Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is indeed a dark day for the nation. We have heard today that even though the Treasurer, when asked, could not find in the budget documents what the level of debt of $315 billion was, he was quite happy to roll that out as the amount of debt this nation would have to sustain. It seems evident that the Treasurer is grossly incompetent, not knowing what his budget papers say or whether they reflect the true magnitude of the financial position this nation will soon find itself in. What is further concerning is that, whilst bond rates have been issued from three to four per cent, current bonds are now being issued at five per cent for three-, five- and 10-year terms. But in three years time—or five years time—as bonds are rolled over to fund this $315 billion worth of debt, what amount of interest will be paid? If a conservative view is taken of six per cent interest on current government bond issuance, $315 billion in a short space of four years—representing peak debt—will be $18 billion per annum in interest alone that this irresponsible government is happy to put on the shoulders of every Australian man, woman and child.

The Prime Minister will stand here and say: ‘The global financial crisis ate my lunch. This is not my responsibility. I did not cause this. The tsunami waves have come across the oceans. A great hammer has swept across the budget.’ Everyone is responsible except for the Prime Minister, who had the temerity prior to the last election to say, ‘The buck will stop with me.’ Clearly, when it comes to a budget with such astonishing and staggering debt, the buck is stopping with everyone but him.

On 4 February this year I spoke the following words when looking at Labor’s second stimulatory package:

There is an ugly fellowship—a not-so-secret society—that exists today. I call it the deficit or debt club. It remains unique. It knows no bounds or restraints. It is confined to no faction. It imposes no intellectual requirement and no geographic location. In the words of the mantra: union membership is required and blind adherence to collectivism is needed. No other circumstance or condition whatsoever, save the merit of lazy spending, shall entitle a Labor leader to membership of this fellowship as all post-war Labor leaders have received it.

Little did I know back in February how prophetic these words would be. Back then the government would still have us believe that their proposed $21 billion surplus for this financial year was still intact, even though a Treasury forecast could not survive any longer than 30 days without it being downgraded. And now we find that this financial year is not $20 billion in surplus but a staggering $32 billion in deficit, with a peak debt of $315 billion.

When it comes to debt, last week it was pointed out to that nervous little man, our Treasurer, that indeed the Costello-Howard years had left the nation with the budget in surplus and all debt paid off. A tirade came from the treasury bench saying that $50 billion worth of government bonds still existed showing that the Howard-Costello government had indeed not paid debt off. It staggers me that a Treasurer simply would not understand how the bond market works or how the Australian Office of Financial Management works. In the last two or three years of the Howard government a decision was made to keep $50 billion of bonds actively being traded within the financial sector to allow a series of AAA rated instruments to be traded. That money was raised and then put on deposit in full with the Reserve Bank, which then used it to fund a range of entities across the nation. The government’s balance sheet, which, clearly, the Treasurer has shown he is incapable of reading, showed a net debt of zero. But what is this to Labor leaders who have joined the fellowship of debt, who have cast the ring of deficit upon their fingers and have burdened the nation for the next 20 years with a horrible, unjust debt position?

The 2009-10 forecast is for a $58 billion debt. In 2010-11 there will be a further $57 billion deficit for the year. In 2011-12 there will be a $45 billion deficit. In 2012-13 there will be a $28 billion deficit. There will be a $188 billion deficit for the next financial year plus the three out-years of the forward estimates—$188 billion of debt for the next four years. And if you add in the current financial year, with this horrendous $32 billion debt, you see a deficit of $220 billion over five years—$220 billion worth of debt with a peak debt of $315 billion.

And all of this is predicated on Labor not increasing expenditure above two per cent in real terms every year. Are you kidding me! We as a country are in this horrible mess because this Labor government cannot do anything except follow the Prime Minister’s manta of ‘spend, spend, spend’. But he would have the audacity, the effrontery, to say, ‘We will keep expenditure below two per cent going right through six or seven years.’

What is worse is that the budget projections for 2011-12 and 2012-13 are based, amazingly, on a real GDP growth of 4.5 per cent, which is 1.5 per cent above the trend of the previous decades. Furthermore, the government assumes that from 2011-12 to 2016-17 there will be six straight years of growth at 4.5 per cent. The fact that this has only occurred twice in the last 30 years and the fact that we never achieved 4.5 per cent growth in GDP in any of the last 12 years of economic sunshine—of the most amazing economic conditions that have existed on the planet, when Australia’s economy was seen as the miracle of the OECD and hailed as such from the four corners of the globe—seems entirely superfluous to this government, which believes that from 2011-12 we will see 4.5 per cent growth every year for six years. It is absolutely and utterly staggering. It is historical nonsense to think that that could occur.

And then the government hides behind the Treasury by saying that it is Treasury modelling, which the government has taken at face value, and criticises anyone who would dare to stand up and question it. Let me put this government on notice: the Treasury is not a sacred cow. Since coming to parliament in 2007 I am yet to see a Department of Treasury forecast actually hold water for longer than a few months. So forgive me for the scepticism I have when Treasury, supported by the government, say that from 2011-12 we will have six uninterrupted years of growth at 4.5 per cent. I am thankful they did not claim seven years of the great big fattened calf coming out of the River Nile, because it then would have been of truly biblical proportions.

The Prime Minister will say: ‘The global financial crisis ate my lunch. I am not responsible. The world is responsible. Subprime debt is responsible. The Asian manufacturing bubble-burst is responsible. The emerging economies of Eastern Europe, and their explosion, are responsible. Everything is responsible except for me.’ That is, except when you actually read into the budget papers.

Since this government came to power, there has been $124 billion of new expenditure—of Labor expenditure. That amounts to $10 million an hour, or $2.5 million every 15 minutes. In the 10 minutes I have been speaking, this government has spent $2 million in new expenditure. The problem is not that the global financial crisis has eaten the Prime Minister’s lunch. The problem is that the Prime Minister has wilfully spent money in the most enormous, grandiose proportions we have seen outside of wartime Australia.

On top of this, he has increased tax by $26 billion, hiding behind the mantra that tax has not been increased as a proportion of GDP. Then there is the impact of policy decisions on this budget. This budget’s policy decisions have worsened it by $97 billion. This does not even begin to include the Prime Minister’s fanciful Ruddnet—$43 billion which the Prime Minister says will be a great investment. The fact that it will be twice the capitalised value of Telstra did not come into it, nor did the fact that there is no product disclosure statement and no advice on return. There is no advice on anything. But the Prime Minister actually said that this would be a good investment.

If any Australian were to stand there and say, ‘Invest in this product: I have no disclosure statement; I have no idea of return; I have no idea of profitability,’ it would be considered a crime and investigated accordingly. Yet this Prime Minister can roll that out with $43 billion of taxpayers’ money.

This worsened budget position caused by government spending does not include Ruddbank—$28 billion worth of the Prime Minister seeking to bail out commercial property with interests that are falling over. The budget for the following year, 2009-10, has savings of $24 billion—1½ per cent. Yet it has new expenditure: over $45 billion. The mantra was: ‘A horror budget; a dreadful budget. Everyone will have to do their part to find savings.’ There is $24 billion worth of savings, yet there is new Labor expenditure of over $45 billion. If the fiscal position of this nation were not in such a parlous, dreadful position, what this government has done would almost be laughable. They have completely and utterly lost control of public finances.

Unemployment at the election was four per cent. It is now forecast for 2009-10 to be 8.25 per cent, rising the following year to 8.5 per cent—a million people unemployed. Yet the stimulus package this government rolled out in December last year—$10 billion cash handaways—would create 75,000 jobs, we were told. Yet unemployment went up. The second stimulus package, which I was proud to vote against because of its recklessness, said it would support 200,000 jobs. And then, in the budget speech, the Treasurer spoke about all of these stimulus messages sustaining 200,000 jobs. ‘Creating’, ‘supporting’, ‘sustaining’—at least the nation can be happy the Treasurer knows what an active verb is. Yet 200,000 jobs being sustained, with the amount of money in the stimulus package, indicates each job sustained is at the cost of a quarter of a million dollars.

The coalition will vote in this House against the 30 per cent rebate being means tested. I personally will stand here and defend the 73,392 constituents in my electorate who have private health insurance. I will defend their right to choose the type of healthcare cover they want for their families. I will stand here and defend them against an ideological attack where Labor simply does not like the idea that people can choose to have a benefit; they can choose to have something different; they can choose to have private health insurance or indeed private education. I will defend the 73,392 constituents of the northern Gold Coast who have chosen private health insurance for their families. Means testing it will simply throw millions of Australians, potentially, out of private health insurance onto a public health system that is failing.

It is ironic Mr Rudd and his government—where the buck stops with him—said, ‘After 18 months, if the public health system is failing, I will step in.’ Well, Mr Rudd, in Queensland right now there are 36,000 people on the waiting list for elective surgery. There are 159,000 people waiting to get on the waiting list for elective surgery. If that is not a crisis in Queensland health, I do not know what is. A state Labor government unable to pay off their $74 billion debt and now looking to flog government owned corporations to the market—even though those corporations are themselves saddled with debt—shows the parlous position that Queensland is in and that Queensland health is in.

This government talks about being a nation-building government. It is so easy to roll out terms. It is so easy to talk up the big, lofty concepts. ‘We’re about building infrastructure,’ the member for Grayndler says. Bless Lord Albo of Grayndler, because $1.7 billion of the government’s promised $22 billion is to be scheduled in 2008-09. Another $1.5 billion is scheduled in 2009-10 and the rest will be flowing—almost $20 billion—after the economy is forecast to kick-start itself again in 2010-11. If you were going to roll out infrastructure as part of nation building, wouldn’t you do it now?

But what we had today, of course, is more government spin. Suddenly they have plucked out 35,000 projects that will be funded. I ask the minister at the desk: Minister, table a list of them. You have said there are 35,000. I gather you have counted them. Table them. Show the nation what they are. Produce the report that shows exactly what these 35,000 projects are. There will be a crane in every backyard, we are led to believe—infrastructure projects ad infinitum across the nation. Table the 35,000. Senator Arbib was on Sky this morning claiming there were 35,000. The Prime Minister claimed there were 35,000. Show me the cranes, Minister. Produce the list of 35,000 so that the nation may have confidence in you, because your budget papers simply say that the bulk of your money will be spent in something like 18 months to two years time. The bulk of your budget papers fly in the face of your 35,000 shovel-ready, crane-ready projects across the nation.

But, then again, it is hard to take this government on face value. The Prime Minister said he would take a meataxe to the Public Service. Clearly, the meataxe I use on a leg of lamb is a little different to the one the Prime Minister uses, because staff numbers have actually increased. The Prime Minister has increased political staff numbers by 30 per cent. The Prime Minister has increased both the ranks of Public Service numbers and political numbers. I guess his meataxe is a little blunt, or perhaps it is not a meataxe at all but a rather limp sausage.

Let us move on to the area of obstetrics. Women charged the average fee for private obstetric care will end up paying $500 more for their treatment under changes to the Medicare safety net—unless, of course, doctors reduce their charges. Well, that is standing up for health care! Well done. I am sure the pregnant women of this nation, which includes my wife, will be incredibly proud of what the government has done—perhaps not as proud as those desperately hurting families who want to have children, who pray earnestly every night for the opportunity to have a little baby of their own and who move on to IVF to increase their chances. I have walked the path with a good pastor friend of mine, Steve Peach. He and his wife, Belinda, tried IVF 10 times before having Zoe Peach, their beautiful gift from the Lord, their beautiful baby. If that were to occur after these changes, IVF costs would increase by $2,000—$2,000 more for the most vulnerable and hurting in our community.

This budget is a farce. Consumer confidence as at 20 May had taken its second biggest fall in 10 years. Is it any wonder, when faced with peak debt of $315 billion and what goes with it? (Time expired)

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will remind the honourable member for Fadden that he should, under standing order 64, refer to other honourable members by the name of their division or by their position.

Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to just reflect, if I may. I remember very well a meataxe of a different flavour in 1996 hitting my community with such vengeance that it threw Canberra into a recession. I just want the previous speaker, the departing member for Fadden, to think about that.

Due to the global financial crisis, I find myself rising to give quite a different speech on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and cognate bills to the corresponding speech that I delivered last year. Last year one of the government’s main concerns was to fight inflation, which at the time was at its highest domestic level for over 16 years. How quickly circumstances can change. We now find ourselves in the midst of the worst economic crisis that the world has seen in over 70 years. Because of the global financial crisis, the world economy is expected to contract by about 1½ per cent in 2009. Australia’s major trading partners are expected to contract by about two per cent. This is a worse outcome than even the Asian economic crisis. All of this is having a direct effect on the Australian economy. Our terms of trade are expected to fall by 13¼ per cent in 2009-10. This will take approximately $35 billion out of the economy. Nominal GDP will fall by 1½ per cent in the same financial year. This represents the biggest fall in nominal GDP in the postwar era.

Last year I said that I was pleased that the first Labor budget in over 11 years had started a new era of responsible, long-term economic management. I am pleased to say that the second Labor budget for this government continues this era, despite its critics, and albeit in a somewhat different manner. Last year, the main priority was inflation. Now it has turned to unemployment. Already the number of Australians looking for a job has increased by 175,000. The most recent unemployment statistics from the ABS show a small contraction in unemployment, and although this was very welcome news and gave the nation a glimmer of hope I fear and we fear that unemployment will rise over the next few years. Unemployment is predicted to rise to six per cent by June of this year, and in two years time after that, in June 2010, another 300,000 people are expected to be unemployed. It is estimated that unemployment will peak in 2011 at about 980,000. This is the highest figure since 1992.

As the Treasurer stated at the National Press Club the other day, this government has no higher priority than minimising unemployment and helping families hold on to their jobs and homes. The budget that this government has brought down this year will do a lot to ensure that the government delivers on this priority. However, a lot of this work has already been undertaken through the government’s quick and decisive action by way of the two economic stimulus packages and measures such as the government’s decision to guarantee Australian bank borrowing. Without this measure, our banks would not have been able to raise enough funds to lend to individuals, families and businesses both big and small. Without this measure, the Australian economy would have ground to a halt or come very close to it.

There have been many critics, including from the opposition, of the government’s decision to make urgent cash payments to many households. Without these payments, consumer spending would have suffered. I have been speaking to my local retailers—I am a great shopper, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I am out there talking to them all the time. They are emphatically telling me that their better than expected retail figures in recent months are a direct result, in their view, of those very cash payments.

It is worth remembering that approximately 1½ million people are employed in the retail sector in this country. Without these payments, many of those Australians who work in the retail sector would now find themselves out of work. The money that the government has already invested in schools and public housing means that about 35,000 building sites are springing up around the country, despite what the previous speaker was raving on about. In meetings I have had with the ACT government, including as early as this morning, I have been made aware of the speed at which these programs are being picked up. I am really very pleased that they are progressing quickly and efficiently and that they are proving very successful. Here in my town I want to commend the ACT government for working hand in hand with us at the federal level to see these programs come through quickly and efficiently.

The increase in the First Home Owner Grant has ensured that new building approvals are up and that the housing market has not gone into a slump. I would like to relate a story told to me by a constituent in my electorate who is currently looking at purchasing a home. He told me that he and his wife have gone to about 30 house inspections over the last few weekends. He claims that nearly every one of these inspections is akin to a very busy marketplace; homebuyer traffic at these inspections is pretty heavy. He also claims that, invariably, a property will be advertised on either Thursday or Friday and will probably be under offer by the following Monday. When this government was elected, one of the major issues facing Australian families was homeownership affordability. The government pledged to fix this problem. Therefore, one of the most pleasing aspects of the extension of the First Home Owner Grant is that it enables people to buy their own home who might never have had the chance to do so.

Another of the government’s earlier announcements that will not only help Australia through these tough times but also be a vital infrastructure investment for the nation is the government’s investment, together with the private sector, to build a super-fast national broadband network. About a month ago, I received an email from one of my constituents who lives in the Hermitage apartment block in Chifley, which is one of the older suburbs in the electorate of Canberra—it is basically central Canberra. The apartment block itself would be a bit over 20 years old, I think. The constituent reminded me that, in a speech I gave in the House in March 2008, I stated that people who lived in her apartment block were unable to access broadband—and that is true. She asked me if I could find out if this situation had changed in the meantime. My staff made inquiries to Telstra in regard to this matter. The reply that I received read, in part:

Unfortunately these units are a little too far from the exchange. Some services on the street are able to access ADSL, as the services fall just within the provisioning limits. Unfortunately ADSL is not available at the Hermitage, as transmission loss is too great.

I was rather shocked to find that this was still the case. What on earth have Telstra been doing, when a block of apartments in central Canberra is just a little bit too far away to access ADSL? For Heaven’s sake! Did it ever occur to Telstra to just run another line a little further down the street? However, I know that the National Broadband Network will eventually rectify this problem for both the residents of the Hermitage in Chifley and many other residents not only here in Canberra but around the country.

This year’s budget builds on the government’s prompt and decisive actions to combat the global financial crisis. A historic $22 billion investment in the nation’s infrastructure will be spent on building and improving ports, roads and rail. This will lay the foundations for a more prosperous future—and it actually points to the lack of activity in this region over the last decade or so. This is something that those opposite should think about. There will be $64 billion, over five years, for the public hospital system. That is an increase of $20 billion, or approximately 50 per cent, on the previous Australian healthcare agreements. That is very welcome, but it is also very necessary to give the public healthcare system a bit of a go after the previous government’s neglect of it. There will be an increase of $5.3 billion in investment in the higher education sector. The number of university places will be uncapped, providing incentives for kids from disadvantaged families. There will be increased funding for research and commercialisation and more money for capital projects. I note that the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University, Ian Chubb, has welcomed the government’s investment in higher education. He said, in part:

I am … delighted that the Government has accepted that research and innovation will be important elements in economic recovery and that now is a time to invest. I recognise that in these difficult economic times these multiple investments reflect well on the Government’s commitment and its confidence in Australia’s universities.

Professor Chubb has stated that the funding at the ANU will be spent on two new chemistry buildings, a new science teaching building and a combined sciences workshop.

The extension of the First Home Owner Grant for an extra six months, beginning with a phase-out period starting in October, is a welcome initiative for the construction and real estate industries. For small businesses, the tax break on eligible assets will be increased from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. For full rate single pensioners, including age pensioners, disability support pensioners, war widows, veterans’ income support pensioners and widow B pensioners, there will be an extra $32.49 per week, and there will be an extra $10.14 per week for combined couples receiving the corresponding pensions. There will be more assistance for carers, through a legislated carer supplement of $600 per year for carer payment recipients and an additional $600 per annum for carer allowance for each eligible person in their care. There will be an investment of $731 million, over five years, for the implementation of a paid parental leave scheme starting from 1 January 2011.

The measures in the budget which will specifically benefit Canberra include $60 million for a world-class brain research centre at the Eccles Institute in the John Curtin School of Medical Research, $90 million for the ANU chemical sciences hub and $29.7 million for the ACT Integrated Cancer Care Centre. This is a very important investment in health in Canberra and the surrounding region, and it is part of the overall redevelopment of the Canberra Hospital campus. The centre will be located in a new building adjacent to the newly redeveloped radiation oncology unit and will centralise all cancer related services into a single integrated centre. For members of the community who have had incidences of cancer in their family, whether it be a child or an adult, this is an enormous decision and I welcome it warmly.

