Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The previous speaker, the member for Goldstein, talked about leadership. Well, this government had 17 backflips in the first seven months of Prime Minister Turnbull's leadership. I do not think that is leadership at all. In contrast to the member for North Sydney, I will not be congratulating the government on what I see as an epic fail for the people of Braddon, Tasmania and, indeed, Australia. You just have to look at the Liberals' Tasmanian backbench to see where they got it all wrong.

While the member for North Sydney will boast about what he calls 'achievements', I beg to differ on many points. When the members on the right side of the chamber refer to the government's so-called protection of Medicare, I can only shake my head. Since the start of this month, GPs have been raising their fees in response to the government's continued rebate freeze, hurting rural regional and rural Australian electorates like my own in Braddon. As a result, GPs are under more pressure to stop bulk-billing and pass costs on to patients, which is making it incredibly difficult for those already struggling to be able to afford to see a doctor. Preventative health is also suffering. While a focus on chronic health is welcome, shouldn't the government also consider that preventative health is economically prudent and that keeping people from getting chronically ill in the first place actually saves money?

When it comes to education, the member for North Sydney simply spruiks changes to vocational education and training, which in fact have only been made better thanks to Labor's amendments in the Senate. What about Gonski? The coalition continues to deny schools $3.9 billion in Gonski funding in 2018-19 alone. Meanwhile, many schools continue to struggle to deliver effective education, despite their best efforts. It is no wonder that the member did not list this as an achievement. Leading up to the election and again in his speech, the member for North Sydney continues to talk about welfare dependency while ignoring the fact that 5,200 jobs have been lost since the election. Cuts to pensions and additional barriers for people trying to access all sorts of assistance are certainly not the way to offer help.

And more on jobs: another epic fail from the coalition has been this constant bungling of the backpacker tax, which the member describes as simply 'better'. Now that is just some mighty spin there. The reality is that both the agriculture and the tourism industries have been left in limbo for many months, while the coalition has refused to consult with them about their tax. Starting at 32½ per cent and then trying to put through 19 per cent, what the coalition did not say was that this was going to make Australia uncompetitive and result in a declining number of backpackers coming to Tasmania. Treasury modelling actually says that. While fruit has been left rotting on the ground, the member and his Tasmanian Senate colleagues have simply ignored the interests of the various stakeholders and barged their way through; yet, with four Senate sitting days, that backpacker tax is still not being debated.

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