Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator Moore, I move:

That the Senate notes that the Abbott Government ' s 2015 budget locks in cuts to health and education and delivers higher spending, taxes, deficits and unemployment.

I rise today to make comments in relation to the insulting language directed towards new Australian mothers unveiled in the latest Abbott-Hockey budget and to detail this government's continued indifference to the aged-care portfolio. Last year the government divided the Australian public into 'lifters' and 'leaners'; and now the government has finetuned and redirected its cannon, placing Australian mothers in the firing line and labelling them as 'fraudsters', 'rorters' and 'double dippers'. We have a Prime Minister who is known as a two-timer; and only an Abbott government and a predominantly male ministry would use these words to describe Australian mothers.

It was the Abbott government who wanted to introduce a gold-plated paid parental leave scheme that would have seen families and mothers get $75,000 to have a baby. True to form, the Abbott government has done another backflip and wants to rip away $967.7 million of paid parental leave, which will leave about 80,000 mothers worse off. Labor's paid parental leave scheme was designed so that paid parental leave would be topped up by employers who wanted to add to the government scheme. This is not 'double-dipping'. Employer contributions allow women to spend more time with their babies and families. Both the Productivity Commission and the Fair Work Ombudsman agree that employer contributions are an important part of paid parental leave; and now the Abbott government wants to rip this way. This is an extraordinary and intensive attack on ordinary hardworking Australian families and women who receive top-ups from their employer to help them spend more time with their newborn babies.

We have all seen this evidence of the foot-in-mouth disease that Mr Abbott is well known for not only nationally but internationally; and it seems that this disease has transferred to the Minister for Social Services, who referred to these mothers as 'rorters', when all they wanted to do was to be able to spend some extra quality time with their newborn babies. These are the critical first months of an infant's life. We mothers all know how extraordinarily important this is. What is worse, Mr Abbott has defended his minister's extraordinary attacks on Australian families and Australian mothers. And we have heard the same thing in this chamber this afternoon. I am amazed that the women on the government side of the chamber would defend these unprecedented attacks on Australian women. It is disgraceful. You really do have to wonder how low this Liberal government can go. The government's audacity in attacking young mothers by calling them double dippers and rorters underpins that we have a government that is arrogant and out of touch with young mothers and young families in this country. They are so out of touch with our modern Australian society. And to add insult to injury, the government is led by a Prime Minister who has also assumed the role of Minister for Women. I think the truth is that this Prime Minister is a double-crosser. Not only has he doublecrossed young mothers in this country; he needs to apologise for the assault on them by his government and his ministers. It is disgraceful.

Under the pressure of last year's failed budget, the Abbott government has shown its true colours once again and reiterated the fact that the Abbott government does not value Australian families. The Prime Minister's credibility with Australian families is rapidly fading. A budget for families has not been produced; it is smothered in savage cuts not only to paid parental leave but also to family payments. How can Mr Abbott be believed by any Australian family ever again? We already know that the pensioners of this country cannot trust Tony Abbott. We already know that the Australian people cannot trust him to keep any of his commitments because, as we all recall, he said there would be no cuts to health and we have seen cuts to health. He said there would be no cuts to education and we have seen cuts to education. He said there would be no change to the pension and then denied the change in indexation for Australian pensioners was a cut. When the indexation is lower then that is a cut. That cut had an effect on the aged care sector as well.

Tony Abbott promised that his budget would not be at the expense of the Australian families budget. He has again broken that promise. We have seen in this federal budget that Mr Abbott has kept the severe cuts to the families budget that were announced last year. These cuts will have a serious impact on low- and middle-income families. These families will be $6,000 a year worse off. Labor will in no way support these cuts. Labor will continue to oppose these cuts every day in this Senate chamber, as we did for the 12 months between the last budget and this one. We have finally shamed the government into putting away cuts to the Australian pensioners. They have shelved them but I think they are really just in the bottom drawer—we know that we cannot trust those on the other side of this chamber. You cannot rip money away from families one day and then say you care about helping them with the cost of raising their children the next.

Labor will fight Mr Abbott and we will fight Mr Morrison, whether he is Treasurer or whatever portfolio he has, even if he ends up being the Prime Minister of this country. We will fight in this chamber to protect Australian families and we will fight to protect those that are most vulnerable in this country. Australians are represented by a bunch of fake fixers. Australian families deserve better from this government. What needs to be fixed is the state of the nation that unfortunately the Prime Minister has now created. We have a Prime Minister who is quite frankly unfit to hold that office. The budget has again this year failed the fairness test and the fundamental unfairness of last year's budget disaster still remains. Labor stands with Australian families. We do not want to see these shameful cuts that will hurt millions of families right across this country.

It is not just families and mothers that this government has forgotten in this year's budget. It has also forgotten older Australians. I ask myself, why doesn't this government like old people? Why doesn't this government support people with dementia? Why doesn't this government support those that have chronic health issues, those that are homeless and those that are on the pension? These are the most vulnerable people in this country and these are the people that this government has abandoned yet again in their second budget.

Labor will always support senior and vulnerable Australians. However, the government's second budget ignores the future of older Australians and has not delivered any security or any certainty when it comes to aged care. Mr Hockey's underwhelming Intergenerational report highlighted that Australia is ageing and that this will significantly impact on the nation's economy and our society in general. Labor is committed to addressing the issues facing Australians as they age. We have already done the heavy lifting to ensure sustainability of the system, and aged care should be absolutely immune from this savage budget. In reality the Abbott government's second budget is set to make it even more difficult for the aged care sector when recruiting staff. This is at a time when the sector needs to increase its workforce to meet the demand of our ageing population. Today in question time we had the minister for aged care in here talking about some of the things that the government has done in aged care. But he would not address the issue that they have had two years and two budgets and they have done nothing at all to ensure that we are ready with trained, skilled-up and available people to go and work in the aged care sector. They have failed again. In fact they have cut $40.2 million that should have been there to ensure that those who are currently working in the sector are skilled up and trained. As we know, we are an ageing population and the complexity of ageing is increasing but this government has failed older Australians. They have failed them and they should be condemned. The budget was brought down on Tuesday night and we have already had people from the aged care sector in our offices telling us how disappointed they are that there has been nothing at all in this budget to help, to encourage and to ensure that we have a ready workforce as we move forward. The minister came into this chamber on 26 June to cut the severe behaviour supplement for people with dementia, and we know that the government cut the supplement without any consultation whatsoever with the sector.

Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You mismanaged it.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You were in government, Senator. We introduced the legislation but you were in government. Your government and your minister took their eye off the ball and that is why this government cannot be trusted when it comes to looking after the welfare of older Australians. I will debate any senator on that side and I will debate the minister in the other place. When it comes to aged care the only government that will ever look after the best interests of older Australians will be a Labor government. Those on the other side stand condemned. Over 10 months ago the Abbott government vowed to undertake an audit of the various funds available for aged care workforce development with a view to developing a cohesive strategy. That was 10 months ago and what have we seen? Nothing. Nothing has been done because the government do not value aged care in this country. We had a minister for ageing and he was in cabinet so he had a strong voice—and I cannot speak highly enough of Mr Butler from the other place. We did all the heavy lifting

We brought in the Living Longer, Living Better framework, which was going to take us forward for the next decade. Of course, there is always more to be done, and the incoming government had the responsibility to oversee, review and carry out those audits, but they have failed and failed miserably. They have not communicated with the community about the changes that will be upon us on 1 July. They have not bothered explaining them.

There are good things in aged care, and I give credit to the government that there are some things they have kept in place. They should be commended for that, and I do commend them, but I will not allow those people on the other side to tell untruths and to continue to mislead the Australian community. What have the government really done? As I said, they have cut $40.2 million from the Aged Care Workforce Fund. The aged-care workers again have been abandoned and just brushed aside. The Abbott government fail to recognise that we need an adequately skilled and well-qualified aged-care workforce if we are to deliver what I believe we should have: the world's best practice when it comes to aged care. Australians deserve nothing less.

