Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The first four budgets of the member for Lilley, the