Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Certainly. Under Prime Minister's leadership economic growth is in real trouble. Australians know that under the Prime Minister's leadership they are struggling. They know that one of the reasons why they are so concerned about how we as a country are going to deal with the economic hits from coronavirus and the bushfires is that under Prime Minister Morrison's leadership—

An opposition member interjecting—

or lack of—I take that interjection and I accept it from my friend. Under the Prime Minister's lack of leadership, Australians are feeling the pinch. Two million Australians are looking for work or more work. Many Australians cannot keep up with the cost of living, because wages growth has been stagnant. It has hit record lows under this government and has been stagnant for record periods. That means that people who are going to work are working hard day in, day out but aren't earning enough money to be able to put food on the table, to pay the bills and to look after their families.

What we need at the moment is a government that will not just make announcements. We need a government that will deliver appropriate and well-thought-out stimulus packages and that will choose people over politics. We need a government that doesn't just say, 'We support infrastructure and we're putting money into infrastructure,' but actually delivers the money for infrastructure. In my electorate of Dunkley, they need to tell us what they are doing with the announced budgeted funding for car parks and roads that we haven't heard anything about or seen delivered in the nine months since the election. They need to talk about how they are going to deal with these extraordinarily high levels of underemployment—people who just can't find enough work. They need to look Australians in the eye and explain how they are supposed to live on an amount of Newstart that means they can't even get to job interviews because they can't afford public transport, let alone do all the other things that are required in order to be able to get a job.

What we need now is a government that cares more about delivering than it cares about promoting itself. We don't need a government that says it's providing bushfire relief to small businesses and farmers yet does nothing but engage in an 'it's not my fault, it's your fault' debate with the New South Wales government when it becomes apparent that, although there have been hundreds and hundreds of applications for the relief, it hasn't been delivered. People don't care whose responsibility it is; they just want politicians to roll up their sleeves, to get to work, to put rhetoric and debate about whose fault it is behind them and to deliver. That's not what is happening under the leadership of Prime Minister Morrison. We need a government that chooses people over politics, and we need a government that's willing to lead a national debate in a grown-up manner, to treat the parliament of Australia with the respect that it deserves and to stop talking about a Canberra bubble as if this institution of government and leadership doesn't matter.

When I go around my electorate, as I have been doing in the last two weeks, talking to local Probus groups—a hundred people at a time—we talk about politics and whether it's broken. To a person—it doesn't matter whether they're Labor or Liberal or support any other political party or individual—the members of the Probus groups I've been speaking to are dismayed and distraught about the way in which politics is being conducted, particularly in this parliament and particularly in question time. These are people who have been watching question time in parliament for a long time, and they agree with me that what we are seeing under the leadership of this Prime Minister is some of the most blatant disregard for the traditions of debate, the Westminster system, integrity and leadership in politics that we've seen almost ever—certainly in a long time. It's just not good enough.

We have challenges that we are facing as a country, as are many countries around the world, and we should be facing them from a position of strength. We won't do that with a government that won't acknowledge when things have gone wrong, apologise and fix them—a government that won't acknowledge the structural and other problems that are occurring in our economy under their leadership and work to fix them but just want to get on with slogans and marketing rather than delivery. That has to change.

The other thing that I hear very often at the moment when I go around my electorate and talk to people at the local sporting events—because I have an electorate, Dunkley, where sport is in our veins and is part of our community and part of our identity—is dismay, sadness and, somehow, almost a sense of inevitability about not being able to trust a government to deliver sports grants and funding in a meritorious, fair and transparent way. Apart from the rorts, and the way in which that has meant that hardworking volunteers in community and sporting groups across this country have been misled into thinking that the hours and hours of work they've put into applications might actually result in some funding on merit, what the sports rorts—and now the infrastructure rorts and the park and ride announcements that predominantly went to Liberal seats—have done is to continue to undermine the public's confidence and trust in politicians and in government. What it has done is feed into the cynicism that too many citizens feel about those of us who are privileged enough to be elected to this place to represent them. That's doing them a disservice, because democracy matters. Government matters. The leadership of the country matters. If we have a government that continues to treat taxpayers' money as if it's their own money for their own political purposes, that continues to refuse to answer questions about how they spend that taxpayers' money and tries to deflect actual scrutiny about the way they're spending that taxpayers money, then we have a government that continues to do a devastating disservice to the people of Australia. We need a government that builds trust and builds belief, not one that continues to undermine it.