In my home state of Tasmania, by 2020, which is not that far away, we will need an additional 5,000 workers in the aged-care sector. Those workers need to be working not just in residential facilities; they need to be able to provide the services to keep people in their homes. A smart government would recognise that that would save them a lot of money, because we know, when older Australians end up in residential care now, that is when it is the most expensive. The longer a smart government can keep them at home, the better it is for the bank balance. But, because they do not care, have no vision and have no interest, they are not smart. In Tasmania, we know that there are already 1,000 people on the waiting lists, waiting for home based care. That is 1,000 older Tasmanians who have paid their taxes. They have worked to build up this country, along with all those other thousands of people across the country who need that assistance to stay at home. What have the government done? The only thing that they have demonstrated, and they have demonstrated it very clearly, is that they have no idea, no vision and no strategy and, quite frankly, they do not care.

Attracting new workers into this sector must occur for the future of this country. We have to recognise that, by 2050, we will need 310,000 people out there looking after all of us who are ageing and those who are coming behind us. It is not a question of whether this is possible or not; it has to happen. We have no choice. We are all living much longer, which is a fantastic thing—I like collecting all these numbers—but the reality is that the federal government has the responsibility in this country to ensure that we have the world's best aged-care facilities and support.

Labor's Living Longer, Living Better aged-care reforms and the Addressing the Workforce Pressures measures were aimed at providing funding and initiatives to ensure the longevity and productivity of those working in aged care. In government, what Labor tried to achieve—and we set the framework—was to ensure that there was a future not only for a strong workforce in this country but for a career path. We have to ensure that people coming to work in this very important sector are not those who just could not get a job somewhere else. We do not want people to join the sector because they cannot find any other job; we want people working in the sector to be there because it is a rewarding experience and they are valued. We want nursing staff to see the aged-care sector as just as exciting and as rewarding as working in an acute care hospital. This is our responsibility.

The Aged Care Workforce Compact, developed by an independently chaired advisory group in consultation with the sector, would have improved services, attracted and retained new staff, and trained staff so that they became the industry leaders. It would have ensured that their career development was an integral part of the sector-wide plan. Included under this measure was Labor's $1.2 billion aged-care workforce supplement. This funding would have assisted in improving ongoing sustainability and retention of aged-care workers. What did the current government do when they came into office? They scrapped it and they have failed to put any other reforms in place.

What else did the 2015-16 budget offer aged care? As if it were not bad enough, the government also decided to cut funding to dementia—yet again. As I said, last year the government cut the dementia and severe behaviour supplement. This is well documented and Australians were up in arms about the lack of care demonstrated by the government to those who are most vulnerable. What did the government do this year? They cut the funding again. This time the arrogant and callous government have cut $20 million from the Dementia and Aged Care Services Fund. Again, it just demonstrates the lack of priority the government give to those who are most vulnerable and those in the aged-care sector. They have no regard for older Australians and no regard for their welfare. Quite clearly, the only thing Mr Abbott cares about is his own job, because that is what this budget was all about. It was all about shoring up Mr Abbott's own job. We are yet to see whether it will save Mr Hockey's job or whether Mr Morrison will be the new Treasurer—in fact, maybe he will go straight to the top and take over from Mr Abbott.

The government have quite clearly failed the Australian people when it comes to aged care. For those suffering with dementia and their families, this is such a disappointing, harsh and callous budget. Not only did they attack those with dementia, but the outrageous attack on young mothers in this country is a disgrace, and I am embarrassed to be sitting opposite— (Time expired)

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I was saying in the whip's office before I came into the chamber, this is a budget that will let you sleep at night, whereas Labor's budget will keep you awake at night in pure terror in terms of what they will do to Australia's economy. This is a budget that should relax Australians in knowing that there are adults in charge of the Australian economy, that there are adults in charge of the Australian government and that we are going to get the economy back on track.

As night follows day, Labor get into power and they go a little bit crazy, like drunken teenagers with their parents' credit card, and destroy the economy.

Senator Polley interjecting—

Goodbye, Senator—a devastating analysis in your contribution. Labor get in and destroy the Australian economy at a state or federal level, and then what happens? We get the coalition in, we get the Liberal and National parties in, to clean up Labor' mess. This is what Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and the cabinet have been doing since they were elected, with a strong and fantastic mandate, in September 2013. This budget is the next step in the coalition's responsible, long-term economic plan to build a strong, safe and prosperous future for all Australians.

We all know there are economic challenges. We know that China's economy has slowed and that the iron ore price has almost halved since the last budget. But it is important to stabilise the nation's finances and reduce debt. Debt is a word that Labor are uncomfortable with. They are probably too comfortable with debt because they love debt. There is debt in Labor's DNA. On this side of the chambers, in the Senate and in the other place, we do not like debt. We think that debt in Australia at the moment is too high and we have a plan to reduce that debt. One of the ways we can reduce debt is by building a stronger economy and a better future for all Australians. This country is seeing real progress. Our plan is working because growth is up and jobs are up. Labor's projected debt and deficit have already been cut in half.

This year's budget delivers a credible path back to surplus. The coalition government remain committed to returning the budget to surplus as soon as possible. The budget will show that our plan is working, because this budget is going to deliver jobs, growth and opportunity in a way that is responsible, measured and fair. We want to help Australians get ahead and provide them with greater capacity to make their own decisions about their future. That is why this year's budget has been focused on families and small businesses. Later on in my contribution I will talk about what the budget is doing specifically for families and small businesses. This is a jobs and small business package that includes the biggest small business tax cut in Australian history which is going to boost investment and boost jobs. And the budget delivers a better childcare system that is simpler, more affordable, more flexible and more accessible. It will provide parents with greater choice when it comes to balancing work and family.

Addressing Labor's debt and deficit will make Australia stronger and will allow the government to invest more in the services Australian's need. So we are taking decisions in the long-term interest of this country, not in long-term sectional interest and not in the interest of the next election. We are making decisions on what is best for Australia in five, 10, 15 or 20 years' time. So, let's talk about the deficit. We inherited a deficit of $48 billion. The deficit for the budget year is now estimated to be $35 billion and is forecast to reduce each and every year to below $7 billion over the next four years. Over four years this means we will have reduced the $123 billion worth of deficit inherited from Labor by over $40 billion, and we have a credible path back to surplus. Because of our efforts the deficit reduces each and every year, on average, by around half a percentage point of GDP per year. This is despite over $90 billion of tax receipts having been written off since we came into government.

Iron ore prices have halved since the last budget from US$90 a tonne to US$48 a tonne in this budget. This has contributed to the largest fall in the terms of trade in over 50 years. The government have decided not to proceed with our fully funded PPL package as provisioned. The funding was put aside in the budget and the scheme has being redirected to fund other important budget priorities. As we promised, the size of government will reduce over the next four years. We have kept real payments growth in check at 1.5 per cent, on average, over the five years to 2018-19. While Labor promised real spending growth at two per cent per annum, they delivered 3.6 per cent per annum. Gross debt in a decade will be more than $110 billion lower than what we inherited from Labor where it was provisioned to go towards $667 billion. Net debt is projected to peak at 18 per cent of GDP in 2016-17 before falling considerably, because of the decisions we made in last year's budget and the decisions made in this year's budget, to 7.1 per cent of GDP in 2025-26.

Our action on the budget has allowed us, each year, to lower taxes. In 2014 we removed the carbon and mining taxes, which was a key pledge of the coalition that we took to the 2013 election. We said that we would get rid of the mining tax; we abolished it. We said that we would get rid of the carbon tax; we abolished it. In 2015 we are reducing taxes for 96 per cent of all Australian businesses. I will repeat that—we are reducing taxes for 96 per cent of all Australian businesses. Taken together all of our decisions since coming to government have reduced the overall burden of tax by $5.4 billion. The government's economic stewardship has seen nearly a quarter of a million new jobs created since we came to office. In the lead-up to the budget Labor were standing in the way of fixing the budget by blocking $30 billion worth of savings including $5 billion of their own savings that they had promised.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Boring!

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is very interesting. Senator Cameron said it is boring, because Senator Cameron and the Labor Party do not care about the debt and deficit position of Australia. They do not care about making sure that we get Australia back on track. To them it is boring, because on that side of the chamber we have a culture of union and Labor barons who do not understand the business world. They do not understand that you have to have money coming in in order to have money coming out. Every day for Labor is Tattslotto or Gold Lotto Saturday. It is a jackpot for them, because the money is coming in and they do not care where it comes from, but eventually, as Mrs Thatcher said, the trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

Let's go back to talking about the $4.4 billion Jobs for Families package that is going to deliver a childcare system that is simpler, more affordable, more flexible and more accessible. Our objective is to help parents who want to work and parents who want to work more. This package will provide parents with greater choice when it comes to balancing work and the family. Families using child care in 2017 on family incomes of between $65,000 and $170,000 will be around $30 a week better off. Those on higher incomes will on average continue to receive the same level of support. We know families face costs when parents want to return to the workforce. Having two parents in paid employment has become a necessity for most families because of changes taking place in our society and the economy over many years. All mothers work hard and many are also in paid employment. Changing the way we make child care more accessible and more affordable is necessary to help families adjust to these changes and set them up for the future.

