Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Budgets represent difficult decisions for governments. They're hard decisions. There are so many worthy projects brought to the Treasurer from all members of parliament and across society. It's that balance of: 'What are the projects to fund, and what are the projects not to do?' Those are some of the difficult challenges of a budget.

But it's not just about the individual projects. It's also about setting this country up for the future. I want to talk about how this budget does that, in some ways, extremely well, but then how it leaves on the table a number of opportunities where we need to take action right now.

Let me firstly talk to the positive aspects of the budget, because, as I said, there are many positive things. I come from Wentworth in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. I remember, very vividly, standing in Paddington at Five Ways one day, talking to different people about what was important to them, and a woman came up to me and said: 'Child care is my most important issue.' Actually, she walked past me and said, 'I'm not sure I want to talk,' and then she came back and said, 'No, I do want to tell you something,' and she told me: 'Child care is the most important issue for me. It was difficult to get child care. It was really expensive. I decided not to. I took more time off than I would have. And now, on reflection, I wish I hadn't. I didn't have the choices that I wish I'd had.' And that is why, as I've said previously, the investment in child care that this government has made is absolutely essential—and particularly to communities like Wentworth, where we have incredibly well-educated women who want to contribute to the world. But we need to give them a chance to do that, and child care is absolutely crucial.

As we're speaking about women, I also want to talk about parental leave. This is one of the areas that wasn't necessarily expected in the budget but was incredibly welcome. I'm so excited that we've increased paid parental leave and, most crucially, that we're going to advocate for part of that to be 'use it or lose it' for the second parent, who is, typically, a man. Again, I stood in Wentworth partly because I wanted to see a shift in the gender equity in this country and in this parliament, and I wanted to enable women to succeed. I think that paid parental leave, where there's an emphasis on parents sharing the caring, could have an enormous positive cultural impact on our country, in terms of economic opportunities for women. But it's also for men—to build greater bonds with their children, and improve mental health, as has been shown, and be good for child development. So I was very excited to see that in the budget.

Again, we're still speaking about women, so let me talk about domestic violence. One of the issues that many people have come to talk to me about is domestic violence. I was shocked, when I met the local commander for the police and asked: 'What do you spend your time on?' and he said: 'Fifty per cent of our time is spent on domestic violence.' In an area like Wentworth—which people assume is wealthy and so perhaps doesn't have the scourge of domestic violence—50 per cent of the time of the police is spent on domestic violence. That is why it's absolutely crucial that there was that investment in those services, and I hope very much that wonderful services like Bondi Cottage get support through that increased investment in services and in domestic violence support.

There are other communities of mine that I think are really important. Let me talk about the young and the old. One of the hardest things, I think—being someone probably in the middle of age—is to look at the generations coming behind you and wonder: 'Are they going to actually have a worse time than we are?' And, when I look at something like housing, I think: 'You know what? They absolutely are,' because the tables have turned on housing. In Wentworth, so many parents and grandparents came to me and said: 'Our children will never be able to buy near us. Our children are working hard. They're educated. They're young couples with two jobs, and they will never be able to buy a house.' And that's borne out by the statistics: it takes twice as long to save up for a house in this country than it did 20 or so years ago. The amount of time and the percentage of income it takes to pay for a house is even more. It is absolutely vital that the government said it's going to look at housing supply, because this is an issue of housing supply. Fundamentally, Australia has 400 dwellings per thousand people. If we had the same as the OECD, we'd have another two million houses. Two million dwellings is possibly what this country needs to grow. The government haven't stood up for that, but they did put a line in the sand and say, 'We're going to try to get a million dwellings built in this country.' I applaud them for that effort and I applaud them for working with the states and local governments on this, because this is a national problem. So these are some of the areas that I think have been really positively addressed in the budget.

I'll speak briefly also to aged care, which is an investment that so many my community really value, and, finally, I'll speak to renewable energy. Wentworth has stood up and said: 'We care about the climate. We care about the environment.' That's why people live in Wentworth—for its beautiful environment, for its beautiful beaches. They care about the natural world and they want to preserve that for their children. My community is incredibly excited that there's such investment in the clean energy transformation that this country needs to go through, and I congratulate the government on those investments.

