Mr MURPHY (5:19 PM) —This afternoon I wish to support the amendments to the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2001-2002 moved by my colleague the shadow minister for finance and administration, Lindsay Tanner. Without question this bill confirms the damage this government has done to the lives of low and average income earners through six Howard-Costello budgets. The government's desperate attempt to address this damage through panic spending and cynical vote buying is nothing more than admission of its failure, and a final insult to those who have suffered the burden and nightmare of the GST.

More than half the constituents in my electorate of Lowe are aged between 24 and 64 years and fall between the income brackets of $30,000 and $80,000 per year. They are the families that are the backbone of our country. Having fought hard to gain an education and move into the work force, these families are entitled to expect some support from this government. What assistance has the government provided to those who work so hard? The answer: next to nothing.

After all the promises, this budget ignores hardworking Australians. In fact, with all its meanness and trickiness, the Howard government has combined the punishment of the GST with silent tax thresholds and bracket creep. The impost of the GST on low and middle income earners—the people this government expects not only to carry out this government's policies but also, somehow mysteriously and miraculously, to provide for their own retirement—has added to their cost of living, a cost unrelieved by the tax cuts and the incentive to join a health fund. The effect of the tax cuts and the health fund incentive was a cynical one-off action swept away by the ongoing daily impost of the GST and bracket creep. Terry McCrann, in his article in the WeekendAustralian of 2-3 June 2001, says:

Low to middle income earners are the silent majority upon whom this government has built this sham of a budget. They get nothing from this budget except the unrecognised honour of paying more and more and more. Bracket creep revenue over the 2001-02 to 2004-05 financial years is estimated by McCrann, in the same article, to rise by an amount equal to the total rise in GST revenue plus the federal excise and other indirect taxes, a figure of some $7 billion. Without bracket creep this budget heads into the red. Crispin Hull, in an article in the Canberra Times of 2 June 2001, is even more precise when he says:

He goes on to say:

The Australian Taxpayers Association, in its review of this budget, also comments on bracket creep starkly with these statistics: that, while total PAYG collections are expected to rise by 5.3 per cent, average salary and wage income is expected to rise by only 3.75 per cent. This increase in taxation for low and middle wage and salary earners is further compounded by the load shifting in the family expenses of education, child care, health and aged care from the public purse to the family purse.

In education, this government has consistently favoured private education over public education—but, worse, within private education this government has heavily weighted its prejudice to the old category 1 end of town. Category 1 schools under the REI scheme are advantaged under the SES scheme with a $1,000 per annum per student increase, as against the lower levels with less than a $200 per annum per student increase. Public schools, by contrast, will get the princely sum of a $4 per annum per student increase. Lowe has 20 non-government schools containing some 11,000 students. None is in the former ERI scheme category 1. Seventy-five per cent of those schools are in the Catholic education system. All but two of those schools are in the former ERI category 11.

Of course, whether you choose a public or a private school, the GST is ever present, from the tuckshop through school books to school equipment. Labor says that all Australian children have, as a right of their citizenship, a claim to a fair share of the resources allocated to education in Australia. At present under this government, the children of parents at the big end of town are being quarantined in privilege whilst the children of lower and middle income Australians have to make do with the crumbs from the table.

This government's budget has simply subsidised the reproduction of privilege in this country at the expense of the children of middle and battling Australia. Recently released CPI figures indicate that education costs on a year to date basis rose 4.5 per cent, with the increase from the December 2000 quarter and the March 2001 quarter being 4.2 per cent. The year to date increases in secondary education were 6.3 per cent and in primary education they were 4.4 per cent. These are huge imposts on the family purse, particularly when the salary and wage incomes of these families rose by less than four per cent over that period.

Education is the lifeblood of a knowledge nation. Labor says education must be whole of life; without it nothing else is possible. Education is the great fuel, the great renewable, by which we maintain and progress the Australian way of life and standard of living. The very life of our country as a society of people operating at above subsistence levels in the world is at stake. It is time education ceased to be the province of partisanship and became a national commandment.

The other great impost on any family is health care. A recent survey reported in the Daily Telegraph of 28 May 2001 noted that over 70,000 people have exited health funds of which many are in the 30- to 50-year age group. Moreover, the government's incentive package to drive people into health funds has not yet relieved pressure on the public health system. The March quarter 2001 CPI figures indicate an increase in the health cost year to date of 3.9 per cent but an increase of 9.3 per cent in pharmaceuticals. So, despite large increases in expenditure by this government on incentives to join a health fund, low and middle income Australians have experienced further health imposts on the family budget, and many are seeking to relieve those pressures by once again exiting health funds and running their luck as before.

This is the government that tells us there is no such thing as a free lunch. Clearly the exception to that rule is this government itself: this is another example of how this budget's largesse is at the expense of something else or someone else. This is a government which sees its role as providing only the most minimal of social safety nets in health, education, child care, aged care and so on. If any publicly provided service or resource provided for more than that, then this government has shown a willingness, even an avid enthusiasm, for reducing that provision to the most minimal by transferring services and resources to the profit driven private sector to make sure the public sector cannot do more than provide the most minimal service.

The recent corporate collapses, attributable to what can only be described as corporate delinquency, are instances of where the watchdogs, the regulators, have been reduced by a poverty of resources to do little other than watch. It is as if this government has told the lifeguards on the beach to put away their equipment, save for a pair of binoculars, a pencil and paper by which to observe the conduct of swimmers and to note the drowning as a matter of record—but never to enter the water. This government's ideology and prejudice driven social engineering are designed to drive middle Australia away from the community as the standard bearer of social services and resources to the market driven, fee demanding private sector.

Everyone knows the corporate sector is a risky and racy place. More and more of low and middle income Australians' savings, either through investments or superannuation, are now used by corporate Australia. No longer can corporate Australia behave in the cavalier manner of the 1980s or the recent dot com frenzy. Low and middle income Australia demands now that corporate Australia conducts itself with a community obligation to protect and enhance those investments and savings. It demands that corporate Australia swim between the flags and that the watchdogs, the regulators, be forever vigilant in ensuring that they do.

The people of my electorate of Lowe expect and demand better of government. They expect and demand that the community will make more than minimum public provision for health, education, child care, aged care, corporate conduct and rectitude. My constituents of Lowe want to know why, after five years and six budgets of this government, this country seems to be run no better than some hapless Third World country. In fact, the lack of accountability of this government for its conduct is matched only by the Pontius Pilates of the recent corporate collapses. Australians have had enough of the mean and tricky hypocrisy of the Howard government and its corporate allies. What has become blindingly obvious to all Australians is that this government runs two sets of moral codes: one for itself and its big end of town allies and one for the rest of us. Australians expect and demand better of themselves and of their governments. They know our country can do better and they are not happy with their country becoming an international pariah.

So far this government has been a one issue per term government: in the first term, industrial relations and the war on the trade union movement with masked men and Rottweilers; in the second term, the GST and the promise that no-one would be worse off—a claim exposed by the recent Newspoll on the GST showing that 57 per cent of the population oppose the GST and 58 per cent believe they are worse off because of the GST; and, in its third term, the coalition only holding out on the promise of the sale of Telstra. What have the last five years of coalition government been for? Attacking working Australians through industrial relations changes, tax changes and the running down of social services and assets. There is nothing about where this country is headed or should be heading. Australia can no longer afford the coalition in government. The time has come for this government and its threadbare mean and tricky ideology to be brushed into the dustbin of history. Finally, all Australians want this government off their backs. This will occur when the election is held on 17 November 2001.