Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

        Schedule 1, items 37-46, page 8 (line 30) to page 9 (line 21), omit the items.

I rise to move the in detail amendment which I foreshadowed during my speech on the second reading. It deals with an issue that the Minister for Workforce Participation, who is at the table, clearly does not understand. We have just seen another very clear example of hubris under the Howard government. Apparently the sun only shines because of the Howard government. People only smile because of the Howard government. Children only enjoy their childhood because of the Howard government. But, when you strip away all of the arrogance that this government now drips as it cheerfully misuses taxpayers’ money for its party political propaganda, what you find is a contribution from the minister that was all about the past and all about Labor’s policies with not one word about the future. The minister managed to tie all of that to a misunderstanding of the meaning and intent of the bill that she has brought to the House. One wonders, when one has arrogance tied with incompetence, where we really are.

For the purpose of explaining this to the minister, because she clearly does not understand it: this bill removes the phrase ‘medical officer’ from the relevant sections of the Social Security Act relating to the assessment of work capacity for disability support pension applicants, replacing it with the word ‘assessor’.

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