Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are two issues that go to the credibility of the Treasurer: what is said by the Treasurer on the day and what he does after that. The Treasurer said in 2008:

We will invest $2.2 billion over five years for the Caring for our Country program …

That was in his speech of 13 May. But what has the government done to uphold this commitment in 2010-11? This budget cut funding for Caring for our Country by $81.3 million and ripped the heart out of Landcare, cutting it by $10.9 million. In my seat of McMillan, Landcare is an iconic organisation conducting serious work in revegetation, restoration, erosion and pest control and in improving our environment. The government has turned its back on regional communities in this regard.

I assert that the credibility of the government is in tatters. Again, the Treasurer, focusing on the future and not the present, said:

Tonight I am announcing a further $2.2 billion investment in the health system.

               …            …            …

over five years … and over the rest of the decade.

               …            …            …

That is why I am announcing $523 million to train and support our nurses, including in aged care and in our rural and regional communities.

You would think that was absolutely marvellous, and I did. GP nurses were a great idea. But what is the reality? A GP clinic has informed me in regard to the GP nurse grant that, given the number of GPs, the clinic would be granted $125,000 for the employment of nurses. As part of the grant process, the practice incentives payments under PIP plus seven other procedures which could be performed by nurses have been removed. This amounts to a total loss of $159,000 to the GP clinic. The net loss of employing the nurses then amounts to approximately $34,600. This is a major disincentive to employing the nurses. There is no logic in this program and it will do great damage rather than provide the benefits that we thought would accrue. The broader question is: is this happening in all accredited general practices and in the much touted superclinics?

I come back to Australians out there working and trying to make a go of it for their children and their loved ones. There was very little mention of them in the budget speech and no mention of rural, regional and remote Australians. But there was plenty of rhetoric about the future and the long run. When the Treasurer did mention families, he said:

But the families I speak to—

not ‘with’—

also want more time with each other.

So the government has decided to provide taxpayers the choice of a standard deduction instead of the hassle of shoeboxes full of receipts and the costs of professional assistance.

Let me say this: what does this achieve?

This means less time with the Tax Pack, more time with the loved ones—

said the Treasurer. Does a once-a-year activity translate to massively more time with loved ones? I think not. By the way, professional assistance is tax deductible.

I now turn to the issues facing young people and I will quote from an ACCESS ministries document rather than use my own words:

The issues facing young people today are unique, as is the case for every generation. But today more than ever young people are susceptible to new forms of peer pressure that invades even the privacy of their own homes. The advent of the internet brings with it some amazing prospects, however it also has introduced a new way of interaction among young people. To some it is simply a fun way of keeping in touch. For others it is the ultimate device for inflicting misery on peers and even teachers in a very public arena. Welcome to the world of cyber-bullying.

Here is an illustration for most of us, including me, of a case of bullying:

For most of us, bullying was played out between 9 and 3 and the retreat of home was usually rapid, and we were safe, there was time out.

Imagine what it would be like, to come home from a demoralising day at school, victim of the same group of kids yet again. You come home, throw your bag in the door, you’re tired and stressed out, you’ve got heaps of homework to do. You’re so behind because you can’t concentrate in class, everything is late and the teachers are getting cross.

You turn on your computer and open up your English assignment, a little icon starts flashing on your screen, it’s impossible to ignore it, like an itch that has to be scratched. You try to concentrate on your assignment but the flashing icon requires attention, someone wants to tell you something …

You click, and to your horror you see your own name, plastered on the screen with a photo of you that is enough to make you want to die. It’s private and personal and everyone can see you, and everyone is laughing at you. They are calling you names and you bury your head in your hands, hot tears streaming down your face, humiliation, embarrassment, anger blended together. How can I face another day at school, how can I face another day of my life …

You are too embarrassed to tell your parents, there is no-one to turn to. Welcome to the world of cyber-bullying.

After a sleepless night while you checked your account every few minutes to torture yourself further with what people are saying about you, you decide there is only one thing to do.

You sneak into the school yard early, avoiding everyone, yet you feel their eyes are boring into you sniggering, you walk up the hall and find a door with one word written on it, chaplain … You walk inside, your eyes meet Sarah’s the chaplain and you shake uncontrollably and the tears are unstoppable.

‘There is nothing I can do,’ she—

who is speaking—the chaplain or the student?

says with a sad smile, ‘first things first,’ she says, ‘let me get the hot chocolate on and the comfiest chair in the house.’ It feels like a hug and you know from her smile that she’s in it with you, and you begin to feel safer, and slowly but surely the world begins to shift back into focus, perspective slowly dawns and you begin to realise the humiliation of the night is over and soon it’ll be yesterday’s news.

This is not a one in a million story. This is happening all the time in many schools across Australia. It could be the young man who delivers your paper, the girl next door—worse, it could be your daughter, your nephew or your grandchild. That is why the chaplaincy program is so important in this day and age. It is different. The coalition have committed to the program in upcoming years. I am just worried the government might not have committed to this program in upcoming years. It is crucially important; in fact, I think the program should be extended so that more schools can take the opportunity to provide chaplaincy in their schools so that that young girl and many others can go to that door and find the word ‘chaplain’.

In conclusion, as to the coalition’s announcement of refugee policy today, my views and standing on these issues are well known and documented. I take not one step back from, nor do I resile from, that I have said and that I have done. I live in hope for all people who have made this great south land their home. I stand in the absolute assurance that hope will always triumph over fear.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the appropriation bills. On 11 May this year the Treasurer began his budget speech with these words:

Of Australia’s 18 years of continuous economic expansion, Australians can be proudest of the one just passed.

Not just because together we avoided recession when almost all other advanced economies did not.

Not just because together we created 225,000 jobs when many other advanced economies were shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs.

But because our shared successes put us in a position of strength from which we will build growth and opportunity, and secure the future.

The point about the Treasurer comparing this year with the 17 that preceded it is important. It is important because budgets do not pass in isolation. They are part of a continuum, a running account of what we value as a nation, a valuation of ideals made actual. In the end, nations are not judged by what they say, but what they do; by what they invest in and what they build. In that sense, budgets are a balance sheet of our beliefs. There are years that, in hindsight, are more critical than others, where decisions are made in the interests of the common good. 1991 was one such year, when the Hawke government committed Australia to a mandatory superannuation scheme. The decision therefore to increase the super guarantee to 12 per cent alone is enough to make 2010 another notable year. After all, that one decision will benefit 8.4 million Australians. Imagine how much better off those working men and women and their families would be now if our predecessors had stuck to the plan to take the super guarantee to 12 per cent back in 2000. Imagine how many billions of dollars could have been put to work in nation-building investments.

I am not going to dwell on the wasted decade of the Howard years. Instead I want to take this opportunity to do two things: to discuss the great success of the Australian model of progress over the past generation, a model founded on the bedrock of the economic reforms instituted by the Hawke and Keating governments; and to bring to your attention, Madam Deputy Speaker, another issue that, depending on what we say, and more importantly what we do, all members of this parliament will be judged on, an issue that is every bit as vital to the prosperity of our nation over the next 18 years as the Hawke superannuation commitment was in the past 18 years. The critical issue I refer to is that of a national disability insurance scheme.

The Australian model of progress is unique. It is, in essence, all about balancing the wants of the global market with the needs of our Australian people. It is all about protecting the Australian way of life by embracing new opportunities. It is about looking forwards, not back; it is about being confident, not conservative. This budget is fiscally responsible, as it should be with the world still suffering the aftershocks of the global financial crisis. But it is something else too: it is a vote of confidence in the Australian people. At a time when other nations are winding back social investments, what is this budget doing? It is giving back to working men and women who have made the Australian model such a success story. Delivering income tax cuts for all workers, making it possible for pay-as-you-earn taxpayers to claim a $1,000 tax deduction, and boosting savings with a 50 per cent tax discount for the first $1,000 of interest earned, benefiting 5.7 million people, including many retirees.

This budget is also giving back to Australia as a whole through the introduction from July 2012 of a Resource Super Profits Tax. That Resource Super Profits Tax, which has already won the backing of 20 leading economists and academics and many others in the community, will allow us to cut company tax rates from 30 per cent to 28 per cent. It is a good tax, it is a fair tax. It is a tax that will ensure that Australian people get a fair return for the minerals of our nation, and it is vital to the economic and social progress of our nation. We must not allow the national interest to be sold off.

Madam Deputy Speaker, there is a great deal more in this budget—for hospitals, for skills training, for renewable energy. But I do not wish to talk about those investments. Other speakers from the government will clearly canvass these matters. Instead I want to turn your attention to the area of disability. It is no exaggeration to say that many of the 1.5 million Australians with a profound or severe disability, together with their nearly 500,000 primary carers, live as exiles in their own country. Whereas prior to deinstitutionalisation many Australians with a disability were shut in, now they are shut out: shut out of employment, shut out of services, shut out of housing and shut out of the community. The fact that this state of affairs has been allowed to continue at a time when our nation is enjoying 18 consecutive years of economic growth is shameful, but our government is starting to address this dire situation.

We are now providing more money to the states and territories for disability services than any previous federal government. We have signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We have established the first access to premise standards for public buildings. And in this budget we are making some modest changes to special disability trusts. These trusts were established to make it easier for families and other carers of a person with a disability to pay for their care. They are not a solution for every family, but they give families with private means a better way of funding care for their loved ones. We have listened to the Senate inquiry into this issue because we want these trusts to be as easy as possible to use. From 1 July 2011 changes will be introduced so that people with a disability will be able to work up to seven hours a week in the open labour market and still qualify as a beneficiary of a trust. The trust will be able to pay the beneficiary’s medical expenses, including membership costs for private health funds and the maintenance expenses of assets and properties. The trust will be able to spend up to $10,000 in a financial year on discretionary items not related to care and accommodation needs which people have so that the beneficiary can be engaged in social and community participation in our communities. And in two years the government will undertake a review of the amount that can be held in a trust on a concessional basis, the amount that can be gifted and who can request audits. It is estimated these changes will result in an increase in the number of people utilising special disability trusts with additional beneficiaries. I want to see more change to special disability trusts, but this progress should be acknowledged.

Most importantly to the continued success of the Australian model of social and economic progress, we established late last year the Productivity Commission inquiry into a national disability insurance scheme. I am pleased to note the support for the inquiry from numerous members both of the government and of the opposition, and I particularly acknowledge recent comments by the member for Gippsland and the member for Pearce from the opposition. This budget also supports the inquiry by committing $520,000 to involve people with disabilities, their families and carers in the Productivity Commission’s landmark inquiry. This inquiry has already received 1,500 expressions of interest, a record for this stage of a Productivity Commission inquiry, and we want as many people with a disability and their voices to be heard. Disability and care organisations will receive grants of up to $30,000 each to fund travel costs for participants to attend consultations or to engage a facilitator to gather the views of their members and prepare a submission. The first round of consultations will be held in June and July, with a second round to be held next April.

