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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
2014-05-20 Daily Xml
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Federal Budget

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (15:29): Today I rise very angry that the arrogant, out of touch federal Liberal government is again ripping at the heart of our community. Angry at the severe and immediate impact its budget will have on South Australians. Angry that on a day when Australian families were told they would face years of pain and hardship, our federal Treasurer danced, singing about how it was the best day of his life. Angry at his suggestion that all we must do is drink less and the need for universal health care and quality public education will disappear.

Our federal Treasurer seems surprised at the outrage his $7 co-payment caused—the outrage at his suggestion that, if poor Australians just made some better choices, they would be able to find the $7 for their sick child to see a doctor.

Working Australians are not all heavy drinkers, Mr Hockey. I have spoken with family after family after family in Reynell; they are wondering what they will do, and what they will go without, next time their children need to see a doctor and what they will do if they cannot get them there at all. They are decent people who care for their children and who for generations have enjoyed the collective security that equality and an accessible, universal health and education system brings. They are decent people deeply united by the compact at the heart of our nation, a compact to work hard together and to look after our most vulnerable. That is what it means to be Australian. That budget announced on Tuesday was the first strike in an effort to destroy our Australian compact.

Unlike those opposite, South Australian Labor, our Premier and the South Australian people will not stand by silently and allow our nation and our values to be destroyed. Our communities want our nation to work together in order to prosper and to live up to our Australian values. All Australians will suffer from the division the federal budget brings. If our families are smashed and our suburbs divided into the haves and have-nots, the social dislocation that will result will be bad for us all. When you take hope away from people, when you treat people without respect, as this budget does, you wave goodbye to community cohesion and safety, and no-one benefits.

Today our nation is governed by a federal Liberal government that protects the interests of just a few. They have fabricated a budgetary crisis as an excuse to serve the interests of just those few. They talk of necessary economic policies as if there is no relationship between economic policy and social impact. Well, I say to them: economic policy is social policy, and there is no need to cut as hard as they have.

We see through their attempts to hide austerity behind a veil of fiscal responsibility. We see through their childish attempts to blame the previous government, one which protected Australian jobs during the global financial crisis and one which did not propose cutting 16,500 jobs from the public sector, 4,500 more than they alluded to before the election. We see through their hypocrisy, talking about future generations but taking steps to decimate our environment at the same time. We see how these cuts mirror those proposed by those opposite in the lead-up to the state election. I condemn these attacks on our Australian way and commit to fight for the interests of all Australians, not just a privileged few.

I have much to say about the disregard shown by this federal Liberal government for those who are dependent on our welfare system, and I will fight to ensure that our most vulnerable are treated in a way which aligns with our Australian values. However, today I direct my anger at what this cruel budget means for South Australian working families, particularly those in Reynell, as they go about their life, caring for their families, working hard and helping to make things in their community a little better.

At the 2011 census, over 50 per cent of households in Reynell reported a weekly income of less than $1,000 and, of those, over 50 per cent were families, families of many different constructs, all targeted by this budget. I have been thinking about a family I know in Morphett Vale. The parents have been happily married for more than 25 years. They are positive, generous people who work hard and volunteer to improve their community and help others where and when they can. One of the parents works part-time in a school canteen and one as a gardener. Their daughters are both under 25, one working in a shop in the Colonnades and one studying whilst also working casually in hospitality.

This budget means that their elder daughter can no longer claim Newstart, which keeps her afloat while studying and working part time and that moving out of home for her is impossible. It means that she is expected to pay her HECS debt sooner at a higher amount, with repayments now starting at a much lower salary. This budget means that any dreams of post-graduate study are simply out of her family's financial reach. It means that everyone in their house, two parents in their 50s and both daughters, will work all the way until they are 70.

Time expired.

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