Mrs CROSIO (11:36 AM) —I, along with my colleagues on this side of the House, rise to speak on and debate the Tax Laws Amendment (Personal Income Tax Reduction) Bill 2004. I find it ironic that an important bill such as this, which deals with personal income tax, could warrant—as the member for Scullin has also mentioned—only four speakers on the government side in support of it. I was just doing some mathematics which showed that our side had something like 18 people speak, offering over 6½ hours of debate on this bill, and the government could not even put up enough members to give it more than 40 minutes.

I, along with the member for Scullin, question where the government's real interest is as far as bills like the one before the House are concerned. I will tell you where it is. We are sure that these cuts are part of what could accurately be described as the largest pre-election bribe ever offered to the Australian people. I suppose it is something we expected. Here we have, as everyone has repeated, the highest taxing government in Australian history offering the largest pre-election bribe in Australian history.

The truth is that four out of five taxpayers get not one red cent in tax cuts. In my electorate of Prospect, more than 88,000 people who are earning wages—or 91 per cent of the working population—will get absolutely nothing. Those figures, I believe, are representative of similar electorates in which ordinary Australian families earn less than that $1,000 per week. These people, the ones you and I, Mr Deputy Speaker Mossfield, represent, are the backbone of this country. They are the ordinary families who work hard, pay their bills, educate their kids and in return get nothing from the Howard government. Many of these people are our office workers, shop assistants, child-care workers, labourers and domestic staff. Where is their encouragement from the government to assist them to climb, as we say, the ladder of opportunity? It is not in this bill and it is not in this budget. Not only are ordinary Australians paying the highest taxes on record but also household debt is at a record high. Many families now owe more than they earn, and mortgage payments are eating away more of the family budget than ever before.

The government thought, in their arrogance, that Labor would oppose the tax changes for higher income earners in this bill. They were wrong again. From the beginning we made it clear that Labor would not oppose the passage of these bills. We support both the cuts and the increase in marginal tax rate thresholds. But we say they do not go far enough. They are slanted very obviously towards high-income earners. All of us debating this bill in this parliament will benefit from the tax cuts, but four out of five people—I repeat, four out of five people—who live in an electorate such as the one I represent will get nothing. This is an insult to those people in my electorate. They pay in their working lives more than their fair share of taxes. They are wondering what they get in return in basic education and health services. In 91 per cent of cases they do not even get a tax cut.

The Treasurer's response to these Australians is that they should be grateful for last year's `sandwich and milkshake' budget. The overall tax cuts—as the Treasurer knows—proposed by the Howard government are worth less than $2 billion. As Taxpayers Australia's Peter McDonald pointed out, that so-called `sandwich and milkshake' tax cut of the last budget was worth $2.4 billion. He also stated that the budget provided the opportunity to significantly reduce bracket creep by introducing automatic and full indexation of the tax scale. This government failed to deliver on this opportunity and opted simply to raise the income threshold at which the two top tax rates apply. It is possible to provide tax relief and restore services. You can do this by operating under the tightest of fiscal disciplines, and that is what we on this side of the House are demonstrating in our budget pledge.

I would like to give a few reasons why the Howard government is the highest taxing government in history. Even allowing for the tax cuts in this budget, total Commonwealth taxes next year will hit a record high of $217 billion. That is up 90 per cent since 1996. Also by next year, 2005, total income tax will be up 80 per cent since 1996. Australian taxpayers are already paying an average of $9,000 more in Commonwealth taxes than they did in 1996. These figures are an absolute disgrace. The great Australian dream of owning your own home is fading further and further from the reach of the ordinary Australian. Because of the dramatic drop in the availability of bulk-billing under the Howard government and its white-anting of Medicare, the costs of visiting a doctor have gone through the roof.

We, under Mark Latham's Labor government, will provide a more equitable system of tax cuts, and we will provide them to ensure that ordinary hardworking Australian families receive the tax relief to which they are entitled. For too many Australians the tax system remains a barrier to hard work. The cuts announced by the Howard government failed to even give back bracket creep in any year over the forward estimates. Labor have already passed the family payments package and will now pass the changes in the tax bill, even though we have moved an amendment to them. Our policy and our commitment are to bring forward a tax and family package which is broader and fairer than that offered by this government.

There is in the community a very high level of public disquiet. Our social institutions are under pressure and people expected more from this ninth budget of the Howard government. Families are struggling to make ends meet and personal debt is outstripping income. Our social attitudes have changed and more and more people are questioning this government's financial direction. They say, `How can they spend $100 million extra on advertising but not provide the means to vaccinate our kids?' We on this side of the House talk about priorities and about making the tax system work for Australians and not against them.

Labor has fully costed and funded a plan to save our Medicare and bulk-billing, and we need to do that. I had the experience on the weekend at Terrigal, in the member for Robertson's electorate, when my granddaughter was injured playing soccer, of going to a doctor and being asked to pay the $55 up front before they looked at her thumb and then being asked to pay $68 up front before they could X-ray it. I could afford that and I did that, but how many other families in that electorate—those mums and dads whose children were on the soccer field that day—at that particular moment on that particular day would have that type of cash in their pocket, even if their child was injured? What would they have done and how would they have received treatment if it had been their daughter or granddaughter? That is just one example.