More and more Australians are asking me about a national disability insurance scheme. As Madam Deputy Speaker Burke and I were visiting the Glenallen Special School in her electorate of Chisholm, parents there were most interested to see what was happening with the development of a national disability insurance scheme. Many of those parents at that very excellent education establishment and many others want to know because they appreciate that something has to give in the way in which they interact with the system to represent and look after their children. One statistic tells the tale. Over the next 40 years, the number of people with severe or profound disability is projected to grow from 1.5 million now to 2.9 million by 2050. That is an extra 1.4 million Australians in need of care and support. That is the equivalent of a city larger than Adelaide who we need to plan for.

This is an issue which can touch every Australian family. It is too big to ignore any longer. We need to find a way to secure ongoing services and support for Australians with a disability. We need to understand that doing so will help ensure our economy against rising disability costs and falling labour force participation rates. We need to understand that doing so will target the $21½ billion that the federal government is now spending on disability, which will continue to grow. The question is: can we make it into a system which would ensure that people living with a disability and their families have greater dignity; that they can be turned from charity into consumers; that we can redefine their identities, not as a person with a disability but as a person with many interesting and unique and special individual traits, one of which happens to be their impairment? We need to do so to help ensure our own future. Any of us, at any time, could be struck by one of the rays of fate. It could be the birth of the child with an impairment. It could be the motor vehicle accident in the blink of an eye. It could be the onset of early impairment diseases such as multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy.

The Productivity Commission has a huge task ahead of it. The commission, in its issues paper released on 17 May, flagged the questions it considers to be most important. How do we achieve early intervention? How does a new scheme encourage the full participation of people with a disability and their carers in the community and in work? How do we ensure that people with similar levels of need get similar support? How do we improve service delivery, including coordination, costs, timeliness and innovation? How do we reduce the unfairness so that people with similar levels of need get similar support? How do we ensure that the professional workforce is well remunerated for the remarkable level of emotional commitment they deploy in their job on a daily basis? Our generation, both within this parliament and outside, will be judged by the ways in which these questions are answered.

Our government is already spending over $22 billion on disability. When you factor in the money provided to the states, the payments made to carers, the $12 billion spent on the disability support pension and the $1.2 billion spent on employment services, we have increased funding substantially. But the fact is that the current system is dysfunctional. It is not working to the best interests of people with a disability or their carers and, therefore, the nation. It is not working for hard-pressed service providers and carers and certainly not for Australians with a disability.

The time has come for us to realise that sticking with the current system is a false economy. We have to make the leap from a crisis-driven system that only intervenes when it has to, and usually at great cost, to one that intervenes early and makes a lasting difference. Making that leap from crisis management to early intervention will not be easy. It has taken decades for this system to become this broken. Building a new system will take time. A new scheme will not be the panacea to all the challenges and problems, but if we can right this wrong we will have built something every bit as important as the mandatory superannuation scheme and Medicare. That is how important I judge a national disability insurance scheme is to our future prosperity and sustainability. I personally have no doubt that the struggle for disability rights is Australia’s last great civil rights challenge. I have every hope that this inquiry will be a turning point in the way that our nation behaves towards its citizens with a disability.

We cannot afford to take progress for granted. We have to make it happen. We can no longer look at the faces of parents with little children diagnosed with a developmental delay and say, ‘I’m sorry, there aren’t any hours available for early intervention services.’ We cannot look at the parents at Glenallen School and other schools around Australia and say to them, ‘There is help when your child reaches primary and secondary school,’ but what happens to them when they turn 18 and they leave those schools? They are on their own again. We certainly cannot keep looking at tens of thousands of ageing carers in their 70s and 80s with adult children with high needs who are sleepless at night with the anxiety: ‘Who will look after my children when I’m no longer here to look after them?’

This budget moves forward the national interest, but there is also the opportunity to develop a proper lifetime care and support scheme for people with severe or profound disabilities—howsoever they acquired that disability, be it traumatically, through early onset or from birth. For those Australians and their parents, it is time that we made them equal citizens in the best country in the world. I commend these bills to the House.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the parliamentary secretary for his contribution and for his visit to Glenallen School in my electorate.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians have come to expect to be disappointed by the Rudd government and its budgets. This is the third budget by Treasurer Wayne Swan and the third time Australians have been let down. The list of broken promises from the Rudd government is almost endless. At last count I think I got up to 47 broken promises. People just do not believe the Prime Minister anymore. They have stopped listening because with a record like that in just the first term it really undermines the confidence that Australians have in their government.

It was a classic budget this year relying on big taxes and big spending measures, and they are going to hurt. Australia is living beyond its means, and as much as people say, ‘Well, our debt as a percentage of GDP is much lower than many other countries,’ everybody knows that in your own family the first thing you do is you pay off all your debt if you can because you are better off because of it. A country is no different. Running a country is no different. I am disappointed when I see $4 billion to $6 billion of interest being paid to overseas lenders now because that is money that cannot be spent on Australians. Yes, there is a case to be made for some level of debt, particularly if it funds long-term infrastructure, but much of the debt that the Labor Party has built up was just a one-off thing and there is nothing lasting to show for it.

There has been a bit of debate recently, members might have noticed, about a great big new tax on mining. All sorts of people had all sorts of views. The government has had a view and the alternative government has had a view. The mining industry has had a view. Economists have had a view, and so it goes on. Treasury has had a view as well. It is sometimes hard for Australians to get to the bottom of what it all really means. Often it comes down to a feeling of, ‘Well, the mining industry was the saviour of Australia in the global financial crisis and why are we now punishing it?’ I thought the Leader of the Opposition made a very good point in question time when he said, ‘Look, if the government is right that this big new tax on mining actually improves jobs, improves investment, then why aren’t a whole lot of other industries clamouring to have a great big new tax on them as well?’ It is a very interesting question. The other thing that many people worried about was is in relation to the threshold where the tax cuts in on profits in excess of six per cent. The question was: which was the next industry that was going to cop a great big new tax on profits?

It has been a great debate in the country and I read the speculation in the newspaper today that we are going to see another great big backflip from the government. It is a bizarre way to run the governance of this country. I worry for my own patch in North Queensland where we rely very heavily on the mining industry. The north-west minerals province in North Queensland is the most prospective minerals province in the world and it very much depends on new exploration, new mines and existing mines. So much of our economy is supported by the mining industry. Yet the government wants to put this penalty on it. I asked in question time yesterday a question on behalf of the mining company Miriwinni, a small family business, who just said, ‘This is going to affect so many sectors of the economy, not just us,’ and that is certainly very difficult for them.

The budget delivers yet another deficit. What is new? Spend and rack up debt is the mantra of the Labor Party, and I guess that the coalition will come back in and clean up all the mess again. I was elected in 1996 when the government last changed and I remember the pain of having to go through and make the savings necessary to get rid of all of the debt, which we then successfully did. I guess we are just going to have to face all of that again.

In a way it is bizarre, too, that the government comes in and has a heyday in spending and everybody thinks the government is wonderful, then the coalition comes in and has this dreadful problem of trying to fix up the problem. It is happening in Britain now, with its new conservative government. Famously, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the outgoing Labour government in Great Britain left a note for the incoming chancellor which just said: ‘There is no money.’ Why does that surprise any of us? The deficit this year is $57.1 billion—still the biggest peacetime deficit in Australia’s history. The deficit next year will be $40.8 billion, the second-biggest peacetime deficit. That makes my point that Labor governments a have long history of leaving debt for the coalition to pay off and clean up. The last Labor government, despite denials, left Australia with $96 billion of debt—and it took them 12 years to rack that up. It took the coalition 10 years to pay it off. The Rudd government has now managed to rack up a similar amount of money in just three years, despite the very healthy surplus left by the coalition government. Economic conservative? I do not think so. And when you look at all the other promises you think, ‘How can people have confidence in the current Prime Minister and his claims of good economic management?’ particularly when he is about to slug the mining industry with this great big new tax.

This advertisement appeared in the Townsville Bulletin this morning. It says, ‘Which North Queensland businesses will be hurt by the government’s supertax on resources? The answer is—all of them.’ People have not quite come to the realisation that it is not only the mining industry that will be affected; it is engineering, restaurants, construction, car retailers, catering, hotels, small business and manufacturing. So you can rightly ask the question: has the government really thought this through? I do not think so. Where there is mining there is more than just mining companies; there is retail, airlines, hotels, car rental, hospitality, construction, engineering, manufacturing—a whole range of industries that make up whole communities. That is all of us; the communities we live in. When the Rudd government introduces the world’s highest resources tax and puts new mining projects at risk, it also risks whole industries and in some cases even whole towns.

The federal government has to think this through properly and it has to consult with the mining industry. It has to put all the issues in relation to this matter on the table for discussion and we have to get a much better outcome. I note that Xstrata has already stopped all of its exploration. It is pretty sad when you have people on the phone saying: ‘I’ve lost my job. What is my family going to do?’—all because the government wants to put this great big tax on the mining industry, so exploration in North Queensland stops. To the government, I say: ‘Hey guys, you are the Labor Party. You are supposed to represent the workers of this country and you are taking their jobs away from them.’ What kind of a party does that, when it is supposed to represent organised labour? It will be fascinating to see how this plays out. I certainly believe that we will see another backflip from the government, and it really does have to happen.

I will turn to a number of other issues. This one is classic of how the Rudd government has behaved—‘Crisis? What crisis?’ As long as I can remember, we have been having front-page articles in the Townsville Bulletin about ongoing problems at the Townsville Hospital. The current problem is the pay saga. Can you believe the Queensland government is not paying the staff at its hospitals properly—sometimes not at all? I heard that somebody the other day, for their fortnightly pay, got a cheque for $72,000. That is the other side of the coin. I suppose it is better to get that than to get nothing at all! That is going on in Queensland, but it is a symptom of a wider issue in the hospital system.

We had the Prime Minister saying, very famously, that, if the hospital systems in Australia were not fixed by June 2009, he was going to take them over. Remember that? What happened? It went on and on, and then in June 2009 there was another round of consultation, which delayed things further, and then, finally, the federal government did not take them over.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Hall interjecting

Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Herbert has the call.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome interventions, Mr Deputy Speaker. The member for Shortland is a very good friend of mine. I have been thrown off the track—that is what interventions are for! What has finally happened with the health debate is that the government has taken back some GST from the states, which it then gives straight back to the states, saying: ‘Here’s our money’—and of course it is not new money—‘but, by the way, we’re not taking over the hospitals. You can still run them. Oh, and here’s our budget this year. We’ve got another $500 million for a whole lot more bureaucrats.’ Already, more bureaucrats than health professionals work in the hospital system. We are getting more bureaucrats, and it is the bureaucracy that stuffs up the health system in this country.

In Queensland, which I know about, the health department in Brisbane runs like a Soviet-style bureaucracy. It is awful. Nobody can make decisions. The local hospitals cannot make decisions. And the Rudd government says, ‘We’re going to have local control of hospitals.’ It just gets out there, bald faced, with these paid television commercials saying, ‘We’ve introduced local control’—utter rubbish. The policy of the Labor government was to basically have a local board to run a number of hospitals in each region. So it was not going to be that the Townsville Hospital would have its own local board—which would happen under the alternative government—but that an amalgam of hospitals would be run by a local board, meaning there would just be another bureaucracy. It has been an abject failure of public policy on the part of the Rudd government. It has been an abject failure of the expectations that were generated in the minds of our community. I will give you another example. Mr Rudd came to Townsville and said, ‘You need a PET scanner.’ Of course we need a PET scanner. ‘Hey, I’m going to give you a PET scanner—here’s the money.’ What he did not say was that it will not happen until 2014. It will be so disappointing when the community finds out they have been sold a pup.

