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

I would like to thank all the members who have participated in the debate on the Veterans’ Affairs Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007, but quite frankly some of the comments that have just come from the other side are so disgraceful that they do not actually warrant being thanked. The fact is that not once in 13 years did the Labor Party pay a bonus to any pensioner. There was a good reason for that—because what they did was to actually mortgage the future of those same peoples’ grandchildren and children. They asked them to pay for their wanton expenditure as an incompetent government and did not give them a damn cent. Yet the members of the opposition have the hide to come in here, one after another, and be so pious as to presume that this government somehow has left somebody out. I say to the member opposite: tell this to your constituents about disabilities—that I went to the ministerial council recently with all of the state and territory ministers and I put on the table this offer.

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