Page 1491 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 14 May 2014
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The universal access national partnership is a program where agreements end in December of this year. There is a possibility that there could be some contingency funds in the budget. This program is being looked at. But if that is not continued, again, we will see around $8 million taken out of our Canberra community. The result will be that the 15 hours of preschool, universal access for our Canberra families, will no longer be available. Those hours will be reduced should they decide not to continue to fund it.
What else is a direct result from the decisions of last night? We will see the outyears of the national education reform changed. The Australian Education Union has expressed concern about disability funding loadings under the NERA. In particular, no additional funding will be provided for students with a disability in these new arrangements.
What else do we see? In VET funding the significant announcements made will impact on Australian apprenticeships, considered both positive and negative. The government will achieve savings of $1 billion over five years, but how do they achieve that? By ceasing 10 skills and training programs from 1 January next year. So the Liberal Party, through its federal budget, is ceasing 10 programs: the national partnership agreement on training places for single parents, ceasing; the accelerated Australian apprenticeship program, ceasing; the Australian apprenticeship mentoring program, ceasing; the national workforce development fund, ceasing; workplace English language and literacy program, ceasing; alternative pathways program, ceasing; apprenticeship to business owner program, ceasing; productive ageing through community education, ceasing; the Australian apprenticeship access program, ceasing; and the step into skills program, ceasing.
The savings from this measure will be redirected perhaps, but there will be an impact of those 10 skills training programs ceasing. The national agreement on training places for single parents is currently administered by the ACT government with all training funded under this program delivered by CIT. ACT students and employers may be benefitting from other programs; however, we know that the training places for single parents courtesy of the Liberal Party will no longer exist.
Much has been said about our doom and gloom approach. Just let me read other words about this. The family tax payments will be tightened with families on sole incomes who currently receive family tax benefit B to be hit the hardest. Recipients of family tax benefit A have also been slugged with income thresholds for eligible families reduced from a maximum of around 150,000 to a new maximum of 94,316. About 15,200 Canberrans receive tax benefit B. 15,000 families here will be hit by that.
Then we have an aged pensioner who said to Mr Abbott, “I have never heard such rubbish in all my life. Why don’t you leave the pensioners alone? If we pull the belt any tighter, we’re going to choke to death.” That is how Mr Abbott, the Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Party, supported by those over there, treats pensioners. That is what one pensioner thinks of his reforms.
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