The second week of Senate Budget Estimates has exposed more cruel cuts and lies at the heart of the Abbott Governments first Budget.
This week:
Treasury officials confirmed $80 billion of cuts to local schools and hospitals over the next decade, breaking the Prime Ministers promise he would not cut education and health funding. The Department of Social Services revealed that cruel cuts to Newstart and Youth Allowance will plunge more than 500,000 young people into desperate poverty, forcing the Government to spend millions on emergency assistance. The Government was forced to reveal that more than 700,000 single income and single parent families will lose Family Tax Benefit B over three years due to the Prime Ministers broken promise to families. Education officials conceded that debate around deregulated and rapidly escalating university fees would deter poor students from attending university. Health officials confirmed that with the abolition of Health Workforce Australia the Abbott Government is left with no plans for vital clinical training programs that help develop our future doctors, nurses and allied health professionals. The Government failed to justify the decision to cut $878 million from major science and research agencies, including $111 million from the CSIRO, and couldnt quantify the impact of the savage cuts. Health officials revealed there was no analysis of the impact of the Prime Ministers GP Tax on chronically ill patients, GPs and emergency departments in public hospitals. Treasury officials confirmed it had undertaken distributional analysis of the Budgets impact on families and individuals but standard fairness tables were excluded from the Budget papers by the Government to hide its impact. Treasury confirmed it did not provide any advice to Government on changes to the diesel fuel tax rebate supporting reports the Liberals pulled the wool over the Nationals eyes again. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade revealed details of a Ministerial website that cost taxpayers $113,130 to develop including $68,000 for "website testing", $19,000 for training, $15,000 for "website release management" and $10,000 for "website deployment". The Government did a double backflip with half pike and admitted it was contemplating the sale of the successful Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Financial market shonks and corporate criminals got a leg up from the Abbott Government at the expense of consumers with news the Australian Securities and Investment Commission will be forced to cut over 200 staff and cease "proactive surveillance". Defence Minister David Johnston confirmed that it was okay for party political banners to be used by politicians when holding press conferences on ADF bases because The public were none the wiser. The Australian Bureau of Statistics confirmed it would reduce social and environmental surveys due to a $50 million king hit to its budget. Trade officials revealed the Abbott Government is not prepared to back its claims by undertaking independent economic modelling on the proposed trade deal it struck with Japan.
The two weeks of Budget Estimates hearings have demonstrated that Prime Minister Abbott surfed to office on a wave of lies.
Labor will continue to hold the Prime Minister to account for his broken promises.
FRIDAY, 6 JUNE 2014
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