Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Enterprise Tax Plan No. 2) Bill 2017. At a time when wages growth has flatlined to a record low of 1.9 per cent, when living standards, which had been climbing, went backwards in the last quarter and when Australian families are facing the harsh reality of rising living costs and rising electricity prices, this government is preaching to the Australian people about the need for budget repair. At a time when people are trying to make ends meet when faced with record high unemployment and underemployment, when hardworking people have been slammed with penalty rate cuts—with nearly 10,000 workers in my electorate of Brand alone feeling the hurt in their wages—and when average income earners are facing tax hikes while millionaires will pay less tax, this government has plucked an arbitrary $65 billion from thin air for the benefit of the big end of town.

Yes, that's right, there will be $65 billion in corporate tax cuts, while everyday Australians are lectured on the need for budget repair. It took a little while for this government to tell us what the tax cuts were going to be and what they were going to cost. It started at $24 billion. It went up to $26 billion and then to $50 billion, and later on in question time it went back down again to $36.5 billion. Eventually, the Treasurer settled on the reply that these tax cuts would cost the economy and the budget $65.4 billion.

You couldn't make this confusion up. It is staggering, but this $65 billion in corporate tax cuts that would be the result of the full plan would have an extremely minimal economic benefit—let alone the parts that the government managed to get through. By 'extremely minimal', I mean economic growth of one per cent in 20 years time and an increase in wages of $2 a day in nearly 20 years time. At the same time, they've failed to protect penalty rates for the lowest-paid workers among us—as I said earlier, those 10,000 workers in Brand across hospitality, retail and pharmacy services.

Labor will not be supporting this; Labor, of course, cannot support this. When reflecting on this and on all those cuts to the programs and services that the government have made, I cannot help but think about what could have been done with that $65 billion. All those cuts have been made so that the government can give a $65 billion corporate tax cut to big business. I think about the everyday people who are carrying an additional burden as they do their best to get by—hardworking people; students; parents with kids at school, TAFE or university; older Australians and people living with disability.

This government has seen fit to cut funding to schools, TAFE, vocational education and apprenticeships. More than $600 million has been cut from TAFE and vocational education in this year's budget, and that is on top of the almost $3 billion in cuts to TAFE skills and training, and the loss of more than 130,000 apprenticeships since 2013. This government has no problem in taking $22 billion from school funding. Not a dollar difference, they said in 2013, scrambling to match Labor's game-changing needs-based funding of our education system. It turns out it was quite a lot of dollars' difference—it ended up being $22 billion difference in 2017. A third of this tax cut for corporates would have paid for over 22,000 new teachers, and, obviously, countless other resources for schools.

When it comes to higher education, this government is eyeing up the university sector as another cash-grab opportunity. After years of their inaction, a policy vacuum was created for our great universities—our third-highest export industry in Western Australia. And after their disastrous attempt to deregulate university fees and introduce potentially $100,000 degrees and after this sabbatical and higher-ed policy, the brains trust comes back with a new plan—cutting university grants, which means less investment in research, in student support services and fewer courses on offer. This government is increasing student fees by 7.5 per cent, which in anyone's language is a barrier to young people wanting to pursue higher education. Or rather, it's a barrier to those students who do not have the capacity, or their families do not have the capacity, to take on this additional cost and this additional debt.

Where do the fees go from this extra 7.5 per cent? Does it go to new infrastructure in universities? Does it go to improving ageing infrastructure? Does it go to supporting the universities themselves to employ more lecturers, to help innovate teaching programs, to undertake research, which they are required to do and which they love to do? Does it have any of these things? No. No, this money does not go to the universities; it goes straight to pay for these tax cuts to corporates.

Our university students already pay the sixth-highest fees in the OECD, and we're adding to that. We're adding increased fees and new fees to students undertaking enabling courses. We're charging for enabling courses. These are courses where students have to go—and many students in my electorate go—to be able to obtain entrance into university because they may have a low ATAR score or did not complete high school at all. These enabling courses are generally shorter, and they help people, who are often the first in their family to be able to go to university, get into uni. Murdoch University—which is not in my electorate, but in the member for Tangney's electorate—has the OnTrack program. In 2016, there were 296 students from the region who took advantage of this program; this year, there are 453. Instead of keeping these courses as they are and not charging for them, this government is going to add them to the HECS regime. It just increases debt for young people who can't afford it. When I took this matter up with the minister for education—and, sadly, we've been talking about it through the press and not directly—he said there is no up-front costs for enabling courses, and that is right. It goes to a student's debt. He said:

There's no upfront cost for enabling courses and those students will be treated exactly the same as their peers doing other courses at university where the student loan program applies.

Except, these enabling courses are not the same, are they? They don't get you a qualification. They're much shorter and they're not the equivalent of a bachelor degree or a post-graduate degree. It's disingenuous of the minister for education to assert to people in my community that they might be.

These charges drive students away. They simply rack up the debt for those in our community least able to afford it, and those in our community we want to encourage to go into university, to take that plunge, to be the first in their family to attend a university to improve their lot for their future and the future of their children and their families. That's what that money's going to pay for—the corporate tax cuts—instead of helping more people get into university and get a better education.

As I said, our university students pay the sixth-highest fees in the OECD. Our government is pushing us further up that list. I guess it depends on your perspective, but perhaps you can congratulate yourself for limiting the access to university for those who can't afford it.

The education minister also mentioned the 'rivers of gold' that he somehow thinks universities live off. Once again—and I've mentioned it before in this place—it's an absolute farce that this government does not understand the essential cross-subsidy that is created in our higher education system. I wish it wasn't the case, but it is the case and has been the case for a long time. To expect or think that increasing student fees and having access to student fees after the places were deregulated meant universities had more cash in their bucket—some 'rivers of gold'—is entirely incorrect. It's untrue. It's no wonder the university sector is upset that it has a minister for education that fails to understand how the university sector actually operates.

The other thing the government is doing in trying to pay for this corporate tax cut is locking out the children of migrants who we have invited to live in this country. Changing arrangements so that only full-fee-paying university places are now offered to New Zealanders and migrants caught up in the government's punitive citizenship changes is not fair. It's not fair on the families who have made the decision to call Australia home, who've come here for a good and better life, and now find they can't afford to pay for their children's education. While pushing ahead with the $65 billion in corporate tax cuts that will be ineffectual at best, the government is throwing away good money for little or return.

We know it has wasted $122 million on a non-binding community postal survey to gauge people's opinions on how other consenting adults get treated by our laws. It's unfair; it's not right. I find it absurd and I find it abhorrent that our government has sanctioned this judgement-casting exercise instead of getting on and doing its job.

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