Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Leader of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

It is with some amazement that I see the member for Leichhardt is attempting to give congratulations to this budget—a budget that sets the limbo bar lower than ever. It is a budget that has disappointed Australia. I have been in this House for more than six years now, and it is the first budget I have seen that has had pensioners demonstrating in the streets. This is a budget that was specifically targeted at interest groups. You borrowed our tax cuts and you targeted interest groups. You tried to forget about the carers, but you could not knock them off. Then you tried to forget about the pensioners. They let you know, in no uncertain terms, they were not impressed by this budget.

The people of Australia are assessing your promises. A year ago we had an Australia that was self-assured and confident. Confidence was high, people were willing to go out and borrow money, they were willing to invest, and now we see a collapse in business confidence, we see a collapse in consumer confidence and, we see Australians wondering what happened when they elected this government some six months ago. They elected a government that was going to put downward pressure on fuel prices, and we have the little Assistant Treasurer over here, little Jiminy Cricket, who is the only thing that stands between them and lower petrol prices or higher petrol prices. And what do we have? We see petrol has gone up by some 17½ cents a litre since the Rudd government was elected. Is that keeping petrol prices low? Is that what Australians elected the Rudd government to do? And on grocery prices, what do we see? What kind of action do we see on grocery prices? Another inquiry! We have an increase in the cost of diesel for heavy vehicles so that it costs more to get produce to market and into the shops. We see Rudd repeatedly breaking his promises. We see higher petrol prices, we see higher grocery prices and we see higher inflation as all of these factors flow through. This is something the people of Australia are not celebrating. They are not celebrating the notion of losing funding to regional areas. They are not celebrating the fact that pensioners were ignored at the last budget, and they are certainly not celebrating FuelWatch.

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