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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-05-13 Daily Xml
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Federal Budget

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS (15:27): I rise to comment on the budget handed down by the commonwealth government and its Treasurer last night. This budget is a sensible one. It takes a gradual path to surplus thereby ensuring that the effect on Australians is not an immediate shock. This will be welcomed by those opposite who castigated the commonwealth government for their so-called 'savage cuts'.

A priority of the commonwealth is the small business sector. On 1 July the commonwealth will offer small businesses tax cuts of 1.5 per cent. In addition to this, unincorporated small businesses will receive a 5 per cent tax cut and all purchases up to $20,000 will be immediate tax deductions. This sector is close to my heart and the cost of entering this space and having a go are prohibitive, so I welcome these generous tax concessions. I hope that this will increase the number of start-ups in South Australia and encourage all those out there considering taking the plunge and starting a new business to have a crack in these newly created favourable conditions.

Praise needs to go to the commonwealth Treasurer, the Hon. Joe Hockey, and his team as they have stayed true to the Liberal value of stimulus through tax concessions, rather than simply handing out cheques. Ultimately, the government should be encouraging people to work as hard as possible for their keep, and personal income tax is simply a tax on productivity and an individual's ability to earn; it is a regressive tax. I look forward to seeing more of this in the future.

To further help the working family, the commonwealth has spent $3.5 billion on making child care more affordable, allowing new mothers to go back to work sooner. This includes an 85 per cent rebate on childcare costs for families earning less than $65,000 who are our most vulnerable; $30 more per week for the next bracket of families earning $65,000 to $170,000; and four-year-old children will have 15 hours of preschool paid for by the commonwealth.

All these initiatives will go a long way to allowing mothers to return to the workplace. The commonwealth has also closed a loophole allowing parents to double dip on paid parental leave payments, taking both government and private sector payments. This, of course, is not the intention of such welfare packages, and I welcome the commonwealth closing that loophole. Welfare payments should only ever be a safety net; being financially self-sufficient should be preferred and incentivised by all governments.

Which brings me to changes to the age pension: those considered asset rich will no longer be able to access the pension, which I think is a fair move as our demography shifts into the future. The pension needs to be sustainable and affordable from a government perspective in order for our most vulnerable retirees to subsist. The aged pension is already 10 per cent of entire government expenditure, and this will only increase. Something must be done, and this is a step in the right direction.

To turn to South Australia, it is clear the commonwealth has been generous in its GST distribution to the tune of $857 million over the state budgeted amount during the forward estimate period. This amount is more than enough to cover the pensioner concessions to council rates and to reverse the ESL hikes. The argument of the state Labor government, that these so-called savage cuts are the reason for these savings measures and extra taxes at state level, is simply a falsehood. It is their own economic mismanagement that has the state budget into the precarious position it is in.

It is disappointing, but unsurprising, that the state Treasurer, the member for West Torrens, could not even acknowledge that there is actually more money flowing to South Australia under this new commonwealth budget—he can only complain and feign disappointment in The Advertiser. The commonwealth is assisting the state Treasurer with his budgetary crisis. He should be gracious enough to stop playing politics and assist vulnerable South Australians. I will conclude by welcoming a much more sensible and fairer budget, and I hope that those on the government side will end the pettiness and graciously accept the extra hundreds of millions of dollars invested in South Australia and use it for the betterment of this great state.

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