I would not mind betting that, if the Rudd government stays in power, in another three years we will have another set of promises. And nothing will have changed. People will still be on waiting lists—to get on a waiting list. That is pretty disappointing. The Deputy Prime Minister came to Townsville last week. There was a great big fanfare. We were all ears as to what she might promise or what she might say. Do you know what she promised? Do you know what she announced? Nothing.

The Deputy Prime Minister comes to Townsville and she says, ‘We are really interested in looking after skill shortages in North Queensland.’ But nobody took her seriously because she was the one who defunded the Australian Technical College—Townsville. It was the most significant technical college in the nation and Julia Gillard took the money off it because it was a Howard government initiative. Nothing more. The tech college struggles on. It could train twice as many apprentices as it is doing at the moment, but it does not have the money. The government then says, ‘Oh, well, we’ll have trade training centres in schools.’ How many have been delivered? They actually promised one in every high school, but that is not going to happen. They then promised 2,650 across Australia. One or two have been completed. We will probably see the rest by about 2020 or something like that. But they do not work. The technical college model, where students were able to do their apprenticeship and get their senior qualifications all at the same time—and get a job—was much, much better. It was just a wonderful model.

In relation to the Broadband Network, in Townsville we have got one of the five demonstrator projects. Do you know what they are going to do with broadband in Townsville? This is just utterly unbelievable. It is a demonstrator project and they are going to string the cables along the telephone poles. Hello! Haven’t you ever heard of cyclones in north Queensland? Why would you prejudice the reliability of a National Broadband Network in a cyclone area by stringing the cables along telephone poles? They should all be underground. All the electricity supplies should be underground. Of course, in all new developments in Townsville all electricity cables are put underground. But for the Broadband Network, no. We are spending $43 billion—and we are borrowing it all, of course—without a business plan. Well, hello! I think we have got to get a bit of sense here and make sure that the security of our National Broadband Network is in fact protected by making sure the cables are underground in cyclone-prone areas. That goes for both sides of the country and the Top End. So often the North is forgotten by these bureaucrats down here and by the government. Senator Conroy, particularly, should take an interest in this, and he should be making sure that we are protected in relation to the security of our Broadband Network.

Let me finish now on defence. This has really disappointed me. Mr Rudd made a commitment that the Defence vote would not be cut in the budget. But there are some really creative things that you can do: you can have your cuts and maintain spending at the same time. It has happened through a thing called the strategic review program. That is the cuts of $20 billion out of Defence over the next 10 years, and it is biting everywhere. Let me tell you where it is biting in the reserves. You cannot get the training days and you cannot get the ammunition. The reserves are just such an important part of our ADF these days. Many ships cannot deploy unless they have reserve officers. We have reservists right through our overseas areas of operation. And, of course, they work in the military justice system. They are all across the Defence Force. But the government is knocking off all of this money and they are not actually going to where the waste is—in the bureaucracy. I am disappointed to see that that is happening to the Defence Force, but our members of the ADF know and I think they will continue to mark down the Rudd government at the next election because of what they have done to the Australian Defence Force.

Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I assure the member for Herbert that this is only the first of my many terms in this place. I rise to speak in strong support of the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011, the Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2010-2011 and the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011. This is a budget that firmly concentrates on responsible economic management by getting the budget back in the black in three years—and that is three years early. The Rudd government will halve the previously forecast peak debt. The measures in this budget will create a stronger and more secure economy for Australia’s working families. By delivering the third round of tax cuts as promised in the 2007 election campaign, the Rudd government has ensured that a taxpayer on average earnings receives another $450 a year in their pocket. That is around $9 a week. That may not seem like all that much to those on the other side, but it is a great help to those working people and working families whose entire incomes are consumed by life’s necessities, not by life’s luxuries. Over the past three years, a working person on $50,000 to $70,000 per annum has been around $1,500 better off due to the delivery in full of our promised tax cuts.

But of course there are other tax cuts within this budget that benefit working people and working families. A tax break of 50 per cent for the first $1,000 of interest on savings is an excellent boost to the millions of people who save a few dollars in the bank for a rainy day but who up until now have been stung every year at tax time with full marginal rate tax on their interest earnings. Our simplified automatic tax deductions, also known as the tick-and-flick tax return, will mean that from 1 July 2012 more than six million Australians will not have the hassle of having to save their receipts in a shoebox for a whole year just to have their accountant at tax time say, ‘No, those ones are no good; just give me a few.’

A $500 deduction is available in 2012 and $1,000 in 2013. Importantly, this means that the average taxpayer who chooses to use this system will pay an average of $192 less tax per year in 2013. Furthermore—and I know this quite well; I have seen it firsthand many times—if the taxpayer is employed in a white-collar or retail job, the benefits may be even larger. As anyone who works in those types of industries knows, when it comes to tax time and the claiming of refunds, there is not a lot there to claim. I used to see it firsthand in the construction industry. I worked on the building site, and at tax time I could claim quite a lot in expenses. But a person who worked inside a site shed on the same building site and did an office job could not claim such expenses, even though they worked at the same workplace. So I think this is a very good benefit for people who have a white-collar background, who do not run their own business and who receive wages.

An even greater long-term benefit for working people in this budget is the raising of the super guarantee charge to 12 per cent from the current rate of nine per cent. With incremental rises starting in 2013, the rate will rise from nine per cent and will reach 12 per cent on 1 July 2019. That gives plenty of time for employers, unions and others involved in the industrial process to adjust to these changes. Ninety per cent of Australia’s full-time employees—about 8.4 million people—will benefit from this three per cent increase in retirement savings. For workers on lower incomes, the Rudd government will provide a contribution of up to $500 per annum for workers earning up to $37,500. This effectively refunds the tax contributions paid on super guarantee amounts up to that level.

I have been a long-time advocate of superannuation for everyone in Australia who works. This is something that most people accept these days, but that was not always the case. The original legislation, which those on the other side of the House most certainly did not like, started the super guarantee at three per cent. That seems so small these days, but when I started full-time work back in 1982, a long time ago now, most working people did not get super—not a cent. I think it is quite true to say that at that time super was for public servants and chosen company executives. In fact, I worked for four years before I ever received one cent of superannuation. And I was one of the lucky ones: I worked in an industry where super came in earlier than was legislated by parliament. In 1986, I and the many others who worked with me in that industry started receiving super at the rate of $9 per week. That seems small these days. But the rest of the working population at that time were getting nothing, and for many years after that they got nothing. It was not until 1993 that the super guarantee charge kicked in and working people actually got to put away money for their retirement.

The problem with that, and it is a very big one and we are still to face the full implications of it, is that people of my age or people older than I am have only worked with super for part of their working lives. And so when it comes to retirement some very valid questions can be asked: do I have enough to live a comfortable retirement? Is there enough money in the super account? Invariably, if you have not spent your full working life receiving super, the answer is going to be no, there is just not enough there to build upon. One of the measures in this budget will extend the $50,000 superannuation contribution cap to over 50s with super balances below $500,000. That is important because it gives some people the chance to catch up, to hopefully have a bigger nest egg for their retirement. Measures such as these will increase Australia’s superannuation savings pool by $85 billion over the next decade. As an example, for an 18-year-old just starting out on a working career on average wages, these changes will mean an extra $200,000 in their super account come retirement.

While I am on super, another improvement to the superannuation system is the extension of the compulsory superannuation guarantee to working people up to the age of 75 instead of the present limit of up to the age of 70. Indeed, it was only last week that I was contacted by a constituent who was very concerned to find out that her last 18 months of employment gave her no super. Her employer had not bothered to tell her that, as she had turned the age of 70, they no longer had to pay compulsory superannuation contributions to her account—and they did not. It was only when she subsequently left employment and checked up with her super that she found she was in that situation.

What might have been a good provision at the time the superannuation guarantee was brought in—that is, the 70 years of age provision—is not so good anymore. Successive governments have encouraged people to work longer. The compulsory retirement age is gone. If we want people to work longer, we need to make sure we encourage them, not discourage them. But the thing that concerns me the most about this subject is if we look at the figures that were not released with the opposition’s budget reply speech, but subsequently came to light through last week’s National Press Club debacle, we see the disturbing information that all of these changes to super that I have spoken about will be gone. Gone would be the increase in super for working people from nine to 12 per cent, gone would be the extension of the super guarantee for those people who choose to work up to the age of 75, gone would be the concessional contribution cap for the over 50s, and gone would be the super contributions tax rebate for low-income earners. That is what we get if we have an Abbott-led government.

At the 2007 election the Australian Labor Party made a commitment to the people in my electorate of Deakin. We committed to fix the traffic nightmare that the Howard Liberal government had failed to lift a finger to fix for 12 long years—that is, Springvale Road. Well-known to people throughout the eastern suburbs, this railway crossing—a railway crossing with 218 train crossings every a day, intersecting a six-lane road with 50,000 vehicles on it—meant that transport was very difficult around the eastern suburbs. If you wanted to head in a north-south direction, chances are you would try to find a road other than Springvale Road to do it on because you knew there would always be a traffic jam there. It had been that way for many years. Indeed, I have spoken to older people in aged-care homes who have told me of problems with the crossing going back in time to before I was born, to a time before it had boom gates. It has always been busy, and in many cases it has been dangerous. There have been fatalities there and there have been many, many accidents.

Last year’s federal budget made the commitment of $76½ million to the project, and the state Labor government came through with $60 million. The project started, the project finished, and that is the best thing. It is good to be able to stand up in this place and talk about what is going to be done; it is even better to be able to follow it through and make sure that it is done. And the Rudd government has done that with Springvale Road. It opened on time and it opened on budget. It is a great result—not just for the people of Nunawading, where it is located, but for everyone who commutes in or around the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

It is also a great result for commuters who use the station. What was an old, small, drafty, asbestos-ridden station that was built between the 1950s and the 1960s and not very often staffed is now a brand-new structure with security cameras and a proper public address system that is staffed from first train to last. It is an architectural statement as well. It is a great addition to the suburb of Nunawading. The new station has much better access for people with disabilities, unlike the old station, where we had problems with the ramps leading to it and the closeness of the station to the road where the buses parked.

Also, the new station, as I have mentioned before in this place, has lockable facilities for cyclists. It is quite a good system. It is remotely controlled from a control centre. There is a swipe card that allows you to access your bike when you need to. And there is security. As many people who want to use bikes know, if you leave your bike at a railway station just chained up, the chances are that when you get back on the train that evening you may end up walking home. So this is also a great improvement for our local transport.

That project is a beacon for what else can be done in terms of transport in Melbourne. There are so many level crossings that still need to be upgraded. They were built, to be fair, when the traffic load was nothing like what it is in what is now a very large city. These crossings were built when there were still red rattlers running around the place. Although the red rattlers are gone, the level crossings are not. The state government has committed to putting a program in place to start to get rid of these crossings. These are the sorts of infrastructure projects that should have been undertaken continuously right through from the 1960s to now. There is a huge gap and it is going to take a long time to catch up. But, if we do not do anything now, that catch up is never going to happen.

