Panellists on the ABC’s Q&A program on budget eve were asked whether the government “has a vendetta against young people,” as audience members pressed them about housing affordability, university debt and the future of Medicare.
The full details of treasurer Scott Morrison’s budget will be released on Tuesday, but measures to increase student fees and to reduce the income threshold at which graduates must begin repaying Hecs debt have already been announced.
Less clear are what measures, if any, the budget will include to help first-home buyers get into the market and to increase affordable housing more generally.
Audience member Anne Stephens told the panellists: “With the ongoing problems with housing affordability and the Coalition’s continuing support for negative gearing, one could be forgiven for believing that the Coalition has a vendetta against young people.
“Why does the government show such support for the already comfortable baby boomers and ignore the needs of the future generations?” she asked.
Why does the government show such support for Boomers over future generations? @danni_addison & @LeiblerMark respond #QandA pic.twitter.com/Oudq2jc0jr
— ABC Q&A (@QandA) May 8, 2017
The chief executive of the Urban Development Institute of Australia, Danni Addison, said the federal government had limited policy options at its disposal to relieve housing woes.
She acknowledged that “it’s not easy to save up for a first home, pay your rent and pay the Hecs debt”.
“That is a pretty tough challenge,” Addison said.
But the government was warned by tax expert and lawyer Mark Leibler that the student fee increases and lowering of the Hecs repayment threshold were counterproductive measures that risked “destroying” the value of Australia’s GDP.
“I think a tertiary education is incredibly important and recently Deloitte Access Economics has actually demonstrated that the value of that knowledge adds to 8.5% of GDP,” Leibler said. “That’s a very, very big sum.”
Veterans affairs minister, Dan Tehan, told the audience the government was simply asking students to contribute to some of the government’s $28bn planned investment in education over the next four years.
“We have to make choices,” he said. “We’ve also got to think about the carpenters, the plumbers, the farmhands and others who won’t get a degree. And they are paying taxes. So everything is a choice that you’ve got to make. We think that we’ve got the balance right when it comes to higher ed.”
We're keeping degrees & housing in suburbs outside cities affordable, says @DanTehanWannon @DHughesy says Google pays nothing #QandA pic.twitter.com/UAKOx76dIN
— ABC Q&A (@QandA) May 8, 2017
On housing affordability, Tehan said it was important to remember that not every city was facing the skyrocketing prices experienced in Sydney and, to a lesser extent, in Melbourne.
In towns such as Ararat [200km west of Melbourne] and Hamilton [290km west of Melbourne], Tehan said, there was “very affordable housing”.
Audience member Anna Basil-Jones asked the panel how the government could be trusted not to privatise Medicare given comments made by Malcolm Turnbull in which he congratulated the US president Donald Trump for abolishing Obamacare.
The government is likely to announce a lift on the four-year freeze on the Medicare rebate to GPs and medical specialists, introduced as a temporary measure under Labor.
Leibler said while Trump would “never be my role model,” he believed Turnbull was being unfairly criticised for his comment in New York.
“All he was doing was turning around to Trump and saying, ‘Congratulations on getting your legislation through the Congress’,” Leibler said. “That’s all.”
Tehan agreed. “As a former diplomat, can I tell you when you’re in another country you don’t talk about the domestic affairs of that country,” he said. “And so the PM was very careful not to do that. All he made was a comment around how difficult it is to get legislation through in the current climate and he praised ... the president for it.”
How can we trust the Liberals not to continue attempting to privatise Medicare? @DHughesy & @Lisa_Singh respond #QandA pic.twitter.com/j0mFZnwMJk
— ABC Q&A (@QandA) May 8, 2017
But Tasmanian Labor senator Lisa Singh said Turnbull had been “kind of praising the US president for repealing something that looks very much like Medicare here in Australia”.
“I’m really hoping ... this freeze on Medicare is repealed, [and] that this government does start to realise that its integrity is on the line and this is an opportunity for it to right some of the wrongs it’s made over the last few years when it comes to issues like health particularly, but education, welfare and the like,” she said.