However, there are areas within the budget which are concerning to me, and one of those is absolutely energy. For a long time we have been denying that we need to have a transformation of our energy system. I think the government has acknowledged that we do need to transform our energy systems, but you still see in the budget investment in fossil fuels and fossil fuel subsidies that fly in the face of the clean energy revolution that we all know we need to go through. I'd like to highlight the $7 billion of fuel tax credits that were in the budget—$7 billion. It's among the top 20 budget expenditure items, and that was spent on subsidising fossil fuels and the fuel tax credits. There was also a $1.5 billion investment in the Middle Arm precinct, which is effectively investment in gas. My community appreciates the difficulties and challenges of having a responsible budget, but that sort of money—$7 billion in fuel tax credits and $1.5 billion in the Middle Arm precinct—flies in the face of what my community expects in terms of the clean energy revolution.

Another key issue: my community expect a government that governs well. They're really supportive of the investment in the budget for the National Anti-Corruption Commission. However, they do not like to see money spent where there is not a strong economic case for its justification. I think the $2.2 billion of investment in Victoria's Suburban Rail Loop, without it being signed off by the independent assessor, Infrastructure Australia, or approved under the National Land Transport Act, disappoints my community. We want money that stacks up in the business cases. We want infrastructure that is top priority for the country and that isn't about doing favours for other members or other parts of the country. It has to be an investment that stacks up for every person in this country, because, frankly, it's paid for by every person in this country. That is what my community expects. We do expect money to be spent on the top priority projects that build this country. We don't like to see cash splashed around irresponsibly.

I'd like to move on to the two major missed opportunities of this budget. The first is energy prices. The budget acknowledges that household and business energy prices will be going up by around 50 per cent. That is a huge burden on the community and on business. At the same time we are seeing gas and coal companies make superprofits because of the war in Ukraine and the consequential tightening of energy supply around the world. As I keep on saying, this is a fossil fuel crisis. This is not a clean energy crisis, as some people would paint it. The sun hasn't got more expensive. The wind isn't more expensive. This is about coal and gas being more expensive because of a foreign war and then Australians being exposed to that rather than being the beneficiaries of our enormous natural resources.

I come from business. I am actually very loath to try and change investments or change circumstances for businesses who are making investments and expect to get their money back and make profit. I support that a hundred per cent. But, when the profit is coming out of a war, I don't think that argument passes the pub test. That's really what I've been saying for the last four months. So I am pleased that the government seems to be taking this issue seriously, but I wish that they had taken that issue seriously enough to make it something that actually went into the budget rather than something that we're still waiting for.

The last piece that I think is important to address in the budget is structural deficits. We have, at this stage, structural deficits as far as the eye can see. For the next 10 years, we're looking at a two per cent structural deficit broadly across the economy. When we come back to intergenerational fairness, that is not fair on our future generations. We are building up debt for them. I think of a young person today saying: 'I can't afford to buy a house. I'm concerned about climate change and the impact that it is going to have on me and my children and our quality of life. And the country is building up a debt that I'm going to have to pay off later on.' I don't think that we are being fair to the generation underneath us by not addressing this. So what I wanted to see in this budget was an acknowledgement that we need to deal with the structural deficit and we need to work out how to truly drive productivity in this economy, and also how to manage to live within our means and make sure that we actually can pay for the things that we are demanding.

I would have liked to see the government make some hard choices in spending. I think the government could have looked at some of the investments that we have made which are not making us any better and not getting the outcomes we need and said: 'Did we need to spend that money? Could we spend that money better and get different outcomes?' I have been urging the government and will continue to urge the government to look at the tax system, because the tax system, in the words of many economists and businesspeople, is broken. It is not serving our productivity. It can be, in many cases, a drag on the economy and a drag on innovation. It is a drag on things like housing. It actually stops fluid housing movement. Consider things like stamp duty; while it is a state tax, it is something that really needs federal government support to be able to be addressed. I would have loved to see the government acknowledge this and say, 'We're going to have a tax review,' but they didn't, so I'm going to continue to drive this in the parliament. We need to see money better spent, and we also need to make sure that we know how to live within our means and we have a tax system that drives productivity and growth across the country and literally grows the pie.

I commend the government for what is really good in this budget, but I want to acknowledge that there are areas where my community expects more. That is in terms of not subsidising fossil fuels; making the hard decisions to not support projects that are politically expedient but don't stack up under infrastructure cost-benefit analysis; dealing with the hard choices in terms of energy prices; and, finally, recognising that a structural deficit as far as the eye can see is not tenable for future generations. We must deal with it, and we must deal with it in a way that drives productivity and grows the pie for other generations.

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