we are delivering our commitment to the South Kempsey Recreational Parklands Project, the Clarence Valley Airport upgrade, the McLachlan Park upgrade and the Wherrett Park upgrade. These are all important pieces of community infrastructure and I am proud to have delivered these projects for my electorate. Next year our Stronger Regions Fund will be up and running, delivering funding for important community infrastructure around regional Australia.

In conclusion, this is a budget that sets Australia up for the future. The $50 billion of infrastructure funding will set Australia up to be more prosperous, more efficient and more secure, and it will generate tens of thousands of jobs in the construction phase and countless jobs as a result of the efficiency of these infrastructure projects. The $20 billion medical research fund will find cures and treatments that will allow us to live longer and more enjoyable lives. The structural changes within the budget will set Australia on a sustainable growth path so that our children are not saddled with a national debt run up by the previous generations—run up by the member for Lilley, I must say, the architect, as I said earlier, of the mess we find ourselves in. After six years of Labor mismanagement and waste, Australia can finally look forward to a brighter future with opportunity and prosperity.

However there is a challenge in this budget and the challenge is the Australian Labor Party. Labor must accept that they lost the election. They were thrown out. Australia decided that another three years of Labor mismanagement was simply unacceptable. Now Labor is seeking to continue their mismanagement from opposition. They are continuing to stand in the way. They are continuing to prevent Australia from moving forward on repairing the budget. They are always there—lots of words, lots of hot air and no solutions. Labor created the mess. We are about to fix the mess. I commend the budget to the chamber. It is a budget that is going to set Australia on the path to a prosperous future.

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