Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before debate is resumed on this bill, I remind the Federation Chamber that it has been agreed that a general debate be allowed covering this bill and the four related appropriation bills.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night I was highlighting the many sneaky cuts that this government has made when it comes to education, early education and veterans, but this is in the context of a budget that also gives $80 billion back to big business. That is what is so unfair about this budget. This government isn't there to provide high-quality services that Australians depend upon, education, health, but wants to give large tax cuts to multinational companies, which is of significant concern. It's for this reason that Labor will campaign as a much stronger alternative government that will invest in our hospitals and schools, has made tough decisions, won't be giving $80 billion back to big business, and will provide double the personal income tax cuts that the coalition is proposing for 10 million Australians. That is about helping ordinary Australians get on with the difficulty of the cost of living. That is about actually making sure that those that need support, those that are finding it tough, those that have not had wage growth for such a long time and that are continuing to struggle will get the support they need. That is a sharp, sharp contrast to the coalition that wants to give tax cuts to the big end of town. Labor wants to give tax cuts to working families in this country, families that deserve support, families that deserve assistance with the cost of living. I am proud to stand with this alternative vision for the country that we live in.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the truly remarkable things about budgets is that they really lay bare for all to see the priorities of a government. This budget indeed tells you everything you need to know about the Turnbull Liberal government. It gives an $80 billion tax handout to big business at the same time as it hits our schools and our hospitals with savage cuts. Despite shocking revelations of misconduct from the banking royal commission, it splashes the big banks with $17 billion in tax cuts at the same time that it cuts $26 million from the banking cop on the beat, ASIC.

The budget looks after big business and high-income earners at the very expense of investment in health, education and vital public services. It cuts the energy supplement, costing pensioners $14 a fortnight, and it forces Australians to work until the age of 70. It locks in $17 billion worth of cuts to schools and confirms $2.2 billion worth of cuts to Australian universities. It maintains $2.8 billion worth of cuts to hospitals and keeps the Medicare freeze on specialist visits for a further year. It rips a further $270 million from TAFE and apprenticeships and levies more than $80 million in new cuts to the ABC. It axes 1,200 jobs from Centrelink, even though unanswered calls spiked from $29 million to $55 million last year. It delivers no new money for aged care, even though 105,000 older Australians are on the waiting list for home care packages. It proposes a radical attack on Australia's progressive taxation system, which would see a carer earning $40,000 on the same marginal tax rate as a lawyer earning $200,000. It squanders some of the best economic conditions in many years. Net debt is double what it was when the Liberals came to office and gross debt is set to be stuck well above half a trillion dollars for every year for the next 10 years.

Unlike Mr Turnbull, Labor has a clear plan to bring back fairness. A Shorten Labor government will improve our schools, fix our hospitals and save Medicare. We will make universities more accessible, guarantee the future of TAFE and put local jobs first. We will take real action on climate change, invest in renewables and safeguard our environment for future generations. We'll deliver genuine tax relief for working Australians, protect pensioners and improve the bottom line. It's a plan we can afford because we've made the hard decisions to rein in tax breaks for high-income earners and we're not going to give big business, multinationals and the big banks an additional $80 billion tax handout.

I would now like to step through a few of the concerns that I have about the impact of this budget on my community in Newcastle and, more broadly, for the nation. The University of Newcastle stands to lose an estimated $69 million as this government levies $2.2 billion worth of cuts on universities. This will undoubtedly hurt students, the wider community and, indeed, our regional economy more broadly. The university was able to protect students from those cuts this year, but that is an unsustainable pathway. When you rip $69 million out of a university, you cannot do so without impacting on student learning and student supports.

I am deeply concerned about the government's budget plan to cut two per cent of medical training places from universities across the country to help fund its so-called Murray-Darling medical schools network. Just to be clear: I do not begrudge medical places in regional Australia—indeed, I come from a regional university with an outstanding medical school—but I am concerned about this blatantly political plan that is so obviously designed with electoral rather than policy outcomes in mind.

It would be an absolute travesty if that plan were to come at the expense of places currently sitting in the nation's best regional medical training program, which is delivered in partnership by the University of Newcastle and the University of New England. This genuinely joint medical program provides the most successful model for regional medical training in the country. If anything, it should be boosted, not diminished. It runs three rural clinical schools in Tamworth, Armidale and Taree. It takes in almost twice the national average number of students from rural and regional communities. Graduates are also twice as likely to seek work in rural and regional areas. Not only that but the University of Newcastle graduates more than one-third of the nation's Indigenous doctors.

Why would you rip out these places? Why would you put a program like that at risk in order to stump up places that have an electoral advantage for the government? Why would you rip places from this medical training centre that has a clear, proven track record of delivering superior regional medical training? I've already personally raised with the minister my concerns about this issue, and I will certainly be seeking assurances that the University of Newcastle's leading medical program will be quarantined from this government's cuts.

This budget locks in $17 billion worth of cuts to schools. In my electorate of Newcastle that means that schools are each losing on average $350,000 over this year and next year alone. That will mean fewer teachers, less individual attention and less support for kids to achieve their full potential. What is worse is that the harshest cuts are being borne by the schools that can least afford it. Over the next two years alone public schools cop 86 per cent of the Liberals' most recent cuts. If that weren't bad enough, we recently learnt that Mr Turnbull has been busy doing more than 100 sneaky deals to give the elite private schools more cash from a $7 million secret slush fund.

Labor understands the importance of investing in education, of investing in our future generations. We think every child deserves the best start in life. Every child deserves a supportive learning environment to ensure that they reach their full potential, and that's why we are committed to restoring every single cent of the $17 billion that the Liberals have cut from our schools.

One of the truly tragic outcomes of this budget is the Turnbull Liberal government's ongoing cuts to TAFE. Hunter TAFE, which is in my part of the world, is Australia's largest regional TAFE and vocational education and training provider. It has been an incredibly important partner and a provider of that training in our community, but it's no secret that TAFE in New South Wales is on its knees. These cuts—this additional $270 million that the Turnbull Liberal government is now cutting from our TAFEs and apprentices—are adding to the crisis that we are already experiencing in TAFE. This extra $270 million cut to TAFE and apprentices is, of course, on top of more than $3 billion of cuts from previous Liberal government budgets.

Once again, it clearly demonstrates that the Turnbull Liberal government's priorities are completely wrong. No government should be prioritising tax cuts to foreign shareholders and the big banks while cutting federal government support to vocational education and training. Seriously, nobody thinks this is a good idea in my electorate and I doubt that they do even in Liberal electorates. It's astonishing that the government thinks that they should continue on this pathway of cuts into TAFE.

I'm very pleased Labor has committed to guaranteeing that under our government at least two out of three training dollars will go into TAFE, because we believe that TAFE must be at the front and centre of Australia's vocational education and training industries. We'll invest $100 million in modernising TAFE facilities around the country and ensure that one in every 10 jobs on Commonwealth priority projects are filled by Australian apprentices. We will provide 10,000 pre-apprenticeship programs for young people who want to learn a trade. There is still a place in many communities for a strong TAFE body to provide trade skills for men and women. From Labor's perspective, universities and TAFE are equal partners in a higher education pathway. I am very pleased that Labor will also provide 20,000 adult apprenticeship programs for older workers who need to retrain. Nothing could be more important for our citizens.

Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou, you could be forgiven for thinking that there would be no more important priority for any government than the health and wellbeing of its citizens. So you can imagine how astonished I was to find that this budget continues to cut deeply into the budgets of our local hospitals in order to pay for big business tax cuts. This will mean increased delays for surgeries, that nurse and doctor numbers will decline and that emergency department waiting lists will increase. In Newcastle, the government is cutting close to $10 million from our local hospitals, and that is from the 2017-2020 years. The John Hunter Hospital, a major hospital in my region, which does not just service Newcastle but, indeed, provides emergency and trauma services through to the Queensland border, is standing to lose $6.88 million. The Calvary Mater Newcastle—again, the region's major oncology service provider—is losing $1.6 million. And, astonishingly, the John Hunter Children's Hospital is going to be cut by $1.2 million. Labor will fully reverse the Turnbull Liberal government's $2.8 billion worth of hospital cuts, as well as funding 500,000 more life-saving MRI scans through Medicare.

My community tells me how important those measures are and how appalling they find the ongoing attacks on local hospitals from this government. Like me, they find this to be both short-sighted and wrongheaded, and I would implore the government to rethink their ridiculous plans to cut further into the health budgets of this nation.

Of course, people in my region have grown used to the fact that Liberal governments do not any longer invest in significant public infrastructure projects in the Newcastle-Hunter region, so it was with great disappointment that there was no money on the table for the Glendale interchange and no investment for high-speed rail. It's astonishing that this government fails to understand the importance of connectivity between our major cities in Australia and why they might want to invest in a high-speed rail network on the eastern seaboard. The evaluation studies were done by Labor when we were in government. There's no need for any more feasibility studies. We know that high-speed rail would turbocharge regional economies like Newcastle's and understand the good that would have. But, of course, every year that we delay we have hundreds of millions of dollars added to the cost of trying to invest in these projects. Indeed, it concerns me that the transport corridor for the high-speed rail is still not protected.

There are many aspects that I would want to touch on, but I will end with the fact that there was, to my profound regret, no investment in a Commonwealth court registry in Newcastle. There are such physical constraints for that court and also a lack of personnel. We have been crying out for the Attorney-General to replace the judge who has just left and was transferred to Queensland. We are down a Federal Circuit Court judge again. We need one badly, and we need them now.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's a growing crisis in this country, and it's evidenced by the fact that one in three young people either haven't got a job or haven't got the hours of work that they want. It's much, much worse for those young people who finish school and who don't have qualifications above that school level. If you look back over Australian history, what you will find is that the youth unemployment rate is always higher than the general employment rate and that every time we get into trouble when there's a recession the youth are hit harder and they have a disproportionately higher rise in their unemployment rise, so more of them are jobless.

What we also have usually found, looking back over history, is that give it a couple of years and, as better economic times come, the two come back into line and young people tend to start finding jobs again. But that hasn't happened since the GFC. Since the GFC, unemployment and underemployment for young people has continued to get worse, not better. We're almost a decade on from it, and we now have this appalling situation in this country where one in three young people can't find a job or don't have enough hours of work. They are getting screwed. The old measures that previously might have pumped up employment don't seem to be working any more. We are increasingly turning our backs on a generation of people who will find themselves without ever having had meaningful employment.

When the government does one of the most important things it does each year, which is hand down its budget, you would expect it would have laser-like focus and put up in lights the fact that so many people in this country are finding it very, very difficult to make ends meet and it's especially hard for young people. But there was nothing for young people in this budget. This is a budget that gives the middle finger to young people in this country. If you think about those one in three young people who either haven't got a job or aren't getting enough hours of work, many of them will be reliant on youth allowance and, if you get a bit older, they will be reliant on Newstart. The number of people who are in that situation where they're forced to rely on welfare because the government has not done enough to create meaningful jobs for them is growing.

The government trumpets its job-creation figures and ignores the fact that, really, those job creation figures are just keeping up with population growth and that we have unemployment persistently stuck at over five per cent. If you again look back over history, you will find that between World War II and the 1970s the average unemployment rate in this country was two per cent. The government is consigning a whole bunch of people to the scrap heap. It's even worse for young people, and the budget has nothing for them. While they're looking for work that is not there at the moment, many of those people them are reliant on welfare. They are trying to find jobs that aren't there, and they're reliant on welfare in the meantime. What we know is that if you are reliant on Newstart to try to make ends meet while you're looking for another job, you are living in poverty.

Everyone is now screaming from the rooftops that the level of Newstart is so low that it's actually a barrier to people finding work. Why? Well, you spend all your time just trying to stay alive, trying to make ends meet, because you've got $40 a day. At the same time, the cost of rent is going through the roof. We find that in Melbourne, for example, if you're reliant solely on Newstart, there is not one rental property in the greater Melbourne area that is affordable for you. So we have people living in poverty.

This low level of Newstart is now becoming a barrier to people finding work because it's becoming a poverty trap. It's not just the Greens saying that. It's not just welfare organisations saying that. The Business Council of Australia has said that trying to get by on $40 a day, at a time when energy bills and housing are going through the roof, means that you don't have enough money to get yourself that extra haircut or to go and buy some extra clothes to get yourself ready for a job interview; you don't have the capacity to go and do the extra training that you need; you spend most of your life just trying to survive.

