Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As we have heard said by many journalists and other contributors to this debate, the Morrison government's 2021-22 budget, presented to parliament just two weeks ago, was clearly an election budget solely driven by the political interests of the Prime Minister, who's looking to the next election and nothing else. It was, in fact, a budget of mixed messages, where, on one hand, the Treasurer was crowing about the strong economy and low unemployment, as we heard in question time again today, while, on the other hand, simultaneously spending big and promising more tax cuts to stimulate economic activity. Indeed, one wonders: if the economy is so strong, why is it that we are heading for a deficit of a quarter of a billion dollars over this year and next year? This budget is from a government that in the past has preached restraint and austerity and pursued those people who are reliant on welfare for every last dollar. Yet, under the coalition government, national debt will rise from $175 billion in 2013, when Labor left office, to a projected $617 billion this financial year and will reach nearly $1 trillion by 2025, with gross debt in 2025 projected to reach $1.2 trillion. Just as concerning is that, as a nation we have very little to show for all of that debt and, indeed, future generations will have to repay it. When interest rates rise, as inevitably they will, there will of course also be an annual interest bill of billions of dollars to be paid.

This is a government with no national vision and no economic strategy, but that is simply focused on an election campaign strategy. It is an incompetent government not only riddled with its own scandals and rorting of public funds but that has bungled every national project that it has been responsible for. It bungled the NBN rollout, where the cost nearly doubled and now the government is having to spend, on top of the doubling of the cost, billions of dollars to rectify its mistakes. The NDIS, after five years of this government, is not only being rorted but has become a constant source of complaints from and frustrations for recipients and their families. We also had the Morrison government highly embarrassed by its shameful and illegal robodebt debacle, which not only cost taxpayers billions of dollars but saw lives lost.

Then we have the replacement submarine contract, with costs already blown out from $50 billion to nearly $90 billion, but still with no clear indication of when work will commence, where it will be done or how much work it will create in Australia. With respect to that work, we have so many businesses and industries in this country that are quite capable of doing the work. Only last week I was pleased to see that Novafast, a family owned business that manufactures innovative composite pipes and fittings for the future frigates, has been awarded a Defence contract. Novafast is one of the many companies that would certainly be able to do the work required on those submarines, but which may well miss out because it seems that so much of the work will be done overseas. Indeed, the whole project is still under a cloud, as is the full-cycle docking maintenance of the Collins class submarines.

More recently, there was the COVID-19 vaccine rollout—again, we heard about that today—which the Morrison government has muddled through and is still struggling to methodically roll out. The cold, hard reality is that, after eight years of coalition governments in office, Australians are less secure, worse off and more concerned than ever before about their future, and that trend was evident before COVID-19 hit the country. It was a trend that had been caused by this government, which can no longer use COVID-19 as an excuse to hide behind.

The national health system is under stress. Homeownership is becoming increasingly out of reach for new entrants. Wages are flatlining. Jobs are becoming less secure. There is no national energy policy in this country, and even other overseas conservative governments are critical of Australia's woeful climate commitments. Indeed, in this budget there were no real climate commitments. It is a worry, because we know that, across the world, governments are responding to the genuine concerns they have about of the effects of climate change on humanity in this world. It is something that this government has ignored for the last eight years. It is something that the science is very clear about. And yet the government is happy to just plod along, claiming that it will meet its Kyoto targets. It's not prepared to do any more than that, simply claiming that meeting those targets is adequate. Well, it's not. The people that I speak to understand that and will judge the government accordingly.

This is also a government that had to be dragged kicking and screaming to address the real issues that concern the everyday lives of Australians. This government voted against a banking royal commission time and time again, over 20 times. We now see that we are going to have a veterans royal commission, and there has been public discussion about the terms of reference. I hope that this government listens to the voices of the veterans in establishing those terms of reference.

