Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to speak for 20 minutes.

Leave granted.

Over the last few months we have heard much about the savage cuts that conservative governments are making to public services across Australia. We have heard how necessary it is for Campbell Newman to cut 14,000 jobs from the Queensland public sector—'necessary' was his word—including almost 3,000 jobs from health services. We have heard how 'tough' it is for Barry O'Farrell to rip $1.3 billion out of education in New South Wales. And, in an extraordinary display of one-upmanship, we have heard Isobel Redmond muse that she might cut up to 35,000 jobs from the South Australian public. The story, right across the country, is the same: Liberal governments are slashing jobs and community services.

They say they need to cut spending but what they are really cutting is investment in our children's future. They are cutting investment in the high-skilled workforce of tomorrow. They are cutting investment in our community's health and in our workplaces' productivity. They are cutting investment today in what is crucial for growth and savings tomorrow.

These cuts store up future losses in exchange for illusory short-term savings. And my own state of Western Australia is suffering too, as the Liberal government is cutting into essential services like policing and health in an attempt to paper over their own financial mismanagement. Western Australia is not immune to the Liberals' obsession with public sector cuts. Nowhere is immune, and there will be worse to come, I think, under an Abbott government. I will be fighting, tooth and nail, to make sure that we do not live to see that day.

While the Queensland and New South Wales governments have recklessly cut funding in large, sweeping blows, the situation in WA has been death by a thousand cuts. They have made smaller but far more numerous cuts to the public sector over the last four years. The WA Liberals have peeled back funding for community services like health, and they have done this by stealth. It might be easier for the WA government to get away with it, but it is not any easier for Western Australia's police stations, hospitals, or for our nurses, doctors, or police officers, to keep delivering the health and community services that we rely on so very much.

Just a few weeks ago, WA Liberal Treasurer Troy Buswell announced $330 million of cuts to public services, which are on top of the two per cent so-called efficiency dividend that the Liberals are trying to bleed out of government departments. What I find most incredible is that the first areas that the WA Liberals seem to look at for cuts are in vital services like health and community safety. The $330 million in cuts includes $10 million from the WA police budget in addition to the $21 million efficiency dividend that the police have already been expected to pay. That is $31 million that will no longer be available to the Commissioner, reducing his ability to keep frontline officers on the beat, and Western Australian communities safe.

I know, in an effort to head off this criticism, Mr Buswell ruled out Queensland style job cuts when he announced these cuts yet the Western Australia Police Commissioner has already confirmed that 104 positions will have to be, for want of a better word, cancelled or lost from Western Australia Police in order to achieve these cuts. As a result of these losses, according to the commissioner, there will obviously be a reduction in the quality of services. Western Australian Liberals simply have their heads in the sand if they think that slashing the police force's budget will not have an effect on police jobs and the services that they deliver, not have an effect on the number of police officers nor on them being where they are needed when they are needed.

In the Department of Health the situation is the same. Officials estimate that 130 positions will be lost as the Liberals rip $12 million out of the health services budget. That move has provoked outrage not only from the health sector unions in Western Australia but also from the Australian Medical Association. They have rightly pointed out that Western Australia cannot afford a reduction in the quality of its health services with a population that is booming and also ageing. In fact, in the news this week we saw that Western Australia is behind other states in important things like emergency service waiting times. But the Western Australian Liberals appear to be unmoved. I can only conclude from this that they just do not care about the quality of services available to Western Australians. They simply do not care.

Mr Buswell has refused point blank to rule out further cuts. That on its own is, I think, unacceptable. But what is even more outrageous is the Liberal's financial mismanagement that created the need for these cuts. There is no doubt that the Western Australian Liberal government has a problem with revenue that they are busy trying to paper over. The budget papers have consistently forecast a drop in the Australian dollar even though all other forecasts tell us it is going to stay at around its current level. That has had massive ongoing impact on Western Australia's bottom line and that is the one thing that the Western Australian Liberals still refuse to acknowledge in the budget papers. They, in their budget papers, have the Australian dollar tracking at about 76c. We all know it is on par with the US dollar. That has a substantial impact on forecasts of real revenue that we get from things like mining royalties. So they are simply papering over the real state of the budget.

Rather than planning for this fall in revenue and saving appropriately or working through an intelligent process—as we have been trying to do in the federal government—the Western Australian Liberals have been busily splashing money on pet projects like Colin Barnett's lavish new offices and the Perth waterfront development. They have left people in Perth suburbs adrift with soaring electricity prices—thanks to the Barnett state government—as well as soaring water and gas bills, without any compensation as we provided through the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and without access to quality local services.

The Western Australian Liberals have abandoned things like the much needed train line to Ellenbrook and they are also very busily privatising services at the new Fiona Stanley Hospital. They have also put forward that the new Swan Hospital should also be a private model. These are things I object to. But the savings they have made by breaking election promises and outsourcing public services have quickly been eaten up by spending on themselves and their boutique projects. That is because the Western Australian Liberals are focused on governing for a privileged few rather than for all Western Australians. At the same time, they run the risk of putting the Western Australian budget into deficit. They have, I say, their priorities wrong and the people of Western Australia are paying the price.

I suppose while the financial mismanagement and skewed priorities in Western Australia are horrifying, I fear they are nothing compared to what would happen under a potential Abbott federal government. Indeed, the federal coalition has responded with nothing but applause for the public service cuts carried out by their state colleagues. shadow Treasurer, Joe hockey, seems to believe that Campbell Newman has not gone far enough in throwing 14,000 Queenslanders out of work—wishing all strength to his right arm. We have good reason to think that the federal coalition will brutally slash community services. But just how far would they go? Coalition MPs have promised to deliver Australia back into a $15-billion surplus. I think this is a staggeringly unrealistic surplus in the wake of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. A $15-billion surplus is roughly equivalent to the savings that could be made by abolishing Medicare. Are the coalition really prepared to cut that deep? Are they? Let us not forget that to even get to the point of delivering that surplus Tony Abbott has to first find $70 billion worth of savings.