There is also $11.3 million for Questacon, not only to improve its education facilities in Canberra but also to deliver an outreach program that will include exhibitions, in-school presentations and digital online programs to promote children’s interest in science around the country. There is $50 million committed to the building of a new supercomputer infrastructure to be based in Canberra.

As I said earlier, the government is determined to see Australia through the worst of the global financial crisis and it has acknowledged that it has had to take a number of unpopular but necessary steps to ensure that the deficit is kept under some control and that we can in fact put money where it is most badly needed in the community. Some of these less popular decisions include the means-testing of the private health rebate. This decision means a single person earning over $75,000 a year will only get a 20 per cent rebate; those earning over $90,000, a 10 per cent rebate; and those earning over $120,000 a year will not receive a rebate. The corresponding earning amounts for couples are, for a 20 per cent rebate, over $150,000; for a 10 per cent rebate, over $180,000; and no rebate for those earning over $240,000. It was a hard decision, but the individuals and families out there who are not in those income brackets do not lose that rebate. So let us just keep this in the context of a debate on fairness.

So, when the previous speaker says he is going to fight for his 74,000 constituents who pay private health insurance, I take it he means that all of them earn over $240,000 as a couple or $120,000 as an individual. Otherwise, he has not very clearly understood the arguments being put forward about the fair distribution of money in very, very tough times.

This decision will result in savings of $1.9 billion over the next five years. No wonder I am pleased to see a cancer centre come to Canberra as a result of those savings. Other decisions are a number of tax reforms, including the tightening of rules applying to non-commercial business losses and limiting the scope of tax exemption for foreign employment income.

One of the very pleasing aspects of this budget from my perspective is the very large investment in science, research and technology. The government has made a substantial commitment in areas such as the Education Investment Fund, Sustainable Research Excellence in Universities, postgraduate research and Super Science Fellowships. There are many more. However, one of the really standout investments in research is the $120 million that the government will provide to the CSIRO to construct a new marine research vessel to replace the ageing RV Southern Surveyor. The old vessel has become somewhat outdated, to put it mildly, and this new vessel will allow our scientists to progress our work at sea on climate change and variability, the development of resources located under the seabed and sustainable use of Australia’s biodiversity.

How do I best summarise this budget? I do so by looking at two contrasting parts. On the one hand, the opposition talk an awful lot about deficits, rates and borrowing. There is nothing wrong with talking about that; however, they do not give us any idea—and I have not heard one speaker yet do so—as to how they would solve the problems that the nation now faces. All they seem to want to do is talk about the economy in negative terms. They are forever talking the economy down, therefore, with a scare campaign about debt and deficit. Let us have that discussion, but let it be fair and balanced. What would they actually do? They need to tell the Australian people what their alternative plan is, but I have yet to hear it. On the other hand, on this side, the government not only talks about but also acts to address the nation’s challenges through spending in infrastructure, research and development, and innovation. In short, the government is more concerned about the future and is acting accordingly.

There is no doubt that some of our decisions around these subjects will not be popular with everybody, but there is a famous saying that you can please some of the people some of the time but not everybody all of the time. The government has had to make some really hard decisions in extraordinary circumstances. No-one can deny the circumstances in which we find ourselves. I am very pleased with the investment in the budget. The investment that we are seeing has a long-term life. It is going into education and health, things that stand the test of time, at a moment in our history when private funding is not around. The private sector is not able at this stage to come forward with that money. So what does the government do? It does its job. It comes forward and invests in the country and its people, and that is what this budget is doing.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and cognate bills. This is not a budget to save Australia; it is a budget that is designed to create the statistical impression of a government that should be re-elected. It is a budget that accepts that those who will suffer its burdens will not vote for 10 or 15 years. Further, it turns to every socialist option to achieve its purpose.

The Hawke-Keating government sold the family silver of government enterprise to fund its expanding expenditure and, of course, borrowed about $80 billion in the five years of that process. Now the Rudd government commits borrowed funds to recreate that situation. We are to have a new government bank, Ruddbank, which is already identified as a mates bank in terms of its preference for the ailing shopping centre and apartment sector. The Treasurer seems to have one special project in mind. But, for instance—and I do not think we should have the bank and I do not think it should have this idea—they are not around to try and bail out failed forestry companies at the moment. It is all about mates. One can only wait for some Labor luminary to have his unserviceable overdraft of around $16 million written off, as has happened in the past—nice to have a government bank!

Now we are going to return telecommunications to the government and union domination, through the so-called broadband initiative. Whatever involvement the so-called private sector might have, it is not to exceed 50 per cent. The government is going to run the shop on the instructions of the trade union movement. I can tell you, I well remember that situation when I was first elected in 1980, when in one small country centre there were 160 outstanding applications to get a telephone. And how did you fix that? You got onto one of the techies and gave him a carton of beer. That is how you did it. Do we want to return to that situation? The previous Telstra management quite properly declined to participate in this political process that fell approximately $40,000 million short of the capital needed. They were criticised for a non-conforming tender when in fact, after the government’s announcement that it would go it alone, it was clear that all the private bids were non-conforming.

The role of the Future Fund, a government statutory authority, in this matter further demonstrates the influence of government over a so-called independent statutory authority. When you can replace the chairman, a one-time chief executive of the Commonwealth Bank, David Murray, what more power as a government do you need? Telstra does not need to be involved in this uncommercial activity and, as the protector of superannuation of the public sector, the board of the Future Fund should be telling Telstra to keep out of it and get on with utilising its existing network and cash flow to make commercial, not political, decisions in the interests of its shareholders, of which the Future Fund is the largest.

Furthermore, think about history. Once this network is in place—and if it is ever built it will overcome all other networks; your telephone and everything else will work through it—when will you be told how much you are going to pay next year? You will be told in the budget, just as the states tell consumers about electricity and water charges and those other matters that are still government controlled. That is the situation. Not only will future Australians be subject to higher taxation and reduced government services as a result of this debt binge, they will have to continue to fund the losses and maintenance of nearly every budget infrastructure initiative.

Take public housing. The Western Australian government in its recent budget has had to allocate $8.3 million simply for repairs of public housing trashed by its occupants. We are never told of the costs associated with unpaid rent. This $8.3 million indicates an annual cost of approximately $80 million of similar costs around Australia as we proceed to build the 20,000 home units.

Today we were informed of the estimated cost of $4.3 billion for a single project for 50 kilometres of passenger rail in Victoria—double the cost, apparently, of building a railway line from Melbourne to Brisbane. And, of course, that is not in the budget yet—that is only the feasibility study. This government is proposing to invest $3.2 billion of that $4.3 billion. There are commitments for passenger rail in the Gold Coast, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane, totalling more billions. However, on the day these projects come to completion they will start losing money, as they always do.

Then there are school buildings. There is the government’s $1.2 billion Investing in Our Schools Program, which was funded with cash and gave school principals and local parents groups the opportunity to spend up to $150,000 on buildings or equipment. On that occasion state government building agencies insisted on managing these projects, which no doubt they will do again, thus increasing costs by multitudes of up to three and deducting 15 per cent for their assistance in forcing the cost of the projects up that high. Very few schools in my electorate applied for the full amount of $150,000, although some could have wisely spent more. But this budget forces them to take another $200,000. It is like feeding a pate goose: you have it forced down your throat whether you need it or not. And if you really think you can spend it you can put your hand up for another $2 million. When they were offered $150,000 many schools did not take the full amount, so why now are they told to get in and spend it? Of course they will spend it. Of course they will write letters of gratitude. But is it going to improve the education of the children as compared, for instance, with putting that sort of money into training teachers?

Reference is made again to the training facilities. Surely the first role of government is to ensure that there are sufficient qualified teachers in the relevant disciplines, science in particular. Prior to this budget, the Deputy Prime Minister and minister for everything else, Ms Gillard, lectured the parliament daily upon her education revolution. Yet this budget reduces the original commitment by $2 billion—probably because of a failure to get that money out on the ground. With her free computer initiative, for example, we know she has been told by New South Wales to go away. She estimated a cost of $1 billion when the total cost, taking installation, programming and maintenance into account, is more like $3 billion. However, in typical style we get covered assembly areas but not teachers.

Worse, students from rural areas contemplating a university education that might equip them to enter these disciplines have had their youth allowance rug pulled from under their feet. In a highly cynical move the government has changed the family income thresholds—and we heard the Deputy Prime Minister on this subject today—to make it appear that access is improved. Then they changed the qualifying criteria retrospectively. The previous rules to qualify for this allowance, which includes rent subsidies, were to enter the workforce to earn approximately $19,000 within an 18-month period. This allowed some young people to take quite high-paid jobs to aggregate the sum over 12 months.

But, whatever the circumstances, there is a serious situation where the government has changed the rules around their working arrangements. You might have a better income threshold, but if you have been working to those old rules you are now told that you have got to have two years gap and work 30 hours a week throughout that period. That is something like 75 per cent, I think, of the typical lower wage. Where do you get that sort of work in this environment? It is not necessarily available. But worse, those who have already done, say, six or nine months under the old system are being told to start again. They will be waiting three years, as a country student dependent on the rent allowance, before they can go to university.

It is all right for the Deputy Prime Minister to tell us who is rich and who is poor in the country. When your child has got to go away from home you double your household costs. If you are on a low income, without some assistance like youth allowance, it is just impossible. Even if you have been more fortunate and have got a higher income, it is not an expense that is incurred by someone who lives close to a university. This is the area of fairness and equality. I have often said that the richer you are, the closer you tend to live to a university. Of course, some kids can walk to their tertiary institution. Nobody knows that better than yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker Washer, when you think of the plush suburbs of Perth and how they surround the University of Western Australia. But, the minute you live further than 50 kilometres away, you have got to relocate. In some cases where wives and others have moved out, it has led to family breakdown and all sorts of issues of that nature.

That is just the start of it. The biggest con of all has been practised on our pensioners. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the shadow minister for infrastructure, who is at the table, are both aware there was considerable debate in the latter years of the Howard government about the disparity between the single pension and the double pension. The gap was just too large. It created a situation, for instance, where on the death of a partner there was a very large reduction—notwithstanding that the only savings within that household was probably a little bit of food. We were all conscious of it. The single pensioner could not survive; the safety net had failed them.

We talked about what needed to be done about that. We lost government and we saw the circumstances of a new government and a new budget. What was in it for the pensioners? Nothing. So what did we do about that? We shamed them into noticing the issue, and our then leader brought to this House a private member’s bill to put single pensioners’ income up by $30 a week. Having made the appropriate inquiries, this government eventually gets the message that it ought to be $32 a week. It then says to the other pensioners, ‘While we are doing this, we will just give you an extra $10.’ It sounds good. But now the phones are ringing because, as of 30 June, the $500 per annum bonus—$10 a week—is to be discontinued. You give them 10 bucks on one hand and take the 10 away with the other. In the case of the single pensioner, where the government was advised they needed $32 a week, they are getting $22 a week because they are taking that $10 back.

That is just the sort of situation that we see throughout these situations. There is no valid argument for this action. There are other opportunities for savings, including the restriction—now retrospective, of course—of the $20 billion cash splash. A young woman known to me got three of them. Farmers are telling me about backpackers that worked on their farms some months ago and who paid a bit of tax. This tax was fully refunded because of the period of their employment and the fact that they did not reach the threshold to pay tax. The envelopes are turning up at the farmer’s addresses. The envelopes have $900 cheques in them and are addressed to these young people from New Zealand and from all over the world. We did that and, while, yes, some of the pensioners got that money, others did not. What was the better way to approach this very important subject?

It is an issue of order of priorities. Is it the government’s view that the construction of school halls and the building of passenger railways is more important than the provision of a security net to those who have already served our community through their labours, who have paid their taxes and who have—by their efforts—delivered a better living standard to future generations?

The government has created a committee to review the Australian tax system with the intention, I understand, of making it more simple. A good tax system should provide simplicity, certainty and equity. Yet it is reported that many more Australians will now be required to employ a tax agent to negotiate themselves through the complexity of this budget and its range of income and other means tests. For example, the income threshold for exemption on employee shares—a matter of great controversy, I might add—is $60,000. But it is $250,000 for non-commercial tax losses. It is $150,000 for parental payments. And you can take your pick of $75,000, $90,000, $120,000—or the doubling of such—for couples for matters related to Medicare and health fund rebates. In my mind, that hardly sounds like simplicity, certainty or equity.

There is also a veritable potpourri of tests relevant to salary sacrificed superannuation, foreign income et cetera. One of the most amazing is to differentiate between employer-paid superannuation contributions above nine per cent, except if that contribution is mandated in a union industrial agreement. In other words, if you have got an industrial agreement that says that you have got to pay 12 per cent, it will not be subject to the tax arrangements. But, if you are just a good employer who wants to help out and the circumstances allow you to do so and you say to the workers that you are going to give them an extra three per cent, there will be a special tax on that. You just could not believe that there could be this sort of commitment under the trade union domination of this particular thing.

The small and medium businesses are to get 30 and 50 per cent investment allowances, but, of course, this presupposes they have business opportunities to employ the new equipment they might purchase, the funds to make the purchase and/or a sympathetic banker to provide a loan at a viable interest rate. I especially mention viable interest rates. The situation is that, with the government pulling money out of our economy in tranche upon tranche of up to $700 million at a time, it is very difficult for the banks to compete in that marketplace. It is very difficult for the share market because the institutions, the big superannuation companies, are buying the government bonds. They are safe and return low interest, but they are secure. They are not investing in driving share prices up to a level that is of some significance for someone who has put their whole superannuation future into shares with the thought that, ‘They are blue ribbon and I can sell them, probably, at a small profit as I need the money.’ You wonder why the banks are charging 10 and 15 per cent. When they go overseas to borrow money the interest rate might be right, but there are the additional costs, hedging against financial currency movements et cetera. Nevertheless, there is a good news story for small business: the budget creates an advisory bureau. Small business will now be able to ring up a public servant to find out how to run their business. I am sure that is going to be a great help. We just go on and on.

Today in the parliament I put a slightly different meaning on the word ‘relevance’. I have been here since 1980. I know what relevance means in this place—the relevance of this House to be able to deliver answers through the media who sit up in the gallery bored to tears as to what the government is actually doing. The Prime Minister today could refer precisely to 3.8 per cent of GDP but did not know what the GDP would be, which might have allowed commentators to calculate the true size of that debt. He spoke for 10 minutes, and in the old days when I was here there would have been a mad rush by officials to provide him with that answer—which could now be got electronically. He did not want the answer. And this is the tragedy of this place. It has become irrelevant under this government.

If the Speaker thinks that he is constrained, he should read about the time when Billy Snedden was the Speaker—because when he was the Speaker he used the ultimate power of a Speaker. When ministers abused the rules of this place they were simply told to sit down, as I will now do. (Time expired)

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and cognate bills and start by setting out some of the key facts about the current economic situation, because those key facts are needed to frame any discussion of the budget and any discussion of the measures in the bills. First, we need to recognise that presently there is the most serious economic crisis that the global economy has faced in many years. Second, we should note that Budget Paper No. 1 outlines this in stark terms and includes facts like every advanced economy is now in recession, with the world economy expected to contract by 1½ per cent in 2009, and that global trade has collapsed. In 2009 it is expected to shrink by 11 per cent, more than in any other postwar period. We have an Australia in recession and we will have an economic contraction of half a per cent in 2009-10. Most importantly in terms of framing this budget there has been a collapse in taxation receipts. There has been a downward revision of $173 billion over the four years to 2011-12, including $90 billion in company taxation and $30 billion in capital gains tax.

The budget is a response to the crisis which Australia and indeed the world economy are facing at this time. In conjunction with the economic stimulus strategy and the Nation Building and Jobs Plan, this budget marks the work of a government that is fully committed to ensuring that it supports the Australian economy and Australian jobs during this time of crisis. Across the suite of economic policies it has taken early and decisive action to secure Australia’s economic future.

The government have supported the financial system through the guarantee of bank deposits and wholesale funding and through the Australian Business Investment Partnership to provide refinancing of loans relating to commercial property assets in Australia. We have provided fiscal stimulus, exactly as any government should do during a global recession, through the Economic Security Strategy, the COAG reform package, the nation-building package and the Nation Building and Jobs Plan. Together these are measures which will raise the level of GDP by 2.75 per cent in the financial year 2009-10 and 1.5 per cent in the financial year 2010-11.

The challenge of any government during this period is twofold. First, it is to stimulate demand in the economy to support jobs. Second, it is to ensure that across the economic cycle we balance the budget and avoid the political temptations of running structural deficits. With this budget the Rudd government have risen to that challenge. We have put in place the foundations for Australia to see through this crisis and to come out of it stronger and better prepared for future prosperity. We are putting in place the basis for future productivity growth by investing in infrastructure and by investing in human capital. Supporting jobs and small business today by investing in the nation-building infrastructure we need for tomorrow is the theme striking this budget. The infrastructure expenditure includes measures such as investing in roads, rail and ports across the country; investing in the single largest school modernisation program in the country’s history; and investing in a clean energy initiative to create the world’s largest solar power plant.

I turn to the questions of debt and deficit, because there has been a great deal of discussion around the projected $57.6 billion deficit and the resultant government borrowing. You would have to say, Mr Deputy Speaker, that there is a debt fetish amongst those on the other side. The Liberal Party appears to be obsessed with debt instead of focusing on the economic circumstances which frame this budget. The budget has gone into deficit during a recession and that is due to a massive collapse in revenue resulting from the global economic crisis. There are two alternatives if those opposite want to reduce the deficit this year: they can slash government spending or they can increase taxes. Both of those would be counterproductive and damaging to Australia’s economy because those measures—that is slashing government spending or increasing taxes—would reduce demand, would reduce investment and would make life tougher for small businesses and for Australian workers. If we believe the Liberals’ rhetoric about debt, we know that if they were in government right now they would be committing the greatest act of economic vandalism this nation has ever seen. The Liberals would slam the brakes on growth at a time of the greatest economic crisis in some 80 years. They would either, it seems, massively increase taxes or slash government spending, which would mean slashing spending on Medicare, slashing spending on higher education, slashing spending from infrastructure and, in addition, consigning the Australian economy to a deeper, longer recession with thousands more Australians unemployed.

The Liberal Party, it seems, views the federal budget as a theoretical accounting exercise when in fact the budget is about responsibly managing the finances of our community. It is about responding to the macroeconomic conditions that Australia now faces and responding in a responsible manner. Running a cyclical budget deficit at a time of grave economic crisis is the only responsible course of action. If we listened to those opposite, the pension would not be being increased to provide justice for our pensioners. The Liberals would not be investing in infrastructure to build the economic capacity of Australia and prepare us for future prosperity. The Liberals would not be investing in education to give all primary schools in our community better facilities for teaching and learning.

It is worth restating the pension reforms that are in this budget. The Rudd government is providing a significant increase of $32.49 for full rate single age disability and carer pensioners and providing assistance for couple pensioners with a $10.14 increase for full rate couples combined. These increases are of great significance to all of the pensioners living in my electorate, and they have been a welcome measure in this budget. Other pension reform includes increasing the retirement age from 65 to 67 over a staged introduction coming into full effect in 2023, which is an essential measure to achieve a sustainable pension system. People I have spoken to in my electorate understand that, with a longer-living and fitter population and a declining number of people earning and providing support through the taxation system to support that ageing population, some change was essential. It is change that is taking place across all developed economies and it is an appropriate decision. As I mentioned earlier, it has a staged introduction in order to give those who are affected by this measure time to plan for their retirements.