The Rudd government has invested not only in the Springvale Road underpass but also in much smaller local projects. One that springs to my mind is the notorious black spot in Ringwood East, the Dublin Road railway crossing. It is next to the shops. That has been another problem area, not so much for traffic jams but because it is dangerous, and there have been many accidents there. Last year, an amount of $396,000 was put forward to fix this problem. I am very happy to say that that project is now underway. It is not finished yet but works are underway and it will be finished soon. It is one of those projects that needed to be done years ago. It will mean that pedestrians will be safer and that hopefully motorists will be safer. Even the train commuters who have to walk through a lot of this area—a problem caused by boom gates being down and there being a T-intersection right where the railway line is—will be safer.

Talking about infrastructure, there is so much happening in my electorate that is only happening because of funding from the Rudd government that I hardly know where to start. I will start with the new soccer pavilion that is being built at Ringwood’s Jubilee Park. Last year the funding was announced and this year I can stand up in this place and say that work is underway. The old pavilion—again, asbestos-ridden—was nearing the point of condemnation by the local council because of its disrepair. It is now gone. Now there is a slab and building starting of what will be a brand-new multipurpose pavilion not just for the use of the soccer club but for the use of all sorts of other clubs, too. There will be a synthetic pitch. There will be lighting so that it can be used at night. There will even be facilities for women to use, something that was not thought of when the original stand was built in 1962. In the same facility, we will have the boxing club, which has been looking for a home in Maroondah for many years. Its last home was also condemned due to access problems. It was in the current Ringwood Central Community Centre. That is a good thing for local sport.

I also mention some of my local businesses that contacted me last year and said that the 50 per cent tax rate for investment was such a great thing. They are saying to me, ‘We really like the provisions in this budget—the provisions that allow for instant deductions for the cost of assets up to $5,000 purchased by small businesses, sole traders and partnerships.’ For example, a purchase of $5,000 under the system that the government intends to bring in would be a $5,000 tax deduction rather than the $750 tax reduction that it was in the first year. Measures like that are a great support for small businesses, encouraging them hopefully to expand and put on more staff in what are still economically uncertain times internationally.

The Primary Schools for the 21st Century program has been a fantastic program for every school in my electorate. Some buildings are finished, some are partly finished and there are a couple that are due to start. Of the ones that have been finished, the quality of the workmanship, the usefulness of the assets and the appreciation of the schools is fantastic. They are a great result for our local community. They are also so different to each other—some schools have chosen libraries, some have chosen halls, some have chosen refits and some have chosen some very innovative learning centres. In fact, I was at one only a couple of weeks ago that was a learning and discovery centre. It was an open plan learning space, and when I was there the students were learning about cybersafety. That is a fantastic thing to do at school, because far too many people think that it is the job of parents to teach their children about that—and I agree that it should be—but far too many parents do not know much about turning on a computer, let alone how or where their children should be accessing the internet.

It is now 16 months into the program, and I have schools such as St Luke’s with its now complete discovery centre. I have schools such as Blackburn Primary, which has a wonderful multipurpose hall and a full-size basketball court. That is a $3 million job and it means that the school, which for so many years has been bursting at the seams, can have an indoor assembly with more than just the children present. This is a school where formerly, if the full complement of 450 children and a sprinkling of parents turned up to an assembly, the parents would have had to stand outside the building and put their heads in the window to see what was going on—there was not enough room. I have been to many assemblies and concerts there where that has happened. We also have schools like Burwood East Primary, which up until now has not even had a hall. In fact, I have been to assemblies there in the rain and in the baking heat. The children are only small and cannot stand that sort of thing very long, but they now have a brand new assembly hall, and that is a great thing for that school.

The National School Pride Program has meant so many benefits to all schools across the electorate because of the number of things they were able to do as a result of it, whether it be doing those maintenance jobs that could never be done because there was not enough money—fixing rotted-out window frames at Mitcham Primary School, for example—or completely redoing an oval with new grass so that it could be used all year round by the students. That happened at many schools, such as Ringwood Secondary, Heathmont East and Laburnum Primary, which put a running track around its oval. The kids are out there in droves using it, and it is really great to see. It is great for a school to give its children the message, ‘We want you to get out and exercise.’ There are also schools such as Nunawading Christian College, which has got a fantastic new indoor hall and meeting area. That school added onto its existing building—it leveraged off that and made it even better. This budget is good for working people and for working families, and I commend these bills to the House.

John Forrest (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The budget appropriations provide an opportunity for the member for Mallee to comment on the state of the Mallee electorate, particularly in regard to the budget the House is considering. The electorate is large—the largest in Victoria, though by no means the largest in the nation. It is bountiful and has wonderful potential in dryland farming, horticulture, small business and lifestyle, and it now has an opportunity to participate in the future particularly in regard to solar power. One thing we have, which is bountiful to share, is ample sunshine. I am pleased to see the budget maintains in the forward estimates the coalition commitment of $75 million for a photovoltaic power station in the north-west of Victoria, something that will provide a stimulus and give Mallee the opportunity to say it is contributing to the challenges confronting the environment.

Mallee is typical of much of regional Australia, which is the engine room providing a productive base on which our national economy depends. But to achieve our full potential we need the consideration, the understanding and the cooperation of both federal and state governments. A good example of what can be done is one of our most significant engineering feats—the completion of the piping of the Wimmera-Mallee stock and domestic system. The recent opening in Horsham of the Wimmera section of that project gave enormous encouragement to the community across the north-west of Victoria. When you add the Wimmera section to the northern Mallee section completed in 2001, the region has seen a total investment of a figure nudging $1 billion. This is an investment in our most precious natural resource of all, water. It has been achieved through federal, state and community and customer cooperation in a genuine partnership with costs being shared one-third/one-third/one-third. I am immensely proud of my role in ensuring the federal government provided a significant proportion of the funding for this project. It is a project that simply would not have happened without a federal partnership.

The pipeline system replaces 18,000 kilometres of leaking and evaporating earthen channels, and will save 100,000 megalitres of water every year—100 billion litres of water, every year. It has been said that that is enough water to fill Olympic swimming pools placed end-to-end from Melbourne to Darwin and back again. I continue to be immensely proud of this project, and, if I do not achieve anything else during my career in this place, the completion of that scheme, which has been debated and discussed for 60 years, will do. It is a modern-day engineering triumph that replaces an earlier landmark engineering achievement—a channel system which first brought water to thirsty communities in the Wimmera and the Mallee in the early 1880s, having taken 60 years to complete.

However, Canberra is still to come good with the final $25 million promised by the Rudd Labor government during the 2007 election. It is still short on that commitment it made, and this is a significant contribution that could be used to backfill the old channels. Most of the smaller ones are being backfilled by the landholders themselves, as part of their own contribution, but the big supply channels, which are as wide as a cricket pitch is long—massive carvings in the landscape—will need backfilling by the responsible authorities and those authorities will need the funds to do it. I am concerned that there is no provision for this $25 million anywhere in the current budget. I call on the Prime Minister to honour the promise he clearly made, and subsequently has reiterated, to provide this $25 million.

On a broader note, much of the Mallee electorate is dedicated to dryland farming and irrigated horticulture along the Murray River. It has three major regional centres—Swan Hill, where I reside, Horsham in the Wimmera, and Mildura in Sunraysia. They are all linked by smaller and no less vital contributing communities. Sadly, our immediate farming and value adding prosperity has been adversely affected by five major elements: irrigation water cutbacks on a scale never envisaged by those visionary people who built the irrigation systems along the Murray, a decade of drought, low commodity prices, a looming mice plague to add insult to injury, and, even worse than that, the potential for one of the worst locust plagues ever seen in Victoria.

While we all appreciate and know the impact of the drought, and the Murray-Darling Basin is very much on the news, the effect on irrigation communities has been devastating, and that is seldom reported. Particularly when you look at the enormous potential of the community around Sunraysia, around the strong provincial centre of Mildura, to visit that location today causes one to be greatly concerned about a provincial centre that was once the third-largest growth centre in the whole of the nation. Coalition shadows, to their credit, have been spending time out there talking to irrigators in their packing sheds in a bid to drive a fairer outcome for those special irrigators of our major food bowl. Irrigators who have had their rights severely eroded by inappropriate decisions by governments, state and federal, in recent years, are now fearful that new sustainable diversion limits, SDLs, which are currently being pursued by Rudd Labor, will add further to their disadvantage. Currently the SDL would seem to be badly biased against the farmer, biased against the irrigator, biased against the wealth creator and biased against the economic activity that creates employment in regional Australia because it targets another 30 per cent of water used for agriculture to be converted to environmental needs.

It needs to be recognised that every gigalitre lost to productive irrigation throughout the Murray-Darling Basin represents 30 jobs across the local economy. It affects the corner store and it affects the retail sector, right down to the shoe shop—lost jobs and lost opportunities. The value of irrigated horticulture flows right through the whole community and it is the reason why strong communities like Mildura and Swan Hill are there in the first place—to support the services needed to encourage horticultural activity. There is also the enormous concern of my constituents that water being taken from the Murray catchment is being sent down to Melbourne and the real concern that this will get rebranded for urban use in a permanent allocation, giving it a greater priority than to those people who produce food; valuable food for the nation.

In 2010 the Victorian irrigation landscape is badly scarred, with many producers having no option now but to sell their water and often their land, although without the water it is not of very great value. This is because their crops were bringing in less than the cost of production, and this has been happening for far too long. It is a tragedy, and the greater tragedy is that it is not yet recognised by the government that presides over Treasury in this place.

We the residents of the north-west of Victoria, we the hardworking people of the Wimmera-Mallee, call for a better balance between the needs of the environment and the river and the needs of wealth creators, employment providers and food production security providers. This can only be achieved by turning to modifications of the overarching federal Water Act. Each year more and more people are getting to the situation where they cannot wait any longer for better times, with more reliability on a water security system that was once the envy of the world. In addition to that, they need a fairer market in a marketplace where they have to contend with the avaricious price pressure from supermarkets. These irrigators are not second-class citizens; they are food producers, they are wealth creators and they are important contributors to this nation’s wellbeing, and their hardship and now their pain flows right across the economic line to every small business. Pretty well every nation around the world defends its food producers, and Australia has a lot to learn in this respect. It is time greater focus was brought to the importance of this productive base in the Australian economy.

We hear a lot of talk about a two-speed economy and the way to address this. It is not to apply additional taxes to those who are successful but to invest wisely in research, extension and implementation. In the past 2½ years under the auspices of this government we have seen nothing but the demise of local research infrastructure, particularly in the north-west of Victoria. Better infrastructure and improvement to those irrigation systems that are nudging 100 years of age and the replacement of the Wimmera-Mallee system are good examples for other locations around the nation to follow.

Our food producers need encouragement to be more globally competitive. They operate where there are not subsidies against commodities in the marketplace internationally that are subsidised. We in the Mallee have had enough of setbacks. I note that regional Australian parliamentarians have been fighting hard to keep their communities together, to try to give them some leadership in the lowest times that we have ever experienced. In the face of drought and low commodity prices, what is looming is the crippling impact of debt. Passionate representations have been made by me in this place about the need for farm debt mediation, because we cannot afford to lose good contributors and expertise in our rural communities. We must do everything we can to put procedures in place to encourage them to stay in their wealth-creating activities. If farmers and small regional businesses cannot trade out of situations, often not of their own making, then we at least need a safety net so that they can exit with dignity. Their passing must not cause a tsunami of lowering of land values. This puts pressure on neighbours across-the-board, puts even more farmers at risk and puts at risk the local government rate base. Local governments across regional Australia are already struggling to raise the revenue to supply the services increasingly demanded of them.

