Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Inequality in Australia is at a 75-year high. Wages growth is at record lows. Indeed, wages now are stagnant or, for some workers, going backwards. This is the worst, lowest rate of growth for wages since records were first kept. The people of Australia and the people of Newcastle, who I represent, might be forgiven for thinking that this budget might want to tackle some of those deep issues of inequality in Australia. Certainly, the Prime Minister likes to talk the talk around fairness and built certain expectations around this budget that it might well be a budget to look at this issue of inequality. But, sadly, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer's 2017 budget shows that they have no idea—absolutely no idea—how to tackle inequality in Australia.

Budgets are all about priorities. They are clear indicators of the values that guide us, the direction that the nation is going to take, so they are important documents. They are much more than just a series of numbers, although I am certainly not disputing the importance of numbers. People need to be able to read budget papers beyond the toing and froing of dollar figures. That is where we learn what the real priorities of a government are.

Sadly, when you scratch beneath the surface of this budget, what is very clear is that this government's priorities remain very squarely with the top end of town. That is where they have been for some time now, and there is no relief here for many of the people that we on this side of the House would want to see getting a fairer distribution of the common wealth. I expect that multinationals and multimillionaires will be very happy with this budget and the government's efforts, but, in the community that I represent, there are many, many people who will be hurt.

To start with, when we look at the taxation breakdowns, obviously the government is trying to get revenue, although this government for a long time tried to pretend it had no revenue problem. This is a budget that, when it carves up the taxation pie, chooses to give its priorities again to the top end of town. People earning more than $180,000 a year are going to enjoy a tax cut out of this budget, while everybody else earning $21,000 or more in Australia gets a tax hike. Big business gets a tax cut which is going to cost this budget not $50 billion as was first anticipated; it has now blown out to $65 billion of Australian taxpayers' dollars which is going to big business and multinationals so they get a little tax holiday.

That includes $7.5 billion that is going to the major banks in Australia. We know that most of those dollars will indeed probably be going offshore. These are the same banks of course that in the last financial year have recorded record profits, obscene profits, at the same time as they sacked more than 2,500 full-time jobs in that sector. These are the same banks that this government continues to let off the hook by refusing to hold a royal commission into their unethical practices and predatory behaviour that certainly constituents in my electorate have been hurt by and had their lives devastated by. These are the people that the government continues to choose to back in at the expense of everybody else. It is not good enough. The Prime Minister, as I said, is paying for these exorbitant corporate tax breaks by savagely cutting into the services that the rest of my community rely on. There are savage cuts to schools—and I will come to the detail of this in a minute—our universities, TAFE, families, pensioners, health and vital public services.

Let's look firstly at the school funding cuts. This government is out on the hustings at the moment, purporting to be injecting money into schools and to having solved this issue around schools funding. This is the cruellest con job of all, and the Australian people are alive to it. I can assure this government that this is not an argument that they are going to be able to prosecute with any success. Australian schools stand to lose $22 billion out of this over the next 10 years. In my electorate of Newcastle, we are set to lose $14.5 million over the next two years alone. When this government tries to direct people to some dodgy calculator to find out what money their school is allegedly receiving in additional benefits, do not be conned—because the baseline being used by this government is Tony Abbott's dodgy $30 billion cuts from the 2014 budget. The government are calculating from the lowest base of all, where schools were being entirely gutted, and saying, 'We're going to return a little bit,' and somehow expect the nation to be grateful and that parents and communities will say: 'Great work, guys. You're not ripping us off by $30 billion. It's only going to be $22 billion that you rip from our local schools.'

I am telling you, the people of Newcastle have good detectors for when people are telling untruths. They know when they are being conned. I can tell the government that, if they think this is going to fly for them, they need to take a serious look around. It is not just my electorate. That the National Party is not out there with a massive campaign standing up for their public schools in particular in all of their areas is astonishing. They should hang their heads in shame. They are the biggest beneficiaries of the school funding under the proper, Labor formulated needs based funding. They represent some of the poorest communities in this nation, and not one of them has got the guts to stand up in this parliament and take the government to task, and they call themselves a coalition partner. It is astonishing.