On infrastructure, this budget shows that the Rudd government understands the need to invest in infrastructure to improve the productive capacity of our nation. According to the OECD Economic Outlook Interim Report released in March 2009, the composition of Australia’s fiscal response to this economic crisis has been heavily tilted in favour of investment spending and it makes the point that it is to a much greater degree than in any other OECD country. Under this budget, the government will deliver further infrastructure spending to protect jobs now and to build our economy for the future. There are measures for metropolitan rail networks, including $4.6 billion for more efficient metropolitan rail networks, and that will of course deliver significant economic and social benefits through less road congestion, lower greenhouse gas emissions and faster travel times for commuters. There is $3.4 billion in this budget for the Network 1 road freight corridor linking Melbourne and Cairns and $389 million for port infrastructure to improve access to global markets for our export industries. Each of these projects will, at a national level, reduce economic inefficiencies caused by the failure of the former government to invest adequately in the infrastructure platforms that this country needs to build our future prosperity.

There has already been a great deal of infrastructure spending that has had a direct impact in my electorate. I mention first that, under the Building the Education Revolution program, schools in my electorate have already received almost $22 million, and more is to come. I know that the members opposite were opposed to this program, but I know equally well that students in my electorate will benefit enormously from the improvements to the schools in which they are taught. Under the Regional and Local Government Infrastructure program, which is infrastructure spending that has been delivered through local government bodies in my electorate, there has already been a range of projects announced, all of which will contribute to very useful projects within my electorate. This includes $1.4 million that was given to the City of Greater Dandenong, which has already announced a very substantial program to upgrade the Tatterson Park recreation area in Keysborough; $1.2 million given to the City of Frankston which is going to be used for the Ballam Park recycled water project to drought-proof three local sporting reserves and, incidentally, save 47 million litres of drinking water each year that is presently used on sporting reserves; and $489,000 received by the other municipality in my electorate, the City of Kingston, which will be used for an upgrade of the Moorabbin Bowling Club and a number of other very useful local projects.

More recently, at the start of May, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government announced a very large project: the complete rebuilding and upgrading of the Noble Park Memorial Swim Centre at a cost of some $7.27 million. This facility is located in the federal electorate of Bruce but serves the entire community of Noble Park and, indeed, the whole community of the city of Greater Dandenong. The member for Bruce, who I see is in the chamber, and I were very pleased to announce that $7.27 million grant recently. There is also a $2.97 million grant to the city of Kingston in yet another piece of infrastructure spending. The city of Kingston is going to use that money to upgrade the Kingston Heath regional soccer facility, which is a much used and much loved local facility that provides soccer grounds. The upgrade will include the construction of better seating facilities for those attending games at that Kingston Heath regional soccer facility.

Further on local infrastructure—all of which is going to lead to people throughout my electorate and the whole of the south-east of Melbourne as well as many other parts of the country seeing construction commencing on useful projects—last week I was able to join the Minister for Housing, the Hon. Tanya Plibersek, in announcing social housing projects in my electorate, which will see the upgrade of homes in Chelsea Heights, Aspendale, Dandenong and Noble Park at a cost of over $200,000. This will not merely improve the standard of the social housing that is the subject of the spending but also create local jobs. Again, the member for Bruce, the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, was present with me at the announcement made by the Minister for Housing in relation to social housing projects in Dandenong in his electorate of Bruce. Construction firms told us at the places I visited with the Minister for Housing last week that they were going to be putting on extra staff to undertake the kinds of works that are involved in these social housing projects.

To return to the appropriations bills and to look at the specific budget measures, another infrastructure project of direct relevance to south-east Melbourne and to my electorate is the Dandenong intermodal terminal. This budget includes some $50 million for the Altona-Laverton precinct and the Dandenong intermodal terminal. These projects will improve rail connectivity, provide intermodal terminals and generally expand the capacity of transport networks in Melbourne to handle freight, which of course is wholly appropriate for the high level of manufacturing activity that takes place within metropolitan Melbourne and uses the facilities of the port of Melbourne.

This budget is about priorities. One of the priorities that is clearly spelt out in this budget is the need for Australia to shift to a low-carbon economy. That shift is something that the Rudd Labor government understands. It is a shift which will involve helping to build an economy with green jobs so that the future is one of low carbon and one in which carbon pollution, which is the underlying cause of the dangerous climate change that the world faces, will be reduced. There is within this budget a $2 billion program which is directed at demonstration projects for carbon capture and storage and clean coal. The significance of such projects to Australia is obvious: developing industrial-scale demonstration projects for carbon capture and storage technology in Australia will make possible the continued use of coal, not only in Australia but also in industries and in power generation throughout the world. Putting money into carbon capture and storage shows that Australia is doing its part in the development of this technology, which is one of many measures that this government is committed to in confronting the challenge presented by climate change.

Another measure that is important in this budget, in the same area, is the commitment of $1.5 billion for renewable energy for up to four large-scale solar energy generation projects. A further related measure is $465 million to establish Renewables Australia, an independent body set up to support leading edge renewable technology research. The two initiatives I have just mentioned—that is, the $1.5 billion for the large-scale electricity generation projects and the $465 million to establish Renewables Australia—are initiatives that will help ensure that 20 per cent of Australia’s electricity supply comes from renewable energy by 2020. As with the investment in research on carbon capture and storage, investment in these renewable sources of energy is a key part of any response to climate change. These initiatives, in turn, build on the already announced Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the Renewable Energy Fund of $500 million and solar and clean energy research, as well as $500 million for the Solar Cities, National Solar Schools, and Green Precincts Fund initiatives. I commend the legislation to the House.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to report to the House that in my electorate I am picking up very deep concerns in the community about the deficit and the debt that has been forced upon our country. People are wondering, ‘Has the government lost its way?’ People are wondering, ‘Does the government have a plan for how to deal with this debt and deficit?’

In question time today we saw some obfuscation, which would indicate that perhaps the government does not have a plan. The country looks like it is going to be in debt and deficit for decades to come. Of course, we will all be paying the interest on that, let alone trying to pay off the principal. That is going to be very difficult, not only for the current generation but also for our kids and grandkids, and I worry for them.

I have lived through a period during which our country was debt free. We were the envy of the world. Yes, people will say, ‘Well, there has been a global financial crisis.’ But other countries have approached this quite differently to the way that Australia has approached it. The policy choices that are available to governments are interesting, and it is interesting to look at the policy choices that the Australian government has adopted. Basically, this has been: borrow, borrow, borrow—if you want to hand out money, just borrow and hand it out. That has been very sad. I think that the Australian community has picked up that the two cash splashes that we saw have not been effective, and they are wondering why we borrowed the money just to hand it out to no effect.

The opposition, for its part, has also been articulating a policy by which, we believe, we could have got twice the bang for the buck for half the money. That is an example of policy choices that are available to governments, and it is a pity that we put our country so far into debt when it really was not necessary.

Specifically in relation to the budget, there has been a lot of talk by the government about infrastructure—nation building and so on. We have seen the parade of hard hats and fluorescent vests all over the country in the last week. People are being asked to believe that a lot of money is being spent on infrastructure. What they are not being told is the quantum of money—how it compares to the previous government, when it might be spent and how it might be funded.

In North Queensland, despite indicating otherwise, the Rudd government will spend less in 2009-10—that is, the next financial year—on road and rail infrastructure than the coalition committed when we were in government. The Rudd government will actually spend less on infrastructure in North Queensland. That is not what the government and their hard hats are telling us, but that is the reality of it. Projects like the Abbot Point coal terminal upgrade and the Townsville to Mount Isa rail corridor are stalled indefinitely—these absolutely nation-building projects in North Queensland are stalled indefinitely.

If the member for Kennedy was here, he would be saying, in a very loud voice, ‘Hear, hear!’ The North West Queensland Minerals Province, which he represents in this parliament, is a wealth creator beyond imagination—it has that potential. It is still largest prospective minerals province in the world today, but the rail and road corridors, which were identified by the former government under AusLink, have not received any funding. Trains have got to travel at 40 kilometres an hour in some cases—there are not enough passing loops. The rail itself needs replacing with heavier duty rail, but there is no money. It is a project that could begin more or less immediately. It is the same with the upgrade of the Abbot Point coal terminal, but where is the missing link between the coal fields and Abbot Point? There is no funding. It is such a shame.

In relation to the Bruce Highway, we find that the passing lanes that we so desperately need every five kilometres have just been forgotten about. This budget has been a bad outcome for North Queensland. Any North Queenslander who thinks that these infrastructure projects are going to have any sort of effect in North Queensland has got another think coming. It is such a shame that it is being put about that there is all this money when in fact there is not.

I am pleased that the member for Goldstein is with us tonight, because he has recognised the $60 billion black hole in the infrastructure packages. This surfaced just the other day. It is basically causing a raid on our superannuation funds. Less than 22 per cent of the new infrastructure spending will occur either in this financial year or the next. The majority of it is going to have to be funded out of private sources, not out of government sources. The superannuation funds are paranoid about what the government might impose upon them and about what they might be required to do, because their obligation to those who deposit money in their superannuation fund is to get the best return, and sometimes public infrastructure does not deliver the best return. That is going to be a very significant issue, and we may well see that some of the projects that the government has announced will in fact never happen.

Some in the media and elsewhere would unkindly call that ‘government spin’, but perhaps it is not so unkind after all; perhaps it is something we as the Australian community should all face up to and understand that we are being sold a pup. Certainly, for my part, I am convinced that that is the case.

We looked at the cash splashes that occurred—one just before Christmas and one in April. There is no doubt that those around the world who know about these things basically cannot believe what they are seeing. Recently, I was speaking to a number of finance ministers in other countries, and they could not believe it when I told them that Australia’s response to the global financial crisis was to borrow money, hand it out and say, ‘Just go and spend it.’ Their instant reaction—in a non-political way, because they are remote from Australia—was: ‘Well, that won’t produce a stimulus at all. It will produce happy voters, but it won’t produce a stimulus.’ That is what has happened.

I will tell you what they did in Malta, and this applies particularly in my electorate. They immediately identified large employers in their country who may face difficulty in keeping their employees during the downturn in the global economy. Malta decided to support those particular industries to keep people in jobs and give them and their families security, but they did it for a very good reason: they believe that those companies will come out of this crisis in a far stronger position than they were in going into it. So there is a win for everybody—a win for the employees, a win for the company and a win for the country—but the key is to support those particular threatened companies so they can continue their operations.

I turn to my electorate and look at Yabulu, BHP Billiton’s nickel refinery. Our community has been very concerned. Currently BHP have a high-level committee looking at the future of the refinery. They are looking at options that range from closing the refinery completely or upgrading the refinery through to processing even more ore through the refinery. All options are on the table. But the financial press is beginning to write very concerning articles, saying: Yabulu is next on the hit list of BHP Billiton. I do not know whether that is true, because BHP have not made a statement, but, when you look at the world nickel price and the fact that BHP’s plant continues to trade at a loss, the future is not very bright. BHP have shut down the Ravensthorpe nickel mine and processing plant, which was feeding part-processed material to Yabulu for final processing. They shut it down, so that feed is no longer there. BHP are now processing basically dirt containing nickel that comes from places like New Caledonia, the Philippines or Indonesia. In fact, just as an aside, they are the largest importer of water in Australia because the dirt that comes in is 35 per cent moisture. That cannot continue. Yabulu has to be profitable. It has to have a good outlook. It is an old plant; it has been there for decades. The worry is that it will close.

As the largest employer in the city of Townsville, if the plant closes it will have a devastating effect on our economy. Nearly 2,000 people are likely to lose their jobs. The money circulating in the economy will dry up. We have to be on guard about that. This is my point: this is a prime example of where the Malta philosophy would have worked, where the government could have gone to BHP and said, ‘Look, in this downturn we will give you whatever assistance is needed to ensure that your plant continues to operate and people continue to be employed.’ I call on the government to look at the options in relation to keeping major employers afloat and providing some certainty for families in places like Townsville, where so many people are threatened with the loss of their jobs.

On another matter, there are changes to youth allowance. That was canvassed today in question time. I do not think the government quite understand what they have done. I would like to read an email that I received during question time today while the minister was talking about this matter. This is an email from a person in Loxton in South Australia, but it is typical of emails we are all receiving. It says:

The changes to qualification for youth allowance post 1 January 2010, as outlined in the federal budget, will be extremely damaging to country students. Currently a student under the age of 25 is considered independent of the parental income test if they have worked full time for 18 months since leaving school or worked part time for two years since leaving school or have earned $19,532. In the latest federal budget it is proposed that students, unless qualified by 1 January 2010, will no longer qualify as independent unless they have worked 30 hours a week for 18 months in a two-year period. The vast majority of country students will struggle to meet these new guidelines as full-time work is difficult to find.

I have James Cook University in my electorate, as has the member for Leichhardt, who is with us. We know how many students come from outlying regions. They will be affected. The email goes on to say:

The relocation assistance proposed ONLY APPLIES TO THOSE WHO QUALIFY FOR YOUTH ALLOWANCE. It is a double slap in the face.

However, there is a group of students that are even more disadvantaged than students completing secondary schooling at the end of 2009 and beyond who will be operating under the new qualification criteria. These are young people who have taken a gap year and are already six months into their 18-month program to earn $19,532—the current rules. They’ve had the rug pulled out from underneath them by having the rules changed on them midway. This group of students finished secondary school in November 2008 and would have been planning to start uni in 2010. What do they do now? What hope have they got to catch up the 30-hour a week average criteria with only 12 months left of their qualifying period remaining?

This is the difficulty that the government face in what they have done to students. They may be unintended consequences. If they are, then we have to see the government immediately moving the necessary amendments to have some kind of transitional arrangement put in place.

I turn now to the question of the reduction in the rebate for cataract surgery. This is a monumental mistake, and it is not being overly dramatic to say the government has decided to send some people blind. It has been the current government’s mantra to entrench the notion of a fair society. Certainly, the Prime Minister has said, ‘There is no greater touchstone for the whole debate about fairness than health and hospitals.’ Mr Prime Minister, please revisit this particular issue and understand what it means. Do you know that a cosmetic hair transplant will get a doctor a higher Medicare rebate than cataract surgery? How can that be? Where has the importance gone? Where have the priorities gone? Dr Bill Glasson, a respected surgeon, who takes his cataract surgery to regional and rural areas, said that he believes hundreds of people suffering cataract problems in rural and remote parts of the state could go blind following the federal government’s decision to cut Medicare rebates for surgery. Bill Glasson is not the kind of person who would overdramatise the situation. We have got to take notice of him and his colleagues in relation to what is what.

The rationale for doing this was that these days the procedure is much shorter and, therefore, it should be cheaper. This is false. If you visit any ophthalmologist you can immediately understand why it is false. I visited Dr Bill Talbot in his rooms in Townsville last week. He has a staff of 11 and 1½ doctors. He works from half past seven in the morning until half past seven at night. He does not get a break. He is a visiting medical officer. He does what he thinks he should do. He visits Palm Island to look after Indigenous Australians. He is a dedicated surgeon. He is not in it for the money. But, at the end of the day, he has to turn a profit to continue to provide the services that he provides to needy Australians. Cutting the rebate will make his business unprofitable. What does that mean? Staff will be sacked. Services will be reduced. He will not be able to be a VMO anymore at the Townsville Hospital. The public waiting lists will grow longer. What kind of an outcome is that? The government has got to revisit this.

Let us look at the impact on the patients. This measure will in fact undermine further the public confidence in Australia’s Medicare system. Patients without private health insurance undertaking cataract surgery in the private system will have to pay increased out-of-pocket expenses. People with private health insurance will have to pay increased out-of-pocket expenses. The cataract procedures will not be available anymore in rural and remote settings or in Indigenous communities—and they are the most vulnerable. There will be greater congestion in an already stretched public hospital system. There will be longer waiting lists. Think about this as an unintended consequence: for elderly Australians who cannot get a cataract operation, there will be a greater risk of falls and hip fractures as a result of poor vision. There will be greater risk of confusion and depression as a consequence of poor vision. There will be people living in fear of blindness. What kind of government does that to the people of Australia? It is not a compassionate government. It is not a government that cares about our health system. It is a government that must revisit this particular issue for the sake of all of those hundreds of thousands of Australians each year who have cataract operations. Finally, I commend the Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association of New South Wales for their action. They have written to all members of parliament, and I ask the government to read their letter and take action.

Jim Turnour (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and cognate bills and to support this budget. It is a budget framed to support jobs to build a nation so that we are well placed for recovery. This is the third phase of the government’s ongoing stimulus and nation-building plan to support jobs in the local economy.

I was out on the weekend in Redlynch in my community running a mobile office, meeting with members of the community out there and talking to small business people, mums and dads and workers. I met with one small business man who expressed to me the real struggle that he is finding in his business today. We are in the midst of a global recession. It has swept across the world and it has swept across Australia. It is impacting businesses in Cairns and workers in Cairns. We as a government have responded to that. This businessman welcomed the government’s initiative late last year—the stimulus package—and our Nation Building and Jobs Plan. Seventy per cent of our investment in stimulus is in infrastructure. But, as a small business man, he also particularly noted how important the $900 payments have been for his small business. They enabled him to keep people employed. He is in the hospitality industry. The payments have been a very important part of our Nation Building and Jobs Plan. Similarly, I spoke to a mother with a son who had been laid off by CMC, a construction company that has recently gone into administration. He subsequently got a job with Smithfield Electrics—he is a third-year apprentice—but, unfortunately, they were impacted by the CMC administration, and he subsequently lost his job with Smithfield Electrics.

They are just two examples: a small business owner and another individual that I met on the weekend. The talk is all about the economy and all about jobs. What they have been looking for and what they appreciate from government is a preparedness to act. They want a government that is prepared to take the necessary action in these difficult economic times to support business and to support jobs in local communities. That is the way in which this budget has been framed. This budget builds upon our Economic Security Strategy from late last year and our Nation Building and Jobs Plan; this budget is building infrastructure to support recovery as it comes.

I would like to spend a bit of time on the economic outlook. We are in the deepest recession since the Great Depression. The world economy is forecast to contract by 1½ per cent in 2009. The economies of our major trading partners are expected to contract by two per cent, which is a worse outcome than that experienced during the Asian financial crisis. The economies of eight of our top 10 trading partners are expected to contract in 2009, and advanced economies in deep recession are expected to contract by 3¾ per cent in 2009. So all around the world the economies that we are linked to are in recession and struggling. Our major trading partners are struggling. It is no wonder that businesses in Cairns, dependent on the tourism industry and the construction industry, are being impacted. Small business owners are having their profits stripped away and workers are losing their jobs through no fault of their own. The Rudd government made a decision that it would act, and that is what this budget continues to do.

When we look at the forward estimates, we can see that unemployment is of particular concern. Unemployment is expected to peak at 8½ per cent in 2012-13, and it is increasing at the moment. In my electorate of Leichhardt, according to the March quarter analysis, unemployment is already at 10.7 per cent. So unemployment is already a significant problem, and it is expected to increase. It is expected to be 8¼ per cent in 2009-10, 8½ per cent in 2010-11, 7½ per cent in 2011-12 and 8½ per cent in 2012-13. That is according to the projections in the budget. So, going forward, we have a major challenge with unemployment. The government have recognised that and that is why we have acted responsibly.

