Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in the matter of public interest debate to speak to the tens of thousands of Australians who are finding their voice and who are coming together from across the country to speak out against the contempt their government—our government—has shown and continues to show against its own people. These tens of thousands of Australians understand that this is a cruel and dishonest budget. These tens of thousands of Australians are angry because this budget launches unmistakable class warfare on low- and middle-income earners. These tens of thousands of Australians understand that waiting until the election to remind people of the true colours of Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the Liberal coalition government is too late. These tens of thousands of Australians have already started their campaign. I thank you all and urge you to continue your campaigns.

Your campaigns are reminding Australians that, after 23 years of continuous economic growth, the services and conditions that make our society one of the most fair and equal in the world must never be taken for granted. Your campaigns are empowering Australians to get informed, to not allow this government to fabricate crisis, to not allow this government to demonise groups within our society, to not allow the powerful to divide the community against itself and to not allow its campaign of fear to gain traction.

Your campaigns are proving that we are indeed living in 2014 and not 1984. We have technology on our side. Your messages are highlighting that there is no budget emergency. You understand that nations with budget emergencies do not receive AAA ratings with a stable outlook from all three credit-rating agencies, as Australia did under Labor. Your messages are highlighting that there is no debt crisis. Australians understand that the Australian government has low levels of debt by world standards which, according to the International Monetary Fund, are around five times less than the average for the developed world.

Australians understand that responsible governments run budget surpluses when the economy is strong and deficits when the economy is not as strong. Labor allowed the government to go into deficit in 2008-09 because the global financial crisis was threatening to plunge our economy into recession. Australians understand that Labor's action, with the support of a clear majority of Australians at the time, stimulated the economy, kept Australia out of recession and supported hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Australians have heard from world experts in economics, such as Nobel laureate, economist Joseph Stiglitz, who described Australia's stimulus package as one of the 'best designed' of any advanced economy. In contrast, when the Liberals came to government and realised there was no budget emergency, the government actually fiddled with the numbers and increased spending in such a way that, over the budget estimates, they had doubled the deficit.

Australians understand that the budget's debt and deficit figures have been inflated by Treasurer Hockey through a combination of spending decisions and changes to economic assumptions, such as unemployment projections. These political changes doubled projected budget deficits by $68 billion and have also blown out debt figures. When Mr Hockey and his MPs and senators claim a debt crisis, Australians know that they are the ones who cooked the books.

Australians also understand that education and disability reforms were funded in full. In the 2013-14 budget, Labor took the unprecedented step of releasing 10-year figures for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and Gonski school reforms, demonstrating how they were funded over the long term. The coalition has reversed a number of Labor's savings measures and now claims the education and disability reforms represent a fiscal time bomb. Australians understand that this is another obvious attempt by Mr Abbott, Mr Hockey and the coalition to justify breaking election promises on schools and disability. These messages are informing Australians of what is fact and what is fiction, what was promised before the election and what the people did not vote for.

I repeat Mr Abbott's pledge, in an interview on the day prior to the election: 'No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.' Mr Abbott also said in that interview that the election was like a grand final and:

… there's only one try in it, either side can win …

Mr Abbott, Australians know that the try you kicked was because of an illegal tackle that was unsighted by the referee. And, like when a result does not go a footy fan's way because of a missed decision, the Australian people are mad. Labor is holding Mr Abbott to account for this promise and the many other commitments he made throughout the campaign that he is so happy to dismiss now that he is in government.

Mr Abbott's promise of no cuts to health is being broken on so many fronts. Most obviously, the cumulative $50 billion of cuts to hospitals and health services over the coming years is a clear breach of this promise. But cuts extend to making Australians pay more for services. This budget plans for a $7 tax on GP visits, as well as an increase to PBS co-payments of $5 for general patients and almost $1 for concessional patients.

These are payments that people on low incomes just simply cannot afford and, in the case of the GP tax, the money is not even going back into the health system. The money is going into an offset account of consolidated revenue where it will act as an offset on government debt until one day in the future when it reaches an optimal amount and starts paying out on an undisclosed amount for undisclosed medical research. It is one of the great con jobs of this budget. The money is not going to medical research next month or next year, and Australians know that and they are not happy.

The GP tax is designed to send more people to state and territory run hospital emergency departments, and of course the Abbott government is hoping that the states and territories will put their own taxes on entry into the emergency rooms—two simple con jobs that Australians understand and they are calling them out for the deceit and spin they are.

There is the increase in petrol tax by bringing back biannual indexation to CPI, a tax that will disproportionately hurt regional families the hardest because of their lack of options on transport, attacks that Mr Abbott said to President Obama was at least on one level part of the price of carbon, a move that would let the big polluting industries off millions of dollars and transfer the cost to Australian families.

There are definitely changes to the pension in this budget. Mr Abbott's new pension indexation system will cut payments for millions of age pensioners, carer payment recipients, disability support pensioners and veterans from 1 July 2017. The plan is to break the link between average wage increases and pensions. Instead, pensions will only increase in line with inflation. If this had been in place for the past four years, a single pensioner would be more than $1,500 a year worse off today.