The immediate future of my Mallee electorate concerns me greatly. Reasonable rains have come but accompanied by the blight of a locust plague that could possibly be the worst in history in Victoria. The locusts have already come, blown down from the north out of Queensland. I understand the Plague Locust Commission position, because of the rainfall and flooding up there they lost the opportunity for pesticide spraying of locusts before they got to the air. I am grateful for the attention the minister for agriculture on the other side has provided, with personal assurance to me that he is alert to the need to deliver radical locust control measures when the hatchings start in Victoria in the coming spring. Each female locust mates at least four times; they are worse than rabbits. Each time she lays eggs she lays 50 eggs. With literally billions of locusts already in the air across the South Australian and Victorian Mallee, that is a prediction for a locust plague in our spring of biblical proportions—black skies which old-timers tell me they can recall from the 1940s, and there was a similar event that happened in the 1970s when I was at Melbourne university.

It is seldom that locusts have penetrated this far south in Victoria. It is amazing to see what they will do to a crop overnight. They have already devoured vegetable crops in my electorate, including those of one of Australia’s largest carrot growers at Wemen. Some $500,000 worth of carrots were wiped out within a few hours, which I watched happening while standing beside the desperate landholder. They do not eat carrots; they seem to know where the juicy parts are and they eat the week-old leaf that has just emerged out of the ground. I saw them do that to barley crop in my electorate last month. I have seen them wipe out a dairy farmer just north of Swan Hill, to the point that within two days he arranged to sell his 300 milking cows. That was the last straw for him. Having just got his water back, irrigated to get a nice pasture going, for some reason only known to the locusts they picked out his brand-new juicy green crop and wiped him out within 48 hours—just staggering. That really worries me about what might happen in the spring. So what I am asking for, due to the high cost of pesticides, which farmers just do not have the resources to budget for, is that governments in Victoria and the Plague Locust Commission get together to make sure that there is adequate pesticide in the nation and get ready for the spring. It is not just on local private land; the huge number of national parks in the north-west of the state require governments to play their part, because that is a breeding ground for many locusts.

Two or three months ago we were all joyful down there that this was the best start to a season that many farmers in south-eastern Australia had seen for a decade. Many got busy with their cropping program after Anzac Day, which is the traditional date to start planting barley, wheat and other legume and grain crops, but now they are hesitant to proceed with their cropping, worrying about what the future might hold. They are worrying about making that massive investment and having it destroyed later by a locust plague. All governments, federal and state, need to work cooperatively to ensure there is enough pesticide in the nation and, better than that, have a plan for its expeditious distribution. Farmers will do their part, but governments need to do their part in the national parks and public land.

When a season starts like this it increases the hope and expectation of farmers that they will have an opportunity at long last to reduce their accumulating debt, which is their greatest ambition, increase their productive investment and take the opportunity to invest in improved technology. We have to encourage them to do this, even with the uncertainty of the season they are confronting.

We as a nation have to defend our regional Australian productive base as never before. The vision of a prosperous Australian farmer driving a Rolls-Royce is long gone—that was maybe 50 years ago. The modern farmer today is a tough individual, working long hours for little reward and busting their guts to remain world-competitive, with no subsidies and no barriers to the importation of cheap competitive products. I admire their resilience and their dogged pursuit in producing first-class, quality food and quality livestock. I commit to continuing to provide them with the vociferous support they deserve in this place. It is time to give our regional economies the respect and recognition they deserve so that they might continue producing the quality foods that too many Australians take for granted.

Critics of irrigators have obviously never gone hungry. They need to be reminded that the plethora of fresh fruit on supermarket shelves—stone fruit, citrus, table grapes—or the good wine, the good steak and the prime Mallee lamb they consume does not originate in a supermarket but comes from the backbreaking work of Australian farmers who have carried the nation for the whole of its history. Today I ask the parliament to give the recognition due to our nation’s productive base and stop treating our regional communities—who are used, abused and neglected—as the poor cousins of those in the cities and call on the Rudd Labor government to respond.

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

In what will be my last speech on a budget in this House, I am pleased to see that this budget represents a real contrast to earlier budgets. The first of Labor’s budgets in government began to correct the imbalance in priorities that the previous 12 budgets of the coalition cemented into place in Australia. Labor’s second budget was framed in the wake of the global financial crisis and, as we look back on the decisions taken at that time, we should appreciate the correctness of the policy decisions which saved Australia from the worst consequences of the economic downturn that affected developed countries around the world.

At a time when more economic storm clouds are gathering, this year we have a budget which builds on the better than expected outcomes, going by last year’s figures, and will see Australia back in a surplus position within three years. It is a responsible budget. Given that this is an election year, unlike budgets under coalition governments, there are no rash handouts. Instead, this budget and programs announced by the government provide a plan for Australia’s future.

While the previous government could never see past the next election, the government’s plans in this budget will place Australia in the best position to meet the challenges of the next decade and beyond. The previous government boasted about surpluses which it had gained through the sale of public assets and by slashing expenditure in vital areas of spending—slashing funding for universities and vocational education and then boosting skilled migration to make up for the skills shortages that its policies had produced. The coalition government managed the strangling of our hospital system by holding back the Commonwealth’s share of funding for so many health services and failed to address the infrastructure needs that have led to so many bottlenecks in our export industries and in our expanding cities. These are not the sorts of budget strategies that we can expect should a coalition government be elected next year.

You could refer to the previous government’s record in office as ‘a tale of lost opportunities’. From the time it took office, the coalition government has squandered the legacy of the Keating and Hawke governments. At that time Australian manufacturing industries were gaining confidence and a foothold in world markets, but we have seen them shrink to a shadow of their place in the Australian economy. The once thriving inbound tourism industry now stutters along and there is a cloud over the future of our once booming education exports.

This Labor government’s vision of what Australia could be 10 years from now is very different from that of the opposition. For a start, the government acknowledges that we have a two-speed economy—something any observer would notice if they travel from one side of Sydney to the other or from one side of Australia to the other. The Treasurer, when speaking of the budget’s key challenges, referred to ‘a return to full capacity in a two-speed economy’. This is the first time I can recall a Treasurer acknowledging this fact. At last we have a Treasurer with the eyes to see that not every part of the Australian economy is going gangbusters. Better still, we have a Treasurer and a government that have the courage to adopt policies that can ensure a prosperous future for all Australians, not just those in the mining industry but those in other parts of the traded goods sector—our farmers, our agricultural producers, our tourism industry, our import-competing industries, our manufacturers and service providers facing increased competition from overseas based firms, our building industry in non-mining areas and our financial services sector.

To have a stable and vigorous economy we cannot place all our investment eggs in one basket. We need a diverse range of industries if we are to develop the full potential of our nation and all its resources, not just the ones that can be dug out of the ground. We know from experience in Australia in past decades and from the recent experience in overseas countries that reliance on mining alone can produce distortions in the economy, which are not in the long-term interests of development. We know from the work of Professor Bob Gregory in the 1970s that mining investment draws investment away from other domestic industries. We know that dependency on mining incomes can leave an empty shell in regional economies when commodity price falls lead to mine closures or when the resource runs out.

The Leader of the Opposition has described the mining industry as ‘the goose that lays the golden eggs’. Well, that is a bird-brained approach to our national economy. The mining industry is not a goose that lays golden eggs; it is a cuckoo that lays its eggs in the nest of other birds and deserts its young to be raised by unsuspecting parents. The cuckoo chick then flies at the expense of the legitimate chicks, leaving the deceived parents with no live offspring to continue with. That would be the fate of other Australian industries if the opposition and their mates in the mining industry had control of the Australian economy. Their approach belongs in cloud cuckoo land, not in our great country Australia.

I mentioned the fate of Australia’s rural industries. As mineral exports and higher commodity prices force up the value of the Australian dollar, our rural exports yield less in Australian dollar terms and force producers out of business. But where are the cries of ‘We’ll all be ruined’ that we have heard so often from the National Party? In this debate there is not just silence but enthusiastic support for the mining lobby. To mention another bird, they are like turkeys voting for Christmas. But we all know that the National Party sold its soul to the miners decades ago—and they wonder why Independent members are successful in their former strongholds!

But just how does a two-speed economy affect people from different parts of Australia involved in different industries? If you look at the Sydney real estate market over the last 12 months, you will see that prices at the top end of the market have increased by 17 per cent while prices in the most affordable suburbs have increased by seven per cent. Significantly, first home buyers now make up only 16 per cent of the market compared to 30 per cent in the previous year, and while the closing of the government’s more generous first home buyers scheme is partly responsible for this drop, the six interest rate rises since last October must also be having an effect. With only the blunt instrument of interest rates to cool down inflation in mining states, all Australian borrowers, including homebuyers and small businesses, are forced to share the burden. That makes the Treasurer’s challenge to return to full capacity in a two-speed economy all the more difficult.

While the media have focused on mineworkers’ claims that they will be ruined, I have yet to see anyone interview building workers in New South Wales to ask about the effects of the 13 interest rate rises we saw under the Howard government. This month, when the Reserve Bank again increased interest rates, the building industry in New South Wales was flatlining. If it were not for the much maligned Building the Education Revolution, the building industry would be in deep, deep recession. That is the challenge of managing a two-speed economy.

If we must share the pain of higher interest rates, why shouldn’t we share the bounty of our mineral wealth, and how should we use that mineral wealth for the benefit of all Australians? The program proposed by the government addresses three key areas. Firstly, it phases in an increase in the superannuation guarantee levy, increasing the minimum employer contribution from nine per cent to 12 per cent. This is a measure that will significantly boost the retirement savings of millions of working Australians, particularly those on lower incomes. It will enable millions of working Australians to share in the wealth of this country and, importantly, it will give them access to that wealth on their retirement from work. You can make a huge difference to the retirement incomes of so many low- and middle-income earners. As well, the money invested in superannuation boosts Australian savings and provides a pool of funds for investment projects around Australia.

Who would oppose such a worthwhile measure? The opposition, of course. They have always opposed superannuation for ordinary Australian workers. They opposed compulsory superannuation when Labor introduced the scheme 20 years ago and, in their time in government, they did nothing to increase contributions. Let us not forget Labor’s long-term commitment to increase the levy to at least 12 per cent. What did the opposition do about increasing the levy? We all remember the L-A-W tax cut promise by the Keating government in 1993—I remember it well. There was a second part to that, which was to be delivered as an increase in the superannuation levy. But too many members opposite have forgotten that the coalition government pocketed that tax cut and saved it for election year handouts. The opposition has never wanted universal superannuation. The only thing superannuation policies mean to them is a way of providing even more lucrative perks for high-income earners. An increase in the superannuation levy is an overdue measure and an effective way of sharing our nation’s wealth. It will benefit all working Australians by improving their retirement incomes.

