Federal Budget

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (15:49): On 9 May, the federal government handed down its budget, a budget out of step with community expectations, a budget lacking in fairness and failing those members of the community most in need of support and a budget that failed in the key areas of health, education, affordable housing and support for the disadvantaged. According to Malcolm Fraser—Malcolm Turnbull (mind you, not much has changed), the budget is fair on every level, but this budget does nothing more than provide for the extremely wealthy and big business with tax cuts, whilst families struggling to make ends meet are faced with increased costs. Fairness, according to Malcolm Turnbull, is a $50 billion giveaway to big business at the expense of everyone earning more than $21,000 paying an increased Medicare levy.

The federal government's budget greatly disadvantages women in particular in the community. At the same time that $50 billion is given away to big business as a tax cut, the government is unable to find $400,000 to unfreeze funding to the national women's alliances. The five national women's alliances are networks of issue-based and sector-based women's groups, bringing together women's organisations to share information, identify issues that affect them and identify solutions, whilst engaging with the Australian government as part of a more informed and representative dialogue between women and the government.

But these measures are not new for this government. Indeed, since the Liberals came to power in 2013, Australia has slipped from 19^th to 46^th place in the Global Gender Gap Report. Some of the other ways in which this budget disadvantages women include housing affordability. Women face an increase in housing stress, and a shocking example of this can be seen in the 17.5 per cent increase in older women seeking help from homelessness services, which is twice the rate of growth in the general population. Failures to address the tax regime in the areas of capital gains tax and negative gearing again disadvantage women. Women only claim a third of negative gearing deductions.

In the area of health this budget also fails women. Medicare rebates will remain frozen for three more years and this will disproportionately impact women, who are twice as likely to delay seeing their GP because of the cost. Women from developing countries are not spared in this budget either: international development funding for family planning services in developing countries has fallen from $46 million in 2013-14 (when Labor was last in government) to just $17 million under Malcolm Turnbull. This budget fails women in the area of education, as university students will pay more for their degrees earlier, whilst funding for universities is cut by 2.5 per cent. Only a third of the $78 million in federal funding to support Indigenous children and young people's participation in education is directed to programs targeting girls.

This budget also cuts funding from TAFE to the tune of $600 million, again disadvantaging those people most in need of support—women, migrants and young people denied opportunities in training and learning new skills. This budget fails the economy, it fails jobseekers and, in particular, it fails older female workers. Growth is down, employment is down and wages growth is down. Jobs are forecast to be down by 95,000. This is very worrying news, particularly for older female workers. This concern is further compounded by recent ABS reports which suggest that ageism is impacting older women in our society: women looking for additional hours because of rising living costs, retirement savings, or providing financial assistance to children, and not able to find the additional hours they need.

It can be argued that this underemployment is discrimination on the grounds of both age and gender, and it adds up to women retiring poorer with less resources in superannuation, savings and property assets than men of a similar age. The budget is also extremely wasteful, with measures that include $170 million for a same-sex marriage plebiscite, $162 million for Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and millions wasted on government advertising, which all add up to a government with poor judgement and no moral compass. This federal budget fails the test for everyone—well, unless, of course, you are a millionaire or a big business. It fails the fairness test, it fails the health test, the education test, the jobs test and it fails women.