BUDGET SPEECH IN REPLY - APPROPRIATION BILLS 2004-2005

2nd Jun 04

Mr ORGAN (Cunningham) (10.32 a.m.) — I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2004-2005. The 2004-05 federal budget is nothing more than old-fashioned, pre-election pork-barrelling. Instead of the increased spending on vital services which the majority of people said they wanted, the Prime Minister in waiting has squandered the money on tax cuts for people who are already well off. A Morgan research poll just nine days before budget night showed that 88.4 per cent of people wanted the budget surplus spent on health, education, aged care, homelessness and poverty relief rather than on tax cuts. All we got was a sop to aged care which is too little to really address the sector's problems.

The latest CPI figures show that the cost of essential services has jumped by as much as 11 per cent in the last year. The government's decision to provide tax cuts only to people earning above $52,000 per year is a slap in the face for low-income earners, particularly the people doing it extra tough in my electorate of Cunningham. The government's neglect of the least well-off people in Australia is an affront to decency.

The government has hailed this budget as a budget for families, but it is not a family budget because it fails families in the long term. There is a handout to family tax benefit recipients which many families will not see. There are lump sum payments for new mothers that fall well short of a national, paid maternity leave scheme, but there is no action to support the overstressed public services that all of us, and families in particular, rely on. There is no real investment in public health, nothing for public schools, nothing for universities and nothing new for sustaining our environment. The Treasurer, a man who aspires to be Prime Minister, has failed to show any vision for our common future.

The Greens have a more optimistic vision and a more responsible plan for the investment of our public tax dollars—a vision of free, high-quality public education; nation-building investment in our environment and infrastructure; strengthening Medicare; boosting our overseas aid; and, at home, a fairer and more effective welfare system that guarantees an adequate income for all. These are the kinds of measures that Australians are crying out for in increasing numbers, because these are the kinds of ideas that, unlike election oriented tax cuts, people recognise as offering a concrete path to a better, brighter and healthier future for all Australians.

Services, not tax cuts—that is what people want. Both Newspoll and the Morgan poll have found that over 70 per cent of Australians are in favour of investment in services over tax cuts. An ANU study found that a clear majority think the standard of health and Medicare has declined over the past two years, and a near majority think the same of education. Voters want these services looked after, and this is not the priority they see reflected in government policy. That is because the Howard government is failing in one of the main responsibilities of government: providing essential public services. This government has shifted the spending on these services from the public sphere, in which all Australians contribute to the cost and share the benefits, to the private sphere, where those with private financial resources buy essential services based on their capacity to pay, rather than their need. It is the poor and the vulnerable who are the biggest losers.

The Senate report into poverty released in March revealed the extent of need in Australia, estimating that 3.6 million people—that is almost one in five Australians—live on a weekly income of $400 or less, lower than the federal minimum wage. Some 700,000 children live in a household without a wage earner, and a million Australians do not make enough from their paid work to live above the poverty line. These are the people who most need government investment in our public services. Their voices are some of the loudest calling for services, not tax cuts.

The Australian Council of Social Service identified $4.6 billion of urgent spending needed on health, education, housing and child care. The Treasurer says that the government has increased spending on services, including health and education. But the money has gone to private schools, to privatising higher education, to private health insurance and to privatising health services. The $2.4 billion per annum private health insurance rebate adds around seven per cent to health spending, but it does not pay for health services. It pays for insurance.

Higher education spending has fallen as a share of total government spending from 3.9 per cent to 2.5 per cent of the budget. When people call for services rather than tax cuts, public education and public health are top of their lists. This government has failed a generation of young Australians by not investing in their education and the nation's future. Australia lags behind comparable countries on its public investment in preschool care and education, public schools and tertiary institutions. This government has pursued an ideological agenda of pouring money into the private school sector at the expense of public schools.

In contrast, the Greens are committed to building a high-quality public education system and, in doing so, turning around the worrying growth trend in private schooling that is dividing our communities. The Greens would scrap the appallingly unfair SES model that funds non-government schools. In doing so we would redirect the $1.5 billion earmarked for the wealthiest private schools over the next four years into priority public schools funding programs. The Greens would freeze the funding of private schools at 2003-04 levels in order to direct those savings into urgently needed catch-up funds for the public sector. Through these and other measures the Greens will continue working to ensure that every child can be guaranteed that an education at a local government school continues to be the best educational, cultural and social experience on offer.

The forgotten one million Australians who are enrolled at TAFE must also be resourced. TAFE has been a world-leading provider of low-fee postsecondary education, and the Greens would build on that record by returning growth funding to TAFE. A return to free university education is the best way to guarantee that all Australians who are academically qualified to study at university can do so, thereby drawing on the full potential of this nation's talent. The Greens advocate abolishing the HECS system and forgiving all HECS debt, returning Australia to a system of free public tertiary education. This measure would cost just under $2 billion, the same amount of money the Treasurer is spending next year on tax cuts for the rich.