These new measures will encourage more than 240,000 families to increase their involvement in paid employment, including almost 38,000 jobless families. We are putting downward pressure on childcare costs. The inflationary system in place under Labor saw childcare fees increase by more than 50 per cent between 2007 and 2013. Through the nanny trial, the government is also providing more flexibility for Australian families. The two-year in-home care nanny pilot will support 10,000 children in families who find it difficult to access mainstream childcare services, such as shift workers, nurses, police, and families in remote and rural areas. This is a cost of over $246 million. The government has also established a new childcare safety net to support families who are vulnerable and disadvantaged with $327 million in additional funding for three new programs, supporting up to 95,000 children and up to 18,000 individual services and centres. The government in this budget has also announced $843 million over two years for preschool programs across Australia by extending funding to the states and territories under the National Partnership Agreement on Universal Access to Early Childhood Education. This will ensure Australian families can continue to access 15 hours a week of preschool education a year in 2016-17.

What should really excite Australians is what this government is doing for small business in terms of helping small businesses and helping people get jobs. In 18 months since this government came to power, over a quarter of a million new jobs have been created, but we know there is more work to do. We have a lot more work to do. As our economy changes, the role of small businesses will be even more important. With the economy in transition, we are freeing up small businesses to create new jobs for you and for your children—to those people who might be listening or are reading this later. That is why the $5.5 billion Growing Jobs and Small Business package will provide major incentives for businesses to invest, hire and grow. In addition, the package includes $375 million aimed particularly at improving opportunities for Australians to get a job and reaching out to disengaged youth. It is a package that is good news for big business, which is already enjoying direct benefit. Every big business started out as a small business—except under Labor, because under Labor every small business starts as a big business.

Senator Cameron interjecting—

Senator Cameron—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President Williams—I welcome your interjections any time. I would love Labor to stand up and say they are supporting what we want to do for small businesses in Australia. What we will hear now is Labor saying that. No, I cannot hear Senator Cameron saying he supports small businesses in Australia. So, from 1 July 2015, a mere few weeks away, all small businesses, whether they are incorporated or not, will receive a tax cut. From 1 July 2015, the government will cut the company tax rate for incorporated businesses with an annual turnover of up to $2 million by 1½ percentage points, and that is reducing it down to 28½ per cent. From 1 July 2015, the government will also provide a five per cent tax discount to unincorporated businesses with an annual turnover of up to $2 million. Here we have a budget that delivers a tax cut to small businesses across Australia—a coalition government that is delivering on reducing the tax burden on businesses across Australia. From 7.30pm on budget night—a couple of days ago—until 30 June 2015, small businesses will be able to immediately deduct every asset they acquire that is valued up to $20,000 for tax purposes. Currently, the threshold sits at $1,000. This is a massive boon for small businesses in terms of what they can do with their tax liability, but it is also a massive boon for the small businesses where people are going to spend money and buy the goods and products that they need to run their businesses.

The budget will also help everyday Australians to access new jobs, particularly young jobseekers and the long-term unemployed. New measures will focus on making jobseekers more employable, reducing the costs of taking on new staff and bringing jobseekers and job providers together. A $1.2 billion national wage subsidy pool will target long-term unemployment. Employers will receive the subsidy from the time they start in a job, when hiring and training costs are the greatest, rather than waiting for six months or more. This will ensure wage subsidies are more effective. This includes reforms to Restart that will make it easier for small businesses to receive government support sooner when they employ older workers. And we are delivering a private sector work-for-the dole program—$18 million over four years for around 6,000 jobseekers annually to undertake valuable work experience. This will allow, in particular, young job seekers the chance to develop practical skills and gain workplace experience, and will better connect them with real jobs. There will also be a $311 million youth employment strategy, including a new $212 million transition to work program, to support disengaged young people to develop the basic skills that employers want and need; $106 million of intensive support to young people who are vulnerable, migrants or parents, or those who have experienced mental illness; and $14 million to assist job seekers who have not completed high school.

I would also like to talk this evening in terms of what this budget does for Queensland. Over the next four years, total annual Commonwealth funding to Queensland is increasing by around $6.7 billion. Despite the tight budget conditions, the Commonwealth is increasing annual funding for Queensland hospitals by 27 per cent over the next four years on top of growth of nine per cent in 2014-15. We are also increasing funding to Queensland schools by 29 per cent over the next four years on top of growth of around 10 per cent in 2014-15. Perhaps the Queensland Treasurer and the Queensland Premier, before they go out and make outrageous statements about the Commonwealth government cutting funding to Queensland, should read the budget papers to see the increased expenditure that we are providing to benefit education in my home state in Queensland.

In addition to these large funding increases, the government is investing $13.4 billion to build the infrastructure of the 21st century for Queensland. The Prime Minister has said he wants to be the infrastructure Prime Minister of this country. For Queensland, he is certainly delivering in terms of the infrastructure that we need to make sure that Queensland can proudly march into the 21st century. This infrastructure package, this $13.4 billion, includes $6.7 billion towards fixing the Bruce Highway. I spend a lot of my time on the Bruce Highway. My office is in Nambour on the Sunshine Coast, just off the Bruce Highway. The Bruce Highway is the coastal spine of Queensland. As someone who spends a lot of time bouncing along that road, I can tell you that it needs a lot of work done on it.

The promises and commitments this government has made to making the Bruce Highway four lanes in places and fixing up some of the black spots are welcome indeed. Lots of people in Queensland are very happy with the money that is going towards the Bruce Highway. Construction is already underway. This will upgrade safety, improve congestion, especially for the Sunshine Coast-Brisbane route that many people take, commuting between the coast and Brisbane, and it will also make sure that the Bruce Highway is not impacted by floods. One of the things that people, especially people from overseas, find a little bit strange is that every time its rains in Australia, and especially up in Far North Queensland, the national highway floods. It is a national disgrace that every time it does rain the highway, especially around Ingham, comes to a complete standstill. This government is a government that is certainly going to make sure that over the coming years we flood-proof the Bruce Highway.

We are also committing $1.3 billion to the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing. This is a commitment that the member for Groom and the member for Maranoa have taken to the last few elections since, I think, 2007. This is another coalition promise that we are delivering on. Anyone who has ever driven from Brisbane to Toowoomba and knows what the current range crossing is like will be aware that, if a truck rolls over or if there is a car accident, the highway between western Queensland and Brisbane comes to a complete standstill. So the Second Range Crossing is welcome indeed for Toowoomba and for the Darling Downs in western Queensland. It will ensure a safer road and, also, it will ensure that we get those trucks onto a road on which they can deliver their goods.

We have also committed $1 billion towards the upgrade of the Gateway Motorway North. This is underway already. It is being widened from four lanes to six lanes, improving access and providing better connection between the Bruce Highway, North Brisbane and the port of Brisbane. This means there will be less time spent in peak hour traffic. As someone who drives from the Sunshine Coast down to the airport and goes through this particular part of the Gateway, this is worthwhile indeed. Sometimes, if I need to get an 8 am flight I need to ensure that I leave home at four o'clock in the morning to make sure I do not miss that flight just in case of congestion on the Gateway. The Queensland government is also benefiting from the abolition of the carbon tax.

In closing, this is a budget that will allow people to sleep at night rather than the raw terror of Labor's proposals which will keep people awake at night. (Time expired)

David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night, we saw the final episode of Struggle Street. Let me tell you about someone I know on struggle street. He earns $40,000 a year. He finds it tough to live on this income and ends up spending $43,000 a year. This adds to his debts. He is now in debt to the tune of $28,000, and his interest bill is in the thousands. One night he comes home from work, opens his mail, and looks over a pile of bills and account statements. It is depressing reading, and he pushes the pile away. To take his mind off his worries, he hops online and ends up booking a weekend getaway which costs a couple of hundred bucks. Looking at this scene from afar, as if we are watching a documentary, most of us can see that this guy has a problem. Anyone who cannot see that needs their head read. Anyone who thinks the solution is simply for the guy to ask his boss for a pay rise needs their head read. We can empathise with him all we like, but he needs to cancel his weekend getaway, rein in all of his spending and start paying off his debts. He needs to start living within his means before the credit runs out.

