Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I stand up to support the government's Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2021-2022 and cognate bills tonight and, once again, bemoan the fact that Labor and the crossbenchers continue to play games with even this critical piece of legislation, moving nonsensical amendments that do no Australian any good and are a discredit to this parliament and this chamber.

What we need to remember when we look at the appropriation bills and this budget is the context in which they were made. This event was 30 times larger than the global financial crisis of 2008. This government was determined to not make the mistakes of Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and Ken Henry by overspending, underinvesting and leaving this nation with an extraordinary debt—from which it took us almost seven years to get back to a balanced budget—while providing us and leaving us with nothing, other than pink batts that actually killed people and did no good, school halls that cost more to build per square metre than the Opera House and cash for Wayne's best friends' clunkers. And let us not forget the disaster that unfolded where 'the great moral challenge of our generation' got dumped at the first bad opinion poll.

I listened to the speaker just before me, who feels that this budget was not ideological enough but yet was too ideological, and that it didn't spend enough money but, at the same time, left us with too much debt. You have to love the collectivist left in this country! You have to love the regressive woke warriors of our political firmament who seem to not see a tax they don't want to put up, a program they don't want to fund or a debt they don't want to leave to the next generation, while bemoaning those of us who do the hard work of getting their budget deficits back into balance while, every step of the way, they fight it and mislead the Australian public by talking about cuts when all we are trying to do is to restore some fiscal rectitude to the Australian budget, this parliament and our nation.

The wasted debts of the Gillard-Rudd-Henry-Swan years will never happen under this government. More broadly, this budget avoids the ineptitude that we saw on the Labor side and the Greens' side and which seems to be what the member for Warringah wishes to continue. The point I wanted to make here was that this budget is about rebuilding Australia and building it back better, because what we are going to do is to fix the problems those on the other side left and that those on the other side would recreate. We want to make sure that the structural problems left by those opposite are not left for future generations. We also want to make sure that we seize the moment and this chance. This is Australia's moment.

We on this side and this nation have succeeded where other nations have not even begun to fail. The speaker before me said that we are the only nation in the OECD to have outbound restrictions—restrictions on Australians leaving. But we are also the only nation in the OECD to have a death rate under a thousand. In fact, we're the only nation in the OECD to have a death rate under 10,000. In fact, no other nation in the OECD has a death rate under 50,000, with the exception of New Zealand. In fact, we have done better than any other nation in the OECD. Yet there are those who would criticise those measures that we took to protect Australians.

We do not, in any shape, way or form, resile from those measures. Were they tough? Yes. Would we have preferred not to have taken them? Of course. We are the party of freedom, unlike those opposite. We want to make sure that the money that we have spent—that this nation has spent—to keep families safe does not keep families apart. The worst thing we could do is open our borders before it is safe to do so and inflict upon families the pain, misery, hurt and death that has been inflicted upon so many other families in so many other nations in the OECD. We do not step back from that.

We have spent $17.7 billion in this budget to create 80,000 home-care packages in Australia. We have done that because our tribal elders deserve to live a life of dignity in their retirement. We have invested in skills and training, creating 163,000 JobTrainer packages and 170,000 apprenticeships, because we believe the future belongs to those who have skills and who are educated. We have also invested $1.7 billion in child care, because we believe that families deserve to have the chance to ensure that every child in Australia, regardless of what circumstances they are born into, have all the same opportunities as a child born into the wealthiest family in Australia. We have also done this because we believe that no-one should have to choose between the education of their child and the prospect of giving back to this country by going back to work and using the skills and the education that they have spent so much time developing and acquiring, because they're not choices that any Australian should have to make. So this government has reversed the problems created by those opposite and the crossbench and invested $1.7 billion in a better childcare system.

We have also ensured that 10 million Australians will have improved incomes in their households this year by extending the low to medium income tax offset. This will directly impact those Australians who most need it when they go to work—those whose households are most in need of this income. Unlike those opposite, we have created a circumstance where Australians get to choose what sort of future they want. When we got rid of JobSeeker, those opposite said that Armageddon would follow and that job losses would be huge. What do we see instead? We saw youth unemployment at decade lows. We saw underemployment at a seven-year low. We saw participation rates high, we saw unemployment fall, we saw more permanent jobs being created, and we saw people leaving part-time work and moving into full-time work. Essentially, all their rhetoric has been shown for what it is: just a fancy hairdo, backed by 'Twitterarti' warriors. The opposite to everything that those opposite said would happen happened, again, and yet they have the gall to come in here, make amendments to this appropriation bill, lecture us on economic management and what debt levels should look like and criticise us for being ideological. It's just extraordinary.

There are organisations and people in my community whose businesses will have lower taxes—for example, Anthony Gualdi, who runs the Upper Crust pie shop in Collaroy. His business this year will have lower taxes. He will be able to invest through our changes to the tax system, which will allow him to immediately expense equipment. He has invested more money so his customers can get a better pie and better service. He may be looking at one of those customers here!

Mr Champion interjecting—

Indeed, Mr Champion. David Singer at Elanora Heights has the Frenchies Brasserie. David has made it clear that he is finding it hard to find workers that want to work in his restaurant, one of the finest restaurants in Sydney when it comes to French cuisine or cuisine generally.

Mr Champion interjecting—

Outside pies, of course!

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