Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Greenway for her question. The Howard government, in the last 10 years, has had as its highest priority Australian families—maintaining Australian families, supporting Australian families, encouraging and rewarding Australian families. In fact, over this time we have a proud record of having increased funding to Australian families through the family assistance payment from $16 billion to $27 billion. We have continued to provide taxation relief so that single-income families with a child can today earn some $45,000 and pay no net tax. That is a very positive thing for families. We have also increased the number of child-care places—in fact doubling them—and, of course, we have the child-care rebate of 30 per cent. And in the area of superannuation we have the co-contribution helping families and we are actually letting women contribute to their own superannuation whilst being at home.

Most important are the fundamentals that we have got right. We are taking the pressure off families by keeping interest rates and inflation low, allowing people to own their own home and creating over 1.7 million jobs, all of which are helping Australian families. The member for Greenway, who represents so many middle-income Australian families in her seat out in the western parts of Sydney, knows only too well how easy it is to put under threat their lifestyle and security. To that end, as we currently stand, the member for Brand, the Leader of the Opposition, does not support the 30 per cent health rebate, which is supporting these families, and he does not support the 30 per cent rebate for child care. At the last election the opposition’s policy was to go forward not with 80,000 out of school hours care places, as the Howard government’s policy was, but with less than 10 per cent of that total. Their policy was cobbled together at the last moment to try to respond to a government that cares for families.

Of course, the member for Lilley said it all when he said that the family tax supplement of $600 per child, which the Howard government provides directly into the pockets of Australian families, was ‘not real money’. Has he retracted that comment? No. Has he been condemned by the member for Brand? No. Everybody on this side of the House knows that it is most important that we look after the family members closest to us and that we look after the Australian family.

My advice to the member for Brand is look after your Labor family. Do not deny the rights of the member for Maribyrnong and the member for Hotham, the members closest to you, because when you, as the Leader of the Opposition, run away from those who are supposed to be closest to you—the family members of the Labor Party—you also run away from the Australian public.

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