In the area of health, the Howard government has squandered public funds and a critical opportunity to improve our public health system. Instead of strengthening Medicare, the government has moved Australia closer to a situation where the health care you obtain depends on what you can afford to pay. The government refuses to accept that people happily pay for Medicare through their taxes. They pay for a quality public health care system that provides quality care for all Australians when they need it. The Greens have proposed a number of measures to strengthen Medicare. Abolition of the $2.4 billion of public money going into the private health insurance rebate would allow the redirection of funds to public hospitals, to increasing the bulk-billing rebate for GP services, to mental health services, to preventive health care and to Indigenous health care.

The Greens would allocate additional funding to have medically necessary dentistry covered under Medicare. Currently, around half a million low-income earners are waiting for dental treatment through public schemes with waiting periods as long as four years. Millions more Australians who do not qualify for a health care card and do not have private health insurance simply miss out on dental treatment. We could fund these kinds of initiatives if we opted for services, not tax cuts.

We are surrounded by the evidence of the damage that we are doing to the earth—the planet that provides for all our needs, including spiritual nourishment. The Pentagon report on climate change, released earlier this year, should have dispelled any doubts about the threats that we face if we fail to reverse global warming. The Measures of Australia's Progress 2004 report, published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics last month, confirmed the extent of the challenge. That report painted a disturbing picture of the deterioration of our natural environment and highlighted the urgent need for us to address major problems. Surface water and groundwater are being extracted at unsustainable rates. Almost 3,000 ecosystems are listed as threatened. In the decade to the year 2003 the number of terrestrial bird and mammal species listed as extinct, endangered or vulnerable in Australia rose by 40 per cent. There were 248,000 hectares cleared in 2001 alone, and 70 per cent of this was in Queensland. Almost six million hectares of land were at risk from salinity in the year 2000.

The damage we wreak on the earth's natural systems has an economic cost. Using our natural resources wisely and protecting our precious places and wildlife is at the heart of the Australian Greens' work. Climate change is one of our biggest priorities. The Greens propose a carbon levy, as many European countries have, as the best way to encourage the switch to sustainable energy. The proceeds would finance energy conservation, renewable energy and measures to protect low-income earners from higher electricity prices. We also propose a $35 billion, 10-year investment plan to build a sustainable future. By using the government bond market to offer green bonds to green Australia's essential infrastructure, we can help transform the nation, bringing social, environmental and economic benefits. This scheme proposed by the Greens offers a secure investment, guaranteed return and the opportunity to invest in a greener future for this country.

Greening Australia's infrastructure is only one essential component of making it sustainable. We also need a mindset change to focus on reducing consumption of energy and materials, eliminating waste and improving the quality of services to meet people's needs. The decision to de-fund environmentally beneficial research shows that the Howard government has no commitment to the task of addressing global warming. It has allocated $92 million to fossil fuel cooperative research centres for coal, petroleum and geosequestration, compared with just $10 million for renewable energy, and it has just rejected an application for a solar CRC whilst approving a CRC for the so-called clean power coming from brown coal.

The government's budget also fails to provide enough funding to restore the health of the Murray River by ensuring that the 1,500 gigalitre minimum increase in environmental flows is achieved within a decade. This is an urgent task that the government has failed to address. Eighty-five per cent of Australians want the federal government to intervene to protect Tasmania's old-growth forests and their wildlife. The Greens have an industry transition strategy that would save the forests and create 500 new jobs, but there is zero allocation in this budget towards such a win-win outcome.

In this budget the government continues its abysmal record on assisting the world's poorest people. Under the Howard government, Australia's overseas aid has fallen well short of the UN recommended level of 0.7 per cent of gross national income. This financial year, Australia gave just 0.26 per cent. Lifting Australia's official development assistance to the UN recommended level would cost approximately $5,740 million next financial year. Improving the living conditions and life opportunities for the poorest people on the planet is one of the best investments we can make to secure a safer world.

Let us target the causes of terrorism—that is, global inequality, instability and imperial foreign policy—rather than go to war on the symptoms. Every bomb we drop and every war we fight creates the conditions for more terrorism, costing us in lives and money as the cycle of violence continues. We need to withdraw our troops from Iraq and instead put resources into reconstruction and humanitarian aid managed by the Iraqi people and their future government. Appallingly, Australia's civil aid to Iraq has been almost halved, going from a piddling $40 million to $27 million in this year's budget.

The Howard government is depriving the poorest nation in our region, East Timor, of billions of dollars in royalties from the exploitation of oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea whilst cutting direct aid to the East Timorese. Australia refuses to allow independent arbitration of the sea boundary dispute that sits at the heart of this robbery. East Timor's Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri, says the funds that under international law belong to the struggling nation are needed to pay for schools and health care. `It is,' he says, `literally a matter of life and death.' The Greens support East Timor's internationally recognised claim and call on the Howard government to meet it.

