Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

Senator Brandis's answer confirmed that both Get Reading!—a $6.4 million program—and the $9.5 million Indigenous Languages Support program are to be abolished. He did not give any justification for cutting these programs nor did he give any justification for $100 million being cut out of the Arts portfolio—something the sector thinks is deplorable.

What we do know is that Senator Brandis's taxpayer funded bookshelves, which house his taxpayer funded book collection, will not be cut. His books will be there for him to read at his pleasure. But when it comes to encouraging other Australians to read, he has complete disregard and is quite happy to cut Get Reading! and its $6.4 million. No wonder Senator Brandis has been called, correctly, one of the meanest and least generous of all ministers for the arts in Australia, presiding over some $100 million in cuts that will have devastating impacts on the arts and cultural activities in this country.

Labor believes that the arts are a vital part of Australia as a nation. They are part of our identity. They are what make us who we are as Australians—arts and culture. That is why under our time in government we increased arts funding to ensure that Labor's Creative Australia policy would receive some $200 million in funding for the arts. This budget has taken most of that funding back.

How can Senator Brandis justify himself as an arts minister? In 2007 Senator Brandis, as arts minister said: 'The minister who had been most generous to the arts in terms of funding was me.' That is a down and outright lie. That is not correct because we know now, clearly, that he is one of the meanest. We only need to look at what some of the key spokespeople in the arts have said about the arts funding in this budget. Matthew Deaner from Screen Producers Australia said that film makers are concerned at 'a disproportionate cut to Screen Australia' including to a key area of industry innovation and multiplatform games. The agency received some $100.8 million in funding in 2013-14, but it is now losing $25 million in government funding over that period plus the termination of the Australian Interactive Games Fund.

Further clarification of the meanness of this minister comes from Sue McCreadie, the Actors' Equity director, who says that the cuts threatened the recent 'renaissance of Australian drama' ignited by extra funding for drama production on the ABC. We know also that cuts have been made to the ABC as well. Ms McCreadie added:

Australians want to see local content on our screens, everyone loves it. But where's the future?

Where is the future, Senator Brandis, when you are cutting some $100 million out of arts and culture in this country?

In Senator Brandis's answer he spoke of the ballet. I asked him specifically about the abolition of the $6.4 million to the Get Reading! program, and the only answer he could give was to talk about the funding to the ballet. Well, Senator Brandis, the arts are more than just the ballet. He acknowledges the diversity of the arts, but only wants to talk about the ballet. The arts extend right across a range of arts and cultural platforms, all of which will suffer now under these cuts that this government has announced. There are cuts such as $38 million over four years to Screen Australia and $28.2 million to the Australia Council. That is something that is well beyond what Ms McCreadie thought to expect from an efficiency dividend. Of course, we also know of the cuts to the ABC and SBS.

This is an appalling budget when it comes to arts and culture. Something that was a Labor legacy, where the arts finally had a strong footing, has now been ripped from under just about every arts organisation in this country. Senator Brandis should be ashamed of that.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take note of the answers given by Senator Scullion to questions by Senators Peris and Sterle. I wish to place on record my appreciation and congratulations to this minister for the excellence of his role as the Minister for Indigenous Affairs in this particular government, and to compliment Senator Scullion on his deep engagement and his deep understanding of his portfolio.

He made mention this afternoon, when challenged, of the funding in his portfolio. He very, very expertly—and, I think, adroitly—outlined what a small proportion of his $1.2 billion budget was being reduced. Of course the proof is the fact that, when you get a person as competent as Senator Scullion is in handling the matters of his portfolio, when you get somebody from the Northern Territory who deeply understands the challenges, who deeply understands the solutions, who has the cooperation and support of those people to actually enact the policies he is implementing and so expertly addressing to this chamber, then I have every confidence that the very, very modest reduction about which he spoke will be as nothing in a $1.2 billion program.

He mentioned in his answer, as I recall, the $3.8 million in the Aboriginal child abuse program which deals with the terrible problem that we all know exists and has existed for so long in urban, regional, rural and remote Aboriginal communities. He spoke about the $13.4 million that the then Labor government, whilst they took all the media attention about its allocation to the Clontarf Foundation, conveniently forgot to actually put into their forward estimates. I speak with some pride about the Clontarf Foundation, named as it is from the original Clontarf College, which was a program established very much with the cooperation of Mr Harry Neesham. It was bad luck for me that he was the coach of the Dockers, but he then saw the light. I also draw attention to Mr David Wirrpanda, a great Eagles footballer, an Indigenous man, who is doing great work with young Indigenous boys and girls to try to encourage them into another of Senator Scullion's great programs, the Back to School Program. Senator Scullion spoke eloquently in this place today about those programs, about his intentions and policies and about the implementation of them. Whenever I have travelled in rural and remote Western Australia in recent times I always seem to see Senator Scullion engaging with those communities.