As well as this retirement savings measure, I am pleased to see that this budget includes the 50 per cent discount on the first $1,000 of interest earned on deposits held in banks, building societies or credit unions and on bonds, debentures and annuity products. This is another example of a Labor government providing tax relief for low- and middle-income earners rather than perks for high-wealth individuals that was common under the previous government. Changes which increase the amount persons over 50 can contribute to top up their super, which is limited to those with balances of less than $500,000, is another example of treating superannuation as a retirement income base for all rather than the preserve of the wealthy. This treatment allows for what is becoming common practice for many low- and middle-income Australians at a time in their lives when they no longer have dependent children and can commit more of their income to provide for their retirement.

The second measure to address the challenge of managing a two-speed economy is the reduction in the level of company tax from 30 per cent to 28 per cent and the earlier introduction of the changes for small business, including the instant write-off of assets costing less than $5,000. The opposition, which paints itself as the saviour of small business, is strangely very silent on this issue. These are measures which provide direct benefit to small business. The $5,000 instant write-off is far more realistic than the much lower levels which applied. This will allow many small businesses to upgrade equipment and improve productivity.

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the member for Fowler willing to give way?

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

No. As I was saying, this will allow many small businesses to upgrade equipment and improve productivity, which will benefit their bottom line as well as improving our nation’s productivity. By improving the cash flow of small businesses, this measure will provide greater relief to many small businesses.

The third measure in this initiative is to address the need to improve our nation’s infrastructure. The Resource Super Profits Tax offers the opportunity to fund $5.6 billion in new infrastructure expenditure over the next 10 years. This is money that is urgently needed for investment in critical infrastructure projects to reduce bottlenecks. I am pleased to note that the budget provides $71 million for the road-rail terminal at Moorebank in the neighbouring electorate of Hughes. This is a critical project which can assist in reducing traffic congestion in south-western Sydney.

The most important infrastructure development is the rollout of the National Broadband Network. This project is vital to Australia’s future. As many other members would find, the most common complaint coming to my office by email relates to slow broadband services in Western Sydney. It is clear that no private sector operator is willing or capable of providing a world-class broadband network. Failure to proceed with the rollout of fast broadband will leave Australian businesses in an information dark age. But the Luddites opposite seem to think that we can put up with snail-paced information technology for years and years to come.

Nothing illustrates this better than the announcement by the opposition that it would scrap the electronic health records system. This is one of the most effective ways of improving patient safety and healthcare delivery, and it is not surprising to see that it is supported by health professionals across the board. It seems that only the opposition is out of step with this important health initiative. The electronic health records system is one part of a $2.2 billion investment in our health system. While the previous government failed to maintain the Commonwealth’s share of hospital funding, this government has accepted the Commonwealth’s responsibility in health care and ushered in a new age of health system reform.

As I began by saying, this will be my last contribution to a budget debate.

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

Very sad.

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

Thank you. I thought that some members might be happy that I am going! I expect that in future years I will have the luxury of watching the Treasurer’s speech on television like so many Australians. I can only hope that those budget speeches will show the vision for Australia’s future that is evident in this budget and not the return of the type of budgets that we saw under previous governments: budgets of lost opportunities to develop our nation, budgets which put the special interest of the wealthy ahead of ordinary Australians. We must continue to have budgets which acknowledge that Australia has developed into a two-speed economy which requires special measures to ensure that we develop the full capacity of our economy and not cater to the needs of one sector.

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

At the outset, I would like to wish the retiring member for Fowler a long and happy life. While we probably disagree on just about every political issue, I do have a very high regard for the honourable member and I think that it is a pity that the hatchet men and women of Sussex Street are forcing the honourable member for Fowler into a premature retirement.

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am reluctant to interrupt the honourable member when he is making his address in reply to the budget, but it was—

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Are you seeking to ask a question?

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

No, I just want to raise a point of order on the comment that he has just made about the ‘hatchet men and women of Sussex Street’. Am I allowed to do that, Mr Deputy Speaker?

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not a point of order. I ask the member to resume her seat. There is no point of order.

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

Mrs Irwin interjecting

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

I would look forward to any discussion with the honourable member for Fowler. Maybe she jumped before she was pushed.

However, I just want to comment on this budget. While we hear government members talking about spending in a range of portfolios which they say will be of benefit to the community, one ought to appreciate that the budget position is underpinned by a great big new tax on mining. It is all very well to go out there and say that various aspects of government spending are desirable expenditure, and it is all very well to talk about how various sections in the community will benefit from government spending, but the reality is that this budget is built on an illusion because it is by no means certain that this great big new tax on mining will pass through the parliament. It is by no means certain that the companies involved in the mining industry will continue to make investments in that industry. The income projections from this great big new tax on mining are incredibly optimistic given the fact that large mining companies and smaller mining companies have been talking about voting with their feet and going to other opportunities around the world which do not have the same level of sovereign risk as is now presented by Australia under the Labor government. So, even if this great big new tax on mining passes into law, the amount of revenue which will be raised from it will be much less than the optimistic, rosy predictions of the government and the Treasurer. When that money is not received, the budget will not go into surplus within the time frame announced by the Treasurer.

From the point of view of the Sunshine Coast, the area of Australia I am privileged to represent in the Australian parliament, the budget is more significant for what it omits rather than for what is included. There is very little in the budget for the Sunshine Coast. I do not know whether this is a penalty being imposed on the people of the Sunshine Coast because they had the temerity to vote for the Liberal-National opposition at the last election, but this budget is just another big-taxing, big-spending Labor budget with no serious reform. Unfortunately, much needed infrastructure spending for the Sunshine Coast is entirely absent from this budget. I refer to a couple of articles in the Sunshine Coast Daily newspaper, which services the Sunshine Coast, the seventh largest population area in Australia. I quote from an article by Bill Hoffman. He says that the budget ‘appears to have done nothing to boost regional economies that have been left struggling by the global financial crisis’. He goes on to write:

Sunshine Coast Business Council chief Jason Law said he had failed to identify any targeted assistance to the regions and rejected claims by Treasurer Wayne Swan that Australia had defied the economic gravity of the crisis.

“I don’t see that here,” he said.

Mr Law said it was essential that council, state and federal politicians, as well as business lobby groups, went in hard to chase any available money to assist the region.

I have already written to the Prime Minister, the Minister for Health and Ageing and other ministers in relation to infrastructure needs of the Sunshine Coast but have not received any response at all from the Prime Minister and from other ministers have received responses that do not give us any cause to be optimistic. Mr Law went on to say in the article:

“We won’t be noticed if we don’t make a noise,” he said.

“We have to punch above our weight. The Coast faces a drain of skills to the mining sector.

“The government isn’t talking about the regions. There has been nothing proscribed for them and we need to fight.”

Mr Law, a very well respected member of the business community on the Sunshine Coast, said what everyone believes—namely, that the government ignored the Sunshine Coast in the budget. The article went on to say:

Hopes that there would be Infrastructure Australia funding for key projects like the $200 million airport upgrade and assistance to get the Sunshine Coast health precinct going was a long bow, he said, because of the amount of money that was already committed to other projects.

Those projects, of course, are in other areas. He pointed out that the reduction of one per cent in company tax may have some impact on major corporations but would have little or none here. He of course is referring to the Sunshine Coast.

There was nothing of significance for seniors in the budget. As part of that nothing for seniors, there was an ongoing failure to index the eligibility for the Commonwealth seniors health card. More and more Sunshine Coast seniors are being forced off the Commonwealth seniors health card. By being forced off the card they lose eligibility for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme at the concessional rate.

I refer to another article by Bill Hoffman and the AAP in the Sunshine Coast Daily of Wednesday, 12 May. In this very interesting article he refers to Angela Vogt, a very worthwhile member of the community. He points out that she juggles her own business, three children under the age of 12, the family budget and her husband’s frequent absence because of his job in the Western Australian mining industry. I quote from the article:

Last night’s Federal Budget has left her underwhelmed.

“I’m surprised there are no bells and whistles,” Ms Vogt said.

“There is no help for the average worker, no real tax cuts or benefits. Healthcare was an election promise that hasn’t been delivered before now.

“There is no help for a new hospital and there is no help to build up areas like ours that are experiencing the level of growth we are.

“It’s been tough but there are no incentives for small business to employ more workers.”

Ms Vogt said industrial relation laws which require employers to offer minimum three-hour shifts were doing nothing to help kids and students working casually to bring more money into their families.

A Coast resident for the past six years, the publicist said the Budget delivered nothing to improve her husband Steve’s employment prospects here.

He works four weeks on, one week off in Western Australia, and it is the second time the couple has been forced to take that option since they have been here.

“We do that because there is not enough consistent work here,” Ms Vogt said.

Ms Vogt said the new mining tax was scary for her family unit.

The article goes on to say:

“The industry will cut corners, and jobs will go because of it,” she said.

“The Budget does nothing to improve employment opportunities here and with the mining tax it just adds extra pressure on us.”

That is Angela Vogt of the Sunshine Coast expressing as a person in our community her view of the failings of this budget.

It is important also to look at respected commentators like Robert Gottliebsen in the Business Spectator, published at 7.45 am on 26 May 2010. He refers to the world crisis in finance resulting from poor management in Greece and the situation in Europe, but he indicates that there is a double-whammy effect in Australia. I quote:

Of course, as only Australia can, we have shot ourselves in the foot with the mining tax which has triggered a capital strike that will delay over $100 billion worth of new projects. So, if the global markets signal converts to a slowdown, then we face a double blow. That’s why our currency is being hammered and our stock markets are performing so badly.

We have reports that the government are about to do a backflip on this great big new mining tax. It would be a good thing if they did but when they do that their budget will be shown as the sham and illusion that it is. It is important to appreciate that this great big new tax on mining will make sure that residents on the Sunshine Coast will face higher electricity and grocery prices. The government has completely lost the plot and residents in the electorate of Fisher need a government that is committed to paying off Labor’s $93 billion of public debt and in doing so supporting families and securing jobs. It is truly scary that this government, which inherited a budget surplus, has through irresponsible spending turned us into a situation where the future of Australians not yet born has been mortgaged. That is just an incredibly scary position, as is the level of incompetence we have seen in so many areas. One only has to talk to any single Australian to find how concerned people are with the bungled foil insulation disaster which saw four people lose their lives. Now we find in the budget the necessity to spend another $1 billion to try and sweep up after the mess that was made by Minister Garrett and those in authority in his department. The government, however, has not in my view explained to the Australian community satisfactorily how it is worthy of continued support given its monumental and gross incompetence.

Then of course we have Labor’s dismantling of our border protection which has essentially turned the oceans around Australia into a superhighway for people smugglers. What the government has done is to go out there and tell people smugglers, ‘Roll up, roll up. We’re going to take you passengers,’ and people are paying a commercial figure to people smugglers to be shipped to Australia. Their lives are at risk, and now the government is having to spend another billion dollars to try to do something about the need to have border protection. It is also relevant that this budget deficit is the biggest budget deficit on record at $57 billion.