It is also expected that GDP will contract by one-half of one per cent next year before recovering to grow by 2¼ per cent in 2010-11, by 4½ per cent by 2011-12 and 4½ per cent by 2012-13. We are going into a period where the economy is contracting and where the global recession is impacting upon us directly, but we forecast that we will come out in 2010-11 with a growth of 2¼ per cent and 4½ per cent in 2011-12. The opposition have questioned some of this growth forecast. They have been out in the media, questioning the Treasury estimates and claiming that these figures are optimistic. Really, they have been undermining them and suggesting that they are not true. The reality is that these estimates are similar to those for the recession that we came out of in the 1990s and similar to the figures for the recession in the 1980s. There were similar growth forecasts when we came out of those recessions, and we are in a very similar situation with our current forecasts. So we have confidence in those forecasts and we believe they are the best estimates at the moment, and they were provided by Treasury.

Going forward one of the major challenges we face is the decline in our terms of trade. In 2009 we have seen our terms of trade drop by 13 per cent, ripping $35 billion from our economy, from the income of this country. We hear the opposition talking a lot about debt and deficit and suggesting that the Rudd government has basically run the economy into deficit because of irresponsible spending. The reality is that the vast majority of the deficit going forward is due to the decline in our terms of trade, decline in our tax revenue, decline in capital gains tax and decline in company taxes. We are losing large amounts of revenue from our economy and that is directly feeding into the deficit. We made a decision to stimulate the economy through our Nation Building and Jobs Plan, through our stimulus package and through these budget measures. We have also seen our revenues disappear because of the decline in our terms of trade. According to our estimate, we expect to lose $210 billion in revenue. That is an enormous amount of money. It is no wonder that we are in deficit this year and why it is projected that we will be in deficit in the future. It is critical that we also invest in order to support jobs in the economy. We face $210 billion in revenue losses, but we made a decision to stimulate the economy. That was and is the right thing to do.

Moving forward we need to ensure that we have a plan to bring the nation out of deficit and to return the budget to surplus. That is why we have clearly outlined an exit strategy from this deficit. As growth returns to normal—as we have said, growth will decline by about one-half of one per cent next year, by 2¼ per cent the following year and by 4½ per cent the year after that—tax revenues will increase. That will allow revenue to recover and we will see the budget return to normal in terms of income.

We have also made a commitment to keep real growth in spending to two per cent. So we are being fiscally responsible and will hold spending to two per cent. We have made a commitment that any new spending during this period will be replaced by savings. So we do have a plan to return the budget to surplus over a period of time, and we expect to be back in surplus by 2015-16.

The major issues in terms of the deficit are not due to irresponsible spending, as the opposition suggests. They are due to the fact that we have lost a significant amount of revenue, $210 billion, going forward. We have made a very important decision to stimulate jobs in the economy and within our local communities.

In my own electorate of Leichhardt we have seen significant investments as part of our Nation Building and Jobs Plan—our stimulus measures in this budget. We have the Bruce Highway in the southern part of Cairns significantly in need of an upgrade. In the 2009-10 budget we have a commitment of another $5.5 million that builds on the $5 million brought forward in the last budget. This is to do planning and to bring forward a project of $150 million to upgrade and tackle congestion problems in the southern suburbs of Cairns. We have got a commitment of over $15 million towards the Peninsula Development Road to continue sealing this road. It is a very important access road to Cape York Peninsula not only to ensure that people can get in and out but also so that the economy can grow up there. Cattle can come out and tourists can go in, and we can continue to build that community.

Remote community access roads on the cape will also receive another $2 million in funding in 2009-10 to upgrade roads into Aboriginal communities—that sort of work. We have a total Australian government contribution of $10.5 million going forward, with expected completion dates in 2011. The Roads to Recovery program has delivered 15 grants of $4.9 million to local councils. We have the Black Spot Program—five local projects worth $1.385 million. It is fantastic to see some roundabouts upgraded on the northern approaches to Cairns. The Smithfield roundabout will be upgraded on the Captain Cook Highway. We are also seeing work done around Portsmith, Mossman and Mount Molloy Road, Rumula. These are all important works that need to be done. Sadly we saw a cyclist killed on one of those roundabouts in recent times. This project, this commitment for additional funding through the Black Spot Program, is desperately needed in that local community to upgrade that roundabout. We have seen boom gates provided on five local projects: Aumuller Road, Cairns; Thomson Road, Edmonton; Coombe Street, Cairns; Anderson Road, Woree; and Minnie Street, Cairns. We have seen a number of accidents in the tropical north on railway crossings. People need to drive more effectively and more responsibly, but the commitments to upgrade rail crossings are welcome and they are much needed, particularly in my region.

The Community Infrastructure Program is particularly important as well. We have seen 16 projects worth $3.5 million, projects across my electorate that are supporting jobs and are providing people with jobs in the construction industry, which is hard hit at the moment. There is also support across a range of other areas, including health. The National Rural and Remote Health Infrastructure Program is delivering $131,000. Cairns Private Hospital will be able to refurbish and establish an intervention cardiology service and an intensive care unit within the hospital. The current situation is that you are really in trouble if you have a heart attack in Cairns, because you have got to get to Townsville. This investment is going to support the private hospital being able to do work that it was not able to do before, reinstituting an intensive care facility and enabling it to start to give people much better health services, particularly those facing heart disease.

Other health initiatives that are particularly important include the funding for our $5 million GP superclinic. It was great to have the health minister in my electorate last week to announce the successful tenderer for the GP superclinic in Edmonton. It is a hub and spoke model; it will have not only links through to the centre of town but also through to Smithfield. Balance! have been the successful tenderer and I look forward to them continuing to work in building relationships with other health providers in Cairns and also constructing that facility down at Edmonton. Not only will it improve health in Cairns but it will also provide jobs in the construction industry going forward. We have a range of other health commitments, including new MRIs, in recent times and the oncology services are to be improved at the Cairns Base Hospital. A great commitment in the budget is the $9.2 million over four years for expansion of health services in the Torres Strait Islands, particularly an upgrade in the Saibai Island clinic, and $2.9 million over four years for a mosquito control program. Health is particularly important in the Torres Straits and in Cape York, where we have a lot of Indigenous people who, as we know, have a significant gap in life expectancy. We need to do more to support health and deliver health services in those areas. These are welcome announcements and commitments in the budget.

The area that is really getting the most discussion and is particularly welcomed in my electorate of Leichhardt is the effort that we are going to as part of our Nation Building and Jobs Plan to support primary schools for the 21st century—our National School Pride Program—which supports further construction of education infrastructure in Cairns, as we are all across the country. It does two things. It creates jobs today. In the last month or so I have announced $34 million in the first round for 15 primary schools to build libraries or multipurpose centres across my electorate, and also $8.9 million for 66 schools to do small refurbishments, maintenance and some small construction work in schools, which again not only supports the critical maintenance of schools but also supports the jobs in those local communities.

Our education program, as part of our Nation Building and Jobs Plan, is critically important, particularly nowadays, to support jobs. As I said, I met with a young bloke—a young apprentice who had lost his job twice—and his mother on the weekend. I know there are many others. CMC went into administration in the last few days. They effectively had 500 people working for them. In the construction industry, people have lost their jobs and are looking for work in other areas, and the education funding is providing real work and real support for jobs in local communities like Cairns.

Our Community Infrastructure Program is supporting jobs in Cairns. We had a commitment of $2 million to build a new emergency services centre, which is critically important infrastructure. Cairns is at the far end this country. We suffer from cyclones—not irregularly—and this new facility will enable us to better plan and coordinate and better respond to cyclones when they come along. So we have a budget and we have a plan that is very focused on ensuring that this country can weather the global recession and can ensure that, as we move forward, we are well placed for recovery. What we are doing is investing in nation-building infrastructure to support jobs today but also to ensure that we are well placed for the recovery that will come in the future.

There is a significant difference between this side of the House and the other side of the House. We have been prepared to act in the face of the global recession. We have been prepared to take the difficult decision to stimulate the economy. Sometimes this has been unpopular, but it is critically important to support jobs in local communities, like mine in Cairns. That is a decision we have taken. We heard the member for Herbert a little while ago putting forward some ideas from Malta and other places. Those are really the first ideas in terms of fiscal policy that I have heard from the opposition. They have been going on about debt and deficit but have really put forward no clear plans about how they would deal with the global recession. They have been running a scare campaign.

We have clear plans for the future. They are in the budget. They are in the Nation Building and Jobs Plan. They are in the economic security package that we announced last year. We are getting on with the job of tackling the global recession, supporting jobs and building the nation. Seventy per cent of our stimulus is nation-building infrastructure, economic infrastructure and community infrastructure. That will support jobs today and also ensure we are well placed for the recovery.

I commend this budget to the House. I am out there selling it in my community. It has been welcomed. People appreciate the fact that the Rudd government is not prepared to sit on its hands—it is prepared to take the decisive action needed to support jobs in local communities, like mine. I commend the bills to the House.

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As always, I am pleased to speak in the House of Representatives, this great chamber of democracy, and represent the people I have the great privilege of interacting with in the suburbs of Moggill, Bellbowrie, Jindalee, Westlake, Middle Park and across the river in Taringa and Indooroopilly. They are hardworking Australians who want of their government genuine fiscal prudence, good ideas and good policies. I know they are very disappointed with the second Rudd budget, delivered by the Treasurer earlier this month. They are very disappointed because it is a Labor budget through and through. It is a Labor budget through and through because it is irresponsible and takes this country into territory that means their children will be saddled with great debt and there will be a great deficit in this country.

My Queensland colleague the Labor member for Leichhardt said that coalition members will go on about debt and deficit. I can assure him that I will certainly do that, and I know my colleagues will continue to do that, because we know how significant it is to ensure that the national budget, just like a household budget or a business budget, is kept within a certain framework. You cannot have a situation where the government of the day just spends willy-nilly, recklessly and irresponsibly, and takes the country into very dangerous waters when there is no ability down the track to service that debt.

This budget was supposed to be a tough budget. Of course, in the week leading up to the budget, senior members of the Rudd government tried to give to the Australian people the impression that they were going to be tough, that it was going to be a horror budget and that they would make sure that no area of Commonwealth expenditure was untouched. Why were they going to do that? Because they themselves realised that the earlier cash splash and the earlier investment of hard taxpayer dollars into things like Pink Batts were really not delivering the returns that they should have. They were being very political in trying to keep the economy out of recession. Of course, we are now in the third quarter of a recession—and they failed miserably to prevent that. A lot of taxpayers’ money has gone down the drain. Regrettably, the children of the people I represent will be paying for that very heavily in the months, years and, indeed, decades ahead.

This budget is also one of broken promises. It is short-sighted. It does not deliver what the people of Australia, certainly the people of the electorate of Ryan, expect from the national government. In short, it is a very weak budget. It was delivered by a Treasurer who is clearly out of his depth. I regret to say again that tens of thousands of families across this great country will be paying for it. They might not think they will be paying for it as I speak but certainly there will come a time when they realise that the credit card can no longer be maxed out.

I want to draw the attention of the parliament and of the people of Ryan to the $188 billion figure. They will hear a lot about this. This is the figure that the government refuses to talk about. This is the record net debt that is going to be a chain around this country in a few short years. I also want to draw the attention of the House and of the constituents of Ryan to the $58 billion deficit figure. It is remarkable that when the Treasurer delivered the national budget he could not bring himself to mention that. When we are talking about those kinds of dollars one would expect the Treasurer to be able to eloquently articulate the actual amount of money that this country is in debt for. I repeat it again: it is $58 billion.

Interestingly, the government seems to be satisfied that the unemployment rate is a single-digit figure—8½ per cent. I think that is atrocious. How can we be content to say that the unemployment rate is only in single digits? Of course, we on this side of the chamber all know that when we came into government there were one million people unemployed. That was the legacy of the Keating recession we had to have. Interestingly, here we are with a Labor Prime Minister and a Labor Treasurer in a recession. That is very interesting indeed.

The other point that I want to draw very strongly on in my remarks is the issue of private health insurance rebates. In the Ryan electorate, a lot of people have taken up private health insurance. They are doing their bit to ensure that others who might not have the financial means have the opportunity of accessing our public health system. They have chosen to take out private health insurance with the 30 per cent rebate that the previous Howard government invested in as a very strong public policy signal. Yet in the budget just delivered the Rudd government have signalled that they are going to attack this. What that is going to mean is that everyday Australians—the working families that Labor allegedly represents—are going to pay a high price.

The superannuation co-contribution scheme was a very significant scheme. The previous government and the Treasurer were very creative and innovative in that policy area. That scheme was clearly designed to bolster the retirement savings of low- and middle-income earners. This has been cut by a third. That is appalling. At a time when we have an ageing population and we are trying to encourage as many Australians as possible to save for their future, it was the public policy view of the previous government, and remains so, that we should be doing all we can to encourage people to put away extra dollars. The government’s co-contribution scheme was very popular. It was a very positive signal. Yet the Rudd Labor government has savaged this by a third.

Australians are going to be working longer to pay off Labor’s debt. We all know that the pension age is being pushed out to 67. We see in recent media reports that this is something that a lot of Australians are not going to put up with. It just shows that Labor’s debt is something that is going to be affecting all kinds of Australians in all kinds of ways for many years to come.

Essentially, with a Labor government, a Labor Prime Minister and a Labor Treasurer, Labor’s reckless economic management is going to hurt not only this country as a whole but individual Australians. It is going to hurt retired people, families, businesses and vulnerable and exposed people—those who Labor says are really its core constituency. It is going to hurt the very people who Labor says that it represents; it is going to hurt the very people who Labor says are its natural followers. I say to those across the length and breadth of this country that Labor is not your friend at all. How can Labor be your friend when it is taking the country into great debt and great deficit?

Just like a business debt or a household debt, that has to be repaid. At some point in time, in some way, the children of Australia today are going to pay that price. Those who are in their 50s now will be paying the price later on, because the capacity of the Australian government in the future to maintain a certain lifestyle for them will be much diminished. The government will simply not have the money in the bank; it will not have the financial resources in its kitty to maintain the lifestyle that we experience today and that we expect should be delivered to people who throughout their working life have paid their taxes and done the right thing and who in their retirement want to maybe do a little bit of community work but also want a standard of living that gives them dignity in their old age. But, as I said, there will come a time when the government of the day, whether it is a coalition government or indeed a Labor government, will be confronted with this incredible debt, which will be an imposition on its finances that it will have to repay.

Do not think for a moment that anyone is divorced from the national government in terms of the country’s financial responsibilities. Mr and Mrs Australia, you are affected by what the Prime Minister of this country does. With this Labor Prime Minister, clearly all the signs are that you will be affected in a more detrimental way. If you own and run businesses, those businesses will be detrimentally affected. That is something that I will turn to in a moment.

At the end of the day, governments do not create wealth; bureaucrats do not create wealth. That is perhaps the fundamental distinction between this side of the chamber and those opposite. We on this side of the chamber—we of the Liberal and National political stripe—strongly hold the view that it is business, small, medium and large, that creates wealth. Entrepreneurs and innovators create wealth; those who are willing to put their own capital on the line create wealth; those who are willing to come together to join their talent and initiative and to combine their resources and networks create wealth. They are the ones who ought to receive the gratitude of the Australian people. They are the ones who create wealth and jobs. When students come out of school, they look to entrepreneurs and business men and women to provide them jobs. That is something that the policy compass should always be focused on. I encourage the leadership of the federal opposition and all colleagues on this side to keep that as the anchor—as the rock—for how we represent our people.

I come from a small business background in the sense that my parents owned a little corner shop. They were not fancy people. They were regular people, Mr and Mrs Average. The resources that they were able to put together to put me through law school and my brother and sister through medical school reflect that philosophy. They were ordinary people who worked their backsides off, paid their taxes and did their community service and who wanted to be left alone. They worked on their own initiative and contributed to the fabric of this country.

I am very proud of my parents. Indeed, they are my heroes. They and people like them are the spine of this country. People like them across the country collectively sacrifice so much and contribute so much to the future of this country. I will continue to remind my colleagues—indeed, I hope, sometime very soon, a future Liberal Prime Minister—that they are the heart and soul of our support base and they are the kinds of people we must in every fashion look after. They are the ones who create opportunities for the rest of the country. We must always remember that.

I want to humanise this presentation by making reference to a young constituent from the Ryan electorate who has very kindly not only given me her permission but indeed encouraged me to quote her name. I want to thank you, Melissa Rowan, from the Ryan electorate. She wrote to me. She is 19 years old and she asked me to use her words in whatever form I could to reflect the thinking of a lot of young people. It is very instructive. This will be of great interest to other young people in the Ryan electorate and, I know, the many others in the Ryan electorate that I represent. In an email to me on 27 April she wrote:

Dear Mr Johnson,

I am writing this letter to voice my complaint about Kevin Rudd’s Stimulus Package.

My name is Melissa Rowan and I am 19 years old from Brisbane …

…            …            …

I find this highly offensive—

she is talking about the stimulus package—

just because I earnt under the threshold that I am not entitled to this payment. I am now working fulltime and have been for 12 months. I am a tax payer and I pay tax so people on Centerlink benefits can get money. Pensioners and Centerlink members got $1400 at Christmas time … I paid my tax as a paye and I submitted my taxation group certificait which was assessed accordingly for the year …

I am also aware students who were working part time and studying who earnt under the threshold are entitled to this payment but myself as a working person I am not …

…            …            …

I also find it very discriminatory that I will be paying for deceased persons to receive this payment, people to receive two lots of payments and people in jail. I do not believe I should be paying for a ‘pet’ to receive this stimulus package.

We all know that pets happened to receive hard-earned taxpayers’ money as well, of course.

I have heard of a third stimulus package and I am very against this.

I am a hard working Australian who only earns about $23000 a year and I am currently struggling to pay for braces which are $6580 and next year (2010) I will be needing a Jaw operation which will cost me $5000. I am paying for private health insurance for this operation and to top it all off I will be getting retrenched along with 80 other staff at my workplace …

I am deeply upset and affected by this …

…            …            …

Kevin Rudd is trying to win the vote of younger Australians. I just wanted to point out that there are young people like myself very unhappy with what the Rudd Government is doing.

…            …            …

This is just not right. People who have not received this money should not have to pay so millions of people can get a one off $900 bonus that we as taxpayers will be paying off for years to come. My Children one day will be paying for this. I am just very disappointed and uncomfortable about this.

I believe this Stimulus Package is a very big mistake and will put Australia into deep debt. John Howard worked so hard to clear debt and to save money. Now Kevin Rudd is wasting billions of dollars that future generations will have to pay. It’s just not fair. This is an insult to tax payers and Kevin Rudd can not understand what most Australians are going through. He promised this would create jobs but this has not created jobs, if anything people have or will lose their jobs. This is dispicable what the Rudd Government is doing. This is nothing but a popularity contest to them.

I want to end my remarks, because regrettably time has escaped me. This is a young Australian—Melissa Rowan, who is 19 years old—from the Ryan electorate, who in those words expressed quite eloquently the increasing sentiment in this country that this is a government that is clearly out of its depth, that has no idea how to manage this economy, and that has clearly no capacity to distinguish between quality spending and wasteful spending.

