Mr GAVAN O'CONNOR (6:35 PM) —The ninth budget brought down by the Howard government is a blueprint for its re-election, not a blueprint for the next three years or, indeed, the next 10 years. It is certainly not a plan for the nation. Laid bare in this budget are the values that this Prime Minister and his colleagues hold dear to their hearts—namely, their naked quest for political survival at all costs and the manipulative contempt in which they hold the Australian people.

This politically crafted budget is simply too clever by half and is based on the cynical belief that the Australian people at the end of the day are mugs who can be bought off with 30 pieces of silver at election time. The truth of the matter is that the highest taxing, highest spending Treasurer in Australian history has had his hands in the pockets of Australian wage earners through bracket creep every year that he has been in office. Having taxed them mercilessly and hoarded the gold, he has now embarked on the father of all spending splurges to buy his way back into office at the next election. Australia's Prince Charles wants the prime ministerial throne, but King John will not abdicate. So the Treasurer spends like a sailor who is on land after six months at sea, hoping to buy the prime ministership one more time so that the Prime Minister can hopefully hand him the prime ministership if the coalition is re-elected.

Not having the intestinal fortitude to take on the Prime Minister, after having been dudded and doublecrossed and outsmarted by the Prime Minister, the Treasurer sulks late at night in his office, producing surpluses so that he can spend, spend and spend again to compensate for his loss of the big job. Over this side of the House we simply call him Ole Yeller. The tragedy for the Treasurer and many of his lemming supporters on the coalition back benches is that their political cowardice is hurtling them towards the political abyss. It would appear that the ninth Howard-Costello budget has gone down like the proverbial lead balloon. Following a $52 billion spend in this budget, the government's political fortunes have failed to bounce. There is a political reason for that: dead political cats don't bounce. I note in the chamber tonight the honourable member for Corangamite, a supporter of the Prime Minister. Let me say once again for the honourable member for Corangamite: dead political cats don't bounce. This Treasurer has wilfully accumulated those surpluses while Geelong families have bled financially and shouldered ever-increasing burdens in health and educational expenses.

The government, for over 18 months, has been told by aged care providers in the Corio electorate and elsewhere of the adverse impact of funding shortfalls on their capacity to provide aged care services. But the Howard government has acted only because there is an election around the corner. It has crafted its tax cuts to people whose incomes are in excess of $52,000, yet some 66 per cent of taxpayers earn much less than that amount and will receive no tax relief at all. It has brazenly offered cheques to families under its family tax benefit arrangements, but it has deceptively failed to tell people that the benefits will be offset against family tax benefit debt accumulated by families as a result of the government's own flawed scheme.

Our grinning, arrogant Treasurer has failed to address the increasing financial burden on Geelong families, and he now cynically throws money around like confetti at a country wedding, believing that voters can be bought off. While Geelong families have borne this burden, the Treasurer seeks to line the pockets of commercial advertisers with a hundred million dollar pre-election campaign to sell the budget. I want Australian taxpayers, particularly electors in the seat of Corio, to ponder that one fact. This is a government that withdrew the Commonwealth dental scheme, worth some $35 million a year, that would have given pensioners some relief from the pain they suffer as a result of their dental problems. But, in one pre-election year, this government is prepared to spend $100 million, lining the pockets of advertisers all around Australia for its own political gain.

Geelong students face increasing HECS burdens, with increased fees and educational expenses hitting to make more and more debt. Yet this Treasurer has forgotten them in the budget. Geelong aged care providers and Geelong families with aged relatives have had to shoulder increased financial burdens over the past two years as a result of the government's misplaced priorities. And now, with some relief in this budget, they are expected to get on their knees and give thanks to a Treasurer, a Prime Minister and a government which has bled them dry financially.

I therefore support the second reading amendment moved by the honourable member for Hotham, Simon Crean, which:

(1) its cynical election driven spending spree which, while spending a record $52 billion over the forward estimates, failed to deliver crucial services to Australians, including:

(a) funding the pneumococcal vaccine for children;

(b) funding VET in schools so young Australians can either Earn or Learn;

(c) ensuring access to Higher Education without excessive fees or increasing student debt levels;

(d) ensuring all Australians can access bulkbilling services;

(e) ensuring adequate measures to respond to Australia's skill shortage;

(2) also condemns the Government for failing to present a strategy to adequately address the long term fiscal challenges facing the nation.

This budget is not about fairness. It is not about social investment and building community. It is not about vision for advancing the nation. It is simply of crude attempt by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to buy and bribe their way back into office one more time.

There are several matters I wish to raise in the context of this debate relating to my electorate of Corio, which is based in the greater Geelong area. Firstly, many constituents in my electorate will be particularly disappointed at the targeting of the tax cuts to people with incomes in excess of $52,000. We know the government has indulged itself again in a cynical political exercise with these tax cuts, but recent census figures show that 84 per cent of Geelong income earners in the electorate of Corio earn less than $50,000 per year. There are 95,000 income earners in Corio according to the 2001 census and, of these, at least 79,717 earn less than $50,000 a year.

Around Australia, the pattern is repeated. Four out of five income earners and singles receive no relief at all from this budget. Indeed, NATSEM has confirmed that three out of five families and single people will not receive anything by way of tax cuts or family benefits in the budget. Furthermore, although the government has provided some additional income to families through the family tax benefit, the debt clawback from some families still exists, and there is no relief from the high marginal tax rates on working families where a partner does some casual work or part-time work to supplement the family income. So the government has basically failed a large part of my constituency in this budget, which as I intimated earlier is fairly and squarely aimed at getting the Prime Minister re-elected rather than really addressing the pressing needs of Geelong families.

