Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Deputy Chairman , Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, no amount of bluff and bluster from the Treasurer, no amount of interjections can hide this fact from the government. The reconstruction of the flood affected areas should proceed and should proceed, as we have all said, quickly. It should proceed out of existing budget programs. Now for those opposite to argue they can easily identify $3.8 billion worth of savings but not a dollar more, that it is not wise to identify a dollar more, whoops, until we have to find another $150 million, which we cannot identify but we will by budget time—those opposite should look in their heart of hearts, and some of those opposite should look in their heads. Not all of them, I regret to say, but some of them know in their heads that this is a farcical argument. They know deep down, despite the Treasurer’s bluff we had in here about how he saved Australia from the global recession, the waste that the Treasurer and the Prime Minister have presided over. They know that the levy that is being proposed, which will hurt the pay packets of Australians, equates to the waste just from the Orwellian Building the Education Revolution program.

The Prime Minister, when she was education minister, wasted the equivalent of this levy on the Building the Education Revolution school programs, wasted the—

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