Federal Budget

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (15:12): I rise to speak on the dangerous and anti-community 2015 federal budget, a budget which locks in the Abbott Liberal government's vicious cuts to health and education, to community services and to skills funding, and confirms their utter lack of care for our communities. Uncertainty of community sector funding to deliver quality services to our most vulnerable citizens is rife, with short-term extensions only in some funding areas, such as homelessness, and with many of the cuts to community services from last year's budget remaining. Those highly dedicated community sector workers, 85 per cent of whom are women, along with public health workers have had their salary sacrifice arrangements slashed in a move which will see the take-home income of these relatively low paid workers cut.

The Abbott Liberal government is trying to silence our community as they prepare for an election. They have now set their sights on expecting parents. Attacks on paid parental leave will affect up to 46 per cent of mothers, including those active union members who have fought hard to secure much-needed leave within their existing enterprise agreements. Childcare subsidies are cut for any stay-at-home parent with a partner earning more than $65,000 per year, and cuts have been made to family tax benefits.

This Abbott Liberal government continues its ideological crusade to increase university fees and create $100,000 degrees, thereby locking kids from families with lower incomes out of tertiary education. This budget confirms Tony Abbott's intention to cut funding for undergraduate student places by 20 per cent, costing universities around $3 billion over the current forward estimates. University research is cut again, with $263 million of cuts to sustainable research excellence on top of almost $430 million ripped from university research equity and reward funding in last year's budget.

As well as the locking in of the billions of dollars in cuts to health and education from last year's budget, there is no new funding for vocational education and TAFE, no additional funding to front-line domestic violence services, and unemployed young people will still be stranded with jobseekers under 25 left with nothing to live on for a month. Tony Abbott has also retained his planned changes to the eligibility age for Newstart, pushing jobseekers who are between the ages of 22 and 24 onto the lower youth allowance. We need more young Australians in work, not less. Jobseekers deserve support as they head into the workforce, not savage attacks that make it harder for them to find work.

It is clear that Tony Abbott has learnt nothing—and how short-sighted this budget is. On the night before the last election, Tony Abbott said that there would be:

…no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to ABC or SBS.

On budget night last year, he cut more than half a billion dollars out of the ABC and SBS leaving viewers angry and hundreds of ABC and SBS employees shattered.

This budget has locked in a record $11.3 billion cut to foreign aid, hitting some of the world's poorest countries hard and putting regional security at risk. The Abbott government's aid cuts continue to hurt the most vulnerable and hurt Australia's international reputation as a good, global citizen. But the cuts are also putting regional security at risk. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute says that reducing deprivation and inequality in our region delivers significant strategic benefits to Australia.

The cruel attack on dental patients continues with Tuesday night's budget ripping $125.6 million from the Child Dental Benefits Schedule. Just last weekend, the federal health minister promised that the Abbott government would 'sink its teeth' into dental reform promising $200 million in new spending. The only thing the minister has sunk her teeth into is Australia's kids, stealing $125.6 million from Labor's scheme that provided millions of children with dental care through Medicare. Tony Abbott has broken his promise that this budget would not come at the expense of the family budget. A new $1 billion cut, cruelly announced on Mother's Day, will leave tens of thousands of mothers worse off in the early months of their child's life.

This budget fails the fairness test with $80 billion in cuts to schools and hospitals. In my electorate of Reynell alone, $1,551,000 has been cut from the promised Gonski funding equating to $1,280 per schoolchild. In contrast to the Abbott government's cruel disregard for pensioners, I am so proud that our state Labor government has today announced our cost-of-living concession that will support older South Australians and see more than 200,000 seniors able to access these new concessions. I am so proud of our respect for those South Australians who have contributed so much to our community.