Mr Abbott's new pension system also freezes the means test thresholds on all pensions, which means more people will be bumped off or incur a lower rate of the pension. Finally, without any public consultation, Mr Abbott is raising the pension age from 67 to 70, a move that will give Australia the oldest pension age in the world, a move that is coupled with the cut to the low-income superannuation co-contribution, which Labor introduced to give low-income Australians, predominantly women, the same tax incentive to save for their retirement as people earning five and ten times their wage, a move that would take the burden off the pension system in the long term.

Mr Abbott's promise of no cuts to education; is being broken on so many fronts. Firstly, there is the long-term $30 billion cut that will put pressure on teachers, on parents and, worst of all, on students. There are cuts to the schools from 2018 through reduced indexation of federal government payments. Despite promising a unity ticket on Gonski, Mr Pyne and Mr Abbott have done all in their power to use weasel words and get out of their commitment. Despite state Liberal governments supporting the plan, despite parents supporting the plan, it did not fit with Mr Pyne's class warfare on public education and had to go.

The budget increases university fees after Mr Pyne said in August 2012 that the coalition has 'no plans to increase university fees'. The facts are that the coalition plans to: more than double the interest payable on student loans from CPI to six percent; increase the student contribution to university funding by 20 per cent, put extra pressures on regional universities in particular; deregulate course fees, which could see a $20,000 degree quadruple or more overnight; and for the first time, the budget allocates public funding for private universities.

Labor will oppose the cuts to the family payments, the cuts to Newstart and youth allowance and the cruel move to not allow Australians under 30, who are by no means young, access to income support for more than six months in every year. The rhetoric, another three-word slogan of course, is that taking people off income support will make them 'earn or learn'. Of course at the same time the government is increasing the costs of learning, cutting employment services for young people and providing incentives to businesses to employ older Australians.

The budget has also savagely cut government assistance for carers, for housing and homelessness, for child care and for legal aid. All carer payment recipients will suffer from cuts to their payments. This is a heartless attack on vulnerable people from a government who promised no change to carers' pensions before the election. The impact on women is significant given the gendered nature of caring. Cuts to homelessness services affect some of our most vulnerable community members. Women and girls make up about 60 per cent of all clients of homelessness services and about a quarter of services' client load is attributable to children and women fleeing domestic and family violence. This budget also takes the axe to the early education and care parents rely on every day, while funding $50,000 payments to mothers who do not need them through his extravagant parental leave scheme. Legal Aid supports some of the most vulnerable women in our community—mothers and grandmothers who need to go to court for child custody matters, child protection and family violence. The cuts outlined in the budget will mean more women representing themselves without any legal advice or guidance in the courts.

I have received a large number of stories from Australians from all walks of life, stories that are uniting Australians where their government is seeking to create division. I want to share Kelly's story with the Senate today. She says:

My name is Kelly, and I live in Queenstown, Tasmania I have to attend a college 2 hours away from home and live in the boarding house. In addition to my full time studies I have two jobs just so I can get by. My mother is disabled and without a job yet and my father was abusive and lives in another state, so, like I said, I have to support myself.

In addition to somehow keeping myself a float and helping my mother both financially and physically, I am also trying to save for university next year.

These new taxes aren't helping.

On top of all my personal financial struggles, I can't afford to pay to go see a doctor, and I'm afraid of how these education budget cuts are going to hinder my fellow students and I in our pursuit of our own lives.

I'm absolutely devastated about these cuts to the ABC stations, because contrary to many beliefs, my age group does actually watch it, and enjoy watching it.

These are only the tip of my fears for the short and long term future for myself, and my country.

Something must be done.

Kelly.

I want to thank Kelly for her honesty in coming forward and telling her story, and I am sure there are lots of other stories around like Kelly's

But I do want to assure Kelly that we are not standing still. The online organising that is going on at full speed across the country is being backed up with opportunities for the public to come together at respectful and inclusive events and not feel that they are threatened and alone. I thank all of the community members, the trade unions, the organisations such as the Salvation Army who will be left to pick up the pieces of people's lives after this budget, the GPs and the many others who have organised and participated in these events and all those who have events in the pipeline.

The Australian community will not forgive this government for this cruel and dishonest budget, and we will not stand by and support the measures in the budget such as the GP tax, the cuts to university education, the cuts to health, the extra impositions put on pensioners and the problems associated with state budgets now having to fund the concessions. Labor will not stand by, and I want to assure people like Kelly and the many hundreds and thousands of others who have written from around the country that we will not stand by and let this cruel and twisted budget get through without a fight. We will continue to stand by them, we will continue to stand with them and we will support these people in every measure that we can by voting down these measures within the budget. It is onerous, it is awful, it is cruel and it is twisted, and it is not what was promised to people prior to the election.