And of course there was the aged-care royal commission, a commission that was called for after some 22 other inquiries into the aged-care sector in recent times had clearly painted a picture for the government as to what was required and what was wrong with the system. The government knew what was wrong. They were simply trying to defer any response to what was wrong and kick the can down the road. That's exactly what they've done. Whilst the government has allocated some $18 billion over five years in response to the royal commission, the reality is that it is simply not enough. In addition, the money being committed does not guarantee that adequate staffing levels will be provided. It doesn't guarantee the ongoing and appropriate staff training that is required. It doesn't guarantee that there will be increased pay rates for aged-care staff, who are currently some of the lowest-paid workers in this country yet do some of the most demanding work in the country. Nor does it guarantee that aged-care residents themselves are going to get the care and nutrition that they should be getting, as was highlighted by the royal commission.

Indeed, the whole of the health system is under stress, and it has been for years. Across Australia, the situation is getting worse. Medical practices are struggling to recruit additional staff. Elective surgery waiting lists have blown out over the last eight years. Medical visits, dental treatment and prescription medications are being deferred simply because of costs, all of which results in additional demand on public hospitals right across the country. In my state of South Australia, ambulance ramping and waiting times for emergency treatment at public hospitals reach life-threatening levels on a regular basis, and the situation is not improving. Indeed, it's generally getting worse. At the same time, private health insurance rates are declining, having fallen from 47.4 per cent in 2015 to 44.2 per cent by the end of the March quarter this year. That comes as no surprise, since private health insurance rates have increased by an average of 36 per cent since the coalition took office in 2013. This year the rates again increased, by an average of 2.74 per cent. That figure is above CPI inflation rates. Even after the ACCC found that, in 2019-20, insurers paid out $500 million less in hospital and extra benefits compared to the previous year, the private health insurers have increased their fees. And I stress that those were average increases. In some cases, the increases were much higher than the figures are quoted.

Over recent months, I have been contacted by several people with concerns about the private health insurance cost increase, coupled with the diminishing cover that they now get for the extra money that they are paying. Indeed, one person who contacted me only a few weeks ago had this year's premium increased by nine per cent or $338 a year. In an email he sent to me he states, and I quote: 'This is a hefty increase, especially for pensioners like my wife and myself. I do not know how long we are going to be able to afford to have private health insurance, and like us there are so many others in the same situation.' Falling rates of private health insurance drive people into the public system and, therefore, the queues in the public system will continue to grow.

Once again, despite the government's big infrastructure spending announcements, I understand that, in my home state of South Australia, only $131 million will be spent over the next financial year on infrastructure. It is well below South Australia's fair share, and it has been year-on-year under this government. Any additional funding promised in the budget will come after the next federal election or possibly the election after that if this government is still in office—which, hopefully, will not be the case.

It has also been estimated that around $15 billion to $20 billion of COVID economic stimulus money paid under the JobKeeper program went to companies that simply did not need the money. In other words, around one in five dollars spent on JobKeeper went to firms whose earnings actually increased in the year 2020. This is another example of the government's incompetency in managing a program. This is a government that pursued pensioners, pursued unemployed people, pursued students and pursued single parents for every last dollar that they were being paid and yet has been prepared to pay not millions but billions of dollars in JobKeeper payments to companies that never needed the money and which, allegedly, in many cases, paid millions of dollars in bonuses to their executives.

It begs the question: if the government were so keen on pursuing what they referred to as their robo-debt overpayments, why is this government doing nothing about reclaiming the money overpaid to these companies? We're talking about billions of dollars that could otherwise be used to fund essential community services or infrastructure—billions of dollars that so many other sectors out there in the community are quite rightly and understandably screaming out for. It is an example of this government's priorities—priorities which are always driven by ideology.

While this government might appear to have handed down what I would generally refer to as a pretty generous budget, it is only doing so because it has an election in mind and it will be facing an election sometime in the months ahead. My real concern in respect to that is that, given this government's ideology and having handed down this year's budget and incurred such a debt, what will it do in future years if it is re-elected? It will, of course, bring back its austerity measures and seek to reclaim or to balance its budget again on the backs of those who can least afford it. That is why this budget, I believe, is actually nothing more than a con by this government to try and get it through the next election. Whilst I certainly welcome all of the money that has been committed to within it, and we won't oppose the budget, I understand that it is driven by one thing only. The flipside of that, in my view, is that a budget should be looking at the long term not the short term.

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