In the few minutes left to me I wish to reflect on what would have to go down in history as one of the scandalous failures and act of bastardry of the Labor government in its time. That was the action taken on 8 June 2011 when the then Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, and the then Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator Ludwig, completely and utterly cut the guts out of the live export trade in this country. They particularly decimated the industry associated with Aboriginal cattle stations across the north.

It is disappointing that Senator Sterle, who asked one of the questions, was himself a champion of the process which helped us all to reverse that disgusting and despicable decision that was taken. The impact that it had on Indigenous Aboriginal stations in the Kimberley and particularly in the Territory is still resonating today. It was a program run by Aboriginal people, an excellent program of cattle management, a program that was adding employment opportunities for young Aboriginal people and middle aged Aboriginal people as they worked on the stations, as they managed the stations, and as they properlly got stock ready for export alongside the other pastoralists in Northern Australia. It gave them the opportunity to gain the self-respect that so many of us know was lacking among Aboriginal people. This action taken by the then government would stand them condemned when it comes to the aspirations of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders in this country.

I speak with some pride as I listened to the answers by Senator Scullion in outlining his policies, procedures, actions, challenges and solutions in the Indigenous affairs portfolio. I look forward to his success. (Time expired)

Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note of answers given in question time today. If there has ever been a greater example of what divides the Labor Party from the Liberal and National parties it is the budget that was delivered on Tuesday night—a budget delivered on deceit, a budget delivered on cruel cuts and unfair increases to everyone in this country. We need only look at the example delivered in that budget of $80 billion in savage cuts to schools and hospitals. I will give an example of what an LNP government is doing in my home state of Queensland. They are actually selling schools in Queensland. That is the extent they go to. That is how LNP governments treat education. Other examples include the destruction of Medicare with the introduction of a $7 payment when you go to the GP. My office has been bombarded by people ringing and emailing, concerned about the horrendous budget that has been handed down by this government.

Before the election Mr Abbott promised there would be no cuts in these areas. He promised there would be no cuts in health or education. He promised there would be no cuts to the ABC and the SBS. He promised there would be no changes to pensions. We all know that that was a malicious lie. We need only look at today's papers. There is an article in The Courier-Mail with the headline 'Truss accuses seniors of using super on cruisy life'. That demonstrates how out of touch this government is in terms of what they have delivered in this budget. The article states:

Older Australians are relying on the age pension because they are blowing their super on cruises and luxury items, Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss has declared.

It continues:

"Increasingly, the lifestyle and the savings for superannuation are being seen as an opportunity to enjoy a few cruises and the luxuries of life for a few years until it runs out and then people wish to fall back on the age pension," the Nationals leader told the Conservative Breakfast Club in Brisbane.

How out of touch is this person! I will use my father's retirement as an example, Mr Deputy President. He was a police officer, just like you. He retired at 55 and he is still self-funding his retirement. And you know very well, Mr Deputy President, it is not a very generous pension that police officers receive, particularly at his age. My father has never been out of this country on a cruise. Every year, he looks forward to playing golf with other police officers around the country. That is his luxury—going round to capital cities playing golf on a golf course! That is how out of touch this government and this Deputy Prime Minister are with the people out there who are trying to make ends meet. It really surprises me because the Deputy Prime Minister comes from Wide Bay, which has one of the largest populations of seniors of any electorate in the country.

That same article in The Courier-Mail quotes a retirees organisation that has come out attacking the Deputy Prime Minister:

"Retirees generally do not squander their money and it is nonsense to suggest they do," National Seniors Australia chief executive Michael O'Neill said. "People who save and accumulate money for their retirement do not then go out and throw it up against the wall just to get a pension."

Last Sunday I was out working on a stall in the seat of Ferny Grove, which fits into one of my duty seats—Dickson. People were coming up to me extremely concerned about this budget. No doubt, as a result of the feedback, the emails and the phone calls my office has been receiving, this will continue. People will remember the extent of this budget. They will remember the seat; they will remember the promises that were broken; they will remember the impact in areas such as education, health and pensions.