Last year, not long after being elected as the member for Dunkley, I wrote to the Minister for Youth and Sport to bring to his attention requests that had been made to me by local sporting groups for funding. The Frankston Bombers Football Netball Club and the Frankston Rovers football club and the Baxter Soccer Club use Baxter Park. They have growing numbers of participants, particularly when it comes to women and girls playing football. They had a pretty reasonable request: that I speak to the government about some funding—about $180,000—for lights, which are really needed. So I wrote to the minister asking for a process to put in an application about the merits of that and to get funding. What I got back was a letter that said to me it wasn't possible for the federal minister to work with me to deliver this funding, because there was no more funding available for sports grants. At the time I thought: 'That's very unfortunate. How can we have a federal government, which says it's committed to all these things like supporting facilities that will help girls and women play sport, say there's no more money left?'

Since we've heard about the sports rorts, I guess it makes more sense now. We've got a government that was willing to spend millions and millions of dollars—billions of dollars—to fund sports applications in electorates that mattered to them; to allocate money for projects that were finished, so they could make an announcement; and, unbelievably, to fund the redevelopment of a swimming pool in North Sydney under a regional development fund. But, now that they've regained power, the minister won't work with me to deliver funding for a meritorious project in the Labor held seat of Dunkley.

Although we are an outer metropolitan seat, the entirety of my electorate is more regional than North Sydney. There is no doubt about that. If a swimming pool in North Sydney can be funded under a regional sporting and infrastructure fund, it's not unreasonable for Dunkley's needs to be funded. You would have thought that out of that money the government might have actually been able to put in the full $10 million that the council required for the Jubilee Park redevelopment for a centre of excellence for women in sport, but it couldn't. Because of advocacy from the groups and from me and the state member, in the end the council had to stump up the rest of the money.

You would have thought a federal government might look at Emil Masden Reserve in Mount Eliza and the hundreds and hundreds of young people and adults who play four or five different sports there and say, 'This is a regional facility; maybe we could fund that?' Not so much. Bayside Gymnastics Club perhaps could have gotten a commitment for funding from a government that's splashing money around. They didn't get one. Frankston basketball has been left absolutely in the lurch by the Liberal government, which took money away from its redevelopment. No funding for them. Bruce Park? No funding for the clubs at Bruce Park. No funding for Frankston Bowling Club, who want to put in a synthetic lawn and chairs for disabled bowlers to be able to bowl. No funding for them. They're the sorts of projects that we need funding for in the electorate of Dunkley, and I'll be continuing to push for them and support applications that they make on merit, expecting that there will be a transparent and fair process.

One of the most important things to people in my community is education. There's almost nothing more important than equality and fairness in an education system that gives young people a chance to succeed in life. We need to do more in this country to stop the visible inequality between Australian schools. We can see it in my electorate, where we have some magnificent schools and other schools that are just crying out for some support.

This government says it's committed to sector-blind needs-based funding. Well, by 2030 under coalition policy almost all private schools will be funded at or above their full school resource standard while almost all public schools will remain below it. It's great that private schools will be funded, but it's outrageous that public schools, where often, particularly in my community, children and families in need attend, won't be. It's not good enough. I will continue the fight to make sure that these schools are funded. It's why I was so pleased to be able to support a number of schools across my community making applications for money for libraries, playgrounds and wellbeing centres. I'll be going around all the schools talking about this because education is vitally important and nothing we should be doing means more than supporting schools to deliver for our young people.

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