Many people were hoping that this budget might deliver something for all of those people who are looking for a job, and that it might help lift some Australians out of poverty while they're looking for a job. And the budget gave the middle finger to them as well. The budget said: 'There is nothing for you from this Liberal government if you are trying to find jobs that aren't there because we're not creating them. And if you're living in poverty just trying to make ends meet, well, we don't care.'

So not only was the opportunity to help make Australia a more equal society passed up because the government refused to do anything on that front. They also turned their back on last year's budget, when they said that housing was the most important issue. Remember that—when they said that making housing affordable was one of their priorities? There was not a single dollar in this budget to help make housing more affordable.

Things have changed a lot in the last couple of decades in Australia. People are going into record debt because the cost of housing is going up and up and up and other forms of income are not going up at all. And again it is worse for young people. Back in the 1990s, the average cost of a house was six times the average young person's income. Fast forward a couple of decades and the average cost of a house is 12 times an average young person's income. The Treasurer made a big song and dance about that a year or so ago but now seems to have completely forgotten. So there's no money in this budget to look after the people who are falling through the cracks, and there's nothing in this budget to address housing affordability, when we know that, if we had the guts to rein in negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, for example, we could use that money to build more affordable housing.

Start building more affordable housing that's available to people at the lower end of the spectrum and you'll kill a number of birds with one stone. You'll start putting people into work as we start to have a construction-led employment recovery. You'll also start bringing down rents because the housing will be affordable and you'll take a bunch of people out of that very tight rental market by delivering them public housing. Start building some affordable housing for key workers in our cities as well and you'll start to ease the pressure on them so that cleaners, nurses, ambulance officers and firefighters can afford to live near the places that they're servicing. That would be a sensible thing to do.

Nothing—nothing—from the government on that. Why? Because they want to make inequality worse by ending progressive taxation in Australia as we know it and giving a handout to big corporations and the very wealthy. It's going to cost $140 billion—money that we could use to build more affordable housing or to lift Newstart or to get dental into Medicare. Instead, the government says that the way to increase inequality in Australia—because that's ultimately what they're on about—is to get rid of Australia's progressive taxation system.

As a result of the proposals that this government is putting forward in this budget, in a few years time, when they get rid of and dismantle the progressive taxation system in Australia and phase 3 of the tax cuts kick in, someone who is earning the minimum wage will pay the same tax rate as a CEO on $200,000. Now, that is not fair. That is not fair, and it is a direct assault on egalitarianism in this country. We have a progressive taxation system for a reason. There is an acceptance in this country that if you earn a bit more, and especially if you're right at the top end, you can contribute a bit more. There is an understanding in Australia that we will be, and remain, a more equal society if we use money to invest in services like free health care and free public schools so that no matter how much you earn you've got the same rights as everyone else to get good quality health care and good quality education.

We understand in this country that the key to avoiding going down the US road and becoming a dog-eat-dog society, where everyone has to look after themselves, is making sure that every child in this country can get a world-class public school education if they want it and that you're never turned away from a public school because you're worried about the quality of the education. You know, as of right, that you've got that. And you know that if you get sick, you will be looked after in the hospitals in this country. And you also know—although this is increasingly coming under threat—that you're able to get to a GP as and when you need one without the gap costing you too much or being a disincentive for being able to go. Now, to do all of those things we need to ask big corporations to pay their fair share, not give them a tax cut. But we also need to maintain a progressive taxation system in this country.

If there's one thing that the budget has achieved, though, it's that they've successfully fired the starting gun in what's going to be a tax cuts auction going to the next election. And it's very, very disappointing to find that in this parliament the Greens are the only ones standing up saying: 'No, no tax cuts. Let's put the money into services instead.' And in doing that we are standing with the majority of the Australian people, because the majority of the Australian people know that whether it's $10 a week or $20 a week, most of that is going to disappear as power bills going up, as the cost of housing goes up and as the cost of going to see the doctor goes up. If you ask most people: 'What would you rather? Would you rather $10 or $20 a week? Or would you rather that money go into making sure you don't have to pay so-called 'voluntary' school fees when you send your kid to public school? To making sure that the gap between the cost of what Medicare provides and what you have to fork out of your pocket when you go to see the doctor gets brought down? Making sure that we re-regulate power prices?' they say that they would much rather government get involved and ensure that Australia remains an equal society. They know that $10 or $20 a week gets eaten up just like that.

And the best way to look after low-income earners is to lift the minimum wage and the best way of looking after people who are falling through the cracks is to lift Newstart. That is a better road to go down than engaging in this tax cuts arms race. Every time the opposition falls for the bait from this government on tax cuts and engages in this macho 'my tax cut is bigger than yours' contest going into an election, a little piece of the welfare state dies and a little piece of social democracy dies. We need to defend proper taxation as the price we pay for a civilised society. If we keep getting sucked into this idea that people want bribes of $10 or $20 a week instead of government taking action on the things that are actually putting people under pressure, then we're all going to lose.

So what should the government do instead? Well, let's re-regulate power prices in this country. That will save people more than $10 a week. Let's say that electricity is an essential service that shouldn't be run for profit, that should be in public hands and should be regulated. Let's do that. Let's build more affordable housing and bring down the cost of renting. That will save more than $10 or $20 a week. Let's put the money that's meant to be going into tax cuts for millionaires and instead put it back into public health or into Medicare and we'll bring down the cost of going to see a doctor. That will make people's quality of life much better.

I think the Australian people would accept a fair level of taxation if they thought the government was spending it properly, if they thought it was going on public schools and public health and making sure Australia remains a more equal society. Most people would rather we do that than have this bribe-fest at every election. This is an appalling budget and I hope that very, very soon this government is no longer the government, but I hope that when there's a change we can shed this idea that we've always got to cut taxes, and, instead, put the focus on services.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Industry and Support) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a great opportunity for me to really bell the cat and put the last nail in the coffin on the coalition's attempts to portray itself as the better economic manager in this country. That really hasn't been true for a number of decades now. To put this situation in context, look at the reforms that the Hawke-Keating government delivered to us. They really set the platform for the 26 years of unbroken growth that we've had. The Howard government did contribute the institution of APRA but, beyond that, throughout the years, the main thing that they bequeathed to us was structural deficits. In order to address debt-and-deficit issues in the first half of their time in government, they sold off $76 billion of Commonwealth assets—sold off the farm, effectively. That gave you a short-term sugar hit, but, to give you an example of the impacts of that in the long term, we can take the RG Casey Building. They sold that for $200 million. We've now paid $300 million and more in rent on that facility. So, that immediate sugar hit has left us with long-term structural deficit outcomes.

In addition to that, you can then look at what they were able to benefit from with the mining boom. Out of the mining boom they spent money like there was no tomorrow, so we had ridiculous spending initiatives like the baby bonus. Then we come to the dividend imputation measure they introduced. Keating introduced a measure there which tried to eliminate the double-taxation issue that was going on at the time, where the company tax factor was piled on with taxes on the profits from dividends, which was a sound measure. But then what Howard did was allow, in effect, a double dip there. At the time, that resulted in a $550 million hit to the budget. Now we're looking at an $8 billion to $10 billion hit to the budget, and, if you draw a line through that exponential curve, there was going to be a point where the dividend imputation was going to consume the entire federal budget.

This is an unsustainable situation. Somebody has to get out and have the guts and the bravery to get out there in the Australian public and argue the case that this has to be done now for future generations. What this government is doing is intergenerational theft: PAYE taxpayers, all those young workers out there now, are going to be sustaining these people who claim, 'This is because we wanted to be independent of pensions.' Well, it's still government money, whatever you call it, and it's unsustainable. One thing that people have to factor in with that issue is that part of your retirement income will be health costs and aged-care services. The only way we can make that affordable, and not make it a user-pays American-style system—which I'm sure no Australian wants to see—is to be able to afford funding those services. The only way we can do that is to make sure we take the prudent measures Labor has put forward—fiscally responsible and prudent—that will deliver better savings and deficit reduction than the government is offering.

How are we doing that? Removing that dividend imputation is the first part of the story. The rest includes: reforms to negative gearing and capital gains tax, what we're doing on trusts, and what we're doing on not giving $80 billion away to big companies and, of course, on the $140 billion giveaway of tax relief to the wealthy. There are so many measures in that that would more than underpin what we want to do to make sure that people in their retirements are well looked-after and that they're not having to pay more—which will eat into their retirement income—on health services.

When I talk about the economic credibility of this government being destroyed, never mind the 30 polls in a row; let's look at the statistics. What we've seen since 2013 is that there's been an extraordinary boom in global trade, domestic commerce and company profits around the world. So there should have been a significant uplift for Australia in that context, and we should have been maintaining our position relative to the rest of the OECD. But what have we seen instead? From 2009 to 2013, Australia's economic growth was close to the top of the 34 richest countries in the OECD. We've now slipped to 23rd in the list.

When you look at productivity, we've now dropped to the lowest level since 2012 in the context of the washout of the GFC. Unemployment has now risen from the level which we were at in 2013. Those one million jobs that the government like to claim they created was the track that should have been happening as a year-on-year average with that economic pick-up, but it has actually been below world trends and a lot of that has been casualised. We are now at one of the highest casualisation rates in the OECD, and that's extremely disturbing. In terms of our jobless rate, in 2013 we were ranked seventh in the OECD; now we're down to 17th. So the government is losing here, and its economic credibility is completely destroyed in the context of how we should be looking at this picture in relation to other like nations.

Then you look at Malcolm Turnbull. He comes into government and we all think he has been wanting to do this job for a long time and so the Prime Minister must obviously have an agenda, but we were sadly disappointed. I am very grateful to the folks at The Marcus Review, who have well documented the thought bubble failures of Malcolm Turnbull since he became Prime Minister. There was what they described in November 2015 as 'super tax episode 1', where Turnbull floated the thought bubble about a super contribution tax rate from 15 per cent to a flat rate 15 per cent discount on the contributor's marginal income tax. That disappeared. He rethought the negative gearing cap in March 2016 and the capital gains tax issue. That disappeared. On 30 March, he talked about building a 'taxation revolution'—another Penrith Park thought bubble in the tradition of Tony Abbott, with all those broken promises. So he has been undoing, effectively, the evolution in our federation of taxation on a more efficient basis. It would have completely destroyed our progressive revolution and evolution in that space. That was an utterly hopeless proposition. I think it was one that he picked up from the former member for Eden-Monaro, who had that as part of his policy proposals, which he set out to the IPA, and that sank without a trace.

In April 2016, he said that the tax revolution was not going to happen, and that was April Fools' Day. So, no doubt, that was very appropriate on 1 April. And then there was 'super tax episode 2', where he tried to outlift Labor by increasing super contribution rates for anybody earning over $180,000. That died. Turnbull thought about building a high-speed rail revolution in 2016, and that died. Then, in May 2016, we had 'super tax episode 3', where he talked about having another go at raising more revenue by fiddling with people's super. That confused everybody, in particular, Julie Bishop, the foreign minister, who was unable to explain that on radio, famously. In May 2016, both the Treasurer and the Prime Minister announced corporate tax cuts over a period of 10 years, which has absolutely no chance of happening. Then the Prime Minister crashed that plane into a mountain. It became a complete disaster when he tried to do an interview on that regarding the costings. In August 2016, he announced that he wanted to change the GST distribution system, and many interpreted that to mean that he was going to improve Western Australia's share of the GST. Actually, that wasn't what was proposed. He left them trying to work out exactly what was being proposed, and we still don't know, frankly.

It's a terrible record of his time in government. At the same time, we all know the 2014 budget was cruel, vindictive. It really hurt the most vulnerable in our community. People think maybe the government have walked away from that. Well, a lot of those things are still floating around in subsequent budgets, like raising the pension age to 70 and trying to cut the energy supplement for our pensioners. Now we see their cuts to education and health, which is, to be clear, the cuts to the funding that was flowing from Labor under the health and hospital agreement and Gonski. There has definitely been a cut relative to that funding that was flowing. So they can't pretend there hasn't been. The idea that they're increasing their funding is like saying: 'We'll take four wheels off your car and we'll put one back on, so we're raising the funding. You should be grateful.' That is the classic style of this government. It's all been mythology.