This guy is called Joe. He is the federal Treasurer, and if you add seven zeros to each of the numbers I mentioned you have got the federal budget for the coming year. His revenue will be around $400 billion, his spending around $430 billion, and despite this parlous imbalance he added a couple of billion dollars in new spending on Tuesday night. The Treasurer's net debt next year will be around $285 billion and his interest bill will be $12 billion. Anyone who does not think this is a problem needs their head read, and they need their head read if they think that the Treasurer should just ask his boss, the taxpayers of Australia, for more money. The taxpayers of Australia are already paying the government more than it is worth, and they should not pay any more. The Treasurer should not have announced additional billions of spending on Tuesday night. He needs to rein in government spending, start paying off his debts and start living within his means.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was taken a bit by surprise—I thought Senator Leyonhjelm was just getting into his stride there. This budget has been described as a mishmash with no coherent strategy. I think that does describe a budget that tries to do a political fix for what was one of the worst budgets this country has ever seen: the first Abbott government budget. The first Abbott government budget, we should never forget, attacked pensioners, attacked the education system, attacked the health system and attacked working people in a way that we have never been attacked before, and this was done on the basis of ideology. We should never forget that this was about ideology. You only have to go back to the speech by the now Treasurer of this country called 'The end of the age of entitlement'. That speech was made on 17 April 2012, when the Treasurer was in opposition. He made it in London to a group of Thatcherite supporters who would have been clapping the house down with what he was saying. This is what he said:

I wish to thank my friends at the Institute of Economic Affairs for the opportunity to discuss an issue that has been the source of much debate in this forum for sometime….that is, the end of an era of popular universal entitlement.

You have heard Senator Leyonhjelm coming in here talking about how everyone must live within their means and talking about how the government should not spend any more money helping families in this country. I do not agree with that proposition, because I believe that all Australians think that we should help families put food on the table, help families be able to put their kids into decent school clothes and help families get them into a decent education, and if the kids get sick or the parents get sick they should have access to a decent health system. That is what taxation does. That is why everyone puts in: to help in a collective manner those that can least afford to help themselves.

The coalition do not agree with that fundamental proposition because their argument is that if you are not big enough and tough enough and strong enough to look after yourself or your family do not look after you then governments should get out of the way. Labor does not agree with that proposition because Labor understands that from time to time families can do it tough and need some support and from time to time individuals do it tough. For ordinary working class people in this country, it does not take very long, if you suffer a serious illness, not to be able to pay your mortgage, not to be able to put food on the table, and that is what the welfare system is about.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And we support it.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government have clearly established their ideology in this speech, in which the current Treasurer said:

As a community we need to redefine the responsibility of government and its citizens to provide for themselves, both during their working lives and into retirement.

What the coalition simply forget is that some people cannot find jobs. Some people will never have access to a job to allow them to live in decent conditions in this country. That is just the sad fact, and they certainly will not be able to find jobs under this coalition government. The government go on about supporting small business, and we support the small business package. This Labor opposition, during the global financial crisis, saved over 212,000 jobs in this country because we believed that we had to stimulate the economy to make sure that communities could continue to operate effectively, to make sure that families could operate effectively, to make sure that small business kept an income coming in. When the banks were not lending to them, we, as a government, stepped in to the system. That is what governments are about, and that is why we were one of the few advanced countries in the world to escape a recession during the global financial crisis.

We were so good at it that some of the senators on the other side refused to accept that there was a financial crisis. They called it the North American financial crisis. That is how dopey some of them are over there. They did not understand what was happening to the global economy. They did not understand what could have happened to this economy. When we stimulated the economy, they decried that stimulus on the basis of their ideology. That really goes back to what the Treasurer said before he became Treasurer: you really have to provide for yourself.

Mr Hockey, in his speech in London, went on to say:

You will remember it was Margaret Thatcher who interpreted community entitlements as the right for our children to 'grow tall and some taller than others if they have the ability in them to do so'.

Basically, if you are strong, if you are tough, if you are gifted, it is fine, but for the rest of you who do not have those attributes you can just please yourself. This was a speech that really outlined what the coalition have been about and certainly outlined what they were about in that first budget. Mr Hockey continued in his speech:

A weak government tends to give its citizens everything they wish for. A strong government has the will to say no.

This is a government that has had to backflip on a range of its policy positions, including on paid parental leave of $150,000 for those who were earning significant amounts of money. Now they say to women in this country: if you want to access both the government scheme that was approved by the Productivity Commission and you want to access your enterprise bargain scheme, then you are rorting the system. That is not how these schemes operated—and it is not a rorting of the system.

The Treasurer started talking about Hong Kong in his London speech. He said that Hong Kong is a city of seven million and it is without a social safety net. He said that if you do not have a social safety net then your top personal income tax rate is 17 per cent, your corporate tax rate is 16½ per cent, unemployment is low, inflation is 4.5 per cent and the growth rate is still a respectable four per cent. He said:

… the family unit is very much intact and social welfare is largely unknown.

The problem for the Treasurer is that that is only one side of the coin in Hong Kong. If you do not have a social safety net and you do not have a family that can look after you and you do not have enough money in the bank, like the top 10 per cent in this country, then you have a problem. What he did not say, but what the South China Morning Postone of the newspapers there—has said, is that there are 1.3 million people in Hong Kong living below the poverty line. That is 1.3 million! One in three of the elderly in Hong Kong are living below the poverty line. Two hundred and eighty thousand youngsters in Hong Kong are living below the poverty line. There are no poverty lines for ethnic minorities in Hong Kong, because they are in an even worse position. In Hong Kong 15.2 per cent of the population are living below the poverty line—second only to the United States. I have newspaper reports here from a couple of weeks ago about the 'caged dogs' in Hong Kong. The caged dogs are not dogs; they are human beings living in six-foot by three-foot by three-foot cages, because that is all they can afford in Hong Kong. Yet we have a Treasurer of this country who would say that Hong Kong is what we should be looking at for the basis of going forward in this country. Well, Labor says no to that! Labor says that is not the way forward.

What did we get after that speech? We moved to a Commission of Audit—which was dominated by big business—to have big business determine how everything should work in this country. The Commission of Audit basically said to slash and burn across the economy, put an austerity system in and everything will be okay. The same philosophy underpins the Treasurer's ideas that if you do not have family to look after you and if you do not get a decent living then you should just be left without a welfare system. This is a nonsense! I have never heard such nonsense! When you go back and read the speech again in the context of the two budgets that we have had, you understand why that first budget set about to rip away at funding for health and rip away at funding for education and rip away at pensions in this country. Remember that first budget was about taking $80 a week off pensioners! Where did the coalition and the Treasurer get that idea? They got it from Hong Kong and that speech. Someone will look after pensioners; somebody in your family will look after you. Then we can reduce income tax rates. Then we can reduce corporate tax rates. We will just get you out of the welfare system in this country. Labor understands the importance of ensuring that when families are in trouble they have access to government help and government support. You cannot trust this government. If you want to know what they are all about, go back to the Treasurer's speech when he was in opposition, when he was in London, and when I think he let his guard down, so that you can see exactly what this government is all about.

But do not take my word about the government. You only have to look at what their ex-friends in the Murdoch press are saying about them and about this budget. You cannot look at this budget on its own. You have to look at this budget in the context of the first Abbott-Hockey budget and the second budget. And this second budget is about panic; this second budget is about populism; this second budget is about saving two jobs in this country—not anyone else's job but the jobs of Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. That is what it is about.

You have Peter van Onselen writing in The Australian; the headline is: 'This is surrender, not leadership'. These are their friends in the Murdoch press: 'This is surrender.' Peter van Onselen goes on to say:

This budget represents a complete surrender: to the Senate, the opposition, nervous backbenchers and perhaps a public unwilling to accept tough fiscal restraint.

Well, they have surrendered, because what they wanted to do was to make sure that those in the top 10 per cent enjoyed $150,000 a year in paid parental leave. They have abandoned that because the public has recoiled in horror at that approach.