Labor have also fully costed and funded a policy to protect our children and a new baby care payment for mothers and their newborn babies. And we have funded and costed 20,000 extra TAFE places and 20,000 extra university places. We have done this particularly because there is that unmet demand for vocational education and training. Why do we want to deny so many of our young people the opportunity for higher education? Without that education our people are having a harder time in securing jobs. This budget should have provided more to help overcome this problem. Our university, Mr Deputy Speaker Mossfield—the University of Western Sydney—is of course our principal higher education facility catering for people in electorates such as mine and yours and for the majority of people who live in Western Sydney. It is the third largest university in New South Wales and the 10th largest in Australia. Very few young people in my area, prior to this university being built, completed their higher education. These young people must continue to be encouraged, not by higher HECS fees but by opportunity provided to them, to participate in and further their education up to and through university standard if they have the ability to do so. Our vocational education facilities under this government have been severely under-resourced and undervalued. The Howard government has diverted public resources to private schools, and this cannot continue.

This morning a mother's letter was published in a newspaper in my local area. I will not mention her name, because I know Mr Speaker's views in this regard, but I feel sure she would love to have it on the record. She wrote:

at the public school—

And it goes on—a parent describing what public education gives to her family. Yet it is we on this side of the House who are constantly criticised because we say it is our public institutions and our private schools in need, not the elite of our nation, that should receive those extra funds. It is not good enough for the government to talk about choice. We say, `Choice, provided that first there is the proper choice for those who wish to have public education.'

Another point I would like to raise is that I was pleased that we on the Labor side have fully costed and funded a national dental scheme aimed particularly at our older Australians. As our population ages, governments of the future must take more direct responsibility for health care programs, particularly for our frail aged. Our dental scheme, which we had in operation before this government took over in 1996, at least assisted to some extent the particular problem that our aged people had. That was stopped, but I am pleased to say that when we are elected at this election it will be returned and once more our aged people will have access to proper dental care.

People talk about superannuation, and I know we are very proud of what we have been able to do with it, but I do not see superannuation as the great panacea to assist people in the future unless the government funds more aged care facilities. Australians know this, and that is why they would rather see more spent in that direction than in providing tax cuts for the few. Two billion dollars, which these tax cuts will be this year, would go a long way in providing more aged care nurses and more nursing homes. People may think I am exaggerating some of the problems that my people are experiencing. A survey of people in the street in my local area asked, `What did you think of the budget?' One person responded:

Another person who was canvassed in the street said:

And another said:

Those are just three of about eight responses to a survey that was done in my electorate yesterday afternoon. Details were given in the newspaper this morning, and I can quote from that paper and table it, if that is what you wish. I use that survey as an example because too often we listen to the mantra from the other side of the House—the government saying that this is the best budget they have ever brought down and that they are the best government ever in the history of this parliament. I am saying: get out and listen to the electorate at large and see what the people really think, not only of what the government are all about but also of what this budget is all about. I thought it was astounding this morning to pick up the Australian newspaper and see in an article on higher education—it was headed `Nelson stirs up fund war'—the minister for education going on about how he has now released the official Department of Education, Science and Training estimates, and revealing how much each university in our nation will secure as a result of HECS increases.

Why doesn't this government understand that an increase in HECS is, in a way, a tax? Where do they think it comes from? It comes from the pockets of the students participating. They are paying that much more. It is securing for them extra debt that they have to face a future with. The figures, based on universities that have already announced plans to increase fees by up to 25 per cent, reveal that students will face extra charges of $94 million next year, rising to over $377 million over four years. Of course, that is not a tax; that is just one of those non-core promises in which the government have said that they will educate and provide education for all, it is just that they are going to tax those who cannot afford to pay. If people wish to pursue education, they will have to keep on paying.

We are criticised because we said that we are going to provide the extra places that have been refused to a number of people and that we certainly do not believe in increasing HECS fees by 25 per cent. That criticism has been answered in that article by Samantha Maiden in the Australian this morning. I suggest that everyone who is interested in higher education read it, and look particularly at how their electorates are being affected. I am pleased to see in that article the comments by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and spokesperson for education, Jenny Macklin. She said:

which my children attended—

Again I pose the question, and I pose it to the honourable member for Sturt who is sitting in the House: where does the money come from? The money does not come like picking lemons from a tree; the money comes from the pockets of individuals. If the money is coming from the pockets of individuals, whether you call it a HECS fee, a tax or a levy, the fact of the matter is that it is an extra charge which the people of our community and Australians throughout this nation are paying to make sure that they can secure the opportunity of higher education.

Whether or not the government likes it that we insist that these are tax increases, it is going to have to wear it, because it is fact. Here is an article that shows quite clearly how each university is going to increase their HECS fees—what it is going to mean to universities each year, and which universities are still considering it. I am pleased to say that the university that we are so proud of in New South Wales, the University of Western Sydney, is yet to decide—and I hope it does not go ahead. They know, along with a number of other Universities, that people in our communities just cannot afford that extra money. It is more than just 25 per cent in HECS fees that they are going to be responsible for. It is the fact that, with all the other charges that have been brought down by this government, whether it is through the GST or through all of the other taxes, parents are finding it more difficult to keep their family together and provide the opportunities for their older children to go on to higher education.

Families in the community that I represent are, for the first time, having a person go on to university. I know I have a high number of migrants in my electorate, and I am proud of that. But, more importantly, those parents too are proud and endeavour to see that their children progress so that they can take that one step further than those parents were able to in their lifetime. Why does the government continually harass these people? Why do we debate a bill today that is going to give money to those people earning over $52,000 a year in income? Why would we as parliamentarians get a tax cut when the people we stand up and represent are going to get absolutely nothing? It is about time this government is brought to task for this, and it is about time this government is held accountable. This is a very important bill. It should have been further debated by the government. Obviously, they have neither read it, nor cared about it, because they have not provided the people to speak to it. But more importantly, it is the electorates at large that are going to say to this government at the next election: `Enough is enough—your time is up. Let us get on with the future.'