I'm proud of Labor's budget initiatives, which would include bringing back a better hospital fund of $2.8 billion. Health is a big issue in my region. MRI scan facilities in hospitals would be really well received. There is what we want to do with private health insurance. Our initiatives in particular for TAFE—it is so essential for the workforce of the future—would be really well received. I'd love to talk more about the chaos in shipbuilding, which has increased since the last time I recited those issues, the OPV being the latest disaster in that space, which the Audit Office has highlighted, and also this mix-and-match effort the government have tried to make—it has been a disaster. So they're wasting a lot of money in that space.

On the Snowy 2.0 project, I'd like to point out that in the Marsden Jacob Associates report on the feasibility of Snowy Hydro 2.0, their own flagship proposal—which actually wasn't theirs; it was Snowy's—clearly sets out that, in order for Snowy 2.0 to be feasible, to be most successful in the new economic environment, you have to have an ambitious renewable energy target. They set out a long-term commitment of 60 per cent renewables by 2040. So the very report that establishes the viability, the economics and the market dynamics of Snowy Hydro 2.0 points out you have to have Labor's ambitious renewable energy targets to make it substantially a financial goer.

In the time that I have left I would like to briefly comment on the issue of the malarial medicines, which has been very significant for veterans in recent times. A lot of our veterans suffered from effectively what was experimentation with new drugs. I was very fortunate in all my deployments to have used the drug doxycycline before these new experimentations came in. But we're now seeing a really significant issue emerging about the effects of those experimental drugs known as the quinolones family, including tafenoquine. I've had long discussions and communications with Stuart McCarthy, the president of the quinolone veterans and families group, and also Professor Jane Quinn of Charles Sturt University, who's working with that family group and helping the families and veterans.

We really need to see some more vigorous action in this space. We need to get down to the nuts and bolts of how the big drug companies have been working in this space, because we've got some real suspicions and issues around that. We need to have a claims process that is cleaned up here. We know the UK are already accepting some claims in this space. It's really the neuropsychological aspects that have to be resolved very quickly now. We need an open and transparent outreach program that's a cooperative venture between the VVCS, DVA and veterans as soon as possible. We're really keen to work with the government on this issue. We would like to see Darren Chester, the new Minister for Veterans' Affairs, meet with Stuart McCarthy and Jane Quinn. There's a lot of material that they've put together, which is available to any journalist. It's been sent to the government. If any journalist would like to reach out to me to get that material, I have copies of it. This is very serious, because we've had issues of perhaps an interconnection with suicides and other neurological problems as well as physiological problems. This process needs to be resolved; it needs to be open and transparent. We need to engage closely with the veterans groups and the professor and medical experts on this and get it resolved. I've been pleased to work with retired Colonel Ray Martin in Townsville on this. He's been really vigorous and hardworking on behalf of veterans in this space.

The member for Solomon, Luke Gosling, and other members of Labor have been very engaged on this issue, including the member for Herbert, Cath O'Toole, in particular, with so many veterans in her space, and Shayne Neumann. They have all been very vigorous in working with me and engaging with Amanda Rishworth, our shadow minister for veterans' affairs. They are all really determined to make sure we get a result on this. We're not in government, so that is obviously a big constriction, but we've been happy to try and reach out to ministers in the government; there have been so many of them in the veterans space, so hopefully we get some stability with my good friend the member for Gippsland, who I know will be concerned to do the right thing here. Obviously it's a big challenge getting your head around this whole issue with the family of quinolone medicines. We should draw on the examples and evidence emerging from overseas, but we need to do our own inquiry on this, and we need to do it deep and we need to do it fast. We need to see that happening now. I urge the government to engage with Stuart McCarthy and Jane Quinn at the earliest possible opportunity. We really do need to get the Specialist Medical Review Council review embracing the issues in relation to support for the veterans and families. But there is a bigger story to be told here that the veterans groups and families are concerned with in relation to how drug companies have operated and the various suspicions and concerns about that in relation to the information that's available on the impact and effect of these drugs.

We also need Defence to be much more rigorous in how it implements new drugs in these spaces. I know, from talking to fellow veterans who deployed with me to Iraq for example, that some people who took the drugs and vaccinations related to the chemical weapons threat we faced there now suffer some of the severe side effects of those drugs. We need Defence to be really careful with this stuff in the future. We're talking about people here, not guinea pigs, and I think we're united across the aisles here on wanting to see something happen urgently in this space.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At is heart, this budget, Appropriation Bill (No. 1) and related bills, continues what the coalition has been doing from day one, since their election in 2013, which is to continually widen the gap between the haves and the need-mores. The reason I use the term 'need-mores' is that, particularly in the electorate that I represent, people are pretty proud that they can make what they can of what they have, but they clearly need more support. That's the case across Western Sydney. For example, look at the investments that governments should rightly be making—but this coalition has continually neglected—in things like schools, in things like TAFEs, in terms of the infrastructure for the growing area of Western Sydney, one of the fastest growing regions in the country. We still don't see the level of investment that should be there. They should especially be investing in things like hospitals and health care in our area. This budget delivered zip—nothing—particularly for Western Sydney, in a range of those different areas.

This government has committed itself to giving $80 billion to the biggest businesses in this country, it's committed to giving $17 billion to the big banks, and it's already delivered tax cuts of $16,000 to millionaires, but it still can cut to people who need more. It will cut preschool funding, particularly in Chifley, where it still has not been guaranteed to be renewed next year, which might affect just over 2,300 young kids in the Chifley electorate. Schools in Chifley still look set to lose $20 million over 2018 and 2019, because of this government, with its smoke and mirrors, and the defunding that has been occurring through Gonski 2.0. That will affect our area. They cut $3 billion from TAFEs and promised an additional $300 million in cuts this year. They've cut billions from universities, and I've got a big concern about what that does in terms of the University of Western Sydney.

With infrastructure in Western Sydney—as I said, one of the fastest growing regions in the country—the government makes a big deal about the north-south rail it's putting in, yet all it can do is $50 million for a study, when what we really need is a comprehensive approach to people movement in Western Sydney, where our region will rival the other side of the city, the east, in terms of growth. It is likely that 150,000 people will move in, just within the Chifley electorate and to the north of it, through the north-west growth centres—very little there. That's before we even get to talking about the NBN and its failure to keep pace with the local area.

But one of the most disgraceful things the government is doing is that in this budget they will deliver a $5.6 million cut that will affect Mount Druitt Hospital. Basically, it is roughly the same as if you were to cut 13,800 patient appointments—and we are going to see that cut. When you look at this budget, particularly for Chifley, you have cuts to school funding, you have future threats to preschool funding, you have no genuine funding of infrastructure, and you have continued cuts to TAFE—$3 billion, with $300 million extra, which will no doubt affect TAFEs like those in Mount Druitt. And, importantly, you'll see a $5.6 million cut that will affect Mount Druitt Hospital. That's before we even get to the point that there is an MRI in that hospital that has not received a Medicare licence, which would ensure that people aren't paying huge out-of-pocket expenses just to get an MRI scan at their own public hospital. It is an absolute disgrace: a $5.6 million cut, plus no licence for the MRI, sets back people in our area hugely.

In other parts of the budget, what you're seeing now from the coalition concerning job programs is effectively a continuation of the slow march away from the things they wanted to do when they first came into office and a crab walk towards the things Labor said should have happened when we left office and the types of things we've been talking about on the ground with employment service providers as we've moved across the country trying to find out how to make these failing job programs of the government work better. Bear this in mind: when the coalition came in, they were all beating their chests about how they would revamp Work for the Dole. They basically scaled up the number of places to 150,000 per year. They were told that this was way too big a jump, would be counterproductive, and it was questionable whether or not it would happen—and what happened? They started scaling it back. They realised that they'd made a mistake, that they hadn't listened. They put people onto the Work for the Dole at the six-month mark of unemployment, when people were telling them that was way too early. They then moved that from six to 12 months, back to where it should have been. In the last budget they then cut the coordinators that existed to help improve the way the program was going. Has anything been done to improve job outcomes? No. What we've seen as a result is still roughly 10 to 20 per cent of people getting jobs three months after going through the Work for the Dole program. We've seen very little evidence of that.

There's hardly any mention of young people and unemployment in this budget. If anything, the focus on older people and particularly digital skills uplift is what the Labor opposition has been saying publicly, through our discussion with job providers on the ground about getting people ready for the future of work and the impact of technology, should have been happening ages ago. Again, if we suggest an idea and they take it up, we welcome that, but it shows a lack of leadership or ability to think through the problems confronting people.

What a change there has been about innovation! A few years ago we were all agile and nimble—it was an exciting time to be alive—then all the talk faded away and is gone. They have pressed the innovation mute button, and they hardly talk about it. Our side has regularly been pressing the case for this, because you need innovation to drive the growth in new firms and jobs, but the government is trapped in the belief that, if they put out another report or announce another review, that equals innovation. It's garbage. In April 2016 Bill Ferris brought down his report to review the way R&D works in this country, and they only just got around to releasing their response to it—and what did they do? They flagged big cuts to R&D spending. From a government that styled itself as innovative, agile, creative and pro future, we're now seeing massive cuts to the R&D arrangements.

They had some other big announcements—for example, saying that we needed to start thinking more about the application of AI and setting ethical boundaries. They also announced that the DTA would get $700,000 in funding for blockchain. I welcome the ideas, because Labor had been championing them months before. We said last year that Australia should take leadership on the issue of artificial intelligence, and we saw very little out of the government on it, and also that the Digital Transformation Agency should be the central point for applying blockchain within government. We're glad the government have announced these things in their budget, because it's exactly what we've been pushing for.

The real tragedy is that this government rarely thinks ahead. If they're not thinking ahead, they're not planning ahead, and they have pushed acting into the never-never. One group that always has to think ahead is our local venture capital community. They have to have a sense of what's coming in the economy, and they need to be able to test those firms who have ideas that will have the greatest possible benefit to the economy down the track. For years the lack of capital availability to back good ideas in the Australian context has been a big issue. It has become less so recently. For example, in the 2017 year, we've seen capital raisings of about $1.2 billion. It has been fantastic, but we should certainly do more.

For some time, I've been absolutely staggered that our nation's pre-eminent fund, the Future Fund, refused to back local venture capital. It's not like they don't like venture capital; it's just they didn't like Australian venture capital. We have been pressing them since last year to explain this: out of the $2 billion that they put into venture capital, why is it they only invest one to two per cent here? Why is it that taxpayers' dollars can be used to support the growth and evolution of new firms and new jobs offshore, yet we see none of that happening here? In October, when the Future Fund was before estimates, they said that they didn't invest locally because they had doubts about the strength of the local VC community. In fact, the quote from the head of the Future Fund was:

I think one of the things that has held the Australian venture capital industry back is that, frankly, performance hasn't been very good …

Some in the VC community would probably agree with that, but things have changed.

What I found remarkable was that in October, before estimates, the head of the Future Fund said that there are doubts about VC, but his own chief investment officer, just a month before, speaking at the Australian Financial Review's innovation summit, basically castigated everyone else for not backing local VC. In fact, he said it was time for a 'paradigm change'. That's always a good way to get attention. It happens the minute you use that combination of words. Dr Raphael Arndt said at the summit:

To put all your retirement savings on a bet that robust economic growth and lower rates will continue is risky.

He then urged super funds to do more.

Well, in actual fact, Hostplus, AustralianSuper, HESTA, First State Super and all the pesky industry funds that the government likes to target, single out, chastise and harangue—and put in all these new legislative arrangements around and talk down to—have probably put more into local venture capital to back local firms and local jobs than what our own Future Fund has. We had the Future Fund hectoring super funds on one hand and then a month later their own CEO was before estimates saying there are big doubts about local VC performance. That was in October. Suddenly in April, we opened up the Sydney Morning Herald and John McDuling had scored himself an exclusive. Blackbird Ventures—which is a great firm with a great investment portfolio and which is backed by a lot of great Australian tech entrepreneurs—had suddenly scored some money out of the Future Fund. I absolutely congratulate the Future Fund for this. As has been revealed in estimates, Blackbird Ventures have scored anywhere between $20 million to $30 million to back locals. That is good.

