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

I rise to speak about the Abbott government's unfair budget and its impact on my home state of Tasmania. Tonight, Labor's leader, Bill Shorten, delivered the budget reply speech Australia was waiting for—a speech that articulated Labor's vision for the nation based on our values of fairness and opportunity for all. When we talk about the needs of fairness in the budget, it is not a slogan. It is not just a word. Inequality lives within our communities, and it is our responsibility to better those communities. For Labor, fairness is an idea we believe in. It is our value. It is in our hearts and it is in what we do every day. It is not a slogan we have adopted two weeks before a budget. Despite its newly adopted fairness slogan, this short-sighted budget does nothing to improve the ability of struggling families to better their situation.

The conservative lack of empathy and understanding of how many Australians live has delivered a budget without practical policies for the future. At the core of this budget are the same cuts from last year—a rehashed budget from last year. Eighty billion dollars is still being cut from hospitals and schools, $100,000 university degrees remain as proposed legislation, and there are cuts to family payments as well. In fact, all but two measures from last year's unfair budget remain in this year's unfair budget. So let us not be blindsided—their ideological attack on Australians remains. The vulnerable have been targeted and the onus has been put on those least well off to lift the load for the most privileged. The cuts remain, the impacts remain, and Australians will be worse off under the Abbott government's budget.

Promises without policy guarantees seem to be the norm, as well as the lack of foresight to kick-start our economy. The government's cut to family payments in this budget, a $6,000 cut to the family budget, are indeed unfair. Two million Australian families currently receiving family tax benefit are being squeezed by this government's cuts. Those squeezed the hardest are Australian families on sole incomes who receive family tax benefit part B.

The Grattan Institute estimates that if Australia had the same female workforce participation rate as Canada, Australia's GDP would be about $25 billion greater. Yet, the Abbott government is accusing our female workforce of rorting by using a paid parental leave system exactly as it was designed to be used and which encourages engagement in the workforce.

I believe that the government should apologise to new mums for suggesting negotiating additional paid parental leave is a rort or a fraud. They have demonised women who have children and work by cutting paid parental leave, cutting childcare support and cutting family payments, which will leave families worse off. The Liberals have shown their true colours when it comes to supporting working mums spending time at home with their new baby. The minimal funding commitments they have made in the childcare sector have funding cliffs in two years time, showing yet again that this is just an election budget to save the Prime Minister's job. As our Labor Leader Bill Shorten eloquently put it:

This is a Government who fundamentally in my opinion doesn't appreciate the role and march of women through society.

My home state of Tasmania has been left off the map again. Still reeling from last year's cuts of $2.1 billion to Tasmanian's health and education—which remain in this year's budget—there is a dangerous lack of funding for new projects in this version, as well as the promise of another funding cut. This budget attacks Tasmanians across the board. Prime Minister Abbott still wants seniors to work until they are 70, giving Australia the oldest retirement age in the developed world. With the ageing population in Tasmania, our community will be disproportionally hit by the government's plans. Tasmanian health funding, which took a catastrophic hit last year, will not be reinstated, and funding for the Mersey Community Hospital remains unexplained, despite assurances from the three amigos that this hospital would continue to help the community.

It is time to stop talking and start working on future investment projects that boost Tasmania's productivity and its ability to generate new jobs. That requires new ideas and new investment. This budget contains no new infrastructure investment and, in fact, has reduced previously promised packages. Following the withdrawal of Cadbury's application for Commonwealth funding, tourism minister Andrew Robb promised the funding would be allocated to tourism projects elsewhere in Tasmanian within weeks. Tasmanians have now waited over 20 months for that promised $16 million to be provided to the tourism industry, and still nothing—not even the process by which that money will be allocated to Tasmania—is in this budget. The government has not even bothered to provide funding to finish the already iconic and world famous Three Capes Track in south-east Tasmania, which would have been the least it could do, considering it has so far completely neglected Tasmania's tourism industry.

Investment in Tasmanian infrastructure must be a priority for stimulating our economy. Yet a combined $240 million state and federal freight rail package promised by Labor has been slashed, with the federal government contribution being reduced from $120 million to only $59.9 million, a definitive blow to Tasmania's infrastructure. It is the same story for irrigation, with a $50 million funding shortfall resulting in the Circular Head irrigation scheme completely dropping off the list of priorities.

The budget also contains the dog-tired policy of university deregulation—legislation which has already been voted down twice because it is unfair. The impact of deregulation upon the University of Tasmania has been well documented. Our university offers an opportunity to students, regardless of background, to continue their education in own home state. Tasmanian students want to stay in Tasmania to contribute to the community. Yet this government seems bent on restricting their ability to do so. In addition, cuts to research, block grants and the Sustainable Research Excellence program will further restrict opportunities for students.

Let us be in no doubt, all this government desires is to be re-elected. If they are, they will continue with their destructive ideology. How we function as a just society is fundamental to our Australian democracy. How we support the socially vulnerable demonstrates the integrity of our policies. The Abbott government's budget contains no trace—none—of this policy integrity. And I will quote from our leader Bill Shorten's address tonight in the House of Representatives in his budget reply speech:

If Labor had not stood strong, if the government had had its wilful way, if Tony Abbott had controlled the Senate, last year's malignant budget would have passed with all its social vandalism.

This government has no vision for the future of Tasmania, for the future of Australia. It has ignored Australia and Tasmania, merely providing short-term placebos to keep safe the Prime Minister's job. The Labor party will always stand for fairness, we will always act accordingly and we will empower the people of Australia and the people of Tasmania with the education and the support so lacking within the short-sighted election budget of this disgraced government.