We cannot simply throw money to try to artificially create jobs. What is needed is sustainable jobs. Just throwing money in the guise of a stimulus package to the extent that the government has spent that money is unsustainable. We need to support businesses and entrepreneurs because, as I said earlier, they are the ones that create jobs. You do not create them by throwing money so that a handful of companies can install Pink Batts in roofs. What happens after that? What happens after they have installed them? Do they come back to the government for more money so that they can go back and install more batts? This is the absurdity of it. This is the complete intellectual dishonesty and policy laziness of the Rudd Labor government. Just spending money is not a policy. Just playing Santa Claus is not a policy. You have got to do the hard yards.

We are not in the business of highlighting to the government what we are going to do at this time. We have already seen you copy 98 per cent of our tax policy at the last election. We will be ready for you. If you want to bring on an election, bring it on. If you think that the people of Ryan are not ready to show you what they think about the Rudd Labor government, bring on an election. I am campaigning hard. I am looking forward to the next election. I can assure you that I will be letting every single one of my constituents—the constituents that I have had the great pleasure of representing here since 2001—know that we cannot afford a Labor government anymore. We cannot for one day longer than is necessary afford to have a Labor government. (Time expired)

Jodie Campbell (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in an era of unprecedented global financial unrest, uncertainty and upheaval. We are in what is without question a most severe worldwide recession. It is against this backdrop that the federal government has framed a budget which will see emerge from this crisis a stronger and better nation. This is a nation-building budget. It is designed to support jobs, small business and pensioners. It unashamedly charters a course which will return the budget to surplus once this crisis has passed—and it will pass. In its wake there will be better schools, better roads, better community infrastructure and better hospitals. This is true across the country and it is true in the electorate of Bass.

One of the key initiatives of the Treasurer’s budget in northern Tasmania is a funding injection which will see the Launceston General Hospital all but rebuilt. In the words of the hospital’s chief executive officer, John Kirwan, this investment will future-proof the hospital. Over three years, $40 million will be committed and invested to create an acute medical and surgical service unit at the Launceston General Hospital. Movement of patients between emergency services and acute care will be significantly improved. This funding will tackle deficiencies in current infrastructure by developing a medical assessment unit, redeveloping the day procedures unit, expanding the operating suite and upgrading the intensive care unit and allied health services. It will assist with the hospital meeting safety and quality standards. It is a project which is the result of an outstanding submission made to the Rudd government’s nation-building Health and Hospitals Fund, a fund which is building the health infrastructure for the 21st century while at the same time creating employment opportunities.

What this means for the electorate of Bass and the wider community of Northern Tasmania cannot be overstated. The local economy will be stimulated and jobs will be created, and as the Launceston General Hospital approaches its 30th anniversary it will be better placed than ever before to meet the health needs of a growing community. I will take this opportunity to pay tribute to the dedicated staff at the Launceston General Hospital; their collective vision, foresight, passion and skill made the submission to the Health and Hospital Fund possible. Thirty-two projects were funded across the country out of the Health and Hospitals Fund, and I am proud to say that the Launceston General Hospital sits amongst those 32. Jonn Kirwan is to be congratulated. So, too, are professors Berni Einoder and Rob Fassett and Dr Alasdair MacDonald, who have fought long and hard to create a hospital which will stand the test of time. This investment of $40 million over three years will encourage the retention of existing staff at the hospital. It will also make easier the recruitment of the high-calibre staff the community of Northern Tasmania deserves. It is without question a show of faith in the Launceston General Hospital.

This investment is complemented by a further $7.7 million which the Rudd government has committed for additional radiation oncology services at the Launceston General Hospital. This fulfils an election promise which I made to the people of Bass, and I thank the Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, for her continued commitment to and interest in the health of our community. The Rudd government has also committed $1 million for patient accommodation services at the Holman Clinic and $500,000 which will be provided to the Division of General Practice, Northern Tasmania, for the Scottsdale Medical Centre. This funding will be used to build a new primary healthcare centre adjacent to the Scottsdale Regional Hospital.

The centre will provide both general practice and hospital medical services as well as access to allied health services. It will improve the nursing and administrative workforce as well as increase access to visiting medical specialists, pathology services and other services as needed by the community. The centre will replace the ageing and inadequate infrastructure that houses the current medical practice—infrastructure that has restricted practice growth and the recruitment and retention of the health professionals who support the development of team based health care. The centre will be completed to occupation stage within 14 months and will represent a significant boost to medical service sustainability across north-east Tasmania.

The 2009-2010 budget also delivers $134.4 million in a landmark package of measures to tackle shortages of doctors and health workers in rural and remote communities in Australia. The reform package introduces incentives based on the principle that the more remote you go, the greater the reward, to encourage doctors to work in some of Australia’s most isolated rural and remote communities. It will encourage doctors to go and work in rural and remote communities and will also help keep them there. The importance of this health package to the people of Northern Tasmania—indeed, to the entire state—is immense. As a government, we are keeping our commitment to communities across Bass that we will support them, that we will respond to their needs and that we are securing the long-term health of the region. At the same time we are building the infrastructure of tomorrow and in the process providing much-needed jobs of today.

This is a responsible and responsive budget. It is a budget which responds to these unprecedented financial circumstances while at the same time taking some tough decisions—decisions which have been forced upon us by the reckless spending habits of the previous government. It has been said many times before that those opposite rode high on the boom provided by the mining industry and the growth of China. Those opposite believed they could fool the Australian people and simply buy their way to electoral success. Budget after budget was used to spend money they clearly believed would keep raining down on them. Fortunately for the former government, the Australian people spoke before they had to begin actually making the hard decisions. That has not stopped them from sitting back and attempting to fool the Australian people into believing they know all the answers, when in fact they have no plan and are completely out of touch with the needs of the economy.

Let us be perfectly blunt about this. Those opposite have no plan to deal with the global recession and are out of touch with the effects it is having on working families and their jobs. Around the world governments are taking action to stimulate their economies, but the opposition leader said that he is happy to let the market sort out the crisis. It is a recipe for disaster. It is that kind of attitude that has landed us in this situation. They have clearly learnt nothing. The opposition have no plan to support jobs and Liberal MPs still openly support bringing back Work Choices. Labor on the other hand has embarked on a program which, as I have said repeatedly in this House, will see the emergence of a stronger and infinitely better-resourced country.

In the Bass electorate, schools, hospitals and councils have benefited enormously from this. I have spoken at length about the hospital, but let us not forget what can only really be described as a mammoth investment in our education system, not only in Bass but across Tasmania and indeed the entire country. This budget builds on more than $7 million in funding through the National School Pride program, which has seen 50 schools across the electorate of Bass receive up to $200,000. This, coupled with almost $16 million in the first round of the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program, represents a redevelopment of schools in Northern Tasmania which is unprecedented. It will stimulate our economy, it will create employment and it will provide our young people with vastly improved learning spaces.

This budget supports the infrastructure spending committed to councils across the country, the impact of which has been enormous also. Northern Tasmanian councils have shared in more than $1.9 million as part of the Rudd government’s $300 million community infrastructure stimulus package, which is intended to help local communities respond to the global financial crisis. Dorset Council received $288,000, which contributed to projects such as an upgrade of the Legerwood Memorial Park and the reconstruction of the Ringarooma town hall roof. Flinders Council received $100,000, which allowed the council to contribute much-needed money towards infrastructure projects like the Yellow Beach foreshore redevelopment and the Whitemark community hall fit-out. Georgetown Council received $237,000, Meander Valley Council received almost $350,000 and West Tamar Council received $359,000. Launceston City Council’s infrastructure funding of $578,000 allowed it to embark upon eight projects across its municipality, including the restoration of Lilydale Recreation Ground pavilion, the refurbishment of John Hart Conservatory and an upgrade of Albert Hall’s light and sound. Councils were telling me that their finances were as run-down in some respects as their infrastructure.

We on this side of the House know how important these facilities are to communities. A town hall is critical to the lifeblood of many rural and regional communities, and providing the means necessary to restore many of them is something of which this government has every right to be proud. The program, like this budget overall, is committed to supporting the jobs and small businesses of today through investment in the infrastructure we need for tomorrow. It is nation-building, but it is also community-building, town-building and region-building.

This budget is about home building. I made it a priority of mine to impress upon the Treasurer the positive impact of the expansion of the first home owners and first home builders grants. In the electorate of Bass, and across Tasmania, builders and builders associations were telling me of the positive impact it was having on their industry. I was delighted on budget night when the Treasurer indicated that it would indeed be extended. This is a measure that has been roundly welcomed by the Launceston Chamber of Commerce, by chambers of commerce across Northern Tasmania and by building industry groups like the Master Builders Association and the Housing Industry Association.

Make no mistake about it: this spending is targeted. It is necessary and it is what this country needs to ensure that we will emerge from this global recession faster than most advanced economies. Part of that recovery involves some tough decisions to reduce debt and return the budget to a surplus, a fiscal position to which this government is deeply committed. The Treasurer and the Prime Minister have made the decisions necessary to combat what is the worst recession since the Great Depression. But what does that actually mean? As others have done before me, I can tell you that it has wiped some $210 billion from the budget—I say again, $210 billion. This is the largest revenue downgrade faced by a Commonwealth government since 1931. Savings, quite frankly, have to be made and the decisions we have taken, though difficult, are absolutely necessary.

I touched briefly on those opposite earlier. I am of the view that their plan—and that is a word I use very loosely—is reckless, irresponsible and garbled and, quite frankly, takes the Australian people as fools, and fools, we know, they are not. Let us look at what those opposite are proposing as their alternative. They are running a dishonest scare campaign on debt. On the one hand they pretend they would not have to borrow, despite the global recession driving down government revenue by $210 billion. On the other hand, when put under pressure about whether they would increase taxes or cut services, the opposition seem completely confused and at odds with each other, admitting that they would have to borrow for the $210 billion collapse in revenues. This makes sense because even the Leader of the Opposition, who is clearly not short of a dollar, would not expect to cover $210 billion without borrowing. And yet those opposite criticise the government for doing just that. They admit that their debt would be almost as big as ours—90 per cent as big. And we know that their plan—again, that is not an accurate description of the rhetoric of those opposite—would cost jobs.

The Australian people did not cause the global recession, yet thousands of hardworking men and women are having their jobs threatened as a result of it. Our job as a government is to do whatever it takes to safeguard as many of those jobs as possible. We are unapologetic about that. What we have done and what the Treasurer and Prime Minister have worked tirelessly to do is provide employment opportunities through infrastructure spending, through direct stimulus into households and through responsible spending.

At the same time, we are delivering on the commitment which we made to pensioners. Pensioners, I know, are doing it tough. There are more than 17,000 in Bass, many of whom have contacted me directly, and I am pleased that they will benefit through this budget—an extra $32.39 per week to full-rate single pensioners and $10.14 per week combined to couple pensioners. Carers, too, will benefit. The government recognises the vital role that carers play in the community. Those who receive a carer payment will receive the pension increases of $32.39 per week for singles on the full pension rate. As well, a permanent carer supplement of $600 a year for carer payment recipients and an extra $600 a year for carer allowance recipients for each person in their care will be introduced. The supplement will replace the government’s one-off bonuses. The first payment to carers will be made at the end of June.

Small business is also being assisted in these difficult financial times. We have boosted the successful tax break for small businesses in Bass, increasing it from 30 per cent to 50 per cent for eligible assets. This says nothing of the $731 million we will invest over five years to implement a paid parental leave scheme, starting in 2011. This is something about which I and many others on this side of the House are absolutely passionate. For too long Australia has lagged behind the rest of the world when it comes to looking after working parents.

For 11 years, riding high on the mining boom, those opposite did nothing, really, to advance our country. As with so much else, it has been left to Labor to do the things which are fundamentally and morally right. I congratulate the Treasurer and cabinet for taking these decisions when times are tough. We have a plan to return the budget to surplus by 2015-16. Ours is a small deficit by global standards; in fact, it is about half the average deficit of the major advanced economies, and our national debt will remain the lowest of any of the major advanced economies for the next decade.

In all, there are many things which distinguish us from those opposite, not the least of which is the philosophy which underpins this budget. It builds the infrastructure of tomorrow and supports the jobs of today. It maps a plan of recovery and will ensure that our nation is stronger and better placed as we emerge from this global recession. It is a budget which means I can assure the people of Bass that their health needs are being not only understood but responded to. Schools across Northern Tasmania will be better placed to educate our children. This budget funds the beginning of the National Broadband Network. In Tasmania, this will change how we deal with health needs in rural and remote communities. It will change how we do business and how we build networks. The potential is absolutely limitless. This is in stark contrast to those opposite, who have no plan, no idea and no respect for the Australian people. I commend this legislation to the House, confident that it maps a path to a better Australia.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in the debate that we are having on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and cognate bills. As the member for Bass scurries out, I will firstly address one comment that she made which was part of Labor’s grubby attack on the Leader of the Opposition for being successful in his business. This is a great campaign the Labor Party like to mount. They do not like people who are successful; they prefer people just to be all stuck together. I am remembering, of course, the hypocrisy of that, with the richest Prime Minister in Australia’s history, whose wealth is all made from government contracts. So the Labor Party might want to go down this path of grubby attacks on the Leader of the Opposition, but I would urge them to be cautious, particularly members in seats like that of the member for Bass. I will not dwell on that issue.

I rise tonight to speak on the first budget that I am responding to as the member for Mayo. Of course, it is the Rudd government’s second budget, but it is my first since I was elected in September last year. In preparing for tonight’s speech, I thought I would go back and look at recent budgets delivered by the Australian government. If you look at the last 12 or 13 years, what you see is a record of governments at the Commonwealth level paying off debt, returning the budget to surplus, delivering services and returning money to the taxpayers of Australia through well-targeted tax cuts—returning what they have earned, as it should be. On the other hand, in the last two years we have seen fiscal responsibility and economic plans go out the window, with the Rudd government not able to get a grasp on how to manage the Australian economy.

It is very important that we remember that in November 2007, when the Rudd government were elected, they inherited a budget surplus of $20-odd billion. They inherited an economy that was growing, as it had been for a period of around 14 years. They inherited net savings. The Future Fund set up by the former government was allocated to pay off the future liabilities of the government in relation to superannuation. In addition to that, there were several other savings accounts allocated to pay for things like higher education infrastructure. It was a budget that had been placed in this position not by some fortunate stroke of luck but by hard decisions made over a period of 11 years—well-thought-through decisions managing the Australian budget in a way which left this new government a legacy that they should not have been able to turn around so quickly, in 18 months.

What we have seen in this budget is the biggest spending budget since World War II, spending more money than the government has—more money than comes into the Commonwealth Treasury. This government would have us believe—we have just heard it in the ramblings from the member for Bass—that the debt and deficit are all because of international events beyond, of course, this government’s control. This is simply part of the spin doctoring that goes on with this government. This government is the Shane Warne of Australian politics. Never has a spinner had so much effect on our country as today. Even Shane Warne’s outstanding record of service to our country pales into insignificance when you see the spin doctoring that goes on around this budget.

The truth is that the spending in this budget is the largest in Australia since the Second World War. The government’s reckless spending has led to a bigger budget deficit than Paul Keating and Gough Whitlam’s governments, and we remember what impacts they had on future generations. It took the coalition government 10 years to pay off the excesses of the Keating government. Since the Rudd government was elected, it has spent $10 million per hour on new initiatives. So much for the idea that this is all due to international events and international factors. The Labor spin does not add up.

This budget has seen the reality of the economic circumstances crash into the Hollowmen’s spin routine. We established that today in question time, with the Treasurer admitting that there will be $315 billion of borrowing, although very shortly after that the Prime Minister put some questions around whether or not that was the case when he said it would be $300 billion. There seems to be a $15 billion gap in the spin there. So you can forgive the member for Petrie for getting tripped up on what the figures were for the deficit and debt this morning at the doorstep—the great tradition in Parliament House of walking in through the media scrum, where she was sent out as one of the backbenchers from the other side to deliver the message on the day. You can understand her not understanding what the spin of the day was, because it seems to have been moving around very quickly—so much so that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer were not on message at all in question time. One said there would be $315 billion in borrowings—of course, that is the truthful figure—while the other, being the Prime Minister, said it would be $300 billion. But it was only a matter of $15 billion, and for the Labor Party that is nothing at all.

What this budget exposes is that the Labor government does not have a plan to manage the economy, nor does it have a plan to help Australia recover, to help small business—the engine room of the Australian economy—to recover. So much focus has been put by the Leader of the Opposition in recent times, rightfully, on how small business can help us grow out of this recession and out of these international events that are affecting Australia. We hear much from the other side of this chamber alleging that Australia is better placed than many other countries to face this global recession. That is true, and that is true because of the hard work put over 11 years into building budget surpluses, paying off debt and returning money to the Australian taxpayer—all things that this government is incapable of doing.

But, as usual, this government does not have an economic plan. It does not have a plan for recovery. It does not have a plan to stop the reckless spending that it is engaged in. It has a political plan. As I have touched on, one thing this government is very good at is politics and spin. It is the Shane Warne of Australian politics. The government is driven so much by spin doctors that it makes The Hollowmen look like a serious documentary. It is driven purely by spin doctors. We see that from government backbenchers in and out of this chamber. We saw the member for Bass in her ramblings just before, reading off scripts. They are very good readers—I will give them that. Some of them will move off the script sometimes, the member for Fowler being the obvious exception there, and occasionally talk about things which are related to their electorates and what they truly believe. But largely those on the other side are happy to follow what is drafted for them, and they are very good at it—I will give them that. They stick to their spin very well.

But the problem with a political script is that it is not a substitute for an economic policy. The government’s claims to have a plan to take Australia out of deficit and return the budget to surplus are part of this spin doctoring which we see from this government on a daily basis. There is no genuine plan to get out of deficit and repay the debt. We saw that again today in question time. When asked about the ‘temporary debt’, the Prime Minister put a figure on the debt level in 2020. We know that by 2020 this government does not even have a fake plan to get out of debt. So much for it being temporary. Instead, as the member for Casey recently said, it is like arguing that the Second World War was temporary. In fact, when it comes to debt, it is like arguing that the Hundred Years War was temporary.

So the government is playing out a political plan and does not have a strategy on how to deal with the economy. On their claims that they will return the budget to surplus, they make two justifications. The first is that they will impose budget rigour on themselves, which is very difficult to believe. As I said earlier in this speech, this government has delivered the highest spending budget since the Second World War. The increase in expenditure in this budget is 14 per cent. The government claims that, following 2011—interestingly, after the next election—it will reduce the real increase in spending to two per cent, which is a real cut in the history of government expenditure. Does anyone seriously believe that this Prime Minister and this government will be able to make no new spending announcements in the next six years? Does anyone seriously believe that they will get through a month without making a new spending announcement?

The claim that they will be able to stick to a two per cent real increase in spending is just unbelievable, so much so that Paul Kelly from the Australian newspaper, a very well known and very balanced commentator on economics, dedicated his column on Saturday to this spin-doctoring problem. He says:

This Government’s communications problem can be summarised in one question: does anybody believe that a Prime Minister and Treasurer too frightened to announce the deficit and debt numbers on television have the fortitude to wage a six-year-long campaign that keeps growth in government spending to below 2 per cent in real terms to achieve a budget surplus by 2015-16?