Our global responsibilities include providing asylum to refugees. The Greens continue to call for an end to mandatory detention and for savings to be redirected to help asylum seekers live in the community while their claims for asylum are being assessed

The cost of housing has skyrocketed in many cities in recent years, pricing many people out of buying or renting a home. The ACTU has calculated that the average house price rose by 70 per cent in the five years to 2003, compared with average full-time wage rises of 26 per cent in the same period. Housing as an investment is driving up prices. The Productivity Commission has identified negative gearing as a factor in this investment trend. The 50 per cent capital gains tax discount introduced by the Howard government has seen people pour millions of dollars into property, but it has not delivered affordable housing. The Greens believe that affordable housing is a right and that governments have a responsibility to facilitate it. We want the capital gains tax concession reversed and negative gearing phased out, with funds redirected to public housing—that is, to public housing with energy and water efficiency features that not only benefit the environment but also save on ongoing expenses.

The budget contains nothing to promote employment and training for workers who are unemployed. While the official unemployment rate is 5.7 per cent, the real level of unemployment is at least double and possibly higher than this. In my own electorate of Cunningham overall unemployment is stalled at 9.7 per cent while teenage unemployment is over 32 per cent. Those figures are a disgrace. The growth in casual employment—that is, in insecure work with low pay and no standard conditions—and the increasing reliance on part-time employees are major causes of poverty. One in four workers is now employed as a casual, whilst the wages of the lowest paid workers fail to provide a decent living. This is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of Australians and their dependants who do not have paid work.

The government's maternity payment is no substitute for a proper paid maternity leave scheme. It does not ensure women's rights to return to work nor will it cover the minimum 16 weeks off work that is recommended by the World Health Organisation. Unless a scheme ensures a continuing attachment to the work force, Australian women's rights to engage in paid work will continue to be restricted. The Greens have developed a scheme to deliver replacement income to 75 per cent of women for 18 weeks, with a further 34 weeks of unpaid leave, a right to return to work part time and a right to share the leave period with a partner. This scheme can be funded by redirecting the baby bonus, which the government has abandoned in this budget. Australia can afford a scheme of this kind and Australian women deserve it. Until the government provides practical assistance of this kind to families it has no credibility in claiming to support families.

Unmet demand for child care, high fees and pay levels as low as $12 an hour for child-care workers are major problems the Howard government has failed to address. The drive for private child care will only exacerbate these problems. The Greens welcome the government's provision of more child-care places in this budget, but the measure only meets one-quarter of the unmet demand in this area. The present federal funding regime has led to the growth in the corporate child-care sector, arguably at the expense of quality care. As at June 2000, some 67 per cent of long day care centres around Australia were privately owned and several child-care companies have now listed on the stock exchange. Taxpayers are effectively subsidising the huge profits being made by corporate operators. The measures announced in the budget will do nothing to curb this alarming trend towards the commercialisation of early childhood care.

The Greens call on the government to provide funding that prioritises the local government based and community managed child-care sector. This includes a commitment to provide operational and capital grants to establish and develop community based not-for-profit centres—a commitment the government abandoned in 1997. Child care is fundamentally about the nurture and education of the youngest members of our society. We do not allow schools to be run for profit, so why child-care centres?

A government that was fair dinkum about helping Australian families would invest in public services for families, not in tax cuts. Taxation policy should be used to redistribute wealth and generate it for the future. Under the Howard government, taxation policy has become less progressive. This means that the greatest burden falls on those least able to pay. The Greens support progressive taxation. As part of this we call for the abolition of the GST. The company tax rate should be returned to the 33 per cent it was at before this government gave corporations a tax break before the last election.

The Australian Council of Social Service, ACOSS, has identified tax loopholes worth $8.2 billion a year which benefit only the very well-off, including diverting income to a private company and executive perks such as salary-sacrificing for a company car or extra superannuation. These loopholes must be closed and the savings redirected to public services. The Treasurer's tax cuts will cost the Commonwealth $14 billion over the life of the next parliament. Add to that the tax cuts from 2003 and the tax loopholes that have not been closed in the projected surplus, and a massive $71 billion of public money has been wasted by this government. This pool of money could have achieved a fully funded, free tertiary education system, more teachers and better resourced public schools. Together with the abolition of the private health insurance rebate, it could also have paid for the expansion of Medicare to cover such things as necessary dental care, a boost in bulk-billing rates for GPs and the establishment of new community health centres. It could do all this with money left over.

Instead, we have public schools that are struggling, university students who are being slugged by higher fees, and doctors fees that are rising. The question that the Greens ask is: do we feel richer? The answer is no. The public has a right to expect the government to provide quality public services. When it chooses to give tax cuts instead of providing these services, the public quite rightly feels cheated. When existing services are left to degrade whilst money is poured into rival private schemes, the public feels betrayed. And when governments cry poor with regard to teaching children, saving our rivers and increasing bulk-billing and then spend billions of dollars to illegally invade and occupy another country, the public gets angry. By putting services before tax cuts, the Greens would set Australia in a much better, much fairer policy direction. We will take these progressive policies to the election and ask the Australian people to join us in supporting public services, peace, the nation's environment and a better investment for its future generations.