Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Defence Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

This budget is a marketing exercise. It is an attempt by the Morrison government to spend its way back to power after eight years of failed rule by the federal LNP government. It's a shameless fix. There's no fair dinkum reform. They'll leave no legacy should they lose the next election. The galling inconsistency and hypocrisy of this government is rife and rank. It spends $100 billion of taxpayers' money, racks up close to $1 trillion of debt and has the gall to spend most of question time criticising the Labor Party.

Where is the debt truck the coalition rolled out across the countryside in the lead up to the 2013 election? I guarantee it's in some wreckers yard somewhere, where the government's economic policies also are. This government has racked up an enormous debt that will leave generations to pay it off. When they criticised Labor on debt and deficit year after year, shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey promised there would be a budget surplus in the first year of the Abbott government and every year thereafter. But we saw the result of the 2014 budget, where they were cutting, slashing, burning and breaking every promise they could possibly find. Now we have a government led by their third Prime Minister.

This is a government which treats taxpayers' money as Liberal and National Party money. There are rorts, advertising and executive bonuses. They're tough on pensioners, robodebt and the poor, even though robodebt was an unlawful scheme and the government has had to pay more than $1 billion back to the Australian public, yet they are weak as water when it comes to big corporate companies. Two-thirds of the top companies in this country don't pay any tax at all, but the government is weak on them. Many cheerfully received JobKeeper, made good profits and kept taxpayer money as executive bonuses or gave it out in shareholder dividends and director fees. The member for Fenner should be commended for the great work he's done in revealing the rorts and rip-offs of JobKeeper. This was, of course, a wage subsidy, which the government thought was dangerous when we asked them about it in the first place. But the government implemented a blunt instrument. Up to $20 billion has been overspent on JobKeeper for companies that didn't qualify and shouldn't have qualified.

The budget was an opportunity for this government to deliver for workers, for women and for the economy. It was a real opportunity to secure skilled jobs, having cut or lost 90,000 manufacturing jobs and 150,000 apprenticeships in this country since they came to power. This was a chance for them to invest in skills, training, TAFE and schools. Instead, what does the tertiary sector get? The loss of 70,000 jobs and $400 million in funding. It's not a budget for a real recovery from a pandemic, and it's not a budget for the long-term challenges this country faces. Of course, in the last budget, we had JobMaker—450,000 jobs promised, 1,100 jobs delivered. Australians really can't and shouldn't believe the promises in this budget.

The government can't even tell us when Australians will be vaccinated when we ask question after question. The government have not secured enough vaccines, they do not come clean on the costs and the risks of any delay in the vaccination program and they will not take any responsibility for quarantine whatsoever, even though it is a constitutional responsibility of the Commonwealth government. They presided over crises everywhere—aged care, energy, housing, skills, education, health and veterans, of course, as well.

This is a government that talks about wanting to invest in infrastructure. On the front pages of the major newspapers around the country we saw project after project announced, saying, 'This is what's going to happen in the budget. It is coming to you in a couple of days' time.' But on average, this government has underspent $1.2 billion a year and has given up on its commitments because tucked away on page 84 of budget paper No. 1 the real story is revealed. Tucked away there, not talked about by this government, it actually reveals a cut in infrastructure spending of $3.3 billion over four years to 2023-24. Most, more than half, nearly 55 per cent of its actual spending, is beyond the forward estimates, so you can't believe those stories in the major newspapers that the government rolls out.

When it comes to workers and wages, this government has failed as well. Workers lose $1.35 billion annually to wage theft and exploitation. What's this government done? A tantrum in the Senate, withdrawing the industrial relations legislation because they couldn't get everything they wanted. They withdrew the legislation and are doing nothing about wage theft now across this country. They can't support wage rises in any submission to the Fair Work Commission. They won't do anything to lift wages despite the fact that the Reserve Bank, Treasury and every respected economist in the country says you need to raise wages to get consumption going to stimulate demand to then get economic activity and growth. Most Australian wage earners haven't received a real wage increase in eight years of this government, and the budget papers project no real wage increase at all for Australian wage earners to 2024. Nearly two million Australians are either unemployed or under employed, losing 30,600 jobs in the last month, in April. But when you listen to them in question time and listen to their speeches, they laugh about it. They laugh about it in question time. It is not good enough.

This is a government that criticises us on our side for tax and expenditure. The government with the biggest taxing and expenditure tax-to-GDP ratio in the history of Australia was the Howard government. The second biggest is this government over here. They can't stop spending but they don't spend it right. They don't invest in infrastructure, jobs, skills and training; they spend it in other ways. They back corporate subsidies, jobs for their mates and help for big business. They don't get the balance right. They will leave no legacy should they get beaten at the next election.

