Mr BEVIS (8:54 PM) —The appropriation bills before the parliament give effect to the budget that was announced a few weeks ago. More than any other single initiative of a government, whoever the government may be, the budget is probably the single best reflection of the true views, values and sentiments that the government of the day hold. In the budget they allocate the hard-earned money of the Australian community to those things that reflect the government’s priorities. It is the budget that determines where the government of the day think the need in the nation is. This budget demonstrates a series of values that reflect the Gordon Gekko view of the world—the ‘greed is good’ view. Welcome back to Gordon Gekko. He is alive and well and prospering in the Liberal cabinet room.

Unfortunately, most Australians do not see a benefit from this budget. A few will. The centrepiece of the budget, heralded on budget night—not so heralded by the backbench since—was the $22 billion to $24 billion tax cuts that were announced. That has been the subject of a separate debate in this parliament, in which I spoke, so I do not propose to devote a great deal of time to that in my address this evening. But there are some important points that need to be reflected on. The budget announcement of tax cuts actually amalgamated three budget tax cuts: those from last year’s budget, those from the current year’s budget and an announcement of what will be in next year’s budget by way of tax cuts. Three years of tax cuts were effectively added together on budget night to arrive at the tax cuts that the Treasurer announced.

A person on an average weekly wage—depending on which measure you use, that is somewhere in the vicinity of $40,000 to $55,000—got zero in last year’s budget, not a single cent by way of a tax cut. Next year they get zero, not one cent, again. In the budget for the tax year starting on 1 July they get a grand total of $6. So a person on $55,000, who is on the upper end of what is identified as average weekly earnings, gets a total tax cut over a three-year period from this government of $6 a week. Someone earning twice that amount of money, $110,000, gets in excess of $72 a week. That is, they have double the income but they get 12 times the tax cut over the period of the previous budget, this year’s budget and next year’s budget. By any definition, it is an unfair and improper series of tax cuts where those in the greatest need receive the least amount of support.

The Labor Party made it clear that we thought that was unfair and that we would not support it. We proposed an alternative tax scale and moved that in this parliament. It is a matter of history and the record that Liberal and National party members voted against that. Even though a number of those members opposite, particularly National Party members, represent some of the poorest electorates in this country, they turned their backs on their constituents to vote for a package that does little to assist their constituents but a great deal to assist the Member for North Sydney and some others.

Labor’s tax cut proposal, our amendments, were detailed and available to the Treasurer for nearly eight hours before the debate. Yet, during the course of that debate, neither he nor any member of the government stood and debated the change—that is, debated the difference between Labor’s tax cut proposal and the government’s tax cut proposal. It is instructive that, in that debate and the debates that have occurred since, not one technical criticism of Labor’s package has been forthcoming. No-one in the Liberal Party ranks has made an attempt to compare the relative merits of the two packages and the benefits that would flow from each to ordinary Australians. It is an indication of just how much the Treasurer, like this government, has become increasingly lazy and arrogant.

It was also instructive to note that not one Liberal member from the Brisbane area got up to speak in the debate on the Tax Laws Amendment (Personal Income Tax Reduction) Bill 2005—not the member for Petrie, the member for Dickson, the member for Ryan, the member for Moreton, the member for Bonner, the member for Bowman or the member for Forde. Not one of them got up to speak in support of the core element of the government’s budget package—its tax cuts. This was such a critically important part of the government’s budget program that you might have thought at least one of the Liberals from Brisbane could have mustered the intestinal fortitude—or, if not that, then at least a little bit of wit—and stood on their feet to speak in the debate. But that did not occur.

This is a budget the Sheriff of Nottingham would be proud of. The fact that those in greatest need have received little support was not missed by the St Vincent de Paul Society, who today issued a statement which in part said:

They then set out what has happened in real terms to mean incomes between 1994-95 and 2002-03, effectively the period of office of Prime Minister John Howard and the Liberal government. Over that period, low-income earners have received an increase of $32.28, middle-income earners have received $62.86 and high-income earners have received $156. The St Vincent de Paul Society issued their statement today, with the figures that I have just quoted, because they, like many on this side of the House and, I think, in the Australian community, are alarmed at the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots and the fact that those at the top end, who are already doing well, are being showered with largesse by this government in its budget and in these appropriation bills.