Some things that came out of estimates were interesting. There were two things in particular. The Future Fund has outsourced decisions about which of the local VCs they'll back to Greenspring Associates. I don't have a problem with capable outfits making those decisions. They have to because of the quantum involved. But the thing I know, moving in this environment for a number of years now, is that VC tends to have a view—I've seen it, even when I have travelled in the United States—that they will only take a greater interest based on geographic proximity—that is, the closer your firm with the proposition wanting the money is to the location of the VC. They generally tend to back it that way. I don't know how many times Greenspring Associates will be out to Australia and if they've set themselves up here to do the local scoping work of the local venture capital market, but I have to say this is something we will keep an eye on. Labor has been pressing the Future Fund to do more in this space. If Greenspring Associates only does an occasional visit to Australia that might occasionally lead to one article appearing in the Sydney Morning Herald about one VC that managed to score $20 million to $30 million out of the Future Fund, then there will be more questions asked by us.

The second thing that it's not very clear from the head of the Future Fund, who appeared before estimates, where they're going to go. For a group that is so fixed on stats, numbers and the concrete, they have not been forthcoming about how they will move from the one per cent to two per cent mark of current local investment from a $2 billion venture capital pool to something better. You would expect better. Don't get me wrong, I think what they're doing is good. We're not advocating a mandate and forcing them to do that. We certainly recognise you have to be very prudent about applying funds in this space, because it is a high-risk class. But the point is this: if the Future Fund has accepted the asset class and if the Future Fund has accepted investing $2 billion in venture capital, then clearly the appetite is there. If they get similar return rates here to what they're getting overseas, it is absolutely incumbent on our nation's Future Fund to back local venture capital.

This is me as a Labor MP arguing this, but a lot of our crew know that you need to back new firms with new ideas to put new drive into an economy that hasn't behaved the same since the GFC. We do need to be clear that Labor will push for this because we see a longer term economic benefit. If we see Greenspring turn up only once a year to scope out local VC and we see only one or two announcements made just to stop the hounding of the Future Fund, that not only is wrong in the short term but is denying us longer term economic prosperity. We will be fixed on this issue longer term.

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

I've got to say that, out of all the budgets that I've seen, this budget has the cruellest hoax attached to it. The cruel hoax is on the hopes and dreams of Australians. We see a budget that follows on from other budgets of the Abbott government and the Turnbull government. In the early ones we saw cuts to a whole range of things. For example, in the 2014-15 budget we saw in my own state over $60 billion of cuts to health. That was in one state. You can see the trickle-down effect that this has when you are in a public bed in a hospital. It has effects on it.

This budget is a hoax and a con. It says one thing but does another. It's a budget that continues making cuts to pensioners, hospitals, schools and universities and has new cuts for the ABC—the national icon, something that is revered by all Australians—and TAFE at the same time. We know that young people and mature-age people need skills to get into the workforce. TAFE has served us very well over the years. It skills up people who perhaps left school early or whose life, for whatever reason, took them in a different direction. TAFE skills them and assists them to get back into the workforce. They get a certificate. It's a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

This is a budget that delivers to the big end of town, to big business, while at the same time making cuts to some of our most vulnerable people. Let's have a look at this budget. It wants to deliver an $80 billion tax cut for the richest end of town, for the banks and the multinationals. Seventeen of those major companies pay no tax at all and yet they're going to be the recipients of the $80 billion tax cut. At the very same time as we're giving out $80 billion we're taking away the $14 a fortnight supplement from pensioners, from people who earn a mere pension, have a Commonwealth care card and struggle to keep a budget—and many do tighten their belts to be able to pay their bills and put food on their table. We are taking away $14 a fortnight from those people. At the same time we're giving Australia's richest end of town $80 billion. I don't see how this is right and I don't see how this is fair. It is very un-Australian.

When I think of that scenario I just put to this place—the $80 billion tax cut and the cut to pensioners—the only thing that comes to mind is that this government wants to deliver radical right-wing policies. It is basically a wish list of big business, entrepreneurs who are wanting to make big bucks. It's their demand on the government. I cannot see any other reason for it, apart from the ideological reason.

As I said, it started in 2014 with the budgets of the Abbott government and it has continued. We have seen attacks on trade unions and the Human Rights Commission. Even a policy came in to water down section 18C of our racial discrimination laws. They backed off on that, not because they thought it was wrong but because they didn't have the numbers in the Senate to pass a bill that would have made it easier for people to discriminate against other people in this nation.

We have always been a nation that has put egalitarianism, fairness and equality before anything else in this nation, and that's why we have become the nation that we are—those things have been fundamental to our democracy. They've been fundamental to the way that we are as a culture here in Australia. And here you had a government that wanted to water down the Racial Discrimination Act to make it easier for people to attack other people on a race basis. There is only one reason for that, and that is an ideological right-wing mentality. That is the only reason a government would go down that track.

We even saw the introduction of the deregulation of university course fees and the introduction of $100,000 up-front fees for people. Last year it was the company tax cuts, which have already delivered, as we heard from the previous speaker, $17 billion to the banks—at a time when we're hearing before the royal commission about banks charging the accounts of deceased people and meddling in children's bank accounts. This year, we see the radical proposal for a flat tax for people earning incomes between $40,000 and $200,000. So, if you're a cleaner working on $40,000 a year—subsidising the family's income because it may be part-time work, or it may be the only income you have—you will be asked to pay the same tax as most of us in this, who are on much more, pay. The flat tax for someone on $40,000 and someone on $200,000 will be the same.

I, like other members on this side in this place, know that we live in one of the best countries in the world, and, as I said before, in a country that has always been fair. Our families—in my case—chose to make Australia home, and we're all proud to serve our local communities. And it's not just us who recognise what a great country we live in: our capital cities, such as Adelaide, where I come from, and Perth and Melbourne consistently rate in the top 10 liveable cities in the world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. This has come to be because of the way that we have been for years. It's come to be because of the equality that we've had, the equality that we've always strived for to ensure that we are a nation where people respect one another, regardless of whether you're a cleaner or a professor. We have this great equality in Australia, and we don't want to see it watered down, which is exactly what this government was doing with 18C.

I don't think it's fair, as I said, for cleaners, aged-care workers, hospitality workers or retail workers to have their penalty rates cut. We know that this is the direction this government wants to go down. We know that someone who is working on weekends, who is giving up family time, shouldn't be penalised by having their penalty rates cut. It is wrong. Our progressive tax system in this nation has served us extremely well over the years, and it is one of the bedrocks of our system. It ensures that we have fairness in our society, based on the idea that those with greater means should contribute a little more. There's nothing wrong in that, and that's the way that this nation has operated for many years. It's a system that's served us well and will continue to serve us well.

Labor will deliver. On this side of the House, we will deliver a fairer system, a system that takes those things into perspective. We will deliver a bigger, a better and a fairer tax cut for 10 million working Australians. That's almost double what the government has offered. We can afford to do more to help because we're not giving that $80 billion tax cut to the richest end of town. We're not delivering $17 billion to the banks and $80 billion across the board to some of the richest people in this country. That's why we can afford to have a bigger, better and fairer tax cut for 10 million working Australians that is, as I said, double the amount that the government has offered.

I am a member who represents an electorate with one of the largest proportions of people over the age of 65, and I know that my colleague the member for Richmond also has a very similar electorate. In fact, when we came into this House, we were competing about who had the highest proportion of people aged over 65, and we were always neck and neck. So I know that the member for Richmond understands the needs of older Australians, as we all do on this side.

We know that they've worked all their lives, that they have contributed to this nation and that we now benefit from the fruits of the life that they lived and the contributions that they made. In many cases, they fought in wars to enable us to live the lives that we do. And all they're asking for is some dignity in their old age. What do I mean by providing dignity? Well, they need aged-care facilities that are appropriate facilities, and services that will look after them. Certainly, we know that extra home care packages are needed.

The aged-care announcement for older Australians that the minister made on budget night was one of the biggest cons that I've seen since I saw the movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with Steve Martin and Michael Caine. We know that 14,000 extra places were given in this budget, but we know that there's 100,000 people on the waiting list for aged-care packages. We know that the rate for people needing aged-care packages rises by approximately 10,000 per quarter. So we've already got 100,000 people on a waiting list for an aged-care package so that they can be looked after at home, because they're old and frail, but the list is growing currently, and it's growing at a rate of about 10,000 per quarter. So in 12 months that list will be 120,000.

The government has offered 14,000 packages and the list is still growing. This is the greatest con job that I've ever seen in terms of an announcement. It just doesn't make sense. If we really want to get to the bottom of the problem we have to offer many, many more packages. And it's not fair. When we look at the detail of what they've proposed, it is paid for through cuts to residential care. They've taken money away from residential care and will barely make a dent in the waiting list. As I said, the figures we had recently showed there were 20,000 places in the last six months. So we've got 100,000 and it grows by 10,000 every quarter, then we announce 14,000 places and it's supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread. To me, that's a con job. It's an absolutely terrible trick to play on older Australians.

Apart from that, at the same time we're taking away the $14 energy supplement that assists them to pay their energy bills and which they receive every fortnight in their pension. At the same time as that, $80 billion is going to the richest end of town, to the people who, in their minds, need it the most. I can't work that out. And, of course, they're increasing the aged pension eligibility for someone to be eligible for an aged pension at the age of 70.

If this government wants to talk about our older Australians, I'm very proud to have listened to them. I listen to people every day who tell me how they struggle to survive and to live on a pension. These are people who have actually worked damn hard for their entire lives, and they do so still in the way that they look after grandkids, are a part of our community as volunteers and have contributed so much to this nation. I know so because I've held ageing forums with the shadow minister—the former minister, the member for Port Adelaide—in my electorate of Hindmarsh. I've advocated for a better and fairer go for those who need help. After giving so much to this nation, the least we could do is to give them some dignity in their old age.

We will be judged as a nation in the future by the way that we have looked after our elderly. We see some reports coming out in the media, where some of the aged-care facilities are allocating $6 a day for food—$6 a day for food! We saw that report recently, and that is a disgrace. It's something that governments should be investigating and looking into immediately.

Recently, I was contacted by a carer on behalf of her mother, who lives in the western suburbs of my electorate. She's lived in her house since the mid-1950s. She went through the process of an assessment and had ACAT approval in December 2015 for a level 3 to 4 package. My constituent has become frustrated and had to continue to follow up with the department, but to no avail. After raising this matter continuously we've finally secured a package, and she is receiving the support and respite that she deserves. So why does it require ministerial intervention to get a result? And what about those who don't speak up? It's just not right.

Labor in government has a proud record, a very proud record, of delivering for older Australians. I will continue to deliver, as will the member for Richmond, who is sitting next to me, and the member for Bruce, who I know has a big population of older Australians in his electorate. It is something that we on this side think is one of the most important things—that is, to give back to those that gave their entire lives for the next generation of Australians to live the wonderful lives that we have in this nation.

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the appropriation bills. As many speakers on this side have pointed out, we do support the bills in the same way that convention has dictated for many years that we support supply; however, we also point out how our priorities are very different from those of the government. It must be stated that this budget, like every other one brought down by this Liberal-Nationals government, fundamentally and unequivocally fails the fairness test.

There will be an impact from this budget on my electorate. This budget puts big business and the banks ahead of the battlers on the North Coast. This National Party budget gives away $80 billion in tax cuts to big business, including $17 billion for the big banks, and it makes locals pay for it with savage cuts to schools, hospitals and pensions. That's what the National Party have done with this budget. In fact, they own it.

The budget fails the fairness test on so many levels. It fails the fairness test on pensioners. The government is cutting the energy supplement, costing pensioners $14 a fortnight, and forcing people to keep working until they're 70. It fails the fairness test on education. The government is still cutting $17 billion from schools, and it now has $270 million in new cuts to TAFE. It fails the fairness test on hospitals. The government's cuts means Australians will be left on hospital waiting lists for much longer. It also fails the fairness test on Medicare. The government's freeze on the rebate for specialists means that Australians will pay more when they visit the doctor.

It's important to note that, on the back of the best global economic conditions in more than a decade, this government has failed the fiscal responsibility test it set for itself. Net debt for this coming year is double what it was when the Abbott-Turnbull government came into office in 2013, and this year's deficit is 6½ times bigger than the Liberals and Nationals predicted in their first budget, their horror budget, of 2014—and we all remember that one! This budget is wrong in its priorities and it fails every test of fairness and every test of fiscal responsibility.

