I beg to differ on behalf of my constituency. The budget for 2006-07 has been treated in a pretty ordinary way by the people in the federal electorate of Calwell—and this despite the massive surplus and also the new comprehensive tax reform measures that see tax cuts given to a much broader base of income earners. Despite those two major features of the budget, many of the people in my electorate and no doubt the Australian public generally have not been as enthusiastic and excited about the goodies that have been on offer in this year’s federal budget. The reason for that is fairly simple—that is, people and in particular families are struggling. They are struggling to make ends meet, despite record budget surpluses and the infamous tax cuts.
My community, like the rest of Australia, knows very well that the tax cuts given in this budget will disappear well before they can be of any benefit, because such is the pressure that our families are under that it will take a lot more than just tax cuts to relieve the burden of the rising cost of living. Tax cuts—and I need to make this point—are of no benefit to those people who are not earning an income. I in particular have a large number of unemployed people in my electorate. I have a large number of sole parents and pensioners who face even greater uncertainty as the government’s Welfare to Work and IR policies begin to kick in.
Household budgets in my electorate, like everywhere else across Australia, are straining under the recent increases in interest rates. In my electorate in particular, we are a significant growth corridor and we have a high mortgage belt, and therefore interest rate rises are felt very quickly and they are felt strongly. You need to add to this the skyrocketing cost of petrol and of course the imminent threat to wages from the government’s industrial relations changes, and you get a community which is becoming increasingly more concerned about its future security and less excited about the Treasurer’s budget surpluses and his tax cuts.
Many of the people in my electorate are asking me and others and themselves: if the economy is doing so well and the budget is in such spectacular surplus, why is it that we are paying more and more for the cost of living? I believe that this particular angst that my constituency is experiencing is not restricted to them alone. My constituents are bracing themselves for the mounting assault on their wages and working conditions. As story after story comes to light about people losing their jobs or their entitlements or copping wage cuts, people are beginning to wonder—quite fairly I guess—why at a time of record company profits and record economic growth the Prime Minister asserts that they should cop the pay cuts for the good of the economy.
I am afraid that average Australia is so highly geared and mortgaged that it is not prepared to make any more sacrifices. That is why this budget has failed to excite people in the way that the government would have hoped. The government is aware that the budget has not excited average Australia. The PM knows this, because I read an article in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday which stated that, in the party room on Tuesday, the Prime Minister told his party room to hold their nerve, reassuring them that the big bounce will come after 1 July when the tax cuts kick in. The Prime Minister is a very astute politician but I think that on this occasion his antenna is being pointed in the wrong direction, because the average income earner understands clearly that tax cuts will not offset the mounting costs and pressures on family budgets. So I think the Prime Minister and his party room might be waiting around for a big bounce to nowhere.
There is concern in my electorate. I want to talk about some of these areas of concern where the budget in particular has failed to deliver. However, there are two areas where the federal budget has been of benefit to my constituency. I am always pleased to talk about the benefits of federal budgets to the electorate of Calwell. Firstly, I want to speak about and indeed thank the government for the recent provision of $51 million to Ford Australia as part of Ford’s $1.8 billion project investment in Australia over the next 10 years. This is a very welcome contribution by the federal government because the Ford plant in Broadmeadows that employs about 5,000 people, most of them locals in my electorate, is a very important employer in our community. Manufacturing, as in the electorate of the member for Scullin, is also a very important employer in the federal seat of Calwell.
There was some talk amongst Ford workers that Ford may begin to scale down its operations and even some fear that Ford may actually abandon its Broadmeadows plant. The reason for this, as bizarre as it may sound, is that in the last 12 months in my electorate we have seen nearly 700 manufacturing jobs lost overseas, in particular to Chinese markets. Five hundred of those jobs were at the Autoliv seatbelt-making factory, 40 at Kozma Industries and over 150 when Kraft Broadmeadows finally decided to close its shop and move overseas. Broadmeadows in particular is an area where the unemployment rate is very high—often at 14 per cent. So these job losses are devastating to our community and, needless to say, our community is feeling incredibly vulnerable and concerned at this point in time.
Of the $51 million which was the government’s contribution to Ford, $12.5 million will be used to build a new design and engineering centre at the Broadmeadows plant in my electorate, which will of course have immense benefits for Ford employees and the local community. This assistance package is expected to create 273 jobs and will extend the potential life of the Broadmeadows and Geelong plant, which is good news at a time when, as I have said, manufacturing jobs are being lost to overseas markets at a rate which could see the car manufacturing industry disappear from Australia altogether in the next 15 to 20 years. This is a major issue of concern not only for my constituents; it must also be a major issue of concern to government. It is important that the government keeps its eye on the ball and remains proactive in this matter of manufacturing, because it is a national concern. It needs to remain proactive and not become reactive.
The second issue that has been of benefit to my electorate in this year’s budget is the announcement by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Senator Amanda Vanstone, that the government was shelving the proposed building of an immigration detention centre in Broadmeadows, at the Maygar Barracks. This particular measure was first announced in the 2004 budget, and it took our community by absolute surprise. Since then, we have waged a very strong community campaign to convince the government that the building of a 200-bed detention centre at the cost of $120 million is not only a waste of public money but totally unnecessary in our community.
We are happy that we have scored what we think is a victory. We are a little concerned, however, that in her letter to me the minister says that she has shelved plans to build the detention centre facility at this stage. It is those words—‘at this stage’—which take the gloss a bit out of what would have been an overwhelming community victory. At this point, I am hoping that the minister for immigration will consider getting rid of or expunging completely the idea of building a detention centre in Broadmeadows. We do want to take this opportunity to urge the federal government to reinvest the $120 million that it earmarked for this detention centre back into the community of Broadmeadows because we need as much money and as much government investment as we can get our hands on because there are a number of areas which need to be addressed—and I will be talking about those areas when I get the opportunity to continue my speech. At this point, I seek leave to continue my remarks when the debate is resumed.
