Page 1128 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 29 May 2007
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Once again, Aboriginal health and housing is grossly underfunded and misdirected in this year’s Howard-Costello budget. It will go nowhere near addressing the 17-year life expectancy gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. Health experts agree that $500 million a year is needed to lift the Aboriginal health standard to that of non-Aboriginal Australians. Taking this figure, Tom Calma, the social justice commissioner, has proposed a plan to address the gap in life expectancy within a generation, and the Greens back him fully. But, shockingly, the Howard-Costello budget allocates only about $30 million per annum to this nationally urgent responsibility—a responsibility it admits is urgent.
The Howard-Costello budget did nothing to address the national housing affordability crisis. And here in Canberra the pressure on housing is very obvious. The announcement that the public service will be increased did not offer anything to help the ACT cope with the housing needs of these people. But all around the country people are struggling to pay rent or mortgage repayments. People on low incomes are worse off because they are paying more than 30 per cent of their income on rent. There are many options open to the Howard government to alleviate the situation, such as bringing together a range of Australian government policies and subsidies that affect housing affordability. The Greens would support changing the tax policy on rental properties to encourage investment in low-cost housing. And with a $15 billion surplus, we can afford to increase our investment in affordable housing and help low income earners to pay the rent. Above all, the Greens’ budget would substantially increase capital investment in public housing.
On education, the Greens have called for a $7 billion boost in public education from the commonwealth. Arguably, ACT public secondary schools need attention but this needs to be done in a fair way and not in response to toeing the federal government’s line, which is how most funding is now being offered to schools. The Greens have a national investment plan from preschool to university. The Treasurer’s $5 billion one-off trust fund for universities will provide less than $400 million per annum, and that is nowhere near the investment that is needed from the commonwealth for the whole Australian education system. There is no single more important and far reaching education measure that the nation’s government could take than the Greens’ vision for public education, and Howard and Costello failed on this.
I believe that the Greens are the party with values. In government we would implement triple bottom line accounting, and that is that our budgets would measure and allocate the nation’s wealth as well as its social and environmental wellbeing. Good environmental policy is fundamental to good economic and social policy, and that truth is clear as we confront the challenge of climate change. Sweeteners from the federal Liberal government do not provide the building blocks for a sustainable and socially equitable future. It is quite obvious that Australia needs Greens members in all its parliaments to ensure that we have that future.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (4.46): I welcome the chance to speak on this matter of public importance because I believe that the ACT economy will benefit greatly from the 2007-08 federal budget. I always love hearing the Greens talk about budget matters: as I interjected earlier, they can confidently know that they will never have the responsibility of having to deliver a budget at the commonwealth level.
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