Paul Kelly, the doyen of the right in this country—what does he say? 'The real aim' of the budget 'is to save the Coalition'; that is what it is about. He says:

This budget aims to revive the Abbott government's political fortunes, entrench the Coalition base vote with small business, families and farmers and give priority to growth and jobs over budget repair.

The second Hockey budget is driven by two forces: the need to counter the onslaught on the 2014 budget that almost destroyed the government and the $52 billion revenue downgrade since last year.

Let me tell you what is still in this budget—what has not been removed from this budget. That is the attacks on the health system and the attacks on the education system—worth about $80 billion.

In my state, the Premier, a Liberal Premier, Mike Baird, has said that the budget was 'a kick in the guts' for New South Wales. The New South Wales Treasury has estimated that $1.2 billion will come out of the health system every year under this budget.

When I say 'this budget', I am talking about the first budget and the second budget, because you cannot disentangle them; they are the same budget. You just have to look at what is happening in health, not only in the hospital system but also for the doctors. So what did they want to do? They wanted to put on a $7 GP co-payment for everyone who went to see the doctor. I have been on an inquiry into this which has been going around the country, and I was in Tamworth. In Tamworth, there is a doctors business with 15 doctors, and they said that, under the $7 co-payment, they would have to charge those with a concession card $65 to see the doctor and those without a concession card $100 to go and see a doctor. This is what this government is all about: shifting costs from the collective of the federal government back to the individual, because that is the theory that this government has. It is the Hong Kong theory—the theory that you have really got to have your family look after you for the rest of your life, that there should be no welfare system, and that if 15 or 16 or 17 or 20 per cent of the population live in abject poverty then that is okay because you can reduce taxation—you can reduce business taxation. That is the line that the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, was running, and that is basically where the first budget was heading: to rip away at the support systems for families in this country. So health was given a big belting in that first budget, and it is still there.

On education, they ripped away the Gonski approach, and the Gonski approach was to make sure that activity funding was there. If you were in a school with a low socioeconomic background, you got some support. If you had Indigenous children with special needs, you got special support. But what does this government do? It goes back to a position where you will see The King's School and other private schools in Sydney get more money, at the expense of the poorest schools in the country. So private education will get preference over public education. That is what this government is about. You have only got to look—

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is rubbish, Doug—complete rubbish.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

at what Joe Hockey, the Treasurer, said when he was in Hong Kong—

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are just lying—lying through your teeth.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

to understand what this lot are about. We have got Senator Birmingham from South Australia interjecting. We talk about jobs. Senator Birmingham had absolutely no backbone to stand up to the cuts in South Australia, for jobs in the car industry or against submarine jobs getting thrown out—absolutely no backbone. A jelly-backed, lily-livered—

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

Order!

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. I am reluctant to interrupt Senator Cameron in full flight—

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

Well, you have now, so please proceed.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

but I will, because Senator Birmingham has been consistently yelling across the chamber, calling Senator Cameron a liar and saying he is lying. We know that we have tightened up the rules, Mr Acting Deputy President; we should actually impose them.

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

Indeed. Thank you, Senator Moore, for the point of order. I would ask you, Senator Birmingham, to withdraw.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Birmingham. Thank you for withdrawing. You know what? They are really, really worried about what is happening in South Australia, where there will not be a coalition MP safe at the next election, because they have abandoned their electorate in South Australia. They have abandoned people in South Australia. They will pay a price for this budget and the last budget. This is a budget that is bad for Australia. It is good for the big end of town. And that is all this lot want to look after—the big end of town. (Time expired)

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

I feel very, very sorry for two people in Parliament House tonight. One of them is Senator Doug Cameron, who has not been correct in anything he has said in the 18 minutes that I have listened to him, and, if he ever goes back to reflect on it—

Senator Birmingham interjecting—

Senator Birmingham tells me about the two minutes before. The other person I feel very sorry for is the gentleman who is going to stand up in about 47 minutes time, being Mr Shorten, who is going to have to give an address-in-reply to the budget. One can only ponder what the poor fellow has to say, because there is nothing left for him to say.

This is a brilliant budget. It is a brilliant business budget. It is a brilliant Billson business budget. This is going to set Australia back on the right path. In 2007 Australia was, of course, living high on the hog. We had no debt, a surplus and money in the bank. How did it come about? It was because of the Howard-Costello legacy of many years of prudence and of excellent management. Then we went from 2007 to September 2013, when that surplus was dissipated and we went from $20 billion in cash in the bank to a $200 billion deficit and, in a country unique in the world that had no debt, we went to a debt that is approaching $660 billion. As I have said in this place before, how are we going to address it, when, ladies and gentlemen, every month we are paying $1 billion in interest—$33 million a day. That is not repaying the $660 billion in debt. That is just for repaying the interest. You know what your credit card is like. You have to pay interest every month and if you do not pay it you are in default—and so would Australia be. So in September 2013 the good citizens of this country made a sensible decision because they knew that the country could no longer go the way it was going.

The first Abbott-Hockey budget made an attempt to start to address those issues. But the worst types of fools are not the ones who caused it; they are the ones who stand in the way of it being solved. In this place we have seen again and again the Labor opposition, who caused the debt and deficit problems, and the Greens, who helped them, stand in the way of recovery for this country.

Let me give those who are not in this place all the time one example. There was one circumstance of $5 billion of savings that Labor, in government, had booked, which, of course, we would have continued to support. Do you know what they did in opposition about the $5 billion of their own sayings? They opposed it. So you could actually go on paying more interest on the debt every month. Do you know what $33 million a day interest on the debt is? It is two new primary schools, seven days a week. Senator Bullock and I both know of a wonderful new hospital in Perth, the Fiona Stanley Hospital. Do you know that 11 weeks of interest—of money thrown away that we borrowed overseas—would have built the Fiona Stanley Hospital. Every three months we could have built a major new teaching hospital around Australia. We are just about to open a new childrens hospital. Eight weeks of interest—two lousy months—would have built the new childrens hospitals, and we could have built six of them around Australia if we did not have the debt that Labor gave us. When we pleaded with Labor, the Greens and the crossbenches to work with us to try to reverse that, they ignored it and said no. One of them in particular said, 'We will oppose everything until such time as we drive a double-dissolution election.' Is that responsible in a democracy? No, it is not.

Why is this a brilliant budget? Why do I call it the Billson business budget? I will tell you why: it is simply because it is aimed at small business—the engine room of this economy. It is aimed at small business leading us back towards that position of financial responsibility that every Australian wants and that every Australian expected we in this parliament would have protected and preserved.

Why small business? There are three major employment groups in this nation. There are government employers and employees. There are those employed by big business and there are those employed by the two million small businesses in this country. Everybody, whether it was Labor in government or us in government, knows that we will not be seeing an increase in the net number of employees employed by governments around Australia. We are just not going to see it. Like it or not, we are not going to see it. So we go back to big business. We know very well that big business is not employing more people. But we need more people employed. We need to make sure that there is an employment market out there. So, to whom do we turn? We turn to small business. And what have we done in this budget, led by Mr Hockey, Senator Cormann, the Prime Minister and, of course, the Minister for Small Business, Mr Billson? We have done two things. The first is that from 1 July we have decreased the taxation rate they will pay from 30 per cent down to 28.5 per cent. You might ask if that is really much. The taxable income for the average small business in Australia is $80,000 a year. Thirty per cent tax on that is $2,400, as of course the Assistant Minister for Health already knows. At 28.5 per cent, the $2,400 actually drops down to about $1,820, which is not very much of a saving.

But the beauty of it is this. Do you know what happens when you give incentives to small business, when you reduce their tax level, and when you get to the next part, which I will speak about in a moment? We will see taxable incomes increase. We will see small business out there doing more. And what is the down-flow effect of them doing more? First of all, money circulates through the economy. Secondly, their own business activity picks up. And do you know what else happens? They actually employ more employees.

So if in fact the Treasurer was concerned about how much he is likely to lose by reducing the tax rate from 30 per cent to 28.5 per cent, I can allay his fears, because if that small business lifts its taxable income from $80,000 to $84,000, do you know what happens? The Treasurer gets the same level of $2,400 in tax back again. That is where the great benefit is, of course. We know our opponents do not like small business; they do not understand it. Very, very few people involved in the union movement are in small businesses. Why is that? Because we know that small businesses are dominated by the owners, their families and their employees, who are very much like families.