Universities are also in for a tough time, with $3.8 billion being cut from Australian universities. This will increase the cost of a degree for an undergrad student by $3,600. University graduates are also being asked to repay their HECS-HELP debts sooner, when they start earning $42,000, which is really very entry-level pay. The government has caused an issue that is deeply disturbing for me as a representative of Newcastle with the changes to the enabling programs that are flagged in this budget. The government wants to put enabling programs out to tender, into the private sector, and it wants to charge students going into those programs $3,200 to enrol. Let me give some insight into the devastating impact of that. I will have a lot more to say about this in a debate in the House when we get to the higher education bill later on.

The University of Newcastle is the oldest and largest provider of enabling programs in Australia. We have programs that started in 1974. We have assisted more then 42,000 students who would not otherwise have had access to tertiary education or assistance to complete their degree. We in Newcastle are extraordinarily proud of our university's capacity to give students alternative pathways to higher education: 42,000 graduates is something to be celebrated, and I pay tribute to the University of Newcastle, and its enabling programs in particular, for that work. Over the years, I have met so many of those students who are our biggest success stories, making enormous contributions not just to Newcastle but to the Australian community at large. The idea that this government is so short-sighted as to put a financial obstacle in the way of students who already face multiple obstacles to gaining entrance to tertiary education is astonishing. It is truly appalling. It is short-sighted, and this government absolutely has to re-think its position on that. These extra fees are going to preclude hundreds of disadvantaged students, not just from the University of Newcastle but all around Australia. It will very disproportionately impact women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, students from low-SES backgrounds and, indeed, all those students who are the first in their family ever to go to university. That is what we do best in Newcastle. We deliver education that is excellent but has equity at its core. That is what this government fails to understand, each and every time.

Let us look at TAFE, another important education sector. The government is ripping $600 million more out of TAFE in this budget. That is on top of the $3 billion in existing cuts that the government has made to TAFE. We have lost more than 130,000 apprentices since this government came to power in 2013. It is a truly appalling track record. I am so proud that Labor has a core commitment to investment and training in TAFE and, indeed, to apprentices. We have laid out positive plans for TAFE and vocational training in Australia. I applaud Bill Shorten's work in that area. It has been a terrific job.

One of the things I mentioned in the House earlier this week around TAFE at the moment is my concern about this government's propensity to outsource everything to the private sector. Hunter TAFE, in my area, is going to lose the Adult Migrant English Program. It is being outsourced to a private provider that does not have teachers or onsite childcare facilities. There is nothing in place at the moment. There are lots of questions to be asked about its capacity to deliver all of the complementary services that are required in the migrant English program.

On all fronts of education this is a profoundly disappointing budget. I have not even touched on the other great con in the budget, that of the Medicare freeze. The government purports to have fixed the problem. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. If you are waiting for assistance, for the GP freeze to come off your consultations, you are going to be waiting another 12 months. If you want specialist consultations, you will be waiting another 12 months for that too, and allied health services, including psychologists, will certainly have a freeze in place until July 2019. Do not be conned about this. This government purports to have learnt a lesson about Medicare from the last election, but I have to tell you that there is not much when you scratch beneath the surface in this budget that suggests they have really learnt any lessons from that. Labor, the party that created Medicare and has always supported Medicare, will certainly be defending Medicare with every breath.

There is no news in this budget about jobs in my region either. For rail manufacturers like Lovell Springs and Moly-Cop, the last manufacturers of springs and train wheels in Australia, there is nothing in this budget to bring them any joy. There is no thought of jobs in the region. There is no money being spent on housing and homelessness issues—a massive issue for my area. Pensioners are getting dudded. The one big regional infrastructure project, Glendale interchange, fails to get any kind of commitment from this government. Likewise, there is no commitment to high-speed rail into the future. This is a shocking budget; it is shocking for everyone but the top end of town. (Time expired)

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