Lo and behold, rather than try and do something to alleviate the pressure on the budget from the gold-plated parental leave, they retain that, they clutch onto that, and make sure that $50,000 is still there and able to be provided to millionaires when they have their children. On top of that, the government is talking down the economy. This is probably one of the most alarming areas. We left the budget and the economy in good hands with a AAA rating. But now you have the government talking down the economy— (Time expired)

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will pick up where Senator Furner left off. He is claiming that the Labor Party left the budget in good circumstances. That is where I am going to start. The fundamental problem with the modern Labor Party, in opposition right now, is that they simply will not acknowledge the damage that they did to our budgetary situation and the mess that they left us to pick up. Martin Parkinson, the Treasury Secretary, eloquently outlined the challenge that we face and that Labor now seeks to deny. It is not credible to deny the budget problems and the budget mess that Labor has left us. Martin Parkinson said:

Without policy change, the budget is projected to be in an underlying cash deficit for the next 10 years.

If this situation came to pass, it would mean that the budget would be in deficit for 16 consecutive years, substantially longer than the 7 years of deficits in the early 1990s.

Martin Parkinson's warning needs to be taken seriously: 16 consecutive years of deficits, which would lead us to $667 billion in debt, is unsustainable. It is a budget emergency, it does need to be dealt with.

That is what this budget is about. It is about saying that we cannot keep doing things in the way the Labor Party was, that we have to make savings, that we have to change the way that we deliver our budgets, the way that we spend, so that we can get our finances on a sustainable footing. As we talk about all those important programs, as we talk about health and Medicare, as we talk about education, as we talk about pensions, all of these things are important, and that is why we need to keep them sustainable. If you look at nations when they lose control of their finances all of these things suffer. All of these things suffer when debt and deficit get out of control because the severe cuts have to happen. We have seen it in Europe and we are not there and we do not want to be there. This is what this budget is about, about stopping us from going down that road. The Labor Party well and truly had us on that road.

Let us look at some of the figures that they left us with, what they inherited and what they left. They inherited a $19.8 billion surplus and they left us with a $47 billion deficit. The average budget position under the Howard government was an $8.1 billion surplus, the average under Labor was a $39.7 billion deficit. Government debt was negative $44.8 billion when we left office and it was $191.5 billion in net debt when Labor left office. What has this left us with? It has left us with an interest bill of $12 billion per year. $1 billion a month is what Australians are being asked just to service the interest on our debt. If we do not get it under control, this could rise to almost $3 billion per month, and that would be disastrous. If we allowed our nation's finances to get to a situation where we were paying almost $3 billion a month to service our debt, $3 billion a month in interest payments, we would see health suffer, we would see pensions suffer, we would see defence spending suffer, we would see our education system suffer. All of these services that need to be funded, all of the infrastructure that our nation needs would become less and less affordable if we allow debt and deficit to get out of control. So I say to senators opposite, I say to the Labor Party, stop living in denial. Martin Parkinson's warning is right: 16 years of deficits would take us down a very dangerous path, a path which would lead to severe cuts because eventually the money has to be paid back. So future generations would be asked to pay increasing amounts of tax and suffer under the burden of increasing amounts of debt, all the while seeing their services cut back. That is what the coalition is against, that is what this budget is about—fixing the mess we inherited from the Labor Party. (Time expired)

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

I take note of answers to questions from opposition senators today. I have to say with regard to this budget of broken promises that it is quite amazing the way that government senators are responding. I know that the Treasurer and the Prime Minister of this country are desperately out there on the airwaves and anywhere else they can go, quite frankly, to sell this budget, this harsh and cruel budget, this budget of broken promises. But here in the Senate it barely rates a mention, and that is because I think government senators opposite are truly embarrassed and are hanging their heads in shame about how bad this budget is. All they can do is either continue to carp about Labor, making up these ridiculous assertions about what we did and did not do in government. We hear that almost on a daily basis. If we are not hearing that, it is about avoiding answering the questions or it is sarcasm. Indeed, naming former Labor politicians is a great habit and seems to delight those opposite over and over again, because that is what they spend their time doing, despite the questions we ask them.

Today I think Senator Scullion takes the prize if there were one by inventing new language, 'blicky-blocky', in answer to serious questions about a budget of broken promises, about a budget which particularly for Aboriginal people really entrenches disadvantage. Despite the Prime Minister of this country before he became the Prime Minister championing the fact that he wanted to be the Prime Minister for Aboriginal affairs, this portfolio has received savage cuts and we have certainly seen money ripped out from all over services to Aboriginal people—$90 million out of health services just gone. We know that Aboriginal health in this country is a long way from where it should be. The average life expectancy is shameful, yet we see that Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey just slash and burn $90 million out of health services. And it does not stop there: they have stolen money from preventive health. Aboriginal young people have some of the highest smoking rates in this country, an absolute tragedy, and what do we do? We do not leave that money in preventive health, no; we redirect that to our new centrepiece that Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey have gone on about but seem to be failing to get much traction on, their medical research future fund. Then there is the GP supertax. If that does not further disadvantage Aboriginal people I do not know what does.

