Basem Abdo (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is the most significant budget to be brought before the parliament in many years. It seeks to address the many challenges that are being thrown our way, whilst also tackling the much-needed reforms to help level the playing field for Australians. The tax reform package at the heart of the government's fifth budget is focused on three clear objectives: making it easier for Australians to buy their first home, cutting income taxes for 13 million Australian workers and ensuring a fairer alignment in the tax treatment between people who earn income through work and those who derive income through other legitimate means.

A really important part of the budget is targeted towards workers, with the most meaningful permanent increase to the effective tax-free threshold for a long time—since Labor last increased it more than a decade ago. But it's not the only way that we're cutting income taxes. We're cutting income taxes five different times in three different ways. We've got the tax cuts already legislated, including another round in July this year and another round after that in July next year. Those opposite voted against those measures. The last time this parliament voted on tax relief for working Australians, they opposed it. They not only voted against it; they also promised to repeal it if given the opportunity. Had they succeeded, they would have taken money out of the pockets of working Australians.

We've got a $1,000 instant deduction next financial year, and now we have the working Australians tax offset announced in the budget. Altogether, our five different tax cuts will mean the average worker will benefit by up to $2,816 in 2028. We are also supporting the productive side of the economy, with more than $3.5 billion in new measures to reduce taxes on businesses and reforms that will reduce regulatory costs by more than $10 billion. It's tax reform designed to lift productivity and investment in productive assets.

Having grown up in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, I've always been determined to fight to ensure that aspiration is afforded to everyone who works and contributes, not just an exclusive realm for people who already own significant wealth while leaving policy settings in place which serve to leave the many behind. This is what this budget is fundamentally about: rewarding work, aspiration and restoring fairness. This budget shows ours is a government determined to tackle the problems facing this country. It is a calm, thoughtful response to a generational problem decades in the making.

I fail to understand the purpose of those opposite as political parties and as an opposition coming into this chamber to argue and fight for the status quo. It's the most futile approach at an attempt at progress and delivery by demanding Australia stand still, racing ahead on neutral—and that's the good bits. All too often their policies are in reverse, as though we're back to the future.

This is not a budget that will fix every problem for every person. No budget will, and nor will any single policy lever. But it is a budget delivered by a government determined to throw everything at keeping us on the course of delivery that this government has already started.

For decades, thanks to a legacy of Liberal Party rule for 20 of the last 30 years, Australia has been shaped by an economic agenda built around privatisation, economic rationalism and the view that Australia should remain nothing more than a quarry. The Liberals told us that governments needed to get out of the way, that governments needed to step back, that governments needed to leave essential parts of our society and economy solely to the private sector and that, if we did this, the natural neoliberal order of things would deliver prosperity. They even had robots chasing our most vulnerable people, such was the contempt they had for ordinary Australians.

If we look around, the consequences are visible right across Australia. Entire industries that once provided secure, dignified employment were hollowed out. Manufacturing, once the backbone of working-class communities, delivering on aspiration and uplifting communities, were pushed to the brink. Good, secure, well-paying jobs that allowed families to buy a home, raise children and build a future were increasingly replaced with insecure work, stagnant wages and rising costs of living. At the heart of this was an economic philosophy that treated markets as the sole solution to every problem, where Treasury and government's role was to deliver the axe for cuts and reversal of the role of government. This ideology put forward that government had to step away from actually functioning as a government and that an unfettered economy would somehow regulate itself in the interests of working people, with no role or recourse for government. We saw it in their inability to even bother to appoint a housing minister for most of their decade in power. Energy generation was increasingly privatised, with the assumption that competition alone would deliver affordability and security, so they allowed our refineries to close. They allowed our national strategic reserves to be held in Texas on the other side of the world, which meant it was not here in our nation and not here in reserve. That's the strategic prowess of those opposite.

Instead of progress and a future that delivered for working people, what Australians have experienced are soaring rents, increasingly impossible house prices and rising power bills. Listen to the irony of the former treasurer under the Abbott government, Joe Hockey, who said on his way out:

… negative gearing should be skewed towards new housing so that there is an incentive to add to the housing stock rather than an incentive to speculate on existing property.

