Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Usually, being the last speaker on an MPI is a pretty hard gig because everyone has already covered everything. But I have to say that if you are talking about fairness in this budget, or the lack thereof, we could be here all afternoon. We could be here day, after day, after day for weeks. I think it is fair—picking up a cue from the member for Fenner—to assess any budget against the challenges that our country faces. So, let's think about a few of them.

Inequality: we live in an Australia where the top one per cent already have 22 per cent of our national wealth. We live in a country where the two richest people have more than the bottom 20 per cent combined. We have a housing crisis, with home ownership at record low levels. We have a productivity and sluggish growth problem. We have employment and wages growth at low, verging on pathetic, levels and we have an infrastructure deficit. This budget fails every test.

Let us have a look at inequality. There are tax cuts for the top—for us, as we have heard—of at least $5,000 for everyone in this chamber, but tax rises for everyone else. There is a tax cut for everyone in this chamber, but university fees are up and repayments are earlier. There is a tax cut for everyone in this chamber, while penalty rates are cut from 1 July—the very same day we get more in our pockets. There is a tax cut for everyone in this chamber, while pensions and family payments are cut. The rich get richer.

I can say one good thing about the 2014 budget: at least it was honest. It did not pretend to be something that it was not. This is a deception. It is sneaky, and it is dishonest. I think the member for Moreton this morning talked about the humble battler millionaire that is the Prime Minister. Only in Turnbull-land could you say that this is fair: 95,000 fewer jobs. At least we will not hear much more about jobs and growth.

If we look infrastructure—and I will take a Victorian lens on this, because it needs to be said: the great state of Victoria is three per cent of our land mass, 25 per cent or more of our economy, 25 per cent of our population, the fastest-growing state and has the fastest-growing capital city of Melbourne. This is a good thing for the economy, but it brings challenges—particularly infrastructure for growth. So, what do we see? Victoria's share of infrastructure funding in the forward estimates is eight cents in every dollar. Eight cents! Nothing has changed. There is this great table in the budget papers that puts out the new spending for Victoria. It goes 00000. I do not even know why they put it in there.

But they have actually achieved an even better feat. They have managed to cut $500 million from zero. We were owed $1.45 billion from the asset recycling, but we are only getting a billion. So, all of those little regional rail lines, many of which I agree are very important projects, are actually been funded by a cut. Work that out. That is almost worth an achievement award. Labor invested $201 per head for every Victorian in infrastructure, but it is $92 under this mob. And, even better, their so-called infrastructure boost is a $1.6 billion cut this financial year, falling off a cliff to $4.2 billion.

I will tell you what else is unfair: this budget sees the start of the privatisation of Centrelink. It may sound extreme, but it is not. We have seen 5,000 jobs cut already under this government. We have seen staff suffering with not one per cent, not one dollar, in a pay rise over years. And 1.2 thousand more jobs have been announced to be cut from Centrelink, plus goodness knows how many from the efficiency dividend. They have quietly slipped in, 'a trial' of outsourcing 250 jobs to a call centre. Do you want to know how much that costs? So do I. It says 'NFP'. That does not mean not for profit; it means not for publication because it is commercial in confidence. So we have a mystery provider that is going to come and take 250 jobs—it could be in the Philippines; who knows where?—dealing with people's most personal, most private information, while they are cutting close to 2,000 more jobs. This is a disgrace. This is on top of the robo-debt, the DSP saga, age pension claims being delayed, and families literally spending hours and days trying to get through. Apparently, poverty is a crime under this government. The drug testing for welfare recipients will be a conversation for another day, but I presume we will also hear more about the drug testing regime that will come in for millionaires claiming outrageous tax deductions. We could talk about housing, but time does not permit. But I do encourage those opposite to listen quietly to Bill Shorten's speech tonight, when you will learn what fairness is really about.

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