Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

It appears that the Leader of the Opposition could not even find five minutes more of hypocrisy to fill his speech—he finished five minutes early.

The hide of the opposition knows no bounds. Let us deal first with the matter of carers bonuses. The opposition leader says that the government are ignoring carers because we will not guarantee, on 11 March, the exact detail of what will be announced in the budget; we will not outline, on 11 March, every last dollar that will be in the budget in relation to carers. It is instructive to go back and look at the record. At the 2004 budget—the first budget that introduced the bonus for carers—the then Treasurer, the member for Higgins, said:

Tonight I announce that around 80,000 people on Carer Payment will receive an additional one-off payment of $1,000.

That was announced on 11 May 2004, not 11 March as it is today. On 10 May 2005 the then Treasurer said:

… tonight I announce as I did last Budget …

So there was not this great concern from the Liberal Party that in March or February or April they had to put carers’ minds at ease about whether they were going to get the bonus; they left it until budget night. In 2006 what did the then Treasurer say? He said:

… tonight I announce as I did in the past two Budgets an additional $1,000 …

That was announced on 9 May, not 9 March. The previous government left it until budget night. Then, on 8 May last year, 2007, what did the then Treasurer say? He said:

I also announce tonight, for the fourth consecutive year, that recipients of the Carer Payment will receive a bonus of $1,000 and recipients of the Carer Allowance a bonus of $600 for each eligible person in their care.

So, for each of the last four years, on budget night the then Treasurer outlined that these bonuses would be paid. The then government did not take it upon themselves in March or April or February to make that announcement; they announced it in May. In opposition, they now say that it is incumbent upon the government of the day to clear this up on 11 March, that it is outrageous, callous, heartless, unless we tell people on 11 March exactly how the payments will be paid.

Of course, at each of those budgets never once did the Treasurer of the day say, ‘And I am announcing tonight that we are budgeting for this into the future.’ Never once did he say, ‘I am announcing tonight that it will be in the forward estimates.’ Never once did he say, ‘We are going to put money aside going into the future to provide certainty to carers.’ On every occasion, he said it was a one-off bonus. And yet the hypocritical opposition waltz in here and have the hide to suggest that this government is not being caring when it comes to carers. Being lectured by this mob about vulnerable people is like being lectured by Paris Hilton on public modesty. Their hide knows no bounds. If hypocrisy were a crime, they would all be serving time at Her Majesty’s pleasure, because this is a cheap political stunt from a desperate opposition.

These people have the hide to come in here and lecture us about carers. More importantly, they have the hide to come in here and lecture us about vulnerable people generally. Of course carers and our elderly are vulnerable people, but there are more examples. The people who had the hide to propose this matter of public importance are, to a man and a woman, the same people who voted for Work Choices—not once, not twice but on multiple occasions. The number of vulnerable people in this country will be reduced dramatically the day that the stain of Work Choices is removed from the legal record of this country, when this government is able to remove Australian workplace agreements and Work Choices from the official record of the laws of this country. If you need any evidence of that, let us have a look at the list that the Deputy Prime Minister released earlier this year of the working conditions that vulnerable people had taken off them by the previous government. Seventy per cent of AWAs removed shift work loadings—

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