5215 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY Thursday 8 September 2011 __________ The Speaker (The Hon. Shelley Elizabeth Hancock) took the chair at 10.00 a.m. The Speaker read the Prayer and acknowledgement of country. APPROPRIATION BILL 2011 DUTIES AMENDMENT (FIRST HOME—NEW HOME) BILL 2011 Agreement in Principle Debate resumed from 6 September 2011. Mr JOHN ROBERTSON (Blacktown—Leader of the Opposition) [10.00 a.m.]: This is a budget that hurts the very people that elected this Government. This is a budget that rests on the back of pensioners, foster carers, first home buyers and the most vulnerable in our society. In a blatant breach of one election promise after another the Premier has sacked 5,000 workers, cut wages and conditions, slugged a $1 billion stamp duty tax on first home buyers, increased rents for pensioners and slashed the allowances for foster carers. But there is more to this budget than meets the eye. In fact, much of the substance has been deliberately hidden from the people of New South Wales. The frightening, unwritten truth is that there is so much more to come. With $8 billion of cuts still to be made, the threat of an axe hangs over every public sector worker in New South Wales, and every vital service. We know the Premier is going to close three jails. Does that mean he is going to privatise the rest of them? We know he is going to lease the desalination plant. Is that the first step to selling off Sydney Water? We know he is going to privatise ferries. Can the Premier guarantee that the rest of the public transport system will not be auctioned off to the highest bidder? We know many of the infrastructure projects are underfunded. Does that mean the Premier has secretly decided to sell off electricity and sell off the poles and wires? The people of New South Wales will have to keep holding their breath and wait even longer to hear the Premier's real plans. With this budget the O'Farrell Government has not just created a monster but a two-headed monster—a budget that hurts people at the same time as it hurts the bottom line. That is right: In six short months the Government has taken the budget from a $1.3 billion surplus to a $718 million deficit. A deficit budget to fund a bold job creation plan would be one thing in this fragile economic environment, but the O'Farrell Government has delivered a deficit with very little to show for it. Having overseen the loss of 20,000 jobs across the economy since coming to office, the Government has now axed 5,000 more. It forecasts employment growth to contract from the 3.8 per cent it inherited to a miserable 1 per cent over the next financial year—a figure that will not even keep pace with population growth. This is a Government well on the way to trashing its economic credibility. It has endangered the State's coveted triple-A credit rating. It has left New South Wales dangerously exposed to international events—with no new initiatives or reforms to create jobs. Later in my remarks I will outline another way. The people of New South Wales are the collateral damage of this budget. It is the first grisly chapter in the story of a new, unfair New South Wales. And it is littered with victims—unsuspecting people who took Barry O'Farrell at his word when he made them a promise. On 26 March the O'Farrell Government was entrusted with a sweeping mandate. But, five months later, just wander outside and see how the community is reacting. That sound you will hear today is the cry of betrayal from tens of thousands of nurses, teachers, police, firefighters and other public sector workers, their wages and conditions king-hit by this Premier's decision to bring back the worst of WorkChoices—after saying nothing about his plans before the election. Regular mums and dads are forced to accept a wage cap of 2.5 per cent while inflation runs hot at 3.6 per cent—either that, or trade off rights such as overtime, penalty rates and breast-feeding breaks. When Tony Abbott called WorkChoices dead, buried and cremated Barry O'Farrell was already stomping out into the graveyard to exhume the body. And today—as nurses, ambulance officers and child 5216 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 8 September 2011 protection workers ask why their wages and conditions are being cut—the Premier's response is: Let them eat cake! These are not the only souls who have been betrayed. This week we learned 5,000 public sector workers will be given the tap on the shoulder—or, as the Minister for Health likes to put it, "deleted"—and sent packing by this Government to Centrelink. These are men and women with names and faces. They are health workers and prison wardens with families, forestry workers, scientists and ferry staff with children. These workers and the vital services they perform will never be replaced. Then there is the epic disappointment with this budget in the regions of our State—western Sydney, the Central Coast, the Hunter, the Illawarra and beyond—a disappointment expressed not so much with angry words but a piercing hurt, a sullen silence; at commitments made, but not kept; at hopes dashed that this new Premier would be different. When this Government failed to tell the people of Stockton for 54 hours of a toxic chemical spill in their neighbourhood it sent a devastating message: that people like you are not important to people like us. Now regular families in the great regions of New South Wales have that same sick feeling. Just as this Government forgot the people of Stockton, it is already forgetting them. A budget cooked up on Sydney's North Shore simply has no clue what life is like for people who do it tough. It is a long way from Barry O'Farrell's high-rise office to the Blacktown-Mount Druitt Hospital in my electorate. Today one in eight people are already walking out of the emergency department without being able to see a doctor. Under the previous Government contracts were tendered for a $245 million upgrade, including a cancer care centre and 120 extra beds. Barry O'Farrell wound the Government's commitment back to $125 million. Then on Tuesday, in an appallingly vindictive act, he gutted funding to an insulting $500,000. It is the same story across New South Wales: Tamworth Hospital promised just $3 million for a $220 million upgrade—paltry scraps tossed at planned hospital upgrades at Parkes and Forbes, Hornsby and Cessnock, when the O'Farrell Government promised so much more, with no mention of further funding and no start date on construction. The Government is not content with drowning western Sydney's aspirational young couples in stamp duty; we now learn commuter car parks in Cabramatta, Granville and Blaxland have been scrapped. And there will be zero funding for the upgrade of Fairfield station. The $25 million Parramatta arts precinct has been beaten to a pulp and shoved in a dumpster despite the new Liberal member for Parramatta promising to deliver it at the last election. And this Premier calls himself the Minister for Western Sydney. With friends like that we do not need enemies in western Sydney. Central Coast roads funding has been slashed by one-third. The betrayal is repeated in the Illawarra, where the Government has scrapped the Illawarra Advantage Fund despite its proud record of creating jobs. The Government also squibbed its full commitment to the Princes Highway upgrade and other public transport projects. Meanwhile, up in the Hunter the member for Maitland has gone missing on her own electorate. A promise of $45 million for the New England Highway safety upgrades mysteriously vanished into thin air. The same goes for the $20 million to kickstart Maitland Hospital. We are more likely to run into Elvis than a cop on the beat from Swansea police station. This Government's promise to reopen Swansea police station has bitten the dust. If only that were the extent of the betrayal of this budget. However, having inherited a $1.3 billion surplus, this Government has seized the chance to give our State's most vulnerable citizens a gratuitous poke in the eye. On 26 March the 70,000 pensioners in public housing, who scrimp and save on fixed incomes, had no idea that five months later Barry O'Farrell would hike their rents by $11.90 a week. The State's foster carers, who move mountains against odds, had no idea their allowance would be docked by more than $212 a fortnight. Young first home buyers had no idea that they would be slugged up to $22,000 in stamp duty. Just as a young couple, after prudently putting away a little each week to save for their first home, is on the cusp of realising their dream, Barry O'Farrell barges in and snatches it away. The caller who gave the Premier a serve on talkback radio yesterday had it right. The caller had it right. This is a knife in the back of anyone who ever aspired to step off the rental market treadmill, whose dream was simply to let their kids jump on a trampoline in their own backyard. With 8 September 2011 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 5217 this policy Barry O'Farrell has chosen to play Big Brother, to barge his way into people's housing decisions with all the finesse of an elephant on ice skates.