This is a government that doesn't invest in infrastructure and, in my home area, hasn't invested at all virtually. None of the projects that we talked about or even Ipswich City Council wanted funded have been funded whatsoever. The government has given out $4 million as part of a $5 million scoping study for the Mount Crosby Road interchange on the Warrego Highway. This is a project that I have described as inadequate and friendless. No-one believes that project in its current iteration at $22 million will achieve anything because it won't touch the bridge—will leave one lane each way—and won't touch the off ramps off the Warrego Highway. My meeting with Main Roads Queensland indicates they're going back to thoughts. That's about it; that's all the money we got. We got a bit of money for a scoping study on the Mount Crosby Road interchange for people on the north side of Ipswich and Ipswich Central and for those around Karana Downs and Mount Crosby but no money for the last section of Ipswich Motorway, between Darra to Rocklea; the Oxley roundabout to the Centenary interchange, no money at all; no money for the Cunningham Highway, no discussions with the Queensland government about upgrading the Cunningham Highway between Yamanto and Ebenezer Creek. They have been spending a billion dollars on the RAAF base at Amberley in the last decade and a half to upgrade it, but they haven't fixed the road outside.

I actually met with the Deputy Prime Minister and infrastructure minister and asked him to back in Ipswich City Council when they asked for $1 million towards a business case for a rail link between Ipswich and Springfield. Seventy per cent of the growth in the Ipswich area is going to be on the south side, around Redbank Plains, Springfield and the Ripley Valley. This is so crucial. There will be nine new stations built. It's absolutely vital. Ipswich's population is about 230,000. It will be about 550,000 in the next few decades. The growth is enormous. But there was no money for the Ipswich City Council. It has even got to the point where the Mayor of Ipswich, Teresa Harding, who ran against me for the LNP in 2013 and 2016—and I beat her both times—has come out and said:

As Queensland's fastest growing city, it was disappointing to see a lack of investment in this year's Federal Budget for essential transport and community infrastructure to support the growth of Ipswich.

I say, 'Amen, Teresa. I agree with you 100 per cent on that.' So their former candidate, the current Mayor of Ipswich, in the Fassifern Guardian & Tribune dated today, also criticises the Morrison government for their lack of infrastructure in the Ipswich region. I agree with her. But, of course, this is a government that can't fund our area. It almost needs Google Maps to actually find our region.

This is a government that has failed in the area of veterans affairs as well—my shadow portfolio—with marketing, mismanagement and missed opportunities. They've put some additional money into the Department of Veterans' Affairs to fix up the mistakes they made in the first place. There's a crisis in veteran mental health and suicide. Our chronically under-resourced Department of Veterans' Affairs is failing veterans in this area. There's some funding in the budget for a royal commission. The government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to have a royal commission. It took resolutions in this House and in the Senate for them to eventually put aside their obstinacy, truculence and stubbornness and call the royal commission. Now we are concerned in relation to how that will look.

I want to touch briefly on the Department of Veterans' Affairs. I agree with the CPSU that the royal commission should have a look at the Department of Veterans' Affairs and its staffing profile, because this government is privatising, labour hiring and outsourcing the department. Fifty per cent of the people who deal with veterans at the coalface are labour hire people, from the 46 companies that the Department of Veterans' Affairs engages. It costs the taxpayers more money, but you haven't got experienced public servants who understand veterans affairs; you've got labour hire people. This is not good enough. This department is more privatised, labour hired and outsourced than any other Commonwealth department. We've got waiting times and processing times blowing out all the time. The department can't even achieve its own targets in relation to this. I've done forums from Townsville to Tweed Heads, from Adelaide to Ipswich and all over the place in the last few months, and what I get in feedback again and again is: focus on the department. So the Department of Defence, government agencies and Veterans' Affairs should be a focus of this royal commission. We should be having a close look at that.

Veteran suicide is a tragedy, a shame and a national disgrace. It's a personal and individual tragedy for those who commit suicide and their families. More people have died at their own hands than in operational service in the last two years, and the number is probably far higher than the 500 that we know about and think about. The government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to establish a royal commission, which they announced on 19 April. It was about time, but we think the government has not undertaken the necessary consultation. We are concerned about narrow terms of reference. We are concerned about the independence of the commissioners.

Labor has had productive meetings with various people—people from sub-branches, individual families, people who've lost loved ones, ex-service organisations, experts and stakeholders. We had a very productive meeting last week at parliament with Julie-Ann Finney, who lost her son David to suicide two years ago, and a committee that she chaired, involving people like Karen Bird, who lost her son Jesse; veteran and lawyer Glenn Kolomeitz; military researcher Deborah Morris; sub-branch president Bill Westhead; and many others. The feedback we've got from them and other people is there needs to be systemic analysis, and not just individualised—don't blame the veteran, don't blame the individual.

If you look at what the government talks about in their themes, we are very concerned about that issue. We think the role of institutions needs to be looked at, and the transition issues from veteran employment and homelessness, the role and impact of support on Defence and veteran families, the support for veterans' families, and the impact of ADF anti-malarial drugs and prescribed medications on serving ADF personnel and veterans. We think there should be an examination on the merits of alternative therapies like medicinal cannabis, assistance dogs, art therapy and so many others.

The key transition issue of veteran employment and homelessness—there was nothing in the budget on veteran homelessness. But, the Labor leader Anthony Albanese, in his response made the point that a Labor government would do that as part of our Housing Australia Future Fund.

This government has also said that they don't believe the royal commission should make findings of wrongdoing in civil and criminal matters. That is exactly the wrong approach—it should do so. Labor has put in a comprehensive submission to help shape the inquiry. We ask the government to get this right. We ask for bipartisanship. The system is broken, not fit for purpose. Do the royal commission properly.

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