The answer is obvious. This is Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan’s real problem. Keen to promote themselves as decisive leaders during an economic crisis, this week they looked scared, silly and subservient to political spin.

That sums up the issue that this government has. It is focused on the politics, not on the policy: ‘What’s the line that gets us through today? What’s the message that people want to hear which will make us popular leading into the next election?’ The government’s problem is that the economic reality is bashing up against the political spin doctoring. So the Shane Warnes of Australian politics are now finding the spin job all that much more difficult.

In question time today, the government asked us, ‘What would you cut if you were going to reduce the debt and deficit?’ They make the claim that for six years they will not increase government spending by more than two per cent, which in real terms means a decrease in government spending. So I put the question back to them: what will they cut? Which PBS items will go? We all know that the PBS is growing strongly, so which PBS item will not get on the list? Which health and medical research program will go? Which education program will go? Because something is going to have to go if they are going to meet this very ambitious target. In addition to claiming that they will meet that target for six years to bring them back to surplus, they are also claiming that, even though this has never happened before in Australia’s history, we are going to have an uninterrupted golden era of economic growth in this country with economic growth of 4½ per cent for the next six years. These are extraordinary claims. I would suggest that they have had some very positive thought processes in going through the preparation of the budget, because the claims are very difficult to match up with the reality. The deficit figures that we see in the budget papers are coming starkly into question. There is no plan to get us out of deficit; there is a political spin document. There is no plan to repay the debt that this government has introduced. It is a political spin document, and that is becoming more apparent by the day. Unfortunately for the government, their political spin is catching up with them.

One of the other claims that the government members have among their talking points to raise in this debate—we have heard the Treasurer and the Prime Minister raise it and the member for Bass, rambling, said the same—is that Australia’s debt, in comparison to that of other countries, is relatively low. Well, of course it is—because we paid off all the debt. The UK and the US went into this economic crisis in substantially more debt than Australia—because we had no debt. It is interesting that all of a sudden those on the other side want to hold the United States up as a virtuous country. For years we have heard them rant on about the dangers of the United States and so forth, but now the United States is the great benchmark for the government’s economic policy. But just because other countries have got themselves into a position of enormous debt and deficit does not mean that we should. I think this justification is a furphy and it is desperate attempt to be part of the political spin document that the Hollowmen have drafted for the Shane Warnes of Australian politics.

This government went on a reckless spending spree because they had no economic plan. They have handed out $900 to every Australian. In effect, it is a loan that Australians will have to pay back at some point in the future. At this stage the bill is $9,000 for every man, woman and child. At current interest rates, that is $500 per year, and it is only going to go up. That is a sad thing for our kids’ future. It is going to reduce the services that the Commonwealth government will be able to pay for. The interest payments will become one of the biggest items in the budget each year. That of course means that there will be less money available for spending on government services.

I now want to refer to a couple of issues which this budget has impacted on—or not impacted on—in my electorate. As Deputy Speaker Georganas would understand, water is the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 issue in my electorate. The Lower Lakes are in my electorate. They continues to suffer under this long drought. Although we have had some reasonable rainfall in the last month, that needs to continue for some time to bring the Lower Lakes back to a healthy condition. It saddens me greatly, as I am sure it saddens you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to see all this water up on the New South Wales North Coast and the Gold Coast when we are not able to get it over the divide and into the Murray-Darling catchment and down the river. So it was difficult to find that there is no focus on water in the budget. There is a lot of money allocated. I continue to say to the Minister for Climate Change and Water that there should be assistance for those people on the Lower Lakes. They are just being hung out to dry by the government at the moment. It is disappointing that there is no assistance to help them get through. Today we had the farce of the Rann government asking the community what they could do to help. After three years of this absolute crisis, today we saw the Rann government, 10 months out from an election, asking people how they could help. It is quite extraordinary. It is very disappointing to see no additional assistance and no focus on the biggest issue facing South Australia—that is, the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin and, in particular, the Lower Lakes.

The other issue in this budget which particularly affects my electorate is the attack on private health insurance. Unfortunately those on the other side have never been enamoured of private health insurance. We have seen that in the budget. We have heard the claims that this will only affect the rich, but what it does is attack all those with private health insurance. It will also have an impact on those in the public system. The additional pressure on South Australian hospitals, which are in many places close to crisis point, will be that much higher. I think that is a big error by the government. We have said that we will oppose that measure in the budget. It is the only measure that we have indicated we will oppose. I support that decision by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow cabinet. My electorate is an older electorate and, contrary to the common view, it is not a wealthy electorate. In my electorate, 62 per cent of people have private health insurance, so this is a very important issue and it is very disappointing that the government is taking this measure.

I want to put on the record for the Deputy Prime Minister and her department an issue which will be raised in a very serious manner at estimates next Wednesday and Thursday. The Kangaroo Island Area School, or the Kingscote Area School, has had a $9.5 million upgrade in the last 1½ years. On the surface of it, that sounds like a wonderful thing—and it is a wonderful thing. However, there are two distinct issues. The first issue is: value for money. They got five buildings for $9.5 million—and half of that was federal government money. I am very concerned that the state education department has not used this money in the most efficient way. The cost of these buildings is extraordinarily high and the Commonwealth has got little value for its money.

We will be pursuing this issue in Senate estimates, and I put the Deputy Prime Minister and her department on notice tonight so they can prepare for it and ask questions of their South Australian colleagues. I think it is a very important issue, because it is lot of money, $9.5 million, and it should have built a new school; instead, we got five new buildings.

The second aspect is that the workmanship appears to be—I visited it last week—of low quality. Whether that is due to the design or the actual workmanship, I do not know at this point. However, there seem to be significant issues with the building, and these are issues that need to be resolved.

The KI Islander’s editor, Shauna Black, has been following the story, and I congratulate her for doing so. She has come under attack from some in the company for raising this issue and I think that is disappointing. But I will not be put off by those kinds of attacks and we will pursue this issue with some vigour, because I think it is a serious issue—I am sure you would agree, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas. We need to ensure that Commonwealth and state money is spent properly, and I hope that through the Senate estimates and other processes we can establish whether the money was spent properly, whether we got value for money out of this project and whether indeed there needs to be further consideration of the matter.

Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a difference a year makes. This time last year the government spoke of the need to build a buffer, effectively, to protect ourselves from international turbulence. This year we have actually seen a downturn in the economic position worldwide—the worst in our lifetime at least. My grandparents can relate it back to what it was like in the 1930s, and that is the direct comparison we are now making. In the last 75 years, these are the worst world economic figures, and we have to grapple with them in terms of cushioning our economy from the effects of the worldwide recession.

Events have unfolded with astounding speed—as I said, within 12 months—and Australia, like every advanced economy, is in the midst of this recession. We know the global recession brings adversity, but what we are trying to do is carefully position ourselves to create an opportunity, repositioning our economy so that we can best cushion ourselves against the worst effects of this international recession, and you can see that in this year’s budget.

This year’s budget has been carefully crafted to stimulate the economy to support jobs now, which is absolutely crucial, while at the same time investing in the long-term future of this country by funding the long-term savings necessary for fiscal sustainability and ensuring Australia’s net debt remains the lowest of any major advanced economy in the world. These are clear strategies that have been embarked upon in this budget. They are, quite frankly, central to the economic position: building jobs now by investing in the economic wellbeing of this country to position it for the future.

It is for this reason that I rise today to speak in support of the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and cognate bills that are required to implement the Rudd government budget. The measures in this budget build on the early and decisive action taken by this government to deal with the extent of the global recession, as that became clear. Mr Deputy Speaker, I invite you to contrast that with the position that was taken by those on the other side. Granted, it was the former Treasury spokesperson for the opposition who said this, but do not forget her words at that stage; she said we should not do anything pre-emptive, that we should ‘wait and see’ what happens. I wonder what people listening to this debate now would think if the Australian government’s response to the world’s worst economic position in 75 years had been: ‘Let’s wait and see what happens to the good people of Australia.’ That is what we were being invited to do.

It does not take much to realise that we are a government of decision. We decided that we would meet these challenges head-on and move to address them now, by investing in Australia’s future, not by doing the things that the coalition government had done during their 11½ years in office. Unlike them, we are not stripping $1 billion out of education and ripping money out of the hospital system and paying for the future that way. We are, clearly, building for the future now, notwithstanding the economic times we find ourselves in.

This budget support jobs now and delivers the investment needed to strengthen our economy in the medium term and into the long term, by making those hard choices. In making those hard choices, we are carefully charting our way back to a surplus. This budget is the third stage of the economic stimulus plan, which, as we know, is helping to cushion our local communities against the world’s worst recession in living memory. Before I talk in detail about the impact of the recession and of this budget on my local community, I would like to spend a couple of minutes talking about a forum I hosted a couple of weeks ago.

Entitled Keep South-West Sydney Working, the forum was an initiative designed to get small businesses and local businesses, various service providers and not-for-profit organisations to come together and listen to the initiatives the Rudd government had developed, and work out how they could participate in the government’s $42 billion strategy. It was encouraging to see more than 220 local business members and people from not-for-profit organisations turn up on the day, and it is very interesting to see how they have responded. My office has been inundated with calls from local tradespeople, asking how they can participate in the Building the Education Revolution—how they can show their interest in that to become contractors working on the local schools—or be part of the $16 million that is being spent in my local area to upgrade housing commission stock, under the social housing initiative. These people are indicating their interest—and by the way, Mr Deputy Speaker, they are all locally based trade groups. They are all local tradies who are out there and now participating.

The Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy, Dr Craig Emerson, was also a guest speaker on this day, which was very good. He was able to take the various initiatives that this government had introduced over the course of the last 12 months and, clearly, through the budget, show how they would actually benefit businesses not only now but also in the future. Through planning their investments up to December next year and by investing in their businesses they would in return be not only growing their businesses but also employing people.

This seminar was quite significant. It was not just something that was sponsored by me. It was also sponsored by the Ingleburn, Liverpool and Campbelltown chambers of commerce, the Macarthur Regional Organisation of Councils, the Macarthur Business Enterprise Centre, the Camden Council, the Campbelltown City Council and the Liverpool City Council. All these groups thought highly of an initiative that could actually help focus people on the values of the stimulus plan and they were all single-minded about how we get people in jobs and how we keep them working.

It was a very successful forum. From inquiries just through my own office, I know there are many local tradespeople out there expressing their interest in the Department of Education and Training and in becoming part of Building the Education Revolution. They are interested in becoming part of the maintenance and building program of social housing in the south-west of Sydney.

As I said from the outset, this is a budget about nation building and also building for recovery. The Rudd government’s budget is framed with these challenges in mind, including a historic $22 billion investment in the nation’s infrastructure including ports, roads and rail to support jobs now and laying the foundations for a stronger, more prosperous and more efficient economy for the future. Included in that is $52 million to continue the widening of the F5 Freeway—the Hume Highway, as we know it. You only have to drive along the F5 between Ingleburn and Campbelltown to see the amount of construction work that is now taking place there. This work commenced as an important step in meeting a key election commitment made by the Rudd government to the hardworking families to the south-west of Sydney. It will make a huge difference to all those who rely on this very busy road corridor. It is the main link between Melbourne and Sydney so it has a significant commercial value as well as supporting the growing population of the south-west of Sydney.

I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate George Kypreos and his company, Nace Civil Engineering, a local company in my electorate that won the $140 million project to widen the freeway. It is a vital piece of infrastructure and it is good to see a local company win that tender. Going with that is the creation of many hundreds of local contracting jobs, which this particular piece of infrastructure now supports.

I am very pleased to be able to inform the House of the commencement of another election commitment made to the people of Campbelltown: the $8 billion upgrade to the Campbelltown Sports Stadium. The stadium is an iconic feature in the south-west of Sydney and in particular my community in Campbelltown. It caters for many sports including rugby league, soccer and rugby union, and our commitment has gone a long way towards helping transform the stadium and the adjoining facilities into one of the premier sporting precincts in Western Sydney.

During the construction phase of this $8 million project, the local council reliably tell me that this is now going to be supporting over 200 jobs in my local area. I am proud to be part of the Labor team that has recognised the importance of investing in the local community and investing in this infrastructure. It is in stark contrast to the Howard government that flatly refused all requests to upgrade this stadium. The Howard government’s representatives refused; they thought the money would be better spent elsewhere. It is a bit hard to believe that but that is now just a matter of fact which is recorded for posterity in all local newspapers.

We are also continuing to invest in building a world-class health system, which includes an increase of $20 billion to rebuild our hospitals. As I said earlier, in contrast to the former government, who decided to take $1 billion out of health, we are committing $20 billion to rebuilding our health system. Whilst I do not have a hospital in my electorate, I nevertheless have two large hospitals just outside adjoining my boundaries. For this reason I was thrilled to hear that through the budget we have delivered $46.9 million to Ingham Health Research Institute, a multifaceted research facility linked to the Liverpool City hospital. The Ingham Health Research Institute will focus on health service research, population health research, clinical trials and research, and biomedical research. This investment is a strong show of faith that this government has in the health system of the south-west of Sydney and, because this facility is linked to our universities, this is an investment of some note in the research capability that we have in the south-west of Sydney.

The Rudd Labor government will invest $1.2 million to fix three very dangerous intersections in my electorate, which have seen crashes occurring over many years. They have been treated as part of the Black Spot Program. It is a serious investment in making safer roads for our local motorists and their families. These programs will make a real difference to our local roads. The projects are at Canterbury Road, Glenfield; Collins Promenade, Minto; and Narellan Road, Blairmount.

I would also like to spend a little time talking about the six-month extension to the first home owners boost, which will have a phase-out period starting on 1 October of this year. That was great news in my electorate.

Data from the New South Wales Office of State Revenue shows that there have been more grants under this scheme for first home buyers in Liverpool, within my electorate, than in any other suburb in New South Wales. People are having the confidence, under this grant, to make that major decision in their life to actually go and acquire that first home—to invest in themselves and invest in their families. This is taking place in the outer metropolitan areas of Sydney and, as I say, we see with some pride that Liverpool has the largest number of grants and new starts. In fact, the Minister for Housing, Tanya Plibersek, last week came and visited my electorate. She came to Ingleburn to see firsthand how the new home grants have helped many aspiring first home buyers around my electorate in the southwest of Sydney and how this is supporting building and construction in the area.

It is interesting to note that, for every dollar that you invest in first home construction, there is an effective investment of about $1.90, I understand from the officials concerned, in your local community. When you consider the people who design, survey your block of land and are involved in the building of your house and everything that goes into it, as well as the production of the white goods, the purchase of the furniture and all of those things—this is a significant net boost to the local economy.

The families that we visited talked to us. One family was explaining to the minister how, before this, they had rented for the last six or seven years and they had seen their rents go up, with nothing they could do. This was the first opportunity they had to get into the market. They relied on the first home owners boost and, in turn, they are now well positioned to be a part of a growing community in the southwest of Sydney.

More than $2 million in Roads to Recovery funding will be provided to Camden, Campbelltown and Liverpool city councils to assist them in maintaining and upgrading their local roads. Again, the bulk of the contractors will be locally employed. There is more than $7.4 million for Campbelltown, Camden and Liverpool city councils, under the Community Infrastructure Program. That includes a $2.1 million redevelopment of Coronation Park Netball Complex—something that they have wanted to do for years but could never afford. There is $2 million to accelerate the upgrade of the Whitlam Aquatic and Leisure Centre in Liverpool—again, something that was high on the ‘desired’ list of the local community, but something that the local councils could not afford without this Community Infrastructure Program.

The government recognises the necessity of supporting small business during this global recession, and this budget has moved further in that direction. We acknowledge that small business is the job generator—not only for now, but also into the future. Under this budget, we have now increased the highly successful tax break increase from its 30 per cent, which was announced in the stimulus package, to 50 per cent as indicated in the budget. That will benefit the almost 10,000 small businesses that are registered in Werriwa.

This is what I said earlier. This is now inviting them, with our assistance, to invest in themselves, back themselves in, grow their businesses, employ people and position themselves more successfully for our recovery program. This is growing small business. All the representatives of small business that I have spoken to, including the Macarthur Business Enterprise Centre, are as one on this particular point. It has been a significantly desired initiative, and certainly one well-received by the business community generally.

We are building on our education revolution—on our $5.7 billion investment over four years to deliver reforms across the higher education and innovation sectors, including $9.9 million for the Macarthur Building Skills Centre for the TAFE NSW South Western Sydney Institute at Ingleburn. The Macarthur Building Skills Centre is expected to help fill the emerging labour market needs in such areas as toolmaking and machining and to support southwest Sydney’s economic growth generally.

Significantly, the National School Pride program, one of three elements of the government’s $14.7 billion Building the Education Revolution, will deliver $9 million to 57 secondary and primary schools in my electorate of Werriwa. It will provide for more than 150 projects, including the refurbishment of classrooms, playing fields, installation of solar panels and the improvement of disability access.

I am also pleased to advise that four of my local primary schools in stage one of the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program are now participating in $7 million of new infrastructure projects in those schools. The remaining primary schools will all be able to benefit in receiving up to $3 million as they move to install either their meeting facilities or new COLAs et cetera. This in turn has a significant effect on our local business community and our construction industry. We see it now.

In the time that I have available, I want to say that I know that Australia has been one of only two countries in the OECD, along with the United States, which did not have a comprehensive paid maternity leave scheme. Historically, this government has now delivered on a paid maternity scheme in support of Australian families—(Time expired)

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a budget that realises the classic Labor trifecta of higher debt, higher deficits and higher unemployment. Each time they are elected to office they promise they will not return to their old ways. But at the first opportunity we have seen this government return to good old-fashioned Labor form. So the classic story of Australian politics continues. Labor are elected, they lose control of the nation’s finances and subsequently the coalition will be called upon to come in again and clean up Labor’s mess. And clean it up we will. In Australia’s interest this must happen sooner rather than later. Just imagine what Labor would do if they were given a further opportunity at the next election.

This budget reveals two cold, hard facts about the Rudd government. Firstly, that Labor have no ticker for the truth when it comes to the factors of this budget and, secondly, that Australians are now paying the price for Labor’s reckless spending. In terms of having no ticker for the truth they have failed to be honest and upfront about the budget bottom line. They were unable to mention the deficit, they were unable to mention the number of unemployed that were to be produced and they were unable to speak of the level of debt. It was not until today that the Prime Minister and even the Treasurer came to this dispatch box and levelled with the Australian people about the bottom line of this nation’s finances.

This is a budget that delivers a dividend of one million Australians out of work. It is a budget that delivers a $188 billion debt, that saddles every man, woman and child with a $9,000 debt and with an interest bill to boot of $500 per year. This is a budget that delivers $57.6 billion in deficit in this budget year coming, 4.9 per cent of GDP and more than $200 billion of accumulated deficits over five years. While claiming that their debt is a function of a revenue shortfall, they fail to observe to the Australian people that two-thirds of this debt is a product of their own new spending commitments since they were elected. That is $10 million an hour for every hour since they were elected to office.