The second element of this wonderful Billson business budget is the fact that, starting today—starting last Tuesday night—anyone can go out and purchase up to $20,000 per item of equipment or an asset to improve the activity of their business. It could be a tradesman—say, Tony's Tradies—who says: 'I can go out and buy another forklift,' or 'I can go out and buy some more equipment in terms of the building industry.' Or if I am a plumber I might need another van; and if I get another van, I can put another apprentice on. That person, as of Tuesday night, can go out there and buy an asset up to $20,000. Since Tuesday night-Wednesday morning, I have had people call me from WA, the Northern Territory, New South Wales and South Australia, all telling me that that is exactly what they are doing. A business with which I am associated through a member of my family was going to defer a decision about purchasing some equipment to 1 July. What do you think they did yesterday afternoon? They went out and made the purchase. So it is going to be small business that benefits.

Why is it so exciting for the likes of us from rural and regional areas? It is because we know that small business is also the engine room of employment in rural areas, in regional areas, in remote areas, in towns and in cities across this country. It is not big business—it is not big business in central Tasmania. It is small businesses throughout this country. They are the ones who are going to benefit and who are benefiting already. Not only can they purchase those assets of up to $20,000; there is also no limit on the number of assets they can purchase. If a family were considering opening up a cafe or a restaurant, they could purchase every item that sets up that small business up to a maximum of $20,000. Then they could open up that business, employ members of their family and, if and as their expertise and their entrepreneurship works, they could start employing people in that town, in that community, in that district. We will see an on-flow happening. That is why this is such a critically important area.

Again, as Senator Nash knows only too well, the two areas where we all agree across this chamber that the real employment challenges are are with youth and older Australians. I go back to my point about government: is government likely to be picking up youth and older Australians? No. Is big business likely to be picking up youth and older Australians? No, it is not. But I will tell you who is: it is small business. Hospitality is an example. In this country today there is an urgent need for some 80,000 jobs in the hospitality and tourism areas. If we are to see the stimulus which I believe will happen as a result of these decisions, we are going to see the demand for older people and for young people being picked up by the engine room of our economy—and that, of course, is within small business. How disappointing it was to hear poor old Senator Cameron, who, when he is bereft of any ideas, loses concentration and then starts to attack people. That of itself is disappointing but, nevertheless, I will not be distracted by him. I will simply say again that if there is one standout of this budget it will be to look back in 18 months time and say: 'What was it that really turned the Australian economy around, that really started to see a change in employment and employability and where we saw cash flowing through this economy?' Mark my words: it was on Tuesday evening when Treasurer Hockey made those statements.

There are a couple of other areas that I want to address in the minutes that are available to me, and these are in the childcare safety net area, where again the government has seen where the needs are. The government has seen that we have got to be able to provide support for those who need it the most. We have got to be able to provide support so that people and families can go back into training and back into employment and get the financial support that they need. As a result of the budget the other night, we are seeing additional subsidies in child care and in childcare support that are focused on those who are most disadvantaged, minimising barriers to participation and providing access to early learning. Those of us who work in the education space know only too well how critically important it is that, from their youngest age, these children have a level of engagement. And we know that that is driven by parents from those very earliest ages.

There is the Community Child Care Fund—another initiative that is financed in this budget. And another one I am very pleased to see is the pilot program to financially support nannies in houses. I think it is going to be a wonderful initiative, and I will look at it very, very carefully over time. It is quite common overseas; so many young Australian girls have gone and worked overseas and do so to this day, working with families in the UK and on the Continent. It has taken a long time for us here in Australia to pull this on as a pilot. We are not talking about the high-socioeconomic sector of our society; we are talking right across it. We are talking about the nanny who can come in and help the children with their breakfast so that husband and wife can get away to work early, if that is what is required, and who can get the children to school and be there to pick them up after school. All of those sorts of advantages mean this is going to be an absolutely wonderful initiative.

Of course, you have seen the initiatives in terms of welfare that were announced in the budget, but I would plead that the best form of welfare is work. The best way to address unemployment and to lift the wellbeing and the thinking of the person who does not have a job is to help them into a job. So I must always come back to these initiatives in the small business area, where I think we will see something absolutely wonderful.

I was interested to learn, when Mr Hockey brought the budget down, of the extension of the income management program. I have mentioned before in this place that I happen to be a member of a philanthropic board in Malaysia which supplies financial support to some 500,000 people—about 100,000 families—on an income support basis in that country, for the mothers only of low socio-economic families. And I have observed, over the last five or six years that I have been on the board of that foundation, the enormous impact there has been when these people have been able to learn about managing money.

In the Australian context—it is happening with this income management program—we have made sure that Centrelink funds that are available to families do not get squandered on alcohol, nicotine, drugs or those other areas of expenditure that take money away from rent, food, clothing and education opportunities for children. Having had the experience of seeing the benefit to low socio-economic families of this type of program, I feel very passionately about this.

I am quite pleased to say that as a result of this program, which is organised around a credit card type of arrangement, I have been able to provide feedback to Mr Tudge, who has responsibility to the Prime Minister for the introduction and maintenance of that program. I certainly hope that this program is going to have a long-lasting effect on those families who simply do not have the capacity to manage their incomes.

From my personal experience let me say to you that one of the biggest benefits is to those Aboriginal communities trying to be dry, but where illegal alcohol sales occur and where drugs and pornography come in. An income management system such as this one, in which money is managed for people in the community, takes cash out of the community. It takes cash away from those who would illegally sell alcohol, drugs and other products, which the community itself has decided to be rid of.

In the few moments available to me I want to reflect briefly on the initiatives in the budget for our agricultural industries. Of course those initiatives are separate from those that have been recently announced by the Prime Minister and by the Minister for Agriculture Mr Joyce, which will assist famers, pastoralists and graziers affected by drought. But these, again, are fantastic measures in the budget. Farmers will now have the capacity to accelerate the depreciation on their spending on water, water sources, water resources and reticulation. They will be able to accelerate depreciation on fodder so that they can accumulate fodder—be it hay, silage or whatever it is—so that they can immunise themselves better against the impacts of drought in good times because they can conserve fodder.

Finally, all of us who know about agriculture, and the vagaries of the problems, know that if you are going to get on top of crop control and animal management, and if you are going to get on top of feral animals and other things, you must be able to fence adequately. Indeed, from an environmental point of view, you need fencing if you want to make sure that you minimise the impact of erosion and all of those things.

Some of the small business tax cuts that I mentioned earlier in my contribution will assist many of the 110,000 farm businesses around Australia who have receipts of $2 million cash or less. So we have had the $38 million that was pre-announced for drought funding. I say again how proud I am to be a member of a coalition government that will have small business leading this country back to a sound economy.

Joe Bullock (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In my comments yesterday, in taking note of answers to questions regarding the governments unfair and ill-considered budget, I focused on the government's vain hope of instituting an income-tax-led recovery and how, in its attempt to support its higher spending, higher debt and higher deficit, the government was seeking to give the misleading impression of a budget improvement, simply through higher tax receipts achieved through bracket creep.

I highlighted how the principal burden of these higher taxes would fall disproportionately on low-income earners as a greater share of their incomes crept above the tax free threshold, which was commendably raised by the Labor government. This burden will be further increased on the 1.3 million workers whose incomes sit between $30,000 and $37,000 per annum as wage increases resulted in their marginal tax rate jumping by 14 per cent.

I shone a light on the government's plan to thrust their hands deeper into workers' pockets by increasing income tax receipts by seven per cent per annum between now and 2018-19 while workers' wages were forecast to rise by between 2½ per cent and three per cent per annum. These higher taxes will reduce the disposable income of workers already struggling to make ends meet, undermine consumer demand and damage the economy.

These concerns are very real to me after 37 years of representing shop assistants—young workers trying to stand on their own two feet and part-time workers struggling to balance work and family commitments and hoping for those few extra hours of work to put them in the $30,000 to $37,000 range, which would, unfortunately, make them subject to the government's tax grab. And a tax grab is what it is. It is not a considered, fair plan to return to surplus, but a naked tax grab from workers who can least afford it.

Today, I want to turn to another issue which will affect the overwhelmingly female membership of my union, the SDA—parental leave. The SDA negotiates tirelessly and effectively to improve the working lives of our members. The principal focus of these negotiations is, of course, wages, because workers need a fair rate of pay to support themselves and their families with dignity.

