Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The member for O’Connor is obviously off on a different topic. He so frequently is. In the last 24 hours, what has happened in this House and in the Senate is as follows. The Liberal and National parties have voted to punch a more than $1 billion hole in the budget, despite the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer consistently saying that they are concerned about debt and deficit. They, of course, now must recognise that they have voted to punch a more than $1 billion hole in the budget.

In the last 24 hours, members of the Liberal and National parties have voted to disadvantage country students. In the last 24 hours, members of the Liberal and National parties have voted to make life worse for small business and to tie them up in red tape. And perhaps the last one will not surprise people quite so much—in the last 24 hours, the Liberal and National parties have voted once again in favour of a return to Work Choices.

On the first of those two, on the bill before the Senate about student financing, which came back to the House today, the Liberal and National parties in this House voted for changes to that bill that would cost more than $1 billion. There are no matching savings. The shadow minister will say that he did have some matching savings, but, of course, he never had matching savings in the order of more than $1 billion and we would not join with him in the gross inequity of permanently cutting scholarships for Australian students, including a rip-off of $162 million of scholarships out of the hands of country kids. And in this House this morning, members of the Liberal and National parties voted to disadvantage country students. They voted to disadvantage country students by voting effectively to rip out of their hands scholarship money. Why did they do this? They did it to put in place a transition issue for kids who live at home.

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