The second matter that I wish to raise in this debate relates to my disappointment that the government has failed to provide federal funding input into the Geelong ring road project. I raise this issue not in a party political sense, as the needs of the people in the Geelong region and the overall national and regional economic benefits that will flow from the early completion of this project transcend the political boundaries drawn by the Electoral Commission. Indeed, if this particular project were to be completed, significant benefits would accrue to my electorate of Corio and, of course, to the electorate of Corangamite. The member for Corangamite is in the chamber with me tonight. I understand from the member for Corangamite that, like me, he has received a large number of representations from people who support the completion of this bypass road.

On 24 April I wrote again to the Prime Minister and the Minister for Transport and Regional Services outlining the case for supporting this important project in the Geelong region. Like many in the community, I was hoping for a favourable decision in the budget, and regrettably that favourable decision was not forthcoming. However, I do note in the budget papers that the government intends to announce its AusLink funding priorities on 7 June. I ask once again that this project be considered for priority funding. Following the budget, the Minister for Transport and Regional Services produced a press release relating to his AusLink funding proposals. I quote from that:

I note in the tables that are provided that new projects for 2004-05 will receive an allocation of $155.3 million. I would imagine that any new land transport projects will be the subject of announcements by the government in June. It is very clear from the criteria that the Commonwealth employs in assessing whether a proposal fits its Roads of National Importance category that this particular proposal fits quite neatly. Although it is not part of the national highway system, it is certainly a road of national economic significance. We have recently seen the Jetstar announcement in Geelong and I understand that tomorrow the first jet will be landing in Avalon from Sydney. I will speak a little bit more about that, but certainly that particular event gives impetus to considerable tourism traffic along the Great Ocean Road.

It is a sad fact of our national planning that the heavy reliance on road transport to move freight and passengers is putting quite intolerable pressure on existing infrastructure. It is contributing to urban congestion, pollution from greenhouse emissions, higher accident costs, energy depletion and a loss of social amenity.

These problems are very acute in the Geelong region. Recent demographic and economic changes now make the completion of the ring road around Geelong really compelling from an economic, social and environmental point of view. As I pointed out in my recent submission to the Prime Minister, the growth in tourism along the Great Ocean Road which I alluded to previously will be given a huge impetus with the recent Jetstar announcement to locate at Avalon. I congratulate Qantas and LinFox on the deal that they have done to locate Jetstar at Avalon. I cannot be there tomorrow when the first jet from Sydney to the Geelong region lands at Avalon, but I do wish the venture well and I hope that the people of the Geelong region as well as the western district hinterland and further afar support this service, as well as the people from Melbourne. It is a very important regional initiative, one that not only will bring that increased tourist traffic to the region but will certainly spawn a significant degree of employment growth as well.

The ring road is a strategic investment that, with Commonwealth support, will integrate the existing road network and propel benefits far in excess of any actual monetary contribution from the Commonwealth government. I want the project completed for the benefit of Geelong and I am not fussed how it is funded in the context of the total Commonwealth-state road funding effort in Victoria. Simply put, I want the road built. The project is necessary, nationally and regionally, and meets the criteria employed by the Commonwealth to evaluate similar projects around Australia.

However, I sound a warning to those who mistakenly believe that the completion of the ring-road around Geelong will be the answer to all our traffic problems in Geelong along Latrobe Terrace and the linkages from east to west. I have seen reports that it is anticipated that the road will only lead to reductions of 30 to 35 per cent in traffic volumes along Latrobe Terrace. Significant as that may be, the City of Greater Geelong has an onerous responsibility to get its traffic planning right, particularly in the CBD area of Geelong, as there is a view about in my electorate that the council decisions have exacerbated the movement of freight and passengers within and through the city. Even if a favourable decision were to be made today by the Commonwealth government, it would be a number of years before the project was fully completed, so the community needs an interim traffic management strategy to cope with existing and future traffic loads.

There is one more matter I wish to raise in the context of the budget appropriations, and it relates to aged care funding in this country. After years of neglect—and years of ignoring pleas from the industry, the opposition and, indeed, the community generally—the Howard government is now in election mode, proposing one of its short-term fixes in aged care funding.

I have received numerous representations from people in my electorate in relation to the aged care funding issue. I will not go through those arguments once again, because my time in this debate is coming to a close, but in the course of 2003 aged care providers alerted me to the dire financial consequences of the underfunding arrangements of the Howard government. Indeed, as I pointed out to them, the federal government deliberately used the Hogan review as a mask for shifting the costs of aged care funding onto the aged care providers.

The Hogan review was tabled in December last year, but it was not until the budget context some five months later that the government moved to address some of the capital funding issues that the aged care sector had been raising with me and other members of this place over a long period of time. Simply put, the Howard government bled the aged care providers dry so that they could drop a bucket of money in the context of this pre-election budget. That is the reality, and that is a real shame.

In conclusion, we have the highest taxing government in Australia's history and we have the highest spending government in Australia's history. Each year the Treasurer's taxation harvest has netted $2.5 billion in bracket creep, but in 2004-05 his budget relief only returned $1.9 billion. The average taxpayer in this country is paying an extra $5,500 in income tax every year under the Howard government, and by 2007-08 they will be paying a further $2,800. Over the eight years of the Howard government, average election year spending has been $32.7 billion; non-election year spending has averaged $3.9 billion. (Time expired)