When government members hop up and talk about the percentage of income that someone is getting as a tax cut, they are playing arithmetic games. They know it, and the people on low incomes who hear that know it. It is another example of why even their own party some years ago, after conducting an inquiry into some of their woes, said that this government and this Prime Minister were seen as mean and tricky. Those mean and tricky games that were played on budget night, and the spin given by government members and Liberal Party publicists to try and justify those unfair tax cuts, do not wash with the public. This budget has failed the nation, at the expense of largesse for a few. It fails to address the critical economic needs. It has not addressed the acute skills shortage we have in Australia at the moment, nor has it addressed the need for investment in key infrastructure. As a nation, we need to renew our investment in areas like transport, communications and water availability. The government has failed to provide the necessary boost in those areas.

But not only has this government failed the economic tests; it has failed to meet the critical social needs of our society. It has failed to provide the support necessary for sole parents, the disadvantaged, the disabled, those who rely on our education system and those in need of health care. In all of these important areas of social need, the budget has failed  to grasp the opportunity that was uniquely available. There has been a massive windfall gain for the government in this budget—the highest taxing government in our history—as a result of which there has been a large pool of funds available that could have been used much more wisely. That is the view not just of the St Vincent de Paul Society and those on this side of the House. Let me read you the comments of some of the commentators on the budget. Ross Gittins in the Sydney Morning Herald said:

Tim Colebatch at the Age said:

There is an ample amount of statistics to demonstrate that the current activity in the economy is very heavily based on borrowings rather than actual productivity. Alan Wood from the Australian said:

Chris Caton at Bankers Trust said, ‘The fact that they have chosen to be relatively expansionary at the margin increases the probability of more interest rate increases.’ That point was taken up by Saul Eslake, a well-respected economist from the ANZ Bank, who said:

That was the reaction to the budget of many prominent commentators. They demonstrate a concern, and rightly so. It is not surprising that they think it was a missed opportunity or that things needed to be done differently, because, at the moment, we have the highest foreign debt in our history. Some of us have been here long enough to recall the old foreign debt truck that the Liberal Party ran around in some election campaigns 10 or 12 years ago. Let me tell you that the foreign debt that this government has overseen dwarfs the foreign debt when Labor was in office.

When Labor left office in 1996, net foreign debt, which is a fair measure—that is, the foreign debt we owe, minus all the income we get from our overseas investments—was about $193 billion. At the end of last year the foreign debt had increased to $421 billion. That is an enormous blow-out. But a more frightening measure is net foreign debt as a percentage of gross domestic product. Some people might say that the actual foreign debt is not a problem if your economy is being very productive and growing at a great rate of knots. The test for that is: what percentage of your gross domestic product is soaked up in net foreign debt? When we left office in the March quarter of 1996, that figure stood at 39.2 per cent. At the end of last year, that very same figure was 50.3 per cent. Our net foreign debt is more than half of our GDP. That is why people such as Saul Eslake rang alarm bells and why other commentators made comments about the missed opportunities in this budget.

There are a number of things that I would like to put on the record to elaborate on the problems that are confronted in areas such as education, health, the environment and defence. Time will not allow me to address all of those things so, because I have had the opportunity to speak on some of them on other occasions, I want to mention one quick thing about the environment and then turn to some issues associated with defence.

The environment has not done well under this government but it is somewhat astounding that even this government would take the action it has in respect of one matter in the budget. The budget abolishes funding for the Australian Greenhouse Office. The Australian Greenhouse Office was the first national greenhouse office in the world. Under Labor, we were world leaders in pursuit of a better, cleaner, stronger environment for the future. Under the Liberals we have put our head in the sand and we are abandoning future generations. In a quite disgraceful way this budget closes down the Australian Greenhouse Office, not because the greenhouse problem has been fixed—it has not—but because this government has chosen to ignore it.