Pensioners and seniors in my electorate on the New South Wales North Coast are some of the biggest losers when it comes to this budget. The government is keeping the unfair plan to increase Australia's pension age to 70, meaning we'll have one of the oldest pension ages in the world. And it's important to know that in every single budget that the Liberals and Nationals have handed down they've tried to cut the pension in order to cut taxes for big business. Pensioners remember that the government tried to cut the pension indexation, a cut that would have ripped $23 billion from the pockets of pensioners. They also remember that the Liberals and Nationals did a deal with the Greens to cut the pension for around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the pension assets test. Budgets are all about choices, and once again the Prime Minister has chosen the banks and the big end of town over Australia's pensioners.

When it comes to health, Labor are the party that believe in universal health care, and we're determined to fix our hospitals. The Liberals and Nationals have cut funding for Medicare and hospitals in every year since they first got into government after the 2013 election. The budget fails in the hospital and health care area on a very large scale. At the same time they're giving that big tax cut to big business, they're persisting with their cruel $715 million cut to hospitals over the next two years and they're keeping their Medicare rebate freeze in place for years to come. This is forcing up out-of-pocket costs to see specialists. They've also failed to do anything to address the private health insurance affordability crisis and they've failed to adopt Labor's plan to scrap the unfair and discriminatory tampon tax. This budget proves yet again that the government cares more about tax cuts for big business and multimillionaires than it does about the health of ordinary Australians.

Meanwhile, their hospital cuts are putting doctors, nurses and hospital staff under increasing pressure, forcing delays in surgeries and making emergency department waiting times even worse. Contrast this with Labor's plans. We're committed to building better hospitals, with record funding for beds, doctors and nurses, and we've announced our plan to cap health insurance premium price rises at two per cent for two years. Labor's better hospitals fund will see a $2.8 billion extra investment, fully reversing the Turnbull government's cuts, and we'll be funding more beds in emergency departments and wards, more doctors, more nurses and more health staff. The funding will be targeted at reducing emergency department and elective surgery waiting times, which have blown out under this government.

A Shorten Labor government will also ensure more communities have affordable access to life-saving scans, expanding Medicare subsidised access to diagnostic imaging in areas where there are shortages. We'll invest $80 million to boost the number of eligible MRI machines and approve 20 new licences, which means half a million more scans will be funded by Medicare. This is vitally important for regional communities such as mine. Labor's commitment will mean more affordable scans for Australians, addressing shortages in communities that need them the most.

Also, as I've mentioned, many parts of Australian society are suffering because of this government's wrong priorities. On the North Coast of New South Wales, in particular, there is a homelessness crisis and a housing affordability crisis. Our state National Party MPs have done nothing to alleviate this crisis at a state level, and their federal mates just make it even worse. The Turnbull government's budget has again failed to deliver anything that will actually alleviate either the housing or the homelessness crisis. The government continues to ignore those young Australians who are seeking to purchase their first home by refusing to adopt our changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax.

Let's have a look at their record. Since coming to government in 2013, the Liberal-National government has presided over a crisis in which home ownership rates for young Australians have collapsed to their lowest level in the 30 years. Fewer than 40 per cent own their own home compared with 60 per cent just a generation ago. Rental stress has risen substantially. Anglicare's recent Rental Affordability Snapshot has revealed that less than three per cent of private rental dwellings are affordable for a single person on the minimum wage. Data from the 2016 census has revealed that the number of Australians experiencing homelessness has dramatically risen by 13.7 per cent since 2011. Those are damaging statistics.

I make the point that, despite the gross inaction of the Liberal-National government, in my electorate and in many others there are remarkable people, institutions and organisations that are doing great work when it comes to homelessness. One such person is John Lee, the president and founder of You Have A Friend. He has 80 volunteers providing over 300 meals a week to the homeless and marginalised in my region. He gets no assistance from any government agency to do that. I always like to congratulate John and those like him who do a wonderful job out there.

Another area that is subject to the government's cruel cuts is aged care services. The budget has revealed a cruel hoax at the centre of the government's aged care plan. The government is slashing residential care to try and fix the home care crisis it created. The fact is that there is no new money at all in the budget for the funding of home care and residential aged care. More than 21,000 residential aged care places will be cut over the next three years to pay for the very small increase in the number of home care packages, and none of this will solve the crisis in home care created by the government: 3½ thousand places a year will not keep pace with demand. The waiting list grew by 20,000 in the last six months of 2017. In my electorate, we have a very high proportion of seniors. This is a huge issue. They are desperately trying to get home care packages, and we've just seen cuts by this government.

Another harsh cut is that to the ABC. We all remember on the eve of the 2013 election that the member for Warringah, then the opposition leader who was to become the Prime Minister, said that there would be no cuts to the ABC. That is what he said. It turned out to be another broken promise. The government imposed cuts of over $250 million on the ABC, and now the current Prime Minister's budget contains a further $127 million in cuts to the ABC. The government just keeps proceeding with cuts to the ABC. The government has also frozen indexation of operational funding for the ABC, amounting to a cut of $83.7 million. What this means in reality at the ABC is cuts to jobs, cuts to content and cuts to services. This will have a devastating impact across the country, but particularly in the regions where we value so much our local ABC and the services it provides. It's another shameful cut by this government.

Also, under this government, education at all levels is under threat, yet again. The Prime Minister and his Liberal-National government insist on giving handouts to big business at the expense of our children's education and wellbeing. When it comes to preschools, our youngest minds are facing uncertainty, with around 350,000 preschools and families facing the prospect of absolutely no further provision of new funding. It means one of two things: fees will increase or services will close. Next year, families will have to start paying for their children to start preschool, without any certainty that the preschools will be funded. One in four families will be worse off come 2 July, under the Turnbull government's unfair childcare package. We believe education is an essential part of a child's development, but this government doesn't. It prefers to put big business before Australian families.

The government continues its assault on education with its schools policy. Its policy is not needs based, it's not sector-blind and it's certainly not fair. In contrast to the government, we're fully committed to the fair funding of our schools and, in particular, our public schools. In government, Labor will restore every dollar of the $17 billion that the Liberals and Nationals have cut from schools. Under Labor the neediest schools will get the biggest funding increases in the fastest time. Our public schools are among the nation's most important institutions, and one of the most fundamental responsibilities of any government should be to ensure public schools are fairly funded to deliver quality education.

There are government cuts for our TAFE students as well. The government cut funding for skills and TAFE in order to pay for those big business tax handouts. The budget cuts an extra $270 million from TAFE and training. That's on top of the $3 billion of cuts in previous budgets—shameful! In contrast, Labor will invest in TAFE, skills, vocational education and higher education. Under us the number of Australians getting a university education will soar by about 200,000, thanks to our plan to abolish the Turnbull government's unfair cap on student places. Australia's future depends so much on properly investing in our preschools, schools, TAFEs and universities so that all of them can deliver the best quality education to all of our students.

Labor's approach to budget tax cuts is much fairer for middle Australia, and so much fairer for locals on the North Coast in my electorate. We're proud of our much fairer tax plan that will deliver lower taxes for 10 million working Australians across the country. A Shorten Labor government will be guided by clear fiscal principles, including repairing the budget in a fair way that doesn't ask the most vulnerable Australians to carry the heaviest burden. The Turnbull government's budget makes those most vulnerable people carry the heaviest burden. We'll more than offset new spending with savings and revenue improvements. Our plan is much fairer and more responsible because we've made all the right calls when it comes to tax reform.

As well as making those correct calls, we will also, as I've said, deliver extra funding for public hospitals and 20 new MRI machines to regional centres and outer suburbs, and abolish the Prime Minister's cap on university places and the up-front fees for 100,000 TAFE places in courses where Australia needs the skills. That is a major commitment which is very important for training. We can deliver all these commitments across all those areas because of our choices and priorities. Unlike the Prime Minister and this Liberal-National government, we won't give out $80 billion in tax handouts to big business and the banks; we will particularly prioritise areas like education, health and hospitals.

The extent of some cuts in another area was only revealed yesterday—that is, the government's cutting of over 500 Australian Federal Police staff. As a former police officer I feel strongly about this. Yesterday we heard damning evidence at Senate estimates, which exposed the impact of the Prime Minister's savage cuts to the Australian Federal Police. At yesterday's hearing it was confirmed by the AFP Commissioner that there would be a $205 million cut to resourcing the AFP over the forward estimates. There's a cut of over 500 Australian Federal Police staff. That is a huge number when it comes to resources within the Federal Police. Instead of supporting those dedicated officers in the AFP to perform their critically important work, the Liberals and Nationals have chosen to cut AFP funding and slash over 500 staff. It is truly shameful that our AFP are being cut so harshly.

In conclusion I specifically note the role of the National Party in this harsh budget. They're wholly responsible for these cruel measures and how they affect the regions. The National Party own all the cuts and harsh measures. The Nationals have abandoned the people of the regions in areas like mine, the New South Wales North Coast. We will spend every single day up until the next election reminding people in the country, the regions and rural Australia that the National Party has abandoned them. This National Party budget gives away $80 billion in tax cuts to big business—including, very importantly, $17 billion for the big banks. It makes local people in regional and rural Australia pay for it with savage cuts to schools, hospitals and pensioners. That's what the National Party have done with their budget. They can go out to country Australia and explain why they have $80 billion for tax cuts, including $17 billion for the big banks, why funding for their schools, their hospitals and their ABC has been cut, and why there is no funding to support homeless people, education and other important services. I can tell you what people in regional and rural Australia will say to them: 'We've had enough of you. You've abandoned us. You're looking after the top end of the town and not people in rural and regional Australia.'

I can tell you this: the people who do look after those in regional and rural Australia are us; that's the Labor Party. We stand with them. We stand with those ordinary battlers who are doing it tough out there. That's our priority. You've got the Turnbull Liberal-National government, and their priority is big business and the banks. It's pretty straightforward. Labor's priority is the battlers, the working class, the middle class and people doing it tough. We stand with them, and we certainly stand with them in regional and rural Australia. We'll continue to do that. Every day up until the next election we'll be doing that, particularly across the country, and we'll be reminding them what the National Party have done to them with their support of this unfair budget.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the appropriation bills, which are the Turnbull government's decisions about how they will tax Australians and how they will spend Australians' tax dollars once they've collected it. Just like budgets past, they deliver a clear picture of what the Turnbull government stands for. This, sadly, is a coalescence of no vision. They have no vision at all. Contrary to the rhetoric from the Treasurer on budget night, the Prime Minister in the media and every single government MP speaking on the bill, the Liberal and National Party do not stand for fairness. Fairness is not a quality you can fake, fairness is not a quality you can rote learn and fairness is not a quality you can trot out when it suits your political interests in the electoral cycle and then shove far down in the bottom drawer. Fairness comes from the heart and not from a focus group. It's a set of values and a belief that informs every decision you make.

I want to use this speech today to go through some of the elements of this budget, piece by piece, to explain exactly how out of touch the Turnbull government is when it comes to policies that damage Australia and do not set out a clear future. What we have is a budget that is slightly less cruel than other coalition budgets, but it is yet another attempt by the coalition to trick Australians into believing that the coalition care about everyone rather than just the top end of town. The government's fiscal strategy, as unveiled in 2014, has failed. Federal government gross debt has surged from $310 billion in 2014 to over $534 billion this year. Net debt, as a share of GDP, has risen from 13.1 per cent in 2013 to a disgraceful nearly 20 per cent this year. If the coalition government ever claims that they're competent economic managers, Australians need to tell them that they're dreaming.

This budget, yet again, demonstrates the failure of the Turnbull government to properly fund front-line health services, particularly hospitals and Medicare. Fundamentally, the Turnbull government does not care about the health of Australians; they believe it should be a private responsibility. The Turnbull government doesn't care about protecting our wonderful public health system. It does not fundamentally believe in Medicare. Health fairness is not in the DNA of the coalition government. This government is ripping $160 million out of Queensland public hospitals. What's that the equivalent of? It's the equivalent of 240,000 emergency department visits or 44,000 cataract extractions that can change someone's life. It's the equivalent of 6,150 knee replacements, which might enable someone to go back to work, or 26,500 births. That's a lot of money. It will affect every Queenslander and every Queensland family. The next time someone is cradling one of their children or sitting with a loved one in the emergency ward, soothing their distress, they will simply have to wait longer to receive the necessary health care.