Shop assistants around the world tend to have wage rates that fall towards the lower end of the spectrum but it is a matter of some pride in the SDA that Australia's retail wage rates are among the highest in the world. Unlike some other unions, however, when the SDA negotiates agreements we often submit over 100 separate claims approved by meetings of delegates for every shop within a business addressing every aspect of working life and addressing the key issue of work/life balance. Many of the claims will go towards rostering: reasonable maximum and minimum shifts; breaks between shifts; rest breaks; access to safe transport home; variation of roster provisions; consecutive days off; and the requirement to have regard for an employee's family and study commitments in establishing and varying rosters. Leave claims will address illness, compassionate leave, natural disaster leave, emergency services leave, carer's leave and, of course, parental leave.

Reflecting the concerns of our members, family provisions in our agreements rank very high on our list of claims. The SDA's success in being the first union to achieve breakthroughs with family-friendly claims has led to the union being heavily relied upon when the ACTU seeks to advance the interests of Australian workers as a whole in these areas. Of course, money and conditions claims need to be balanced; there is no use in achieving the world's best conditions at the cost of having wage rates insufficient to maintain a reasonable living standard. For this reason, in the interests of promoting the family, the union has traditionally seen the government as having a key role in providing universal paid parental leave for all mothers.

Nevertheless, the union has encouraged employers to contribute to the wellbeing of their employees' families through the provision of paid maternity leave as well as paternity leave and adoption leave. These discussions have resulted in some success. Woolworths—including Big W, Dan Murphy and Woolworths petrol—offer six weeks paid leave, including adoption leave for the primary care giver and in cases of stillbirths after 20 weeks. Aldi provides 14 weeks leave at half-pay. Bunnings offers four weeks maternity leave and one week of paid paternity leave. Coles supermarkets, liquor and petrol offer four weeks paid leave. Costco offers 16 weeks leave at half-pay. Dulux offers 12 weeks paid leave for maternity or, for adoption, to the primary care giver and three days paid paternity leave. Freedom tops up government payments for four weeks for maternity and offers five days paid paternity leave. Sanity offers two to six weeks paid maternity leave depending on length of service and two to five days paid paternity leave. Super Retail offers four weeks paid paternity leave. Target provides 12 weeks leave at half-pay to the primary care giver.

These payments to SDA members are highly valued and an important contribution towards families meeting the cost and time commitments required by a growing family. In some cases, benefits provided by companies are included in certified enterprise agreements and, as a result, are legally enforceable employee entitlements for the term of those agreements. In some cases, however, the union has been able only to achieve the entitlements to these benefits through their inclusion in company policies. The union has always regarded such entitlements as second-class entitlements because the company is capable of unilaterally withdrawing them simply by changing its policies. The reason most commonly given by companies for insisting on addressing issues such as this by means of policy rather than an agreement enforceable for a term is that they are in areas covered by legislation which is likely to be subject to change and such changes are more easily accommodated through changes to policy rather than changes to agreements.

While the union accepts that, where community standards are changing, arrangements need to be sufficiently flexible to facilitate improvements, the changes to parental leave payment arrangements proposed in the budget are such that employers are likely to take the first opportunity to change their employees' agreed company funded entitlements for the worse. By deducting any benefit provided by employers from the benefit payable by the government, the government is providing an absolute and undeniable incentive to employers to cut back the benefits they afford to their employees and pass those costs onto the taxpayer. The safest bet in industrial relations is that employers who provide paid parental leave benefits as a consequence of company policy provisions will move to change their company policies and companies which provide those benefits as a consequence of agreement provisions will seek to renegotiate those agreements as soon as they expire.

And why wouldn't they—the money taken out of employer funded schemes will be made up by the government. How crazy is that! Surely a government looking to limit its expenditure should be turning its mind to how it can encourage employers to pick up a bigger share of the costs for employees meeting their family responsibilities. Instead of this, they are telling good employers like the ones I mentioned earlier to pull back, to save the money they had been contributing to their employees' family welfare and transfer it straight to their bottom line while the taxpayer picks up the tab. The Prime Minister has been attempting to woo the vote of Australia's women through his plans for paid parental leave since before the 2010 election. All that has happened since is that his proposal has been cut back further and further; and when the issue is addressed in this budget the government achieves nothing other than a perverse incentive to employers to wind back the parental leave arrangements to which they had already agreed.

Another significant budget measure affecting SDA members is the proposal with respect to child care. Child care is an important service for working families. While I do not personally believe—as the government apparently does—that lifting the workforce participation rate is the highest goal to which to aspire, or that the only work of value performed by a mother is in the paid workforce, I nevertheless applaud measures to improve the availability of child care. Many SDA members cannot afford formal childcare arrangements and rely on the support of family and friends. What they cannot afford to be without, however, is family tax benefit B. This benefit is critical to a large number of families struggling to get by where mum is a second income earner with a part-time job in retail. Linking the provision of additional childcare funding to cuts to family tax benefit B is an extraordinarily callous move by the government which shows an utter disregard for families who place a priority on one parent spending as much time as possible at home with the children. I, for one, will stand up for the unpaid work of mothers. I will stand up for working women struggling to balance family commitments with part-time work. Higher taxes for low-income workers, incentives for employers to cut paid parental leave schemes and cuts to the family tax benefit show this big-spending, high-taxing government for what it is: a government with no regard for ordinary workers or for Australian families.

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to contribute to this debate on the budget. This year's budget is a desperate and failing attempt by the government to pull the wool over the eyes of all Australians. After the ongoing debacle of his first disastrous budget, Prime Minister Abbott has added a glossy sheen to this budget. The one and only reason for that is to secure his own job. It only takes one look past the glossy sheen of the sweetener incentives to realise that this budget is no better than the last one. It is short-sighted, it is unfair and it is spending far more money than it is actually saving.

The 2015-16 federal budget shows that the coalition government is spending more than it is saving in every year of the forward estimates, totalling over $9 billion. The alleged budget crisis that those on the other side have banged on about for the last 20 months is nothing but propaganda. This budget has government spending at a hefty 25.9 per cent of GDP. Even at the end of the forward estimates in 2018-19 government spending is expected to remain as high as 25.3 per cent of GDP. In the final full year of the former Labor government, 2012-13, the ratio was 24.1 per cent and the average for the Labor government as a whole was 24.9 per cent of GDP. In no year, including the end of the forward estimates, will the Abbott government spend below the average of the previous Labor government. This makes their claims of a budget emergency laughable. I did laugh earlier on when Senator McGrath claimed that this budget is just the next step in the long-term economic plan for the country. While those on that side might try to promote their alleged superior economic credentials, there is no hiding from the fact that the Abbott government is indeed one of the biggest spending governments of recent times.

While they are spending up big, the government has no qualms about ripping money from health and education across the nation. Despite the Prime Minister's 2013 election promise of no cuts to health, this week's budget saw a further $2 billion ripped from the sector. In just 20 months the man who promised no cuts to health has delivered a reduction of a total of almost $60 billion. This budget is short-sighted, it threatens the future of Australia's health system and it entrenches the fundamental unfairness of the government's first disastrous budget. Rather than contributing to Australia's health system, the Prime Minister is cutting close to $1 billion from programs that fund measures such as preventative health care, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, mental health and other crucial health programs. Thousands of organisations around the country that do vital work caring for Australia's most at risk and vulnerable people will be left reeling from this assault on their core funding. This year's budget has also cut $125 million from the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, $144.6 million from the MBS including halving the amount paid for child health assessments, $69.6 million from Department of Veterans' Affairs dental and allied health payments, $214 million from eHealth and with not a single dollar allocated beyond 2018, $252.2 million from PBS-listed drugs and $72.5 million from health workforce scholarships.

In addition to these new cuts the budget does nothing to reverse the $1.3 billion increase to the price of medicines, the millions of dollars being added to out-of-pocket costs through unfair changes to the Medicare safety nets or the indexation freeze on GP fees that will attack Medicare and will have an even greater impact than the initial proposal for a GP tax. In my home state of South Australia, this year's budget confirms that almost $300 million in cuts to the state's hospitals will come into play. South Australia's federal government hospital funding will be inadequate to meet the demand for hospital services and will inevitably lead to a blow-out in emergency department waiting times and elective surgery waiting times, contributing to poorer health outcomes for Australians. The Abbott government has also gutted Medicare since coming to office and this budget only inflicts further damage. If the government gets its way Medicare will be nothing more than a residual safety net and not the universal health insurance scheme that it was intended to be when it was established by the Whitlam Labor government.

