Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I was never as obsessed with Mark Latham as the roosters were. When Mr Latham asked Mr Swan how to deal with the $600 annual payment, Mr Swan replied:

‘Just say that it’s not real money ...

Mr Speaker, $600 per child per annum, which is being received by millions of Australians, and we had the member for Lilley saying, ‘It’s not real money.’ I prefer the observations made about this by Ms Gillard, the Manager of Opposition Business. She told the Age on 1 November 2004:

In some of our traditional booths we saw swings against us ...  I think probably the $600 played a role in that. I think we’ve got to be frank and say there were a lot of people who received $1,200 or $1,800 ... in a lump sum and they were pretty keen to keep it, and they identified needing to vote for the Howard Government as the way of keeping it.

They sure did. It was real money. Single-income families, dual-income families and families with children are a lot better off as a consequence of the family policy, the tax policy and the wages policy of this government. The next instalment is on 1 July, and the only way to keep that is to keep a coalition government managing the economy in the interests of average wage earners in Australia.

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