I want to take the opportunity to make some reference to one aspect of defence for which I have particular responsibility on behalf of the Labor Party and the opposition, and that is the justice system in the Department of Defence at the moment. There are far too many cases coming to light of inappropriate activity in the Defence Force that are not being addressed as they should be. This prompted the Sydney Morning Herald to write an editorial only a week or so ago that said:

Sadly, that is a pretty fair statement of where things have got to. I want to refer to a couple of cases to illustrate the problem. One involves former Air Vice Marshal Peter Criss, who in 2000 was summarily removed from his position as the East Timor air commander. At the time he was not given any reasons for his removal or the opportunity to reply to any claims against him.

An inquiry into the treatment of Air Vice Marshal Criss then found in favour of the air vice marshal. It also raised concerns about the conduct of Lieutenant General Des Mueller, who was criticised for not properly conducting performance assessments of Air Vice Marshal Criss. In an amazing development, instead of compensating Air Vice Marshal Criss for the wrongdoing the then Chief of the Defence Force Admiral Barrie asked General Mueller to review the inquiry’s conclusion. In other words, General Mueller was asked to review himself. Surprise, surprise, he exonerated himself. After that, Air Vice Marshal Criss’s claim for compensation, which the first inquiry described as ‘irresistible’, was overturned. So there was a further review—the third one in five years—this time by an independent agent like the first one. It too found in favour of Air Vice Marshal Criss and outlined various breaches of the defence department rules that it identified he had been a victim of.

The simple fact is that there had been an error in the treatment of Air Vice Marshal Criss. The department had now spent over $1 million fighting this case. Wrongly, Air Vice Marshal Criss to this day has not got a cent in compensation. We have had three inquiries and $1 million spent to defend the wrongdoing and the victim of it still waits for any resemblance of justice.

A frightening case in my view involved a very talented young lieutenant commander, a female officer in the Navy who, while she was stationed at HMAS Stirling at Garden Island in Western Australia, was confronted by one of her subordinates who wanted to express concern about sexual harassment she had been suffering. A complaint was put in to the commanding officer about that sexual harassment. Unfortunately, it was not acted on, so the lieutenant commander took up the matter, as she should do, and pursued it with her superiors. Her superiors obviously objected to the fact that she was following through the process better than they had and she was subsequently victimised.

As part of that victimisation, a Dr McKenzie conducted examinations of her and behaved in a manner which the Medical Board of Western Australia subsequently found to be totally inappropriate. In fact, the medical board found Dr McKenzie guilty of professional misconduct and fined him $10,000. The defence department so far has spent about half a million dollars providing legal support and covering other costs for Dr McKenzie. That is, the doctor who has been found by the medical board to have behaved improperly has received support over a period of some years and his legal costs have been largely met by the Crown.

Meanwhile, the victim of all of these wrongdoings has had to pay all her own legal costs and expenses and has had her career at best put on ice—in fact, probably ruined—in the process. To date, there has not been one cent of compensation for that lieutenant commander and not one cent of recompense for her legal costs. Indeed, when I put questions on notice to Minister Kelly about this the answer that I received only a week or two ago was that it was a matter for the courts and if this young female officer wants to sue the Commonwealth then let her do her best. ‘We’ll see you in court with our deep pockets,’ was no doubt the view that the minister was advancing—so much for justice and so much for decency in dealing with these problems.

The final example I will mention, given the time constraints, is the very tragic circumstance of a 15-year-old female Air Force cadet. Sadly, she was in an improper relationship with one of the officers. The officer in fact admitted to the improper relationship and resigned. For her trouble the cadet was subsequently victimised by the senior officers and told that she should leave. She was the victim, mind you, and she was told that she should resign. In the end, tragically, this young girl took her life. The human rights commission investigated the matter and not only were critical of these events but critical of Defence for covering it up.

It is time these matters were dealt with openly and honestly. The great bulk of people in our Defence Force are wonderful people who deserve to have the respect of all of us. But until the system is willing to address these problems when they arise there will always be an inappropriate air of concern hanging over them. These cases should be dealt with by the minister immediately. It is not good enough to fob it off to the department; it is not good enough to tell these people, ‘We will see you in court.’ The minister has an obligation herself—not the department—to investigate these matters to ensure that justice is done.