But that is not the only area where there have been savage cuts. It goes on and on. We heard Senator Singh today talk about money that was to preserve Aboriginal language in this country. It was Labor who delivered the apology to the stolen generation—something many in the then opposition at that time could not even acknowledge. So, obviously, it is easy for the government to take millions out of the preservation of Aboriginal language—something which Labor would not have done.

But it does not stop there. Today we heard Senator Payne talk about universities. Universities have suddenly become markets. Instead of higher institutions of learning, they have become markets. So, apparently, we no longer pride ourselves on going to university to learn, to explore and to really challenge our thinking. No, we are going to a university market. I heard the Vice-Chancellor of Charles Sturt on radio this morning saying that 80 per cent of the courses that are offered will double. Again, the Abbott government seems to think that everyone who graduates from a university starts to make $100,000 a year. Well, they do not. The vice-chancellor used the example of a course in agriculture, which he said will cost $100,000—and no-one will be able to take up that course, because when you graduate as an agriculture worker you are earning quite a small salary. So here we have our vice-chancellors telling the Abbott government, 'We think 80 per cent of our course fees will double.' How dare the Abbott government turn our universities into markets. They are just two examples of a disgusting budget of broken promises. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Human Services (Senator Payne) to a question without notice asked by Senator Rhiannon today relating to funding for public education.

.

The coalition government's ideological attack on public education has been laid bare by comments from Senator Payne and Minister Christopher Pyne. Despite promising in the 2013 election campaign that there would be no funding cuts to education, the government has in fact cut billions. Funding for public schools has been slashed and 3.6 million students as well as their parents and teachers will feel the impact. The sum of $5.8 billion has been ripped out of the public higher education system. This is clearly a massive assault on public education.

The coalition vision for higher education will cause student fees to skyrocket. Under a system of deregulation, students will pay higher interest rates on the HECS debt and pay it back at income levels lower than those that currently apply. Postgraduate students will pay thousands of dollars a year in extra fees and public universities will now be forced to compete with private education companies for government funding.

The government's plans will force students to pay an additional $3.2 billion for university education through a lower HECS repayment threshold and the charging of real interest rates of up to six per cent on their debt. The latter change is perhaps the most insidious. Charging real interest rates means an individual's debt will continue to grow over the course of their working life at a rate higher than wage increases. Yes, the debt will increase over the working life of many graduates. The most perverse element of the change is that graduates on lower incomes who take longer to pay back their debt will end up paying more than those on higher incomes. Clearly, this is a regressive user-pays model for funding public education and the antithesis of what a fair, just and accessible system should look like.

Minister Pyne's entire justification for these changes is the argument that, because graduates earn more money when they enter the workforce, they should pay back more money for their degrees. Under his system, it is the lower paid graduates that pay more for their education, compared to those on higher incomes. Mr Pyne is forgetting that these people pay taxes—taxes that fund our education. Under Minister Pyne's new system, graduates on lower starting salaries will take twice as long to pay back their HECS debt and pay more than twice as much in interest bills as compared to those on higher starting salaries. The government's budget papers show that almost one-quarter of new HECS debt will not be repaid. It is clear that it will be lower income earners who will be saddled with increased debt for the rest of their working lives.

Minister Pyne's vision for Australian higher education is one that mimics that the United States, where the wealthiest can access a high-quality education and the disadvantaged are locked out. Studies in the US have shown that the dual effect of large amounts of debt combined with real interest is a barrier to participation for disadvantaged students.

It is just extraordinary that this government, made up of many members who went to university when it was free—including the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education—are planning to increase fees. Fees for nursing students will increase by an estimated 18 per cent, for arts students by 60 per cent and for engineering and science students by 55 per cent. The coalition's only response when asked about these enormous fee increases is to run the line, as we heard today, that competition fixes everything. During question time, Senator Payne acknowledged that competition would push prices up. This directly contradicts an earlier statement from the minister who yesterday said that the coalition's university deregulation agenda would 'drive the price down, because competition always drives the price down'.

The coalition's free market fundamentalism is not what Australia's higher education sector needs. Australia should be aspiring to a public higher education system that is equitable, well resourced and accessible—not a system that hits low-income graduates the hardest. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.