For people living in Brisbane's south side in Moreton, the hospitals that service the needs of their families will have their funding slashed by this uncaring Turnbull government. The Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Hospital will have its funding cut by more than $2 million and Princess Alexandra Hospital will have its funding cut by more than $13 million, and we know how many Queenslanders these hospitals look at. The Turnbull government simply do not understand fairness nor do they understand the damage they are doing to our public hospital system. In question time and after question time, they stand and try to pull the wool over the eyes of Australians and tell them that there are no cuts to hospitals; but we know that this is simply not true. The budget papers reveal this.

Here are the facts: in the 2013 election platform, the Liberal Party stated that they would fund public hospitals at 50 per cent growth funding of the efficient price of the cost of hospital services. That was in the Liberal Party's election commitment. Then, the 2014, 2015, 2016 and now 2018 budget papers show that the government is in fact only funding public hospitals at 45 per cent of growth in hospitals and a cap of 6.5 per cent overall growth in funding. This volte-face from the government represents a $715 million cut to Australian hospitals between 2017 and 2020. What does that translate into? A $3.2 million cut to QEII hospital and a $13 million cut to the Princess Alexandra Hospital. Shame.

As a former teacher and a parent with two boys, one in primary school and one in high school, I know that education is crucial. It's always been important to me. Unfortunately, we see a Turnbull government that does not value education—not education for all, that's for sure. In this budget, the Turnbull government missed the chance to restore the $17 billion cut from Australian schools. That's right—the coalition can find $17 billion in tax cuts for the big banks, but they can't find $17 billion to educate our kids. Here's the bottom line; it's very simple. Under Labor led by Bill Shorten, Labor will restore every cent. Of this funding we'll put it back into our schools, nearly 90 per cent of it will go to public schools—the schools needing it the most, the schools that do the heaviest lifting in society.

In Moreton, $15 million has been ripped from public schools, and this Turnbull budget will not restore it. Shame. These cuts will mean fewer teachers for Moreton schools, less one-on-one attention for children in Moreton and less help with the basics like reading, writing and maths for Moreton schoolkids. I've said it before and it's so true: the Turnbull government are economic vandals masquerading as politicians. They want to talk about how the economy works for big business, but they don't think about how our economy works for everyone, especially if our kids can't get a decent education. We know from the Gonski investigation that productivity gains come from investing in education. The Turnbull government are short-sighted. We know that investing in our schools benefits everyone and our country.

I'm appalled that the Turnbull government is ripping a further $270 million from TAFE, skills and apprenticeships in this year's budget, and that $270 million cut comes on top of the more than $3 billion—yes, $3 billion—that this out-of-touch government has already ripped from vocational education and training. This comes at a time when nine out of 10 new jobs created in the next four years will need either a university degree or some sort of TAFE qualification. That's why Labor believes in quality universities and strong public TAFEs, working side by side, equal partners investing in our nation's future. Labor's alternative vision in this space could not be clearer. Let's go through it.

Labor, under Bill Shorten, will stop the slide to dodgy private providers and back public TAFE all the way. We'll renovate campuses and rebuild workshops. We will ensure that two out of every three, as a minimum, of our training dollars go to public TAFE. We'll invest in programs to help older workers retrain later in life. Also, in our first term, Labor will cover all up-front fees for 100,000 TAFE places in high-priority sectors. We would expect at least half of these opportunities to go to the women of Australia. Under Labor, a skills vacancy will not last one day longer than it takes to train an Australian to do that job.

I've spoken about Labor's vision for education—primary, secondary and vocational—and now I'll finish the quadrella with tertiary. There is a quote from Confucius that I often like to use when discussing education which says, 'If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for 10 years, plant trees. If your plan is for 100 years, educate children.' Labor takes the long-term view of education. In government, Labor uncapped degree places and opened the doors of university to a new generation. Tens of thousands of students became the first person in their family to go to university—the fair go in action. But the Liberal freeze on university funding means 10,000 fewer places are available next year and, by 2032, over 200,000 people will miss out. And who misses out? Bizarrely, the once great National Party—the people that are supposed to believe in the bush—have wandered off the back roads and hit a bore drain and they're locking students from regional Australia out of university and doing the same to working-class kids.

A Shorten Labor government would restore certainty to this sector. We will uncap places, providing our nation with over 200,000 more university graduates. What does this mean for Moreton and the southside? When Labor first uncapped places there were 1,455 more uni places from 2008 through to 2016. Under Labor's new policy we'll see about 2,150 more students in Moreton alone on their way to university and the opportunities that brings. In Queensland, it would mean nearly 38,000 more students realising their dreams of a university qualification and the careers that follow. Under Labor, a university education is not a privilege you inherit; it's an opportunity you earn with talent and hard work.

If you search through these budget papers you won't find a single cent for the critical Cross River Rail, linking Dutton Park, on the south side of the city, with many places beyond—another snub by the Turnbull government for all who live in South East Queensland. The existing inner-city rail crossing over the Brisbane River, Merivale Bridge, is at full capacity. Infrastructure Australia has known this for years. We've tried to tell Prime Minister Turnbull, but he just doesn't get it. He must be too focused on Sydney. The four stations that are linked to it, that are common across the entire train network—Roma Street, Central Station, Fortitude Valley and Bowen Hills stations—then cause a bottleneck and a scheduling nightmare, one that actually flows right through to Redcliffe, to Beenleigh on the Ipswich line, to the Gold Coast, to Ferny Grove, to the Sunshine Coast and out to Cleveland. Every train that travels in Brisbane basically goes through these four stations, yet it's at capacity. The federal Labor Party committed $2.24 billion to partner with the Queensland Labor government to get this project done. In this budget the endlessly out-of-touch Turnbull government failed to take up our offer of bipartisanship to deliver this critical piece of congestion-busting public transport infrastructure that would serve all Queenslanders. Sadly, they are contributing to productivity bottlenecks in Queensland and it is not good enough. Queenslanders know that Cross River Rail will help to reduce congestion on local roads and get southsiders back home to their families after work much sooner.

But there is another important piece of infrastructure that was also overlooked by the Turnbull government. There is no mention of it at all in the budget papers: the Cooper Plains rail crossing. I wrote to Prime Minister Turnbull before the budget asking him to stand up and help southsiders. Sadly, I'm yet to hear back. Maybe my letter got lost in the post or something! So, I stand here again, publicly asking the Prime Minister, the infrastructure minister and Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk, all members of the Liberal and National parties: surely they can work something out and join the Queensland government to get this mess sorted?

I know that under Lord Mayor Campbell Newman two of the rail crossings on the north side were funded on a fifty-fifty basis. Sadly, Lord Mayor Quirk is offering only 15 per cent for the people on the south side of Brisbane. It note that it would be unfair that any northsider would want the southside to be treated the same! I've got a solution for this mess. I think it should be funded a third by the federal government, a third by the state government and a third by local government. The lord mayor has to go up only a further 18 per cent from the 15 per cent. That's my solution. What could be fairer in terms of getting things sorted?

I know the people of Moreton are sick of people arguing about the politics of who's responsible for the roads, the rail and the footpaths and all that sort of thing, and they are sick of buck-passing. I'm bringing the boomgate down on that sort of politics. My commitment to them is that I will get it done for you.

In every single budget that the coalition government has handed down since they took office in September 2013 they have tried to cut the pension—the coalition government has tried to cut the pension. Let's look at very recent history under coalition governments. The 2018 budget has done nothing to reverse the cuts already made, or to stop Mr Turnbull's cruel cut to the energy supplement. They've added 14,000 additional high-level Home Care Packages—a tick for that—while actually reducing the number of residential care places—a big cross for that. It is a bit of chicanery from the government, given that in its 2016 budget they had already cut aged care by $1.2 billion. With 105,000 older Australians currently on the waiting lists for Home Care Packages, 14,000 places over four years will not even keep pace with the current demand. The waiting list grew by 20,000 in the last six months of 2017 alone.

Labor has always protected pensioners and always will. Labor's recently announced pensioner guarantee will ensure that pensioners can still access cash refunds from excess dividend imputation credits. I will continue to fight to stop the government cutting the energy supplement and also increasing the pension age to 70. Surely, that decision could only be made by someone who had never done a week of labouring in their life. Recently I stood in this parliament and spoke about the fundamental unfairness of the Turnbull government's personal income tax plan. That unfairness is why Labor is seeking to get the bills split so that we can immediately support the parts that are fair. Labor will support the initial tranche to begin on 1 July and then go further to deliver bigger, better and fairer tax cuts for 10 million Australians after that.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Moreton and will just remind him—he's a very experienced member—that when addressing the Prime Minister not to do so by his surname. I didn't stop you; I let you finish. Thank you to the member for Moreton.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking to these appropriation bills, I want to highlight that there are two truisms in budgets and in politics. The first, in terms of budgets, is that they are about choices. The second, in terms of politics, is that it is often that which is small that can be the most significant. It may not be the biggest line item in the budget, but it is certainly of enormous significance: I am talking about this government's $83.7 million cut to the ABC. I want to make it clear that Labor will fight these cuts. It is quite apparent that this government fails to appreciate the strong faith and value that Australians have when it comes to their ABC. It is a trusted institution and it is one that is relied on for quality news, as a provider in regional Australia and for emergency broadcasting.

It was quite telling in Senate estimates last night, for example, where we did have some specific questioning about the potential impact of these budget cuts on Tasmania. The question asked by Senator Urquhart to the ABC was, 'Can you guarantee Tasmania will be spared any cuts because of the government's budget decision?' The CFO of the ABC replied, 'No, Senator, I cannot guarantee Tasmania will not experience any cuts.' This comes off the back of then Leader of the Opposition Abbott's solemn promise on the eve of the 2013 election of no cuts to the ABC. This is a persistent reminder that the Liberals can't be trusted when it comes to such an important public institution. Since the 2014 budget, we have already seen a cut of some quarter of a billion dollars to the ABC. Since 1 July 2014, around 800 jobs have been lost at the ABC, including 23 at ABC Tasmania. Now, with this latest cut of around $84 million, we know that this will have—and cannot it be ruled out, as the ABC has said—adverse impacts on Tasmania.

I took the opportunity, since the questioning was about Tasmania, to have a look at the track record of the former member for Braddon, Mr Brett Whiteley. Speaking on appropriation bills nearly four years ago, he talked about why he wanted to be a member of parliament. He said:

I wanted to be a member of parliament since I was 12 …

Good on him. He said:

It was to ensure that the excellent services that Australians have come to expect are sustainable into the future. … This budget fulfils those aspirations.

That was the 2014 budget. The aspiration was to cut around a quarter of a billion dollars from the ABC. That was when, as I said, the night before the 2013 election a solemn promise was made that there would not be cuts to the ABC. I would like to know where those aspirations are for a strong, viable and independent public broadcaster. It is very clear that support for the ABC is strong. For example, a poll done by the Australia Institute found that 70 per cent of people wanted a strong ABC and 60 per cent of people agreed the ABC needed a boost to long-term funding. They view it as critical to a healthy democracy and oppose a cut to ABC funding.

The Essential Reportcame out only the other day. Let's look at the specific line items of what people do and don't support in this budget. Total opposition to cutting spending on the ABC was 45 per cent. Indeed, a list of items in the budget were assessed. It is abundantly clear that people trust the ABC and do not want it cut. We had the Minister for Communications yesterday in Senate estimates specifically asked, 'Can you make a declaratory statement—can you declare—whether or not the people of Australia can trust you with the ABC?' He gave a response that had all the enthusiasm of a wet weekend. He replied, 'They can have confidence that this government will always support the independence of the ABC and assure that it is appropriately resourced.' The truth of the matter is, indeed, a very different story. This government has proven time and again that it cannot be trusted with the ABC. It just shows how out of touch this Prime Minister is with the Australian people.

The ABC is the public broadcaster, not the state broadcaster—a distinction that appears to be lost on this Prime Minister and his minister. I think it is clear that there is a stark contrast when you look at attitudes towards the ABC and at the attitudes of the government and individual government members—and I'm sure the member sitting at the table will agree with me as well. We on this side of the parliament actually believe in the ABC. It's something that we actually support—we support public broadcasting as an important part of our democracy; it is a trusted institution—whereas it is quite clear that those in the government do not in their heart of hearts support the ABC.

This budget once again exposes the weakness of this Prime Minister. I have another choice quote. In 2013 the now Prime Minister said:

… there is no more committed defender of public broadcasting … than me.

Well, God help us. In 2014 he said:

… the role of the public broadcasters in our national life today is more important than ever, as the business model of the newspapers in particular is under threat and newsrooms dwindle.

