Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

In spite of portraying himself as the new-found friend of the battlers, the Leader of the Opposition was very recently an integral part of a government that gave the Australian people Work Choices—an industrial relations regime that tore away their penalty rates, their overtime and all the protections that lower paid battlers rely on in the workplace to give them some bargaining power.

He is also part of an opposition—as shadow Treasurer and now as the Leader of the Opposition—that is engaged in an exercise in the Senate to blow a very large hole in the budget surplus in order to fight for lower taxes for Ferrari buyers, Porsche buyers and Rolls-Royce buyers. He is also engaged in an action in the Senate to rip apart the budget surplus to defend the interests of big alcohol companies so that teenage girls can buy cheaper alcopops. He is also engaged in a vandalism exercise in the Senate to maintain a tax lurk that was put in place for big oil companies 30 years ago as a kick-start to new projects.

So the man who says that we are in the biggest economic crisis globally in our lifetime is at the same time engaged in an exercise in the Senate to rip apart the budget surplus, which is one of the key buffers for the Australian government and the Australian people in dealing with the consequences of the international crisis. Why? Because he is defending the interests of privileged, well-off Australians. The issues that he is pursuing and that the opposition is pursuing ultimately come back to who they really are, and that is the representatives of the better-off in our society.

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