In being upfront about the nation’s finances I have heard speaker after speaker from the government come in here and ‘set the scene’ as they would like to say. We also heard the Prime Minister today accusing the coalition of actually trying to talk down the economy, which was an amazing allegation to make against the coalition, given that this is what this Prime Minister and his Treasurer have been doing since the day they took up office. It started with their phoney war and their political war on inflation that drove up interest rates and put the brakes on our economy in the second half of last year, just when we needed it to be working at its optimal level. They showed it through their inability to acknowledge the strength of the Australian economy as we went into these difficult times. They failed to acknowledge the strength of the Australian economy that was built up as a result of the economic management of the Howard government.

As we went into those difficult times this is something that would have provided a great deal of reassurance both to the Australian community and to those offshore looking in at our economy. It would have been a good thing for the Prime Minister to say that we are well prepared for this because of the economic management that has been followed in this country for the last 10 years. A week or so ago, when asked on Sky News by David Spiers to acknowledge that he had inherited a very sound set of books and a strong economy, he could not bring himself to do it. He could not bring himself to honestly and reasonably acknowledge the legacy that was left to him by the previous government. It might be a source of pride and vanity for the Prime Minister that he cannot overcome in order to acknowledge these things. But he must and should have overcome them at the time he went into these troubled waters. It was important to reassure the markets, to reassure Australians and to reassure those overseas looking in to see how Australia would fair to see that the Prime Minister of this country actually knew what had been going on with economic management in the previous 10 years. And he could not bring himself to do it.

He also invoked the imagery of flak jackets and raincoats to describe our economic prospects and the situation of the economy that we were faced with. He sought to appropriate the global economic downturn that was swamping the world’s markets as a cover for an unbridled social spending program that we have seen unfold over the last 18 months. He also sought to assert in this place, as others have in the course of this debate, that this is the worst economic downturn in Australia that we have seen since the Great Depression. While it is true that global conditions—and no-one would dispute this fact—are unprecedented, so was the level of economic and financial strength inherited by the Rudd government to cope with these challenges. An article in the Wall Street Journal Asian edition concluded on the budget that Australia enters the global financial crisis with one of the soundest fiscal positions amongst developed nations. ‘Now,’ they say, ‘thanks to the Labor government of Kevin Rudd that’s no longer the case.’ They went on to say that Tuesday’s sea of red comes largely courtesy of Labor’s political agenda not the global recession.

We have not suffered a collapse in this country of our housing markets as we have seen in overseas countries. We have not seen a collapse of our banking system. It has remained robust because of the sound measures brought into our banking system under the term of the previous government. We have not seen high levels of debt at the start of this crisis. The Prime Minister likes to talk about other countries around the world and their higher levels of debt. That is because they had much higher levels of debt to begin with. They had higher levels of debt of around 70 per cent of GDP before this even began. If we are going to look at a rate of growth of debt as a proportion of GDP this government would outstrip every single government in the world in terms of putting the accelerator down and increasing the level of debt because we started with negative debt. There was tens of millions of dollars in the bank and unemployment was at historic lows. This was not the experience of other countries with whom the Prime Minister now wishes to compare his performance. With the exception of Canada these countries were virtually all in deficit and debt. I have observed on a previous occasion that the G20 would probably better be known as the D20 for debt and deficit because that is the club of debt and deficit that this government has now signed Australia up to.

Our policy in addressing the economic crisis globally must be focused on the Australian recession. In comparison to previous recessions, in particular the early nineties, contrary to what is being suggested by those opposite and leading people around the country to believe, it is definitely not clear that the recession we are now facing will be worse than that suffered in the early 1990s. That is also a point which I understand the Reserve Bank Governor has made some reference to and appears to agree with. In the early nineties unemployment reached 10.7 per cent, the economy ground to a halt and revenues collapsed.

In thinking about that time in the early 1990s, the other liberality with the truth that the Prime Minister has sought to engage in in terms of selling and spinning this budget is that the debt and deficit is the product of unprecedented collapses in revenue. Let us look at the record. In this budget revenues will have declined from a peak in 2006-07 of 26.1 per cent of GDP to 23.6 per cent of GDP in the year 2010-11. That is a fall of 2.5 percentage points over three years, after which time it is forecast that revenues will increase again as a percentage of GDP. In 1992-93, revenues hit a low of 22.3 per cent of GDP. That is 1.3 percentage points lower than the actual low-point forecast in this budget. It is a fall of 2½ per cent of GDP over the three years leading up to that year, which is exactly the same as what is forecast in this budget, but it is a fall ultimately of 4.4 percentage points of GDP since the peak of the revenue in 1986-87 at 26.7 per cent of GDP.

So what we had in the early 1990s as a result of the recession we had to have was a drop in revenue of 4.4 per cent of GDP over that time. Compare that to the drop in revenue of just 2.5 per cent of GDP outlined in these budget papers. So suggesting that somehow the revenue drop that we are now facing in terms of what is presented in these budget papers is unprecedented is again being very liberal with the truth, and I suggest the government has no ticker for the truth when it comes to being honest about these figures. Perhaps it was not that bad under former Prime Minister Paul Keating when you compare it to the way the debt and deficit is being managed by this government.

The real cause of our debt and deficit is the Rudd government’s reckless spending. At 28.6 per cent of GDP—this is the big figure—it is a record high since World War II. It has eclipsed even the largesse of previous Labor governments and is staying that way over the forecast period. This is a government that simply believes it can borrow and spend its way out of trouble with other people’s money.

The budget papers also go on to make some very heroic forecasts. This is basically their plan for getting us out of deficit. These forecasts are heroic, and even the IMF tends to agree. In the Australian Michael Stutchbury wrote on 19 May:

The IMF’s published forecasts contained in last month’s World Economic Outlook indicate a deeper recession than foreshadowed in the budget, including a 1.5 per cent contraction this year followed by a weak 0.6 per cent recovery next year.

He goes on to say:

The IMF staff estimates suggest the Australian economy will grow 1.9 per cent in 2011, 2.8 per cent in 2012, 2.9 per cent in 2013 and 3 per cent in 2014.

He concludes:

This almost certainly would prevent the budget returning to surplus in 2015-16 …

And he notes:

The federal Opposition claims a 3 per cent recovery profile could see the budget’s $188 billion net public debt projection blow out to about $250 billion.

A lot of stock is being put in these forecast numbers. The government have no plan—other than their plan for spin—for getting us out of debt. This is a dangerous cocktail we are seeing from this government—combining the Whitlamesque nature of their spending with the Carresque nature of their political spin machine in seeking to pull the wool over the eyes of the Australian public. If the Australian people want to see a forecast of their future under this government then they only need to go to New South Wales. The spin eventually catches up and the state they manage spins out of control, and that will be the case for this country unless this government is removed.

Unlike previous recessions, we will seek to recover in the years ahead. I note also, to cast doubt on the way these optimistic forecasts have been put forward, that at least in the 1980s and in the 1990s—and there were many deficiencies in these governments, and we have a minister of one of those governments here at the table—they had some commitment to economic reform. At least when we came out of the recession of the 1990s and the 1980s we were moving into a less regulated market and a less regulated economy. What we are seeing now as we seek to climb out of recession is an economy saddled by debt and deficit and also an economy that is being reregulated, whether it is in the labour market or other areas, and that will stifle our growth when it comes time to grow once again.

Another area where the government has lacked the ticker for the truth is investing in economic infrastructure. Of all the talk of infrastructure and of all the wearing of hard hats and luminous vests only $8 billion is being spent on roads, rail and ports. That is half of what they are spending on school halls and a third of what they borrowed and gave away. They like to project all of this spending that they have been engaged in as hard economic infrastructure that will enable them to pay off debt, but that is simply not true. It is a big con. It is only $8 billion.

They extinguished the Building Australia Fund that the coalition left behind for them. They extinguished it; it is all gone. The education fund is virtually all gone. They went and spent all the money that was left. After going through the cash splashes and other things, they had so little left for roads, rail and ports that I am not surprised that in my electorate the F6 once again completely missed out and was ignored by Labor, as has happened at the state level for so many years. That critical road link in Sydney’s infrastructure was ignored yet again by this government.

Australians are paying the price for Labor’s reckless spending. In the time I have remaining I want to draw attention to some very serious areas of neglect in terms of Labor’s reckless spending. The price will have to be paid, particularly with the withdrawal of the Medicare safety net. The changes to the Medicare safety net mean that couples who are dreaming of becoming mothers and fathers and in need of fertility treatment will have to either dig even deeper into whatever reserves they have to realise that dream or abandon that dream. This is something that my family, my wife and I have had a great deal of personal experience with. We ultimately were blessed with a miracle child, and I referred to this in my maiden speech in this place. She was the answer to a lifetime of prayer and 14 years of painful, invasive and heartbreaking fertility treatment.

The desire to have children is the most positive, life-affirming instinct we have as human beings. This desire does not go away when you are sat down and told that your chances of having children are remote. You do not choose this burden. Those families that are out there and have seen this measure in the budget have not chosen this burden. It has been thrust upon them by life circumstances. They will deal with it as best they can. But what they resent is a government that just does not get it. The feeling of loss at every failed attempt of fertility treatment is indescribable. As parents, you do not grieve over the failure of a medical procedure; you grieve the loss of a child. We console ourselves with the thought that one day perhaps we will be reunited with our unborn children in another place at another time. But most families understand that this is the sacrifice that they make when they move through this treatment. Sacrifice is something that these families mostly know. For those who have been blessed with children, we know the sacrifice of having children but we know the joy of parenthood at the same time. But, for those who go through fertility treatment, all they know of for years and years is sacrifice.

The Prime Minister can seek to justify this change in the Medicare safety net any way he likes. He can say that these families are undeserving; he can go on to doctor bashing and say that the doctors are overcharging. But the truth is simply this: as some families in the last few months have sat down to look at the $900 in cash payments that they received, other families—would-be mothers and fathers—are going to sit down as a result of this budget and decide whether their dream of children is going to proceed or not. This is something that should weigh very heavily on the minds of this Prime Minister and those who sit on the other side of the table here. They should think very carefully about this. About one child in a classroom of 25 has been born with the assistance of reproductive technology. The introduction of a cap on payments under the safety net for access to assisted reproductive technologies will cost families between $1,500 and $2,000 per cycle.

Sandra Dill, the CEO of Access, the group that represents people involved in the fertility industry and those seeking fertility treatment, in a media release issued by Access said:

… the Labor Government lacked any kind of compassion and understanding that infertility is a devastating medical condition. ‘Infertility is not a choice. The one in six people who need medical help have no control over this condition.’

She went on to say that in 2005 Julia Gillard launched a public petition to protest against proposed limits for access to IVF Medicare funded treatments. She went on:

… but we now see the current Government, voted in on the absolute guarantees they provided to maintain the Medicare Safety Net as it was, completely breaking their word.

She went on to say:

More than 40,000 individuals have been able to access IVF services with the support of the Medicare Safety Net in 2008 and nearly 11,000 babies are born each year as a result.

…            …            …

The cruellest blow is to IVF patients trying to manage the expense of treatment one hand, while balancing the government’s token nine hundred dollar stimulus cheque in the other. IVF is the last chance for many to have a child of their own and the Medicare Safety Net has ensured that every Australian has that opportunity. The Government’s decision has taken away many Australian’s last chance to have a baby.

The Labor Party promised not to change the Medicare safety net.

The Deputy Prime Minister, while in opposition, collected the signatures of over 1,300 people to a petition condemning the previous government for considering changes in this area, which they rightly decided not to proceed with. And she has the gall to come in here and be part of a government that is doing exactly the same thing and worse. When I look at this budget and this measure in particular, I see their failure to understand the consequences of their actions. (Time expired)

Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government’s budget for 2009-10 should be seen from two different points. Firstly, from the big picture view, the budget is squarely focused on the issue of employment, both maintaining levels of employment in the face of the global economic crisis and creating new jobs through spending on public works and improvements to our existing education, health and public housing assets. It is the most ambitious program of public spending in our history, coming at a time when the private sector is in a slump caused by the near collapse of private credit worldwide and the loss of business and consumer confidence that goes with it. As a budget which focuses on employment, it makes no apology for giving much-needed assistance to the working people of Australia. Of all the things that a population can expect from a government, the economic base to maximise employment opportunities is our most crucial need.

From the other point of view, the budget must also ensure that the sacrifices made during hard economic times are not borne by one section of the population alone. We cannot ignore the needs of the victims of this recession, those women and those men who will lose their jobs or their small businesses. We need to see the consequences for individuals and families in the same way that we see the losses of victims of natural disasters. We saw with the recent Victorian bushfires that Australians opened their hearts and their wallets to assist the victims of that disaster. We cannot ignore the plight of those whose lives are thrown into turmoil by the loss of livelihood and income. At this time of crisis, we should also reflect on the priorities of government and how to best direct resources to get our nation back on the path to prosperity—to prosperity for all.

To come back to the big picture, from the opposition we have had nothing but wailing about the debt that we are passing on to our children and our grandchildren. I feel that that is a lot of rot. In the electorate of Fowler, when parents and grandparents worry about their children and grandchildren it is about whether they will keep their job or whether they will be able to find a job. With adult unemployment over 10 per cent and teenage unemployment over 40 per cent in my electorate of Fowler, I know what they are most concerned about.

This is where there is a stark contrast between Labor and the coalition parties. I very much doubt that parents and grandparents in Fowler lie awake at night worrying that their children will pay higher taxes in 10 years time, but I do know that the prospect of losing your job is a very real fear here and now. The opposition’s wailing about the deficit is not only out of touch with the needs of the electorate; it is also out of touch with economic reality. I would be the last person to lecture the House on economic theory, but I will borrow the words of Ross Gittins, the economics editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. Following the budget Ross Gittins wrote:

… the primary reason for the budget’s rapid transformation from large surplus to huge deficit is the economy’s descent into recession, which has greatly reduced the tax revenue the Government now expects to receive.

He went on to say:

The recession would also be worsening the budget balance by greatly increasing the number of people to whom the Government has to pay the dole.

So the first point to note is that the budget balance deteriorates automatically whenever the economy goes into recession. It happens without the Government lifting a finger.

The next thing to note is that, though this sounds like a bad thing … the deterioration in the budget balance is a good thing.

Why? Because it helps to stabilise the economy. At the very time when households and businesses start spending less—and thus threatening jobs—the government starts spending a lot more than it’s extracting from the economy in taxation.

So when the private sector contracts, the public sector expands, thus reducing the decline in the economy and so limiting (but not eliminating) the rise in unemployment.

But the opposition can only wail about debt. They have no concern for the working people of Australia and even less for those likely to lose their jobs in this recession.

But, while I can fully agree with the government’s macroeconomic strategy, I am left with the last line of my quote from Ross Gittins:

… reducing the decline in the economy and so limiting (but not eliminating) the rise in unemployment.

It is in this area that I find some aspects of the budget disappointing. While the Treasurer has acknowledged that we will see a significant increase in the number of unemployed, as many as 350,000, the budget is short on details for measures to assist those out of work as a result of the recession. There was no increase in the level of benefit paid to job seekers, only an allowance for those undertaking training. But in most cases this could be expected to be spent on additional living costs associated with that training.

We have a long way to go before we have policies in place, such as those in Scandinavian countries, which see redundant workers placed in appropriate retraining and job placement programs from the day they finish work. Unemployment should be a transition from one job or career to another, not a stressful period of uncertainty and depression. Even under new job assistance contracts we can expect the outcomes for newly retrenched workers to be mixed and a long way short of what is needed by those who have lost a livelihood as a result of the recession.

As far as the government’s infrastructure program is concerned, I have to ask the question of whether its programs are targeted as well as they could be. It is too easy to overlook the objective of maximising the employment potential of many projects. It is hard to see how a textile worker retrenched from Bonds at Wentworthville could be employed in the planning and design of Sydney’s West Metro or how one retrenched from Bonds at Cessnock could get a job driving a bulldozer on the Hunter Expressway project. It reminds me of the story about the World Bank planning a development project in a Central African republic. They decided to build a road between two major towns. The World Bank engineer said it would be a simple job for a couple of Caterpillar D9s. As there was a big problem of local unemployment, the local official said, ‘Why not use 1,000 men with shovels?’ to which a social worker added, ‘Why not a million men with teaspoons?’ I think the moral of the story is that we have to get the balance right between building infrastructure and creating jobs. We cannot just count the number of jobs; we have to look at what both gives us useful assets and maximises job opportunities.

In looking at some of the projects announced, I really have to look at whether the jobs required on those projects will suit the skills and experience of many who will lose their jobs in the course of this recession. This applies particularly to women. This itself raises a number of issues related to employment in this economic climate. When we think of the impact of job losses on the workforce, we probably think firstly of the male ‘breadwinner’, to use an old, old term. But, for many women, losing a job or having your hours cut is an equally disastrous outcome. Two-income families are the norm in Western Sydney. The loss of income can be very, very devastating.

I understand that major banks and some other financial institutions have developed policies which offer assistance with loan repayments to families affected by the loss of income. As with other forms of assistance offered by governments, we must ensure that women, whether as single women, sole parents, carers or partners in a two-income family, are not treated differently in access to debt assistance or retraining programs.

While I am on the subject of job creation projects, we know that the services sector has been the fastest growing sector of the economy and that women make up most of its workforce. We need to appreciate that we are building a society as well as an economy and that the materials for building a just, fair and prosperous society are more than concrete and steel; we need to build the skills of our people as well. That is one form of infrastructure that maximises employment opportunities.

Having raised those concerns, I want to turn to one budget item that I regard as a disgraceful waste of public money, one which represents a continued attack on the rights of a group of Australian workers. Under the portfolio of the Minister of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations we have an appropriation of $33,446,000 for the office of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Some of us, especially on the Labor side, recall that at the time of the last election Labor promised to allow the ABCC to continue until 2010 and that a review would be conducted, and I for one would have expected this budget item to be much reduced because it is for only half a year. We have of course had the Wilcox review, which recommended the extension of the ABCC for some time, but what staggers me about the ABCC is the size of its funding. It is more than $33 million a year. I am sure it is great at job creation for union-bashing lawyers, but that is one group of workers I would like to see retrenched.

The ABCC is limited to building and construction industry workplaces, but its budget is almost half that of the former Office of the Workplace Ombudsman, who was responsible for all other Commonwealth workplace laws. Comparing the ABCC with Comcare, the government’s workplace safety and rehabilitation body, which gets $5 million this year, the ABCC gets six times as much. Here we have a situation where on average one construction or mining worker dies from a workplace injury every week, but this government spends six times as much on union witch-hunts as it does on workplace safety for its employees. It is when you put the appropriation for the ABCC into context by comparing it with other government agencies that you see that it is a very well fed monster. If you compare the ABCC’s appropriation with agencies in the Attorney-General’s portfolio, you see that it receives more than twice the $13 million allocation to the Australian Human Rights Commission, more than the $28 million going to the Federal Magistrates Court of Australia and more than twice the $16 million appropriated to the High Court of Australia, the body whose responsibility is ‘to interpret and uphold the Australian Constitution and perform the functions of the ultimate appellate court in Australia’.