With defenders like that, the ABC certainly doesn't need any enemies—they've got enough on that side of the parliament.

What have we seen from the Liberals and this Prime Minister on the ABC? As I said, on the eve of the 2013 election the member for Warringah gave a solemn promise, while staring down the barrel of a camera, 'No cuts to the ABC.' Have a look at their record. In 2014 they cut $254 million over five years in the horror 2014 budget. In 2016 they cut a further $28 million from the enhanced news-gathering service that Labor helped set up. In 2018 they cut a further $83.7 million from the ABC with a freeze on indexation. The reality is that Liberal cuts to the ABC hurt and they have consequences. Since 2014 around 800 ABC staff have lost their jobs, the Australia Network has been axed, shortwave radio has been shut down and the number of hours of ABC factual programming has dropped by 60 per cent, drama has dropped by 20 per cent and documentaries have dropped by 13.5 per cent.

Then in 2015 the Prime Minister appointed Senator Fifield—a card-carrying member of the IPA—as the Minister for Communications. The minister's membership of the IPA is disclosed in his register of interests and was confirmed at Senate estimates yesterday. Let's have a look at what the IPA advocates. It advocates that the ABC be broken up. In 2012, in the article 'Be like Gough: 75 radical ideas to transform Australia'—one I'm sure Gough certainly would not have endorsed—the following items are listed:

50 Break up the ABC and put out to tender each individual function

51 Privatise SBS

In October 2008 the now minister for communications said in an address to the Australian Adam Smith Club:

Conservatives have often floated the prospect of privatising the ABC and Australia Post. There is merit in such proposals.

This minister is a serial complainer about the ABC. The list of what he has complained about is as long as your arm: everything from the date of the Triple J Hottest 100 to a host of others. We know that this government did a dirty backdoor deal with Pauline Hanson's One Nation for the repeal of the two-out-of-three media ownership rule. Senator Pauline Hanson has basically said the ABC is a waste of money. We had well-known reports of her threats to block some of these changes unless money was cut from the ABC budget. We have three bills currently before the parliament and a faux 'competitive neutrality' inquiry. Those three bills include, supposedly, some commitments to rural and regional Australia—it is quite ironic that this government thinks by cutting the ABC it can expand the services it provides—a so-called 'fair and balanced' bill and a bill about salary disclosure. Now Australians risk losing much-loved programs and services just because this Prime Minister won't stand up to those in his own party that simply hate the ABC.

It is very clear that the ABC is one of our most important public institutions. It contributes to our national identity, reflects our cultural diversity and encourages our musical, dramatic and performing arts interests. When there's a need for trusted emergency information during natural disasters, the ABC is there. As I said, the latest polling shows that most voters oppose the funding cuts to the ABC in this budget. In that Australia Institute poll, 58 per cent of respondents disagreed with the following statement:

The ABC and SBS should get less funding and provide fewer online and streaming services, so that they don't undermine commercial media.

Labor has a strong record of fighting for the ABC. It's not just about fighting the cuts. The Leader of the Opposition made very clear in his budget reply statement, which was very well received, his and Labor's commitment to always stand up for the ABC and to fight these cuts. It's not just funding cuts that we're going to fight—and of course we are fighting them and we will continue to do that—it's about opposing the government bills already before us, aimed to undermine the ABC. We'll call out this faux 'competitive neutrality' inquiry for what it is: a vindictive attack on the ABC. We affirm the value of the ABC and we know that a grassroots movement of Australians know, love and continue to support the ABC.

Friends of the ABC are not only in Labor; they are members of the public. As I said, sometimes the items you think are the smallest end up having the most significance. I know that the more Australians find out about and come to understand what these cuts to the ABC will mean for Australians, the more people will be opposed. It is essential that the ABC endure as a trusted independent voice that adds to the diversity of news and provides an opportunity for Australian stories to be produced, seen and heard. We on this side of the House believe it's imperative for the ABC to be properly supported by government, not stretched too thinly, as it delivers on its mandate in the contemporary media environment.

It's very clear that you can't trust the Liberals—or One Nation, for that matter—with the ABC. The ABC cannot sustain another term of this destructive Liberal government and its vendetta against our trusted public broadcaster. Liberal cuts mean cuts to the ABC content and services that people trust and rely upon. Labor will continue to fight for the ABC, because we know what an important institution it is in our democratic processes. We have a strong record of supporting the ABC, and we will continue to do so.

In conclusion, we know that there is a cut of $83.7 million to the ABC in this budget. You only have to look at the Minister for Communications' thought processes here. He announces a cut to the ABC and then announces that he's going to undertake an efficiency review into what savings can be made at the ABC. At least when the current Prime Minister held the post of Minister for Communications he held a couple of inquiries into ABC efficiencies before he made the cuts. The current minister makes the cuts and then does the review afterwards. This budget pauses indexation of the ABC's operational funding, amounting to that $83.7 million cut.

This will have an impact on what the ABC can do. It's quite clear, as I said, from budget estimates yesterday and as it continues today, that the ABC will need to make those difficult choices. It cannot guarantee, for example, that services and jobs will not be cut in Tasmania. Following that, it is quite clear that it cannot guarantee where else its services will be cut. As they have said themselves, there is no fat left to cut—it's cutting into muscle. It's cutting into that muscle that is an important institution of our democracy.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I begin my contribution to the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2018-2019 and related bills by associating myself with those very fine words from the member for Greenway. She is absolutely correct. Over the last five years, the Turnbull and Abbott governments have continued to eat away at our ABC—a national icon and an institution particularly needed in rural and regional Australia, including in my own region. I just make a genuine appeal to the government to restore the ABC's funding and to give the ABC every opportunity it has to thrive, as it has done for so long, and, in doing so, extending so many important broadcasting services to rural and regional Australia.

Yesterday I spoke on the government's tax changes, where I canvassed the economy pretty extensively. I won't go there again today in respect of these bills. Rather, I want to talk briefly about three things. I want to speak about Qantas's plans for a new pilot training school, a very important move by them; I want to speak about AGL's Liddell power plant in my electorate; and I want to talk a little about Australian agriculture and its future—in particular, the performance of its ministers and the impact that has had on the agriculture department.

It's well known that we have a massive shortage of pilots, not only here in Australia but internationally. In fact, many of our pilots are being poached by other countries, which exacerbates the problem here in Australia. To its credit, Qantas has taken the initiative of doing something about it and is massively expanding domestic training here in Australia. In doing so, it intends to establish at least one new flying school. I had the opportunity to speak with Qantas executives last night and they said that it might no longer be just one school, that it might be a number of schools. They made that comment mainly because there has emerged intense competition amongst regional towns for the opportunity to host such a school.

If it were to be one single school, we'd be talking about literally hundreds of trainees each year going through the school, wherever it might be situated. Obviously, that would be a significant economic boost for any township or local community. I'm told that up to 40 towns or more have expressed an interest across every state and territory, so it's an interesting venture for Qantas and it will be a challenge for Qantas to make its decision. As was pointed out to me last night, it will be one friend and potentially 39 upset communities—although, as I said, maybe in the end Qantas will do a number of smaller schools rather than one big school.

But today, as I did last night, I'm making a pitch for my own local community. My hometown, Cessnock, has a largely-unused aerodrome, as we traditionally called it. It's used by private pilots only—often by people visiting the vineyards, of course. But it is an aerodrome in good shape and which, in fact, still has some infrastructure around it. Whether it be fit for purpose for Qantas is another question, but I don't think they expect to walk into any town where the building for a physical school would be ready for them.

Cessnock is only two hours drive from Sydney on the M1, so I can think of no better location. It's close to Sydney but not too close for air traffic purposes. I'm told that the aircraft involved would only be light aircraft, so I don't see any real community opposition. I see it as only a win-win for Cessnock. Of course, Qantas will make its own decision on the merits of each of the propositions put to it, but I can't imagine somewhere better, at least in terms of location, than my home town of Cessnock. The aerodrome is nestled right in the heart of Hunter wine country. While I'm sure Qantas is keen not to be mixing the consumption of our world's finest wines with flying, in my experience, if you want to retain people on these courses, it's good to have them train somewhere not isolated but close to a capital city and somewhere that is just generally a wonderful place to spend a large part of their life for 15 months or so. Again, I think Cessnock fits that bill exactly.

Given the intensity of the competition, I expect state governments will become involved. Qantas will enjoy, one would think, the outcomes of the energies of each of those state governments as they seek to ensure that the school, or schools, is situated in their own state. So, today I make an appeal to the Premier of New South Wales and her senior cabinet colleagues to have a look at the proposition of Cessnock as the host of that training school and to do all it can to give us the very best chance of securing that school.

I think one of the things that Qantas will have in mind is the desire to avoid going somewhere where they're not particularly wanted for some reason, whether it be flight path issues et cetera or whether it be an already busy town that doesn't have the infrastructure to host the additional demand on that infrastructure. I should have said that Cessnock has the benefit of lots of accommodation capacity, because the tourism traffic is lumpy; it's mainly around weekends. So I think there's an opportunity to argue the case on accommodation.

But there are a number of things that could be done in Cessnock that would enhance our bid for that school, and chief amongst them is access from the CBD onto the new Hunter Expressway. Labor funded and built the Hunter Expressway. It has been a great boon not only for Cessnock but for the region. There's also the unexpected or impossible-to-avoid other effects of a big project like that—for instance, the way it redirects other local traffic and the demand it puts on other local roads. Cessnock desperately needs the help of the state government, and I would like to think the Commonwealth could play a role, too. We need a link to the Hunter Expressway and some form of ring-road around Cessnock so that the people living in the growing suburbs aren't using the CBD for their exit out of town as they commute to work each morning and their arrival home each evening. So I make an appeal to Gladys Berejiklian to look at that proposal and to do everything she can, along with her cabinet colleagues, to secure that school for Cessnock, remembering that a very large corrective services or jail project has just been imposed on the local town, with no infrastructure support to accommodate the change and the demand that that massive jail expansion is creating. So there is every reason for Gladys Berejiklian to become more engaged in Cessnock, our aspirations and our challenges.

I want to say something quickly about Alinta's bid for AGL. I view this as a stunt. I don't believe Alinta was ever serious about buying the Liddell Power Station. I think it was a stunt encouraged by our Prime Minister to try to skew the debate around energy in his favour. I believe Alinta might have had some hope of taking the power station but only on the expectation that they would be heavily subsidised by the Turnbull government. I believe that they believed it was a possibility, because the Prime Minister was so determined and so politically desperate to make that proposition work.

I recently met with the mayor of Port Augusta, Sam Johnson, a very capable person, and he reminded me of Alinta's history in his own backyard. When Alinta closed down power stations without giving any real notice to the community and the council, it had devastating economic effects for Port Augusta. Thankfully his community—in part, I suspect, due to the good work of the council and the former Labor South Australian government—has regenerated itself, basically on the back of renewable energy technologies. But Alinta has a bad track record. Its Chinese-based partner, or the entity which would have controlled Alinta, I'm told is registered in the Cayman Islands, and that sends all the wrong signals to the Australian community generally. I think people know what that means.

I lament the fact that AGL's plans for investment in the upper Hunter have been frustrated and delayed. We should be getting on with the very good plan they have to ensure that the upper Hunter remains the powerhouse of New South Wales, and every day that the Prime Minister runs interference on it is a day delayed along our path to greater energy capacity as well as renewable forms of energy generation. This will create many jobs for many, many decades to come, not just for a couple of years such as with the proposed extension of Liddell. Of course coal-fired power generation will continue to play a role with the upgrade of the Bayswater Power Station, just across the road from Liddell. If AGL is allowed to get on with its plans, we will remain the powerhouse of New South Wales and we will continue to create jobs in power generation—in coal, in gas, in large-scale solar, in battery storage and pumped hydro. It's a very good plan, and the Prime Minister should get out of the way.

I'm genuinely concerned for our agriculture sector. There is a lot of talk about going to $100 billion in value by 2030. I think we can do much better than that. That is just normal trajectory. That would be a performance that would just match what we'd done for the last 10 or 20 years. We can do better, but we need real government guidance and real government leadership. We need an agriculture department that is capable, effective, efficient and properly resourced, and that's not what we have at the moment. In Senate estimates last night, we canvassed the department's 2017-18 corporate plan. Under the banner of 'Our capability', and under 'Policy' specifically, it says:

Consultation with stakeholders has indicated the department needs to strengthen its capability to develop agriculture and water resources policy, and to influence other policies affecting our portfolio industries and rural communities.