The health sector was not the only victim in the budget this week. Prime Minister Abbott and the Liberal-National coalition have failed Australian students, universities and researchers by recommitting to the unfair and discriminatory plan for $100,000 degrees. The budget confirms the Prime Minister's intention to cut funding for undergraduate student places by 20 per cent, costing universities about $3 billion over the current forward estimates. The budget also slashes $263 million from university research above and beyond the $430 million that was ripped out from research, equity and reward funding last year. Labor senators want to encourage our young people to be the best that they can be and if they choose to further their tertiary studies we would like them to be able to do so. With the government's fee deregulation and $100,000 degrees, students are going to have less opportunity than ever to further their education. My constituents, particularly those living in regional South Australia, overwhelmingly oppose university deregulation and university cuts but this year's budget proves that the Abbott government has not listened and has not learned. Unfortunately the budget also proved that under the Prime Minister's watch students that graduate are increasingly struggling to find any type of full-time employment. Under this government, according to its own figures, one in every three university graduates by 2016-17 will be unable to find full-time work four months after graduating. That is an appalling prospect for a wealthy nation such as Australia.

While I am talking about cuts and the damaging effects of the government's second budget, I cannot go past the impact of the cuts the Abbott government has made to the foreign aid sector. The coalition government has repeatedly cut overseas development aid from its budget since it came to office in 2013, with a $1 billion reduction announced in the overall aid budget late last year. Overseas development aid contributions will be reduced by a further $3.7 billion over the next three years, severing Australia's proven foreign aid programs and reducing our capacity to alleviate poverty and to build prosperity, stability and security in our region. Additionally, the government budget cuts include dropping our aid for sub-Saharan Africa from $186.9 million to $93.9 million and almost halving our Indonesian aid budget, which will lead to damaged relations with our neighbouring country. Mr Abbott's government has inflicted the single biggest cut to aid spending since our overseas development aid program began. With a further $2.7 billion of cuts forecast for the next two years, women and children in particular will continue to suffer. In a year where natural disasters have been so prevalent, I am appalled that the government continues to inflict such cuts on poorer nations in our region.

Closer to home, I was horrified to note that this year's budget entirely fails the fairness test and the future test for Australian women. This year's budget cuts paid parental leave for 80,000 women, childcare support for mums and family payments for families. Significantly, in the fiasco that has been Mr Abbott's paid parental leave scheme, he first ruled it out entirely, then he devised his signature gold-plated plan, only to backflip again to now labelling expectant and new mothers as 'rorters' of the system. This budget will reduce access to paid parental leave from July 2016. It is estimated that this will affect up to 46 per cent of new mothers. So many people in this nation fought so hard to ensure that women had access to paid parental leave from their employer—I acknowledge the work of Senator Bullock's union, the SDA, and of all the trade unions in Australia in the fight for paid parental leave—and now, if the Prime Minister gets his way, women may no longer be able to access the government parental leave scheme. These changes are effectively limiting paid parental leave to 18 weeks for many people. If this government gets its way, 80,000 women will lose up to $11½ thousand from paid parental leave because of the government cuts. What this means in real life, for mothers and their babies, is that those new mums will have less time to spend with their newborn babies at home. That is what this government's new policy is. That is exactly what this Prime Minister has done, in the most extraordinary of political and policy backflips that I have seen.

Rather than prioritising the advancement and empowerment of women in today's society, Mr Abbott and the coalition have reiterated their total disregard for women. This budget has shown that Tony Abbott's interest in addressing gender inequality is directly correlated to its political benefit for him. Australian women deserve better than a self-serving government desperate to save its own skin and a minister for women who is most definitely not desperate to improve or address gender inequality.

In a year where, shockingly, 36 women have been killed in domestic violence incidents already, this year's budget does absolutely nothing to address violence against women. Domestic violence is the leading preventable cause of death for women under 45. The budget has failed to reverse cuts to legal services and community support services that assist women suffering domestic violence and has failed to implement any new initiatives to assist in stemming the growing epidemic that is domestic violence.

I ask: how can this Prime Minister be believed by anyone in this country ever again? He has no shred of credibility when it comes to supporting women, students, pensioners or Australian families. He has not been transparent and he has again broken his promises to Australians. Spending is up, taxes are up, deficits are up and unemployment is up. This is yet another bad budget for Australia and the Prime Minister needs to stop focusing on his own job and start focusing on what is best for the people of Australia.

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

This is not a budget for Australia's future; this is not an economic plan for Australia's future; this is an election strategy—let's make that really clear. This is a strategy for the Abbott government to win an election. It is not a plan for Australia's future; it is a strategy for short-term political survival, particularly the political survival of the Prime Minister. You can see clearly why that is the case when you cut through all the spin that has been provided by the Treasurer and the Prime Minister over the last couple of days. You see that we are still left with so many of the budget measures from last year's budget, when you would think that the government would have learnt a very, very strong lesson from the people of Australia, who resoundingly rejected their budget last year—but no. They decided to rehash all of those cruel elements of their budget and put them, underneath a bit of gloss and a bit of glamour, into this year's budget. There are things such as $80 billion worth of cuts to schools and hospitals that we are still left with, which will, as Senator McEwen said, inadequately meet the demand of hospital services and lead to poorer health outcomes for all Australians. On top of that, we are still left with the $100,000 university degrees that Christopher Pyne wants to bring back into this place, and, of course, huge cuts to family payments.

When you go through these budget documents, you see very clearly that this government is predicting higher unemployment for much longer, more debt, more deficit and a bigger and growing tax burden in this country. This budget has failed the future test and it has failed the fairness test. Somewhere in their lexicon they think that if they use the word 'fairness' it somehow makes it all right, it somehow makes this budget fair. You cannot just use the word 'fairness', you have to believe in the word 'fairness', and you have to show that in your actions as a government by delivering a fair budget. There is nothing fair about this budget. There is nothing fair about making young job seekers go from waiting for six months if they lose their job to, now, waiting for one month. That is still unfair, just as it is still unfair to make such huge cuts to family payments.

Of course, we know that the government think, 'If we just put in some new policies it'll be okay and the Australian public will buy our new budget.' When you look at some of those new policies you soon realise that they are only there for two years. They are only there to get this government re-elected, such as the universal access to preschool, the small business accelerated depreciation and the nanny's program. They are only there for two years. Clearly, that is because this is not a budget for the next decade; this is a budget for the next election. In the meantime we know that on top of that, despite really low interest rates in this country right now, the government are contributing to an increase in debt, a fall of consumer confidence and a rise in unemployment.

My Senate colleagues have added to this debate, and Senator McEwen talked about the attack on working mums, the gender attack that this government has contributed to. I think it is worth noting that the government has gone so far as to use language by saying that new mums are 'rorting' or 'frauding' the paid parental leave scheme. I think those new mums are owed an apology by this government. The government should really consider what it has said out there in the last couple of days and give an apology to all those new mums. The government's cuts to family payments that remain in this budget, some $6,000 cut to the family budget,—whether it is cuts to family payments to fund their childcare policy, or whether it is the attack on the paid parental leave scheme—are things that are going to hurt working women and families in this country. To then, on top of that, say that the mums are somehow rorting and frauding the paid parental leave scheme is absolutely unconscionable. The Liberals, of course, in doing so have shown very much what we all probably knew all along and that is where their ideology is set. They have shown their true colours when it comes to supporting working mums to spend time at home with their new baby.

Unfortunately, although it may be seen through the media that somehow this government is palpable, that it is something that the Australian public can live with, I asked the Australian public. I asked the Australian public to think deeply and look deeply at what is underneath the gloss, because underneath it is the same-old, same-old ideological attack on the working class of this country. You only have to look at the cuts to health and education and the attack on working mums to see that. At the end of the day this budget is not an economic plan for this country, it is not a budget for Australia's future. It is an election strategy to get this government through to the next election, to try to win it with a couple of sweeteners on top of a lot of rehashed budget from last year underneath.

That is why Labor do not support the unfair measures of this budget because, unlike the government, we actually live and believe in fairness and we act out fairness. We do not just add it as a word in our lexicon, or as a slogan, as Tony Abbott is so frequent in using and then thinks that somehow the Australian public are going to buy it. They simply will not. This budget is unfair.

Question agreed to.