This high-taxing, high-spending budget is a danger to the economy and a danger to Australians born and Australians yet to be born. I am particularly pleased that the Liberal-National opposition has indicated our very strong opposition to this great big new mining tax, which is a massive threat to Australia’s economic future. On the other hand, the Leader of the Opposition has been prepared to take some hard and necessary decisions that the Prime Minister and the government have shirked. That is why the opposition found it necessary to make certain announcements over the last week or so to indicate that we will return the budget to surplus within the same time frame as the government claims it will but do so without the need for a great big new mining tax, which will threaten the economy, threaten jobs and see investment go overseas instead of to Australia.

It is interesting that the Canadian authorities have said that, now that the sovereign risk in Australia is as high as it is, mining companies ought to look at immigrating to Canada and voting with their feet by investing in a country that does not have the same iniquitous tax that is being suggested by the Labor government. This great big new tax on mining follows the other great big new tax, the ETS, which has been temporarily shelved by the Prime Minister. But there is no doubt that, if the government is re-elected, this other great big new tax, the ETS, will come back in. That will threaten our exports and our economy. There will be disaster all around.

I want to stress that I have written to the Prime Minister to seek assistance in our urgent need on the Sunshine Coast for extra hospital and health services. The Queensland Labor government promised, prior to the last state election, that the Sunshine Coast University Hospital—which is desperately needed, given the rapid population increases on the Sunshine Coast—would be built by 2014. No sooner had the result of the election been declared, they shredded that promise and said that the hospital would not be constructed until 2016. Given the fact that the Prime Minister has grabbed about 30 per cent of Queensland’s GST revenue, I suggest that some of that revenue should be spent on the Sunshine Coast to accelerate the construction of the Sunshine Coast University Hospital that was postponed by the state Labor government.

I would be the first to say that state Labor governments around the country have shown that they are monumentally incompetent in many areas, particularly in the area of health. Now that 30 per cent of the GST revenue is being raked in by the Prime Minister, that money should be disgorged and spent in areas like the Sunshine Coast so that we get our hospital built by 2014 and do not have to wait until 2016. The state Labor government is seeking to impose huge population increases on the Sunshine Coast. The Palm View development alone will bring 14,000 more people and the population of the Sunshine Coast will double in the next 10 to 15 years. But state Labor governments are not prepared to put in that infrastructure—such as the Sunshine Coast University Hospital—that we need.

It is also necessary to increase the size of the Bruce Highway from Caboolture to the Sunshine Coast to six lanes. I have been pushing both the former government and the current government to do this. We have a situation on the Bruce Highway in which traffic is often gridlocked. The Howard government increased the size of the Bruce Highway to six lanes from Brisbane to Caboolture. That removed the worst bottleneck between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. But, as traffic flows continue to grow because of population continuing to expand, there is a need for six lanes all the way from Caboolture to the Sunshine Coast.

I mentioned that I had written to the Prime Minister in relation to the need for extra health and hospital services on the Sunshine Coast. It would not come as a surprise to you, Deputy Speaker Georganas, to hear that I have not received a reply from the Prime Minister. I also wrote to the Minister for Health and Ageing. She did not reply but she got the honourable member for Port Adelaide, the Parliamentary Secretary for Health, to respond on her behalf. Basically what he said was that the Australian government was aware of the challenges facing our public hospital system and is working with the states and territories to make real and sustainable developments.

He also pointed out an accurate statement and said:

… the States and Territories are responsible for the day-to-day administration of public hospitals, included capital infrastructure and service planning, and you may wish to raise your concerns with the Queensland Minister for Health, the Hon Paul Lucas …

And he gave me Paul Lucas’s contact particulars, which I already had. The only reason that I wrote to the federal authorities was the fact that Minister Lucas and the state Labor government had broken their promise to construct the Sunshine Coast University Hospital by 2014. I might add that Minister Lucas is the same minister who introduced the new computer payroll system which saw many people on the Sunshine Coast working for Queensland Health not paid or only paid a fraction of what they were entitled to. That of course was a scandal. I understand that a similar computer system is about to be introduced in another government department in Queensland.

In summing up, this is a budget which is significant for what is omitted as far as the Sunshine Coast is concerned. It is a budget built on an illusion. It is a budget which claims it will get back into surplus within a couple of years. The basis of the calculation of that so-called surplus is the great big new tax on mining, which will either not pass through the parliament or, if it does pass through the parliament, not raise anything like the revenue that the Treasurer claimed it would when he delivered the budget. This is a government which in three years has run out of puff. It really is time for a change of government. This government is more like the Whitlam government than any other government Australia has ever had. This is a government which is tired. It has run out of transparency. It is into creative accounting. We find this budget is a huge fraud on the Australian people, in particular on the people fortunate enough to live on the Sunshine Coast. I am very concerned about this budget, which is a disgrace. (Time expired)

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the concrete benefits of this year’s budget for my electorate of Melbourne Ports. Every single one of the 15,321 small businesses in Melbourne Ports—from the famous cafes in Acland Street and in Victoria Street, Albert Park, to the St Kilda Road solicitors, to the Elsternwick smallgoods stores—will be better off because of this budget. Every small business will be able to claim a deduction of assets up to $5,000 and their tax rate will be reduced to 28 per cent if they are a company from 1 July 2012. Incentives for individual savings include a 50 per cent tax concession for savings and an increase in the superannuation guarantee to 12 per cent over time. Workers will also be entitled to the superannuation guarantee for a further five years up to the age of 75.

One of the major benefits out of the budget for young people in Melbourne Ports is a training placement guarantee for those under 25. Australia wide, $661 million will be spent on training. There will be 70,000 new training places and 22,500 new apprenticeships over next four years. This very much fits in with this government’s determination to see that there is a skills training program for young Australians, who were so neglected under the previous government, and it fits in with our skilled migration policy, which is designed in a balanced way to fix skill shortages in Australia—concentrating as much on young people getting skilled positions as on immigrants, who help the bottom line of the budget.

The budget also allocates $2.2 billion on providing better access for GPs, primary care and to train nurses, particularly in aged care and the regions. The necessary funds will also be made available so that waiting times at places like the Alfred Hospital emergency department and all other hospitals around Australia should be no longer than four hours.

Despite the budget necessity of reducing the number of childcare centres under construction—and in spite of the Deputy Prime Minister’s fantastic and perceptive work following the collapse of ABC Learning Centres, where she managed to keep in existence a very large number of commercial childcare centres that would otherwise have folded, with all of the attendant problems that parents would have had to deal with—Melbourne Ports is lucky to have secured two of the 38 centres that will be built by the government. Despite some of the local difficulties with one of these centres, in Port Melbourne, I am confident that both are being built. They will ease the strain on the demand for child care in our burgeoning part of the inner city. I might say that the number of young people and young families moving into the area as part of urban consolidation is very evident. Not only will these two government centres be necessary but there are two other commercial childcare centres being built, which I also support and which cover the very top end of the market and are very expensive. It demonstrates the ongoing need for child care.

This budget is good news for Melbourne Ports. It provides additional funding to improve health services, funds additional training places for our young people and provides financial relief for families and small business. This budget also provides for community housing in my electorate—something this government has made firm commitments on. I notice it was criticised recently on Derryn Hinch’s program on 3AW. I do not think Mr Hinch’s interlocutor was aware of the various things that are being done.

On 23 April this year I joined the federal Minister for Housing, Tanya Plibersek, and the Victorian housing minister, Richard Wyne, together with some great people from the Salvation Army, Territorial Commander Caroline Knaggs and General Eva Burrows, to open the Salvation Army’s crisis accommodation centre in Upton Road, St Kilda. The centre is a testament to the extraordinary service the Salvation Army has given over 20 years in providing emergency housing for the homeless and disadvantaged singles and families in the St Kilda community. The centre will house 11 one-bedroom units and two four-bedroom units for families.

The funding for the centre was contributed by the federal government, which provided $2.3 million through the Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan; the Victorian government, which contributed $2 million; and a range of philanthropic contributors, led by Peter Fox, Margaret Jackson and John and Betty Laidlaw, who contributed $3 million. It is a perfect example of a private-government partnership to see that the more disadvantaged in our electorate have a place to live.

If people visit this centre, they will see it is a paradigm for using land, such as this piece of land next to Dandenong Road, which otherwise would not be used. Its various rooms can be allocated according to the size of the family that are in crisis accommodation. I pay tribute to the architects, to the wisdom of the Salvation Army in working with the federal government and to the philanthropists, in particular to Peter Fox for his leadership. Together they have added to the stock of housing we have available for the homeless and for disadvantaged people who are in need of crisis accommodation.

It saddens me that each day outside my office I am confronted with the effects of homelessness on families and individuals. I do not believe it is acceptable in a country like Australia—one that has staved off the global financial crisis and is prosperous—that thousands of Australians need emergency housing. We as a society and as representatives of the Australian people have an obligation to ensure that no-one is left behind from the progress and affluence of our country. Homeless families and singles suffer abject and gut-wrenching poverty which most of us cannot imagine.

The Salvation Army crisis accommodation centre is just one of a number of projects in my electorate to provide emergency housing that the federal government has invested in to the tune of $53 million. Thirty-six million dollars of this is funding targeted to housing projects through the Port Phillip Housing Association, South Port Community Housing Group and St Kilda Community Housing. I have been to most of these projects, and to say that they are achieving their ends is putting it mildly. Of this amount, $5.1 million is for a new building of 17 units in Grey Street, the opening of which I went to the other day; $1.5 million for eight new units in Alma Road; $1.1 million for nine new units in Blessington Street, St Kilda; $1.5 million for 14 new units in Jackson Street; and $5.5 million for 36 new units in Beaconsfield Parade. The Australian government has made homelessness a national priority, and the building of these new facilities in my electorate is a step towards making the changes needed to cut the homelessness rate by 2020.

Another aspect of the budget this week was the accident-prone response of the Liberal Party on economic policy. On Wednesday last week the Liberal Party finally let the public know how they would make changes to the budget. They claimed they would make savings to the tune of $47 billion. One particular program that was not listed to be cut was the school building program. This is despite the fact that, on 12 April, the member for Sturt argued that the third round of the school building program, which has not been rolled out, should be suspended. Perhaps the fact that it was not listed for axing in the budget reply means that members of the Liberal Party have seen the error of their ways, but the ferocity of their attacks against this program with the coming election makes me doubt that. As we have seen, the Leader of the Opposition, in particular, will make all sorts of rash claims if he believes they will bring him political advantage. On behalf of my electorate, I warn the Liberal Party against calling for axing of parts of the school building program in the heat of the election campaign.

The schools in round 3 in my electorate are mostly schools with more complex design issues. This means that, as inner city schools with restricted space require more time to organise new construction, they have been put up in round 3. As Melbourne Ports is one of the most densely populated electorates in the country, we have a very large proportion of schools receiving funding in round 3. Sixteen schools in Melbourne Ports are receiving funding in round 3. All these schools will have their funding scrapped if the Liberal Party comes to power and follows through with the member for Sturt’s plans. This is utterly unacceptable, unjust and even immoral. The member for North Sydney has called the budget ‘a shameless con’, but the only shameless con is the Liberal Party’s claim of depriving our schoolchildren of the new teaching facilities that are economically sensible for the future of Australia.