If you look at the appropriation of the Australian Crime Commission, it receives $95 million and is responsible for reducing the impact of serious and organised crime in Australia, yet the ABCC gets more than one-third of the amount that goes to fighting serious and organised crime in Australia. I am sure that all Australians can sleep safe in their beds knowing that the government spends so much on chasing a few union members while drug rings and bikie gangs can run riot in our community. But looking at the real concerns of ordinary Australians, in the face of losses of more than $30 billion by 200,000 Australian investors and the collapse of companies like Storm Financial, Great Southern and Timbercorp, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission will spend an extra $20 million this year chasing corporate crooks. That is $33 million to chase building workers and $20 million to chase real criminals in business suits.

How does the ABCC’s appropriation compare with the total appropriation for the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority? It gets $23 million, $10 million less than the ABCC. Just what are the priorities of this government—protecting the savings of ordinary Australians or threatening building workers? It is like the Keystone Cops going after the wrong guy. And what is that $33 million worth to the Australian economy and improving productivity? It should be working wonders, because the ABCC gets only a million dollars less than the Productivity Commission.

But, to really understand how much is wasted on the ABCC, we should compare its appropriation to the salaries of members of this House. The ABCC gets more than the combined base salaries of all 150 members of this House as well as the 76 senators, and what has the ABCC achieved? That is a question that will have to be answered. If I could send a memo to the razor gang working on next year’s budget, it would say to save the people of Australia $33 million and axe the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

On one final point in my response to this budget I must express my concern with the proposed increase in the age of eligibility for the age pension from 65 years to 67. I can recall a time when we looked at reducing the age of retirement to 55 years. My greatest concern, especially for the working families that I represent in Fowler, is for those workers in industries which require physical endurance. It is not uncommon to find workers unfit to continue many years before the present retirement age. For many the result is that they spend their years prior to retirement on a disability pension. And we must remember that for women we are increasing the retirement age from 60 to 65; I have already noted a number of issues arising from this change. I would expect that the planned increase in the pension age would be preceded by an inquiry into work and life issues and ways of ensuring that all Australians are able to plan a rewarding working life as well as enjoy a healthy and varied lifestyle.

In closing, overall this is a budget that provides for the working men and women of Australia. It does focus on jobs, which is critical. Time will definitely tell if the expected increase in unemployment has its effect.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government has taken the steps necessary in the circumstances as this country faces the greatest economic challenge we have faced since the Great Depression. It is important to look historically at what Labor governments do and how they respond in the circumstances because it seems that it is our legacy to be elected at times of great confrontation. Whether it is war or economic difficulties, it is Labor governments that come to the fore.

Labor governments look after those who are less well-off but they also meet the challenges they confront and at the same time invest in infrastructure, in jobs, in schools and in hospitals to not just ameliorate the economic circumstances of the country and of the people of the country but also invest for the future and for the great recovery that we all hope and anticipate will take place in the future. We know that has happened before and we know that the Rudd Labor government will attack the problem and work hard every day to overcome the challenges that it faces, because Labor governments have always done that—like Curtin’s and Chifley’s. We saw Whitlam, for example, internationalise the economy in many ways. We got rid of Black Jack McEwen protectionism; Whitlam reduced tariffs by 25 per cent. The other side of the House simply did not have the wit or the will to bring in something that would help Australian business like the Trade Practices Act. It was Whitlam who did that.

Labor governments have not just assisted the profitability of business but also helped people in the economy. The Hawke and Keating governments internationalised the economy. They floated the dollar, opened up the banking system, built superannuation, had the prices and incomes accord and laid the groundwork for the prosperity that the Howard government inherited. That is the reality of political life in this country and in the history of Labor governments. And now the Rudd Labor government, which is facing the greatest global economic crisis that the world has seen since the Great Depression, takes up that challenge.

We are now also dealing with the consequences of the inaction, inertia and indolence of the Howard years. There are the structural deficits that they created. We saw a lack of investment in infrastructure, which we see manifested in terms of ports, rail and roads. What is the legacy of the Howard government? What did they do when they got in? They gave us a public health system that was deinvested by $1 billion. They wrecked public housing in this country. They destroyed the Commonwealth Dental Scheme. What is their legacy? They imposed another tax on the Australian public—the GST—which they said they would never do. And their great reform was Work Choices. That is the legacy of the Howard government. We hear so much nonsense from those opposite about this economic nirvana they had. We hear about this new Jerusalem under John Howard that we are now destroying and sending off to Hades or hell. That is simply not true. It is historical revisionism by those sitting on the opposition benches.

The truth is that with the stimulus packages the government has acted in a way that will cushion the impact of the global recession upon the Australian people. But at the same time we have invested nationally in hospitals, in roads, in rail, in infrastructure and in the greatest modernisation of our school system we have ever seen—$14.7 billion. We see it in our electorates every day. In the experience of every politician in this House, there would not be a day that goes by on which he or she does not see the consequences and the advantages of this to the children, the teachers and the communities of their electorates. But the opposition voted against every single one of the measures that would put community infrastructure and the school modernisation funding into their local constituencies. Those opposite may have, but we on this side of the House are proud to say that we supported it. The budget bills—the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and cognate bills—provide so much in terms of the national response to the global financial crisis.

Locally in my electorate as well we have experienced tough times in the past. My electorate is Ipswich and the rural areas outside. When the Depression hit us back in the 1920s and the recession hit us in the 1990s we in Ipswich in the rural areas suffered because so much of our industry was manufacturing and coal based. The truth is that locally we are seeing benefits from the Rudd Labor government and certainly, by these appropriations bills, we will see in my electorate of Blair the manifestation of the Rudd Labor government’s commitment to nation building. The failure of those opposite is most manifest in my electorate of Blair in the lack of critical infrastructure for 12 long years—the failure of the coalition to invest in the national road system in the electorate and in neighbouring electorates, such as Moreton and Oxley.

The Rudd Labor government has invested $884 million in my electorate in a nation-building program that will support thousands of jobs. It involves a road that those opposite might like to hear about called the Ipswich Motorway. My predecessor and those opposite opposed the upgrade of the Ipswich Motorway. Currently we are seeing investment by the Rudd Labor government in this vital infrastructure as part of our national highway system. We are seeing thousands of people benefit locally with jobs and we are seeing millions of dollars thereby being injected into the local Ipswich economy.

For a long time we campaigned vigorously to get the ear of the federal government and Mr Howard, the then Prime Minister, to convince them to invest in this infrastructure for the health, safety and economic development of the local economy and for the people in the Ipswich and West Moreton region and in the south-west of Brisbane. But it fell on deaf ears. They did not bother to do so, even when they were receiving billions of dollars at the height of the mining boom. When it came to the motorway, those opposite showed that they were the party of the past; they were not the party of the future. It is the Rudd Labor government that is investing to improve the economy of Ipswich and to finally connect Ipswich in the way it should be with Brisbane and the rest of South-East Queensland. Those opposite failed to grasp the necessity of this infrastructure and why it was absolutely necessary in the circumstances.

The Rudd Labor government is investing in my electorate in many ways. Not only have we seen something in the order of $30 million put into local schools with announcements in round 1 and round 2 of the School Pride and the schools for the 21st century funding as part of the Building the Education Revolution funding, but we are also seeing an amazing amount of money being put into the Ipswich economy. We saw, for example, $10 million in funding granted by the Rudd Labor government to bring down the costs of new homes in the Walloon area, west of Ipswich city. It is an area just outside the RAAF base at Amberley. We are seeing a huge amount of money being put in there which will enable people who move into that area to purchase lots for $10,000 less than they would otherwise be able to. It will open up the whole area. In fact, a former National Party candidate and now a councillor in division 10, David Pahlke, said publicly that he thought this was best thing to happen in that western part of Ipswich during his tenure in the Ipswich City Council—in his lifetime, almost. That is part of the investment of the Rudd Labor government to the Ipswich area, which also includes $60 million as part of the $1.1 billion redevelopment of the RAAF base in Amberley. This will build it into a super base, bringing the Super Hornets to the super base, creating infrastructure, creating jobs and putting millions of dollars back into the Ipswich economy. We are building 133 defence houses as part of our nation-building and jobs strategy in the Ipswich area. That means local tradesmen—plumbers, electricians—working locally, bringing money into the economy, supporting local jobs, supporting local families and supporting local infrastructure. That is the manifestation of the Rudd government’s commitment to the Ipswich area.

Ipswich is a fast-growing area according to the ABS data. It has grown over four per cent in the past 12 months and it is the fastest growing area in Queensland according to the statistics that have been released. The Rudd government is committed not only to school infrastructure, or roads; it is also committed to giving our children the chance in life that they deserve. We have seen close to $2 million worth of computers, the tools of the 21st century, being allocated to high schools in the area—and let me tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I have gone around the schools in my electorate I have seen that that money is well spent. It allows children—whether they live in Boonah or Brisbane, Kalbar or Kingaroy, or Riverview or Redcliffe—the same chance in life to access the information that they need to get their talents, skills and abilities to prosper so that they can earn an income.

That is good for business. It is not just good for social equity and social capital; it is good for business. It makes businesses more profitable when they have better trained and educated workers. I know because for 20 years, before I was elected to this House, I was the senior partner in a business law firm and I ran a business. I built it up to a multi-million-dollar operation, so I know what it is like to run a business. I know what it is like to have to deal with staff and all of the challenges—paying the rent, looking after the payroll, dealing with employees and meeting commitments. I know what it is like in these circumstances and, if we can help businesses, that is good. If we can make sure our young people are trained as well as they possibly can be, that will improve productivity and improve small business.

Just last Saturday I was speaking to the manager of a local car dealership in my area, James Sturges of Ross Llewelyn Motors, at the Ipswich Arts Foundation’s 10-year celebration of the art gallery in Ipswich. A wonderful place, the Ipswich Art Gallery; it is the most visited regional art gallery in the country. James was telling me that the 30 per cent tax deductibility for small business was a godsend to his business; they had sold more cars recently than they had done previously. He was commending the government mightily for the work that they have done, not just with the 30 per cent but with the 50 per cent tax deductibility.

In the many mobile offices I run, and the country shows and the shopping centres I visit around the Blair electorate, I have run across many young people who have taken advantage of the first home owners scheme increases that we have brought in as part of our stimulus packages, which are a part of this budget as well. There have been 59,000 people who have taken up that challenge. I remember a young couple who came to me at Brassall Shopping Centre. They were so excited and they wanted me to witness their signatures on their applications. They were absolutely thrilled at the prospect that for the first time in their lives they could purchase a home in North Ipswich. Their son was also very excited because he liked the yard that they were purchasing. They were absolutely beside themselves with delight.

The investment in community infrastructure is just so important, and that is opposed by those opposite. They opposed this part of the stimulus package, as well as all of the others. I have seen in my local area, as part of the $800 million Community Infrastructure Program—the largest ever federal investment in local infrastructure across Australia—$661,000 given to the Lockyer Valley Regional Council, $921,000 given to the Ipswich City Council and $667,000 given to the Scenic Rim Regional Council. That is a total of $2.249 million. With that money, Ipswich City Council has done a lot of things: it has done some work on the Ipswich civic centre, the Canning Street footpath, and the Phillip Street kerbing and channelling, and a number of other areas were also attended to. The regional council in the Lockyer Valley spent an enormous amount of money on a lot of projects right across the Lockyer Valley—from Murphy’s Creek to Laidley and to Lake Apex in Gatton, right across the area.

I just want to focus on one part of that, and that is the money that was given, which was opposed by those opposite, as part of our Community Infrastructure Program. As I said, we gave the Scenic Rim Regional Council $667,000, and they used it wisely. The council put aside $480,000 of that money towards the Scenic Rim health and hydrotherapy complex. The local people raised an equivalent amount and the council correctly put it aside for that purpose. Just last Sunday, a week ago, I was out there turning the sod on the hydrotherapy complex at Elizabeth Terrace. It was a great day. This was a project that my predecessor, the previous member for Forde, refused to fund during her tenure representing the area. I was there with a shovel, making sure my left foot was on the shovel. Putting his right foot on the shovel was the local mayor, John Brent. He is very well known in the local area and a prominent member of the National Party. Also present was Sel Pfeffer, a prominent member of the Liberal Party. Present at the same time was Aidan McLindon, the new Liberal National Party member for Beaudesert.

Here we have it: a number of prominent Liberal members, National Party members and LNP members—whatever they call themselves in Queensland in this day and age. They seem to change their name and they are not quite sure what they are. I still call them the old National Party, because those of us who grew up under Joh Bjelke-Petersen still do so. But here they were with us as we turned the sod on a project that the coalition refused to fund which was being carried out as part of our stimulus package. Here was a prominent member of the National Party, a prominent member of the Liberal Party and the new LNP member for Beaudesert praising the Rudd Labor government by their attendance, and in some cases by their words, for having the commitment to the Scenic Rim area to fund this wonderful project. It seems a bit odd to have these prominent local National Party, Liberal Party and LNP identities present at the time when their comrades, their brethren, their fellow party members opposite, are voting against the very stimulus package that they are there supporting, saying how wonderful it is for the local area of Boonah. There is a great degree of inconsistency there in all the circumstances.

But the funding is not just in those community infrastructure programs. There are other amounts of money that we have poured into the local economy, particularly in areas like Ipswich, where we have seen $600,000 put towards the refurbishment of the Ipswich basketball stadium. There is also $575,000 for the George Alder Tennis Centre and $10 million for the Ipswich CBD redevelopment. Ipswich received almost nothing under the Howard coalition government. It was totally forgotten. The Mayor of Ipswich, Paul Pisasale, has frequently said that he has not seen so much money in his time on the council and that he warmly welcomes the commitment of the Rudd Labor government to the people of Ipswich.

We have also invested $5.1 million in road projects in the local area, but the coalition refused to do it—even for the Warrego Highway, which you will know all about, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, because it goes into your electorate. The LNP member for Lockyer has constantly been going on about the Warrego Highway, but it is the Rudd Labor government that recently committed $8 million and another $2 million for fixing up the Warrego Highway. Did they do anything about it during their time in office? The coalition failed miserably when it came to road infrastructure in my local area. They simply forgot about it. They simply forgot about Ipswich and the rural areas outside. That is the legacy of the Howard government.

The contribution and the legacy of the Rudd Labor government to Ipswich and the rural areas outside is the commitment to infrastructure, to schools, to roads and to business, because that is what Labor governments do. They commit themselves to nation building in times of adversity and they commit themselves to helping those in need, helping their fellow Australians, cushioning the impact of economic difficulties upon their lives and supporting Ipswich and the rural areas outside. I am proud to be part of a government that is committed to Ipswich and the rural areas outside. I commend the bills to the House.

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a sad case when you sit here and listen to the ramblings of new members of the government when they have been running out opening Investing in Our Schools projects and taking all of the credit for those great projects. They have been running around opening up new projects and new roads and taking all of the credit. I stood on the Sheahan Bridge today after the duplication of that bridge and I watched a wonderful speech by the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. He took all the credit for the $78 million for the Sheahan Bridge that most certainly came from the coalition.

I quite enjoyed my day today on the Sheahan Bridge, because it was a great day. It was a great day for Gundagai and it was a great day for the people of Australia. You give some; you take some. I stood there and I listened to Senator Arbib, who came into my schools and opened a project last Friday. He has opened projects on many occasions in my electorate and he has talked about the Rudd government’s infrastructure program—and not $1 of this project on Friday, by the way, was funded by the Rudd government’s programs. It was funded by the last coalition government. But I enjoy those days. I enjoyed having Senator Arbib come and join me to open this great project and take the credit for it, because you know what? It actually happened. When I sit and listen to the amount of almost garbage that is being fired across the chamber day after day saying, ‘You go out there, you put your foot on the shovel and you say how great it is to have your foot on the shovel of this shovel-ready project,’ we seem to be maligned, all day every day, for the number of feet we have on shovels in our electorates.

On the other hand, I have been welcoming Labor to my electorate to open up projects which were funded by the Howard government and for which I fought so hard. I have shown strong advocacy and support for my electorate in getting those projects up and running. In a so-called safe seat, I have fought very hard for that funding, so to be constantly maligned in this place is almost laughable. ‘Ending the blame game’ is all we ever hear about, but the member for Blair has just said that we absolutely destroyed the dental program. But the dental program had not one dollar in the forward estimates. It was a sunset program initiated by former Prime Minister Paul Keating. He said that that program was just an assistance program and would end in four years. By the way, when the Commonwealth dumped their money into the states, the states just withdrew their money, went home and said, ‘Thank you very much’—so we did not actually achieve very much. I get a great kick from being on this side; it is fun to listen to all the groaning and moaning about us having a say. It is as if the government, when they were in opposition just 18 short months ago, sat on the other side of the House and said absolutely zero—accepted everything and voted for everything and never complained about a thing. But now the shoe is on the other foot, so it feels a bit funny.

But I want to talk about the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010. There are some good things and some bad things in everything we do, but I want to talk about the changes to the student income support workplace participation criteria—that is, youth allowance. It is a major issue for rural and regional students. I have sat in this chamber and listened to the lack of understanding about country kids who have no choice but to leave home to further their education at university. When I hear about the so-called packages that these kids get once they get to university, it is enough to make me very angry on this issue. Our rural and regional kids have as much right to an education as any city kid. We should not be penalised because some city kids, and kids in regional cities where there are universities, are able to access youth allowance and go and live in a flat when their parents earn so much so-called income. My issue is about those kids who sincerely have no choice about living at home and have to leave home.

I was shocked and in disbelief when I read an article in the AustralianI think it was a week before the budget was handed down—which outlined the supposed changes to the student income support criteria. It is now apparent that the information that was in the Australian was a leak and is actually factual. It was a true and factual story but, at the time, I could not believe it. I thought, no, it could not happen; no-one would discriminate against rural students in this way. But it is true. The Rudd government has discriminated against rural students in a way which I think is an absolute disgrace. I could not believe that the government would contemplate making changes which will without doubt inhibit many potential students from accessing the vital support of youth allowance so that they can study at university. A student cannot travel four hours backward and forward every day from Hay to study at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga; they have to live in Wagga Wagga. So they leave home. Accommodation is expensive and paying for it is quite a difficult task for any student.

Since the budget was handed down last week, I have received many calls. I have brought into the chamber with me just a few of the many emails and letters of concern I have received from voters in my electorate who are absolutely stunned that this action is taking place. It has been extremely difficult, though, to pinpoint the finer details of all of the government’s proposed changes. We just have not been able to get enough information to make it really clear exactly what is happening. But the one thing I am most anxious to be told about is how a potential student can access student income support. I have written to the Minister for Education, asking her to outline exactly how a potential student from rural and regional Australia who leaves home can access youth allowance. As I see it, there are two options. They must either come under the family tax benefit A combined income test for both parents or they must establish financial independence in the eyes of Centrelink by gaining at least 30 hours of employment per week for at least 18 months during any period of two years.

But how does a student with no experience in the workforce and no understanding of work initiatives go out and get themselves a basically full-time job when unemployment is skyrocketing? How does that student access 30 hours of work a week, almost full-time employment, for at least 18 months during any period of two years when we have skyrocketing unemployment? My understanding is that you can get it by being married, or if you were previously married, or by living in a marriage-like relationship for at least 12 months. So do we say to the kids, ‘Off you go; go out and get married’? Do you have to live in a marriage-like relationship when you are just 17 or 18 to ensure that you are able to get youth allowance so that you can study and get an education at university if you want to? One of the other ways you can get it is by having a dependent child. So do we say to our kids, ‘Go out and have a child and maybe you can get youth allowance’?

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 8.30 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 34. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.