The difference is we've got a government with the guts to actually do something about it, to budget it and to deliver it, as tough as it is, so that the odds are not increasingly stacked against Australians, especially younger Australians, for forever and a day.

That very same former treasurer today talks about domestic innovation, forgetting his record of trashing and decimating the very industries that help power science and innovation in this country. He spent most of his time chugging at cigars, budgeting and subsequently celebrating the demise of our manufacturing industry on the balconies of Parliament House. Rather than actually offering something to the Australian people and rather than actually having a policy alternative that we can even begin to work with and debate, the opposition resorted to what could possibly be their last refuge in the dividing of Australians into migrants and Australians—whatever that means—and into permanent residents and citizens.

The 2.7 million small businesses in Australia are the backbone of the Australian economy and are the heart and soul of local economies in communities like mine. That's why this budget is backing them in. This budget will make the $20,000 instant asset write-off permanent. It will give businesses more certainty to invest and grow. Not only will this change bring around $890 million in cash-flow support over the next five years; it will slash compliance costs for small businesses. This change will also save hardworking business owners 366,000 hours on record keeping. This budget will see permanent two-year loss carryback for companies with turnover of up to $1 billion from 1 July. It will help ensure that small businesses can return to profitability faster and have the confidence to invest earlier and withstand volatility that may come their way. Our small business tax cuts will also look towards helping new and innovative businesses with the introduction of loss refundability to help startups grow in their first two years, expanding tax incentives for venture capital to help unlock more investment in young and expanding businesses.

This budget continues the massive investments our government has undertaken when it comes to health care. One of the proudest things I speak about in this government's delivery is in the area of health care. Making sure that health care is accessible and well funded makes the world of difference for so many in my community. In just this term of parliament, the number of Medicare bulk-billing practices in our area increased to 46, with our bulk-billing rate going from less than 40 per cent when I was first elected to more than doubling to over 90 per cent. Our health investment is breaking down barriers not only when it comes to seeing a doctor but also when it comes to getting the treatment one needs as well.

We've cut the cost of medicines on the PBS to $25 and $7.70 for concession card holders whilst continuing to add more medications to the PBS. I'm pleased to inform the House that 2,198,573 is the number of cheaper pharmacy scripts issued in our community. This investment has already made a positive impact on my community. That's why I was pleased to see this budget go even further, in particular with the $25 billion in additional public hospital funding, which will go a long way to improve hospital wait times, reduce emergency department crowding and free up hospital beds.

I welcome the government's implementation of a domestic gas reserve requiring LNG producers to reserve 20 per cent of exports for the Australian market. This is important reform. Manufacturers in my electorate know that putting downward pressure on domestic gas prices will support local industry and better shield Australians from global price volatility. The reality is the conflict in the Middle East is affecting communities here at home, from the bowser to the factory floor. It's our job, and it's been a focus of this government that Australians should not continue paying the price for instability overseas. That's why the budget's $3.2 billion investment in an Australian fuel security reserve is so important, strengthening our national fuel security by increasing diesel and jet fuel reserves.

There is a clear difference between this government and those opposite. We want to see the issues in the housing market for young people and we want to fix them, rather than doing absolutely nothing about them. We see the rise in social and economic and political division and dislocation around the world, and we want to shield Australia from it, while all three arms of those opposite want to import it, copy it, fuel it and, ultimately, be consumed by it. When younger Australians lose faith that hard work leads to stability, security and opportunity, the social contract itself begins to fray.

This moment calls for courage, for reform and for governments willing to recognise that economic policy must serve people not just markets. We have before us a generational opportunity born from a generational necessity, an opportunity to rebalance our economy towards productive investment, to make housing accessible again, and an opportunity to rebuild the industries, to strengthen public infrastructure and restore the principle that prosperity should be accessible to all Australians. Most importantly, it is an opportunity to restore a fighting chance for younger Australians to own their own home, a fighting chance that secure work can deliver a decent life and a fighting chance that there is a generation that will not simply just inherit rising costs and shrinking opportunities but a country that invests in its future and a government to do what is necessary to adjust the policy settings that have long held Australians back and left them behind.

Debate adjourned.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:33

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