I might point out to the Liberal Party that I have been through all these projects in my electorate, along with the school principals, to see that we can get the best value we possibly can for the government dollar. It is in the interests of the schools. Why would it be in the interest of any school to try to get the worst results possible? Only in electorates where members have been insufficiently attentive to these things, in my view, has this problem been allowed to happen. I know from the projects I see in my electorate that classrooms need to be built for the burgeoning number of children. There are children there. What would the Liberal Party have them do—be taught in the street? If the Liberal Party continues its campaign for the axing of parts of the school building program, I will be demanding that the Leader of the Opposition come to Melbourne Ports to explain to the parents, teachers and students of St Kilda Park Primary School, the Victorian College for the Deaf, Caulfield Primary School or any of the other round 3 schools in my electorate why they do not deserve new classrooms for their schools. The federal government is investing $72 million in schools in Melbourne Ports, and nearly $15 million of it will be ripped off if the opposition comes to power and axes round 3 of the school building program.

I would like to turn to some other aspects of the budget involved in foreign affairs. I was pleased to see the budget is continuing to make progress towards our commitment of spending one-half a per cent across national income on international assistance by 2015. It has become common practice that whenever governments are looking for easy spending cuts they target international development. I am pleased to see they are resisting the temptation to do this. This should not be a partisan matter. I notice, for example, that although the new Tory-Liberal coalition in Britain has announced ₤6 million in spending cuts they are not cuts in international development. Smart governments of whatever party recognise that international development assistance serves the interests of both the recipient and the donor. Our generous international development programs bring benefits to Australia as well as to those who receive our aid.

While we are briefly focusing on the new British government, I hope it drops its daft policy of the Colonial Office—I am sorry; I mean the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—insisting that the government in Afghanistan negotiate with the Taliban, a truly disastrous idea, promoted by those in the Colonial Office—I am sorry; I mean the foreign office—who think that the dreadful people in the Pakistani intelligence service will give them warning about attacks on facilities in London if their mates in the Pakistani intelligence service are included in the Afghan government. This is one of the most manipulative, stupid ideas I have ever heard of, and I hope that the new government drops the previous plans to engineer that trade-off.

I was disappointed to see the comments made earlier this year by the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, Senator Joyce, who attacked this government over our international development program and called for it to be cut. He specifically attacked our donation of $150 million to the World Bank to be used to help to reduce the price of food in some of the world’s poorest countries. This is a foolish position to take, especially from someone who claims to represent farmers. Raising living standards in African countries will create new export markets for our food exports, as they have already done in Asian countries. Fortunately the Australian people have better sense than to listen to such opportunist attacks on our international development program.

In fact, only a fairly small part of our international development money goes to Africa. Much of it goes to assist countries with which we have a direct strategic and political interest. For example, we have committed $323 million over four years to expand our development partnership with Indonesia to tackle key issues such as education, health and governance. Isn’t spending money on governance in Indonesia, where the problem of corruption has been so widespread, in the Australian national interests? Of course it is. That is part of the $500 million a year we will spend in assisting Indonesia. We have an obvious interest in the stability and prosperity of our largest northern neighbour, the largest Muslim country in the world and, to its great credit, a developing democracy. Any assistance we can give them we should maintain. In my opinion the money is well spent. Every dollar you spend in Indonesia on education means that you have to spend less on intelligence and security.

I was in Jakarta recently and had the pleasure of meeting President Yudhoyono and listening to his speech on why Indonesia should continue down the democratic path. I urge anyone who is genuinely interested in the development of democracy in that most important country to read President Yudhoyono’s speech in Jakarta to the World Movement for Democracy.

Similarly to the Indonesian situation, we are giving over $141 million over two years to AusAID and the AFP to step up our civilian assistance to Afghanistan, which will serve to build the capacity of the Afghan government to deliver basic services. We should have learned that military efforts must go hand in hand with civilian assistance if such conflicts as the one we are engaged in in Afghanistan are to achieve their ends. As I have said before, I strongly support our continuing commitment to the conflict in Afghanistan despite its cost in both money and lives—blood and treasure. But that commitment will be futile in the long run unless the people of Afghanistan can see they are getting a better government, better services and better lives for their families as a result of helping to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which bring so much misery to their country. That is why we must maintain our civilian aid programs as well as our military commitment.

My support for international development does not mean that I think there are no problems with our program; of course there are and there always have been. I have seen recent reports of flaws in our international development assistance to PNG, for example, and I was pleased to see an interview with the Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance, Bob McMullan, in which he made clear we are cutting back on spending on advisers and putting more into direct assistance.

I also want to be critical of the $12.7 million we are giving each year to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA. This is a single-nation focused UN agency which exists solely to channel aid to the four million people living in the Palestinian territories and other countries. The sad fact is that UNRWA is a refugee organisation which employs 26,000 people, and it is focused on one group. The UNHCR, the refugee agency that covers the rest of the world, only has 11,000 employees. This is plainly totally out of kilter and in fact helps perpetuate the state of dependence on foreign aid and the continuing status of the Palestinian people in these territories. UNRWA should have over the years done what every other refugee agency in the world has done—work to transit people out of dependence and out of refugee status in the part of the world that they are able to live in at the moment.

I am all in favour of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians and I support the money we are spending on assisting people in Gaza and the West Bank. I think we need to look more closely at how we spend it and where we spend it. In my view it would be much better for Australian aid to go to the Palestinians in the West Bank rather than being given in cash to be put in the bank accounts of the Palestinian National Authority to end up God knows where, although I must say Mr Salam Fayyadd, the treasurer of the Palestinian National Authority, is a great improvement on Mr Arafat who used to give out cash in brown bags to leading members of Fatah. By the way, Fatah is conducting an internal investigation into what happened to the entire international aid that was given to them in the 1970s and 1980s, which has disappeared entirely without any accounts and which was used by leading officials of that organisation to buy property in Qatar, Syria and Jordan. The Palestinian people, through their leading political party, Fatah, are demanding their money back from all the leading officials of that organisation. I think we need to look more closely at the endemic waste, corruption and misappropriation of funds that has plagued UNRWA and this kind of funding over the years. One thing I would particularly suggest is that Australian companies should be given tenders to develop sewerage works in Palestinian cities in the West Bank rather than money just being paid directly into a general account of another quasi-government Australians could be employed. This would be a much better use of Australian taxpayers’ money.

I conclude by saying that I commend this budget. I think in so many areas of social concern in my electorate, particularly in education, it is doing a wonderful job. I am very concerned that the claims of the member for Sturt will be activated. All around Australia parents and students who have programs in the third round of the building schools program should be made aware that, if the opposition is elected and the Liberal Party wins office halfway through the construction of these programs, the construction of classrooms for their students will be stopped.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am always pleased to follow the member for Melbourne Ports in the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and cognate bills. I think he gives us a very good knowledge of foreign affairs, which I think many parliamentarians would do well to take note of. It was a shame that at the end of his speech he brought out a scare campaign that all the half-finished buildings would be stopped if the coalition got into government. That is a complete fallacy—as anyone knows, whether a Labor government or a Liberal government comes in, those sorts of contracts are already signed and they would continue. That is just one of those fallacies that unfortunately marred the rest of the speech and the contribution from the member for Melbourne Ports. Whilst he said that foreign aid and development can often be cut in areas when governments are looking for cuts because of the prevailing economic circumstances, he should acknowledge that the government have cut the foreign aid budget by a billion dollars. They have changed some reporting on how they recognise the GNI, but the fact is the government have cut foreign aid funding this year in the budget.

This was Labor’s third budget and it was just as disappointing, if not more so, than the previous two. We all know that Labor inherited a budget surplus from the Howard government. In fact, the Labor government came into government with the best terms of any incoming government in our history since Federation. Unfortunately, they then embarked on a superspendathon that exhausted not only the surplus—and we left them $45 billion, which they have exhausted—but also plummeted Australia into deficit. There is not much in this budget for rural people and certainly not much for people in the electorate of Barker. One of the crying shames of the government is their continuous cut to research and development in agricultural industries in Australia. We will pay the price for that further down the track.

There is no doubt that Labor have been out there spruiking that it was them who carried Australia through a bad economic climate. They are quick to claim that they orchestrated the measures that made Australia survive and be so much better off than many other countries. Never mind that the Howard government built up a surplus or that the resource sector helped carry us through. The government are trying to put a nail in the coffin of the resources industry with their great big superprofits tax on mining. The Rudd government are quick to claim the successes but quick to deny the failures.

This budget is built on hopes and dreams. It is built on a great big new tax. The Labor government are robbing the resource industry to pay off their debts. Isn’t it interesting that the $9 billion a year in extra income that they are hoping to get from the mining super profits tax is equivalent to the interest bill we will be paying each year to pay off our debt. With the debt they have run up, they need to tax someone. So they have said: ‘The resource industry is an easy target. We’ll bring in a great big new super profits tax and that’ll pay off our debt.’ The budget is built on hopes and dreams, and it is built on a prayer that the inflation rates will stay at 2½ per cent and we will have four per cent growth. The budget is a house of cards. They think we are going to have 2½ per cent inflation and four per cent growth and somehow have the best terms of trade that we have had for 60 years.

We all remember the erratic behaviour of the new Labor government. They suggested that the inflation genie was of the bottle, that it was public enemy No. 1 all of a sudden, and that this was all the fault of the previous government. And they think they are somehow going to keep inflation at 2½ per cent over the next four years. This will almost certainly lead to higher interest rates and, of course, higher interest rates will lead to a higher Australian dollar, which will make it much harder for our export industries to compete with the rest of the world. So this budget really is a house of cards. I do not think any rational person would believe that the government can deliver a surplus in 3½ years time. I like to call this budget legislation the ‘Net Debt Bill’.

We have a history of Labor governments being addicted to debt. It is very interesting to look at our history since Federation. In 1901 we federated, we basically created a new government. We built a new capital city. We have fought in two world wars and in a few other skirmishes. We took on huge debts to make sure we had a substantial defence force. In our first 90 years, from 1901 to 1991, this country accumulated a net debt of $16 billion. For 90 years the accumulated net debt was $16 billion. But, over the next five years, the Hawke and Keating governments repeated that 90 years worth of debt each year. So the coalition ended up coming into government with a $96 billion debt. The problem with that was that we had to pay $7 billion or $8 billion in interest each year to the banks, the lenders, rather than actually spending it on the things that we really needed to spend it on. It was a huge problem for Australia and for the incoming coalition government. But we were up to it and we delivered surplus budgets. In the end, we were the first government in Australia’s history to have a net budget surplus. We were the first government in Australia’s history that actually had money in the bank. Of course, the current Labor government have benefited from the fact that we were such good managers.

There is no doubt that the Prime Minister and his government are in a league of their own when it comes to waste, mismanagement and sending the country into debt. This year alone they are projecting a debt of $40 billion. Of course, they have been very successful in saying, ‘That’s all right because in three years we’ll be back in surplus.’ But this $40 billion deficit is still a debt of $2,000 for every man, woman and child in Australia—and that is just one year’s borrowing. And that is on top of the previous year’s deficit of $53 billion, which is about $2½ thousand for every man, woman and child in Australia. So, in two short years, we have gone from having $2,000 in the bank for every man, woman and child in Australia to owing $4½ thousand for every man, woman and child in Australia. This is a salient point: this Labor government have no hope of ever actually repaying this debt.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. The honourable member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.