In its testimony, the secretary of the department did better than that, or put the point more bluntly: the department, under the watch of Barnaby Joyce, lost its policy capacity and so far has done no better under the new minister. Nothing could be more important than policy capacity.

In their corporate plan they go on about the need to identify 'policy skills gaps', 'shifting to a longer term focus' and 'improving our engagement with stakeholders to build trust'. This is the key point: there is no trust. When you force the relocation of an entity like the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, you don't build trust with stakeholders, industry or your staff. You do just the opposite. When you take roles and responsibilities off states so that you can create a pork-barrelling exercise in the name of the Regional Investment Corporation, you don't build trust. You do just the opposite. And if we're going to be successful in agriculture, if we're going to meet our aspirations, the role of the states will be absolutely crucial. What the member for New England has done in the past, as agriculture minister, does not build trust with the states. It does exactly the opposite. When you give the live sheep trade an unconditional pass to go on with its atrocities in animal welfare, you don't build trust. You build disaster. And when you blame the regulator, your own department, for the debacle that is the live sheep trade, you don't build trust. You undermine your departmental officials and leave them with the view that they're not valued and they'd be better off somewhere else.

There is the same result when you tell people, with spouses working in Canberra and with children in Canberra schools, that they don't have a job any longer if they're not prepared to move to Armidale in regional New South Wales. That's not how you build trust; that's the exact opposite of how you build trust. You must respect our departmental officials and the role extended to them. They must be able to trust that the minister will give proper guidance, respect what they do and provide them with the support they need to do their job effectively on behalf of the Australian community. In the last five years, just the opposite has been taking place. You know the old story: those who are best in the department, who know they can secure work, will move on and those who are not so sure will stay. I'm not saying those who have stayed are not good staffers. Some of them will be, of course, and they will have stayed out of loyalty to the government and the department. But it is reaching disaster point. The Prime Minister needs to take control, needs to talk to the new minister and needs to tell the new minister that he needs to turn the ship around.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The budget this year is just like every other Liberal budget: it fails the fairness test. The Liberal's budget looks after big business at the expense of people who work and struggle. The budget gives an extra $80 billion tax hand-out to big business, including $17 billion for big banks, at the same time as it hits schools and hospitals with savage cuts. It's not just like previous budgets; it still has the nasties from the nastiest of Liberal budgets, the 2014 Abbott budget. Remember the pride that the Abbott government had when they were cutting funding to schools and hospitals, how proud they were of that appalling 2014 budget, the plans to axe the energy supplement for pensioners and some of the most vulnerable people in our community, and increasing the pension age to 70? Those so-called zombie measures are still in this budget. The government aren't bragging about them this year, as they did last year and in 2014; but those measures are still there, quietly sitting there and waiting to strip money away from pensioners, from our capacity to educate our children and from the health system that supports us when we are sick.

The budget locks in the cutting of the energy supplement for pensioners, costing pensioners around $14 a fortnight. The budget will force Australians to work until they're 70 before they're eligible for pension. There are $17 billion in cuts to schools and $2.2 billion in cuts to universities. There are cuts to hospitals and cuts to Medicare by keeping the rebate freeze on specialists for one more year. It seems the government learnt nothing from 2014. They're cutting away at the living standards of pensioners, cutting funding to our basic services and giving billions of dollars to big companies, many of which are overseas, and $17 billion of that $80 billion going to the big banks.

It also goes further and has some new nasty cuts. There's another $270 million in new cuts to TAFE and apprentices on top of extraordinary cuts that they've already applied. There's more than another $80 million in new cuts to the ABC. There is a $1.5 billion cut to remote housing by ending the national partnership agreement. The old cuts are still there, and they've added some new cuts. These are cuts that they apply in order to help pay for a massive $80 billion tax cut to big companies. I have to be a little bit fair here, in that the Liberal government says they are also going to provide tax relief for low- and middle-income Australians with the first tranche on 1 July of this year. It is actually paid at the end of the financial year. It is around $10 a week for someone on $125,000. If you're on one of the lower incomes, it's maybe $4 or $5 a week. As always with this tricky government, it's all a bit strange. There's a second and third tranche. The first comes one comes in 1 July, which is between $4 and $10 a week for low- and middle-income earners.

The second and third tranche—they are in 2022 and 2024, so are two elections away; elect Malcolm Turnbull twice and you'll get them—target people on much higher incomes. So, we've got the first tranche for people on low- and middle-incomes. Then, in 2024, some six years away, there are tax cuts that are much larger for people on higher incomes. The interesting thing—and this is where their trickiness comes in—they've said that if Labor doesn't support the tax cuts in 2022 and 2024 now, then the people who need tax cuts now won't get them. So, Labor has to support all of it, including the big tax cuts in 2022 and 2024, two elections away, in order for people who really do need tax cuts to get them now. Quite frankly, I feel like saying, 'So there! Support our big cuts or you won't get your little ones.' This is the nature of the government that we have.

We have said quite clearly that if they split the bill, Labor is prepared to support that first tranche of tax cuts right now—we can pass it today. The people who would get those cuts are suffering from stagnating wages, the cost of living is rising, rents in my area of Parramatta are some of the highest in Sydney, and the median house price passed $1 million over a year ago. People are actually struggling and that tax cut for the low- and middle-income earners will actually make a difference. But, the government is holding it to ransom—either the opposition supports tax cuts for the wealthier end of town or people who need it most don't get it.

Remember when they did this with the NDIS? This is not the first time they've played this trick. They tried to hold people with disability hostage, claiming that the money wasn't in the budget and Labor had to agree to all sorts of cuts in order to guarantee funding. It didn't work, and suddenly the money was there after all, as it always was. It was a hostage attempt then to use people with disabilities to try to force the Labor Party to make other cuts to other sections of the community, and they're doing it again now.

The budget doesn't pass the fairness test, but it also doesn't pass the fiscal test. In fact, it doesn't pass the government's own fiscal test. The Liberal Party used to rail against a 'debt and deficit disaster' and now there's barely a peep from them. That's not surprising actually, because it's much, much, much worse now than it was when they came to government. On the back of the best global economic conditions in more than a decade, when the world is growing, when other economies are growing and doing well, we find that Australia is going almost the opposite way. Net debt for this coming year is double what it was when the Liberals came to office. If the Liberals in opposition thought that the Labor Party's debt and deficit coming out of a global financial crisis was a disaster, what is it when it's double that now under the best global conditions we've had for a decade? The world economy is growing and still the debt is double, the net debt is double what it was when the Liberals came to office. On their watch, gross debt has crashed through half a trillion dollars for the first time in history, and it will remain above half a trillion dollars every year for the next decade. Both types of debt are growing faster under this government than under the previous Labor government, which had a financial crisis to contend with. This year's deficit, 2017-18, is 6.5 times bigger than the Liberals predicted in their 'horror budget' of 2014.

The budget fails the fairness test, it fails the fiscal test and it also fails the future test, because if there's one thing you have to get right to build for the future it's the education of our children. When you look carefully at the figures—and they didn't mention this in their budget presentation on that Tuesday night—after the end of next year there is no funding for universal access to preschool—none. Labor introduced a commitment that children get 15 hours of preschool. There are 2,429 children in the Parramatta federal electorate who will be left in limbo when that funding comes to an end at the end of next year. There are 350,000 children across Australia who access preschool each year who depend on this funding. The government just flippantly says, 'Well, we fund it every year.' But it's not in the budget—it's not in the forward estimates. If you intend to fund it put it in the forward estimates. Have you left it out to make the surplus look bigger at some point in the future? Is that why you've left it out? If you're going to fund it, put it in the budget. Let me explain something to those of you who don't understand this. Businesses like child care centres have to build assets. They have to renovate and update. They have all sorts of things they have to spend money on. They actually need certainty. Doing it year by year does not work for businesses that actually have to invest in capital in order to provide their services.

Nor does it work for families. Anyone who knows parents in this day and age knows how difficult it is to organise the care of children in future years. Parents know: they look around, they pick their childcare centre and they pick their preschool, finding the best ones and trying to get their children into those centres before they return to work. They move house sometimes for the best care for their children. They need certainty. It's not okay to remove funding for universal access to preschool after 2019. It's not okay. If you're going to fund it, put it in the budget and let parents and businesses do what they need to do to provide the services that our children need to do well in the future.

And also for schools. In Parramatta, schools will lose over $28 million: $18.3 million from public schools and $9.8 from Catholic schools. That's not okay. Then consider the massive amounts that this government has already ripped out of TAFE and apprenticeships, and they're now ripping out more. That pathway also disappears for people in my community, and it's incredibly important. We have construction all over the place in Parramatta, but if our young people can't learn a trade because our TAFEs and our vocational education systems are being ripped apart by this government, one has to ask: what's the point? Our young people need those jobs and they need the training in order to get them.

We'll also lose $12 million from Westmead Hospital. And, as if that isn't bad enough, we'll lose $2.09 million from Cumberland Hospital. Anybody who's been in my electorate and who has visited the Cumberland Hospital knows that, of all of the hospitals, that's the one which cannot afford to lose that kind of money. These are dreadful cuts.

But there are three areas where the government claims they're actually going to put money in. I just want to deal with those. First of all, there's home care. They made a rather tricky promise to create 14,000 new in-home aged-care packages over four years. What they didn't say is that they were taking the money out of residential aged care to pay for it. It wasn't new money for the 14,000 new in-home aged-care packages over four years, it's a transfer of money. It's a hoax, particularly when you understand that there are 100,000 people on the waiting list now.

There are 150 electorates, so if it were averaged out that's 666 people in my electorate who'd be on the waiting list. I've got 12,000 people over the age of 70 and there's 666 on the waiting list. This 14,000 over four years is 23.3 places a year per electorate. We've got a waiting list of at least 666 and I've got 12,000 people over the age of 70, with more of those needing home care every year, and they're offering, by transferring money out of residential aged care, 23.3 places per electorate per year. Are they kidding? And that was worth announcing in the budget? That was actually important enough and impressive enough, in their eyes, to announce in the budget—really?

Obviously, they haven't spoken to any of the people who are desperate for in-home care. People are actually going to nursing homes because they can't get their home care packages. People are leaving the homes they have lived in all their lives, and leaving their partners, and going into nursing homes because this is a stuff-up. And they announced 23.3 places a year with great pride and great fanfare in the budget. Really!

Infrastructure: airport rail in Western Sydney was the great announcement. Yay! But there's no money to build it; it's another feasibility study. It's a hoax. We need airport rail and we need it to be there the day the airport opens. We need to plan it early enough for businesses to leverage the route and to make their plans as well. If you want to build a new city you've got to get the planning right and you've got to give other people time to do what they need to do to make the most of what you're doing. If you're putting in airport rail then get it done. Make a decision! How many feasibility studies? How many scoping studies? Put the money there to build it. Without money to build it, it's just paper. How long is this going to go on?

On the Great Barrier Reef: I know that a lot of people in my community really care about the health of our oceans. Many people write to me about marine parks and I know they care about this. They might have thought: 'Oh, $444 million to the Great Barrier Reef? Good!' It comes on top of figures that show Commonwealth funding to arrest declining water quality has been dropping by $11 million a year under this government, so they've been going backwards. But that $444 million is going to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, an organisation that had an $8 million budget and 10 staff last year. There wasn't even a tender process. This is an organisation chaired by John Schubert, the former chair of Esso. This is a private foundation that had 10 staff and an $8 million budget, and that's the organisation that is getting the great package for the Great Barrier Reef: $444 million without a tender process.

I would love to have time to talk about the wonderful things that Labor has in its policy, but, quite frankly, at the moment, the single most important thing we can do is just point out to people the hoax in this budget. There are tax cuts for low-income earners, but only if the parliament agrees to major tax cuts for high-income earners six years down the track. There is supposedly new funding for home care packages that is actually taken from residential home care and isn't even a drop in this ocean of backlog that this country faces. There are cuts to preschools, cuts to schools, cuts to TAFEs, cuts to universities—cuts to every single service that our young people need to build good lives. This is a hoax, and the fact that this government got up there and spruiked it on the night as a great thing shows that either they're completely out of touch or it's a big con.

Debate adjourned.

Federat ion Chamber adjourned at 13:06