Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The incorporated speech read as follows—

Families in my duty electorates of Lindsay and Greenway in western Sydney, Dobell and Robertson on the Central Coast, and Gwydir and Calare in west and north western New South Wales have a right to be disappointed by this Budget.

This Budget represents nothing new from a tired, old Government, whose arrogance after 10 years is already starting to poke through. It’s become a familiar tale on Budget nights under the Howard-Costello Government: Australians are all waiting for a promise to invest in the country’s future, but it never comes. This year was no different, but the disappointment was made all the more bitter by the fact this Government had a once-in-a-generation opportunity to capitalise on the revenue from the resources boom and put in place a future-thinking programme of investment, but we got nothing of the sort.

Under this regime we have seen 300,000 Australians turned away from TAFE courses. Not because they didn’t have the marks or the qualifications, but because there weren’t the places to take them. And running concurrent to this shortage of educational places has been a skills shortage that continues to worsen. This month the vacancies for skilled jobs rose again by 1.2 per cent. We can’t get the people to fill these places because they aren’t getting the opportunity. And what is this Government’s response? Instead of using some of the $10 billion to make sure young Australians aren’t being turned away for trades courses, they are relying on imported workers to fill the gap. John Howard said in question time this week he thought it ‘elementary’ to rely on foreign workers to solve the skills crisis his Government has sent us headlong. Well I say it is elementary to train our young people to fill those places before we turn to overseas labour.

Of course, this is part of John Howard’s grand ideological plan for the country with his Work Choices legislation. It is all aimed at slashing the wages of workers, whether it is employers drawing up Spotlight-style AWAs or it is business using labourers from overseas to undercut the wages of domestic workers. The only choices under this regime are accept lowered wages, no penalty rates and no rights, or be unemployed. These are the stark choices Australians are being presented with.

Even Gosford Liberal Councillor Malcolm Brooks knows this. In his newsletter, The Way Ahead Cr Brooks lambasted the Coalition for imposing its ridiculous IR laws, admitting it is deeply flawed and will make it harder for Australians to get a fair go in the workplace. Considering Cr Brooks’ newsletter purports to represent mainstream Liberal Party opinion on the Central Coast, I would assume Ken Ticehurst and Jim Lloyd share this point of view but haven’t had the ticker to come forward and stand up for their electorates.

At the centrepiece of this Budget was what Peter Costello referred to as ‘tax reform’, but in reality was a $10 tax cut that was eaten up by the triple whammy of interest rate rises, skyrocketing petrol prices and shrinking wages under this Government’s draconian IR laws.

According to the last ABS census, the vast majority of income earners in my duty electorates earn weekly incomes of less than $800 and will receive a tax cut of $10.

Labor has lobbied hard for a tax break for middle Australia. Those families on average weekly wages are bearing this country on their shoulders: they are the workers who are putting in overtime and working on weekends and public holidays, and they are the workers who are helping to strengthen the economy. But middle Australia also cops the brunt of the spikes in petrol prices, or when this Government’s poor management of the economy sees yet another rise in interest rates, or when an employer uses this Government’s IR laws to slash their wages for the sake of a profit.

They were short-changed in last year’s Budget with a miserly $6-a-week tax cut, and the extra $10 coming out of this year’s Budget is already spent as mums and dads at the kitchen table try and balance the books.

The Member for Dobell, Mr Ticehurst, in his contribution on the Appropriations Bill, regaled the tax cuts delivered by the Government. Mr Ticehurst said:

Improvements to tax and family payments in this budget will help middle income earners in Dobell, particularly those with families, and put more money back into their pockets. From 1 July 2006, all Australian taxpayers will benefit from new personal tax cuts worth $36.7 million.

In the seat of Dobell, 84% of income earners are earning less than $800 a week. 6.7% of people in the Dobell electorate will benefit from the cut to the tax rate of 42 cents in the dollar to 40 cents in the dollar, and only 2.55% will benefit from reducing the top tax rate from 47 to 45 cents in the dollar. Mr Ticehurst and his Government aren’t looking after middle Australians, they are delivering tax cuts to their mates in the top tax brackets.

In the past two years, the average income earners of my duty electorates have received $16 in tax cuts. But let’s look at the increases in the costs of goods and services they have been forced to bear in the past two years. In April 2004, the average cost of unleaded petrol in Sydney was 94.7 cents per litre. In April 2006, they paid an average of 132.5 cents per litre. If we look at filling up a family sedan, with a 75 litre fuel tank, in April 2004 this would have cost $71.03. In April this year, families were shelling out close to $100. That’s an extra $30 a week middle Australia is trying to find just to be able to commute to work, do the shopping or take the kids to weekend sport.

Let’s have a look at the increase in mortgages. Since October 2004, when John Howard made his hollow promise to keep interest rates low, the repayments on an average mortgage of around $227,000 have leapt by $879 a year. That’s an extra $18 a week families are scraping together to pay off their mortgages.

With their $16 in tax cuts, families are also trying to cover childcare fees that are climbing ever higher. Since the ABS’s 2001 Child Care Survey, the median weekly cost of childcare has increased by 48%. The median weekly cost of childcare for parents using 40-44 hours a week was $85 in 2001. In 2005, this had jumped to $130. That’s an extra $45 a week parents are having to find and fund.

Low income earners are going to find it particularly tough, because Peter Costello is making them wait until 1 July 2007 for their tax cut. Australians receiving the Low Income Tax Offset, which is a significant proportion of the tax cut received by taxpayers on less than $40,000 a year- and there are five million such people- won’t see that cheque for another 12 months.

Working mothers number large among recipients of the LITO. Mums coming back into the workforce after the birth of a child would benefit from the LITO, but even with a $10 billion surplus and a self-congratulatory pats on its own back, the Government couldn’t see fit to give these low wage earners a break and ensure they had access to this important offset.

If the Government does the arithmetic here and still concludes that the tax cuts it handed down in the Budget are something for ordinary Australians to marvel at, they are more out-of-touch than I thought.

I would like to take a moment to comment on the Government’s inaction on childcare in this Budget.

Mrs Markus said in her speech on this bill in the other place:

I would particularly like to highlight the uncapped childcare places in family daycare and before and after school care. While it is a job that is never done, child care must change with the social nuances of the time. It is a job that requires active listening and responsiveness.

Indeed, I would agree with Mrs Markus that there needs to be a lot of listening done on the issue of childcare. The problem is, it isn’t happening. Just ask Jackie Kelly, Member for Lindsay. She has jumped up and down about child care, but her Government colleagues aren’t listening to her. They’re certainly not listening to the electorate.

However, I found Ms Kelly’s response to the Budget rather perplexing. In the local press in my duty electorate of Lindsay following the handing down of the Budget, Ms Kelly had very little to say about child care.

I would like to read from the Budget coverage in The Western Weekender of Friday, May 12, by Kieran Colreavy, titled, ‘Eleventh Heaven’, which featured, incidentally, a photo of Ms Kelly quite chummy with Treasurer Costello:

Federal Member for Lindsay, Jackie Kelly, welcomed the Budget, saying it would leave workers and families better off.

“A new comprehensive tax plan, more childcare places, superannuation assistance and further family assistance are just some of the highlights of the 2006-07 Budget,” said Ms Kelly.

In the Penrith Press of the same day, journalist Louise Attard’s story has Ms Kelly singing the praises of the Government’s childcare provisions in the Budget:

“(The childcare rebate) will rebate 30 per cent of out-of-pocket childcare expenses up to $4000 per child per annum,” she said.

Of the uncapping of family day-care and out-of-hours care places, Ms Kelly said in the Press:

“This means any new service set up by any eligible group will be funded,” Ms Kelly said.

“It is expected that this will generate an additional 25,000 places by 2009.”

I found this very curious, particularly considering Ms Kelly’s previous tirades against her own Government. Take, for example, her speech to the Fisher Price Childcare Awards in November last year, where she declared her Government’s 30 per cent childcare rebate as ‘clumsy’. She goes on, in the same speech, to say, “The Government system to support those people (parents) is designed by people who don’t use it.”

This speech was followed by months of Ms Kelly calling her Government’s childcare system a ‘shambles’ and proposing radical reform. She even threatened to cross the floor at one stage if the Government did not install a world-class childcare facility in this House.

Yet come the Budget announcement, and we had an unusually tame response from Ms Kelly despite the fact she got nothing of what she was asking for, and Australian mums and dads were rightly disappointed by the absolute poverty of solutions for childcare from the Howard Government. Ms Kelly was in ‘Eleventh Heaven’, according to the local papers.

But come Sunday, May 14, and Ms Kelly had transformed into a maddened avenger who, after having expressed no initial concern about any of the childcare provisions in the Budget, came out and said, quite rightly so, that the ALP was more serious on childcare than her own party. She told the Sun-Herald newspaper:

Childcare needs a bit of leadership. We have missed an opportunity with this Budget. Kim Beazley is obviously talking childcare as an attack, saying you could have done more.

It’s hard not to disagree with that when you have got $10 billion in your kitty.

So we had a very sudden turnaround, from disinterest to anger, in the space of two days.

Ms Kelly was very correct, however, in saying the ALP is taking the issue of childcare more seriously than the Coalition. The Howard Government has, in the words of Ms Kelly, missed an opportunity to use that massive surplus and invest it in our future, to take that surplus and invest it in supporting our working mothers and fathers by making a childcare system that is affordable and accessible.

We do have the better policy. Kim Beazley demonstrated this in his reply speech. We will build 260 childcare centres on primary school and community grounds so parents can avoid the mad morning double drop-off. And those centres are going to be staffed by Australians who have studied the relevant TAFE courses for free, because Labor is going to abolish fees on those courses. We recognise that it’s about more than just rebates and uncapping places; we understand that those centres have to be built and have to be staffed as well.

It didn’t take Ms Kelly long to change her mind yet again, but it was more the monstering she received from her own party colleagues than anything, I suspect, that provided the imperative. The next day, May 15, she was out with her tail between her legs, well and truly cowed by the heavies on her side. She’s gone from saying the system is a shambles, that the rebate is clumsy, and that the Government doesn’t know what it’s talking about when it designs childcare policy, to statements like this one she delivered on the AM programme:

I mean, I think our Government’s got a great record on childcare, and I think this lifting of the cap on family day care is another step in the right direction. It’s an instalment, if you like.

She lit a fire, but couldn’t handle the trouble she got herself into and backed away from it.

Her hypocrisy on this issue continued on into her speech on this bill in the other place on 1 June. She said that, “Importantly for me, we did something on childcare”, and goes on to say she is looking for the second instalment in the Government’s childcare policy. Well, firstly, this Government has done nothing for childcare but paid it lip-service, and secondly, guess what, Jackie Kelly, keep looking for that ‘second instalment’ because this Government has no further commitment to deliver a solution to the problems wracking childcare.

I find it entirely disingenuous that this Member can’t even bother to put out a decent response to her local press after the Budget, then comes out swinging madly and telling the truth for once on this issue- that Labor has got it right-, but capsizes at the first sign of pressure. What kind of representative is this? The people of Lindsay don’t deserve an MP who will toe the party line at the first sign of heat from the thugs on her own side.

This is a disappointing Budget, and the Government have shown again they aren’t serious about the future of this country.