Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today on a matter of public importance regarding the Abbott government's appalling budget. There is so much wrong with the budget that it is really hard to work out where to start. It is a budget that entrenches disadvantage and it is a budget that hurts all Australians, except wealthy Australians and corporate Australia. It is a budget for which those in the Abbott government should hang their heads in shame. It is a disgraceful, harsh and cruel budget.

This morning the Prime Minister was on TV, saying that it was a fair budget. If he thinks it is a fair budget, then it shows the Australian public just how out of touch he is. Millions of Australians, the community sector, education and health providers are reeling today and will continue to reel as more and more detail comes out about this harsh, cruel and unfair budget.

Is the Prime Minister of this country so out of touch that he thinks slicing a bit from everyone is fair? We do not live in a fair society. There are huge disparities between the rich and the poor in Australia. I am, quite frankly, disgusted that the Prime Minister of the country can say that his budget is fair, because that assumes that we live in some kind of fair society.

Last year ACOSS showed that people who are unemployed, children, especially those children who live in lone parent families, and people whose main source of income is social security payments are the groups most at risk of poverty. Those are the groups that the Prime Minister of this country has targeted. I watched Mr Hockey deliver the budget last night and at points the Prime Minister was grinning. How can you grin—he is the Grim Reaper—when you have imposed further poverty on groups in this country who are currently struggling?

Of those groups living below the poverty line, more than two million—that is based on 2013 figures—600,000 of those are children. The Prime Minister of this country, who says he has a fair budget, has simply put those people living below the poverty line—the more than two million, 600,000 of whom are children—further behind.

What a knockout blow the budget is to most Australians—permanent pain for low- and middle-class Australians and for young people in this country who have been thrown on the scrap heap—who rely on benefits, including pensioners and vulnerable Australians, such as homeless people, with whom I have a lot of contact in Western Australia. They are living on our streets and, in a place as rich as Western Australia, it is an absolutely shameful indictment that families are living up and down Perth beaches. Has the Prime Minister ever visited those families? No, he has not. Why do they live in their cars on our beaches? Because that is where showers and toilets are. When you ask them what they want, they say that they would like to have a hot shower. Their expectations have been slashed and burned so badly that that is their first immediate response: 'It would be nice, when we use the showers at the beach'—which are designed for beachgoers, not homeless families—'if they were hot.'

But, again, those people would never say the Prime Minister's budget is fair, because all the Prime Minister has done is further penalise groups like that. As they struggle to put a little bit of petrol in their car, because it is their home, they will be charged an additional cost to every other cost that they are currently trying to get by on. Again, what an uncaring government, a mean-spirited government, that applies a temporary debt tax on the wealthy and just lets corporate Australia off scot-free—with no new revenue-raising avenues—and that punishes every other Australian.

And what about Medicare? What lies we have been told about that! What an absolute imagination of the health minister, Mr Dutton. Earlier this year, on the 7.30 report, he said he wanted to have a debate with Australia about its health system. When did that happen? It certainly passed me by. I was not aware of this 'far-reaching debate', to quote the health minister. In February he said he had a new plan for a GP tax, based on those Australians who could afford to pay, so people in this chamber and other Australians who could afford to pay were the target. In his view, GP services were being overutilised. Of course, we know that this government does not bother about getting facts and information. It just makes them up, because there is no evidence that I am aware of that GP services are overused in this country. He went further, saying that middle-class Australians and those on higher incomes would pay for their medicines. He told us the GP tax was levied towards those who could afford it, making Medicare more sustainable, stopping us from going to the GP too many times, despite having no proof. This far-reaching debate certainly missed all of us. I am not sure where it was taking place.

But what we now know is that those secret meetings were taking place behind closed doors in the cabinet room of the Abbott government. Even earlier this week, in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald,Minister Dutton still told us that the GP tax was about curbing Medicare and stamping out unnecessary GP visits

Now we know the truth of it. Now we know that sick and poor Australians will be paying for medical research. What an injustice that is. Minister Dutton will go down in history as a destroyer of Medicare. He will go down in history as a mean-spirited minister who imposed harsh taxes on poor people in this country, not only when they go to a GP but when they get a prescription filled. When they get a referral—and we mostly do when we go to doctors—they will be paying for that too. Australians will not forget that it was the Liberal Party who made life much harder for them.

There are the Medicare Locals. A couple of weeks ago I went to Fremantle. I am sure the Prime Minister has not been there either, and he certainly would not have visited the Street Doctor who plays a vital role in linking homeless people to services. What we know about homeless people is that they are unlikely to go to a GP. It is almost impossible for them to front to a GP. Sometimes they do not even have Medicare card, so they are not likely to front to a GP. They are also highly unlikely to front to accident and emergency, particularly in WA where it is going to be moved many miles away, so it will be impossible for them to get to. The Street Doctor in Fremantle is also visiting families who are living in their cars along Perth beaches. They have a clinic at South Beach in Fremantle. But what do we know? Medicare Locals are completely scrapped. I want to know from the health minister: who is going to be paying for the Street Doctor? Or are we saying to those who are homeless, 'It's time you stood up for yourselves. It's time you looked after yourselves. Go get a job. We know you're living in a car, but off you go, after you've had your cold shower in the morning, and get yourself a job.' The Fremantle Medicare Locals are also doing Close the Gap and a range of other services. Where are they going to go?

I heard Mr Hockey proudly announce—and I have heard this from other Abbott ministers—that we do not provide schools or hospitals, so we are forcing that cost, 100 per cent, back on states. That is a cowardly act. It is a cowardly act because it is just code for: 'We really want the states to start to have a GST conversation.' Like those people living at South Beach and Kwinana Beach in WA, it is time the states stood up for themselves as well, so they will be forced to find additional revenue. The only way they can do that is to look at raising the GST or, perhaps, have it apply further than it currently does. We all know what the GST does. It disadvantages the same group of Australians—the people who use all of their income buying food, paying rent and so on every week, and the people who are not able to make their income stretch and are currently reliant on the community sector for food banks and handouts when they cannot pay their electricity bill. But, no, there is complete disregard from a very unfair budget. We are going to force the states—by forcing them to pick up the full cost of health and education—to spread the GST revenue further and increase the tax. That is yet another body blow for low-paid Australians, those on pensions, young people and those who use their savings to just get by.

There is our youth. Fancy treating future leaders in our country with such contempt. It would be nice if I were 28 and could say, 'I'm still young at 30,' but to say to people, 'We're going to stop you getting unemployment benefits for six months and then we're going to force you to do 25 hours of work for the next six months, even if it's picking fruit two hours south of the city. And then, if you do not get a job in that time, it is all going to start again until the age of 30.' I have had a bit of a look through the budget papers. I know lots of 30-year-olds who have children and are buying their own homes who, through no fault of their own, end up being made redundant. What about those families? There is absolute silence from the Abbott government about them.

Almost every specialist youth program has been slashed. One of the other services I looked at in Midland was Youth Connections. It has been completely scrapped. Youth Connections deals with youth who are disadvantaged, have fallen out of school or have become unemployed. Guess what? It is an amazingly successful program. I bet none of the WA senators from the Liberal side have ever been to Midland, but if they care to visit Youth Connections they would see that Youth Connections are working with children as young as 11. I am sure that the Abbott government thinks that somehow Jobs Services Australia will deal with youth, but, when you are as young as 11 and you have dropped out of the school system, it is Youth Connections that successfully gets you back into school, and that is what has been cut. In Midland, Youth Connections goes into the shopping centres and has lots of conversations with disadvantaged youth in that area, and they have been incredibly successful. They are not the only Youth Connections service in the country that is successful. We heard evidence through the Senate Select Committee into the Abbott Government's Commission of Audit that they are successful wherever they go because they have been well funded and are well-resourced. Isn't that what we want: get children and youth back into school and back into employment? Apparently not. So youth in this country have just been thrown onto the scrapheap by the Abbott government.

In terms of the homeless, there is nothing for them. Yes, the Prime Minister extended Labor's program for another 12 months but ripped out millions of dollars that went to developing new housing. As I speak, Perth's Registry Week volunteers are taking a survey of homeless people in Perth City. Last year, just in Perth City, we needed 200 beds. We do not have any capital funding to build those beds. It will be very interesting at the end of this week to see what the need is in Perth City. But the uncaring, harsh and cruel Abbott government does not care. It does not care about any of those people. They are walking down a road littered with broken promises and Australians will not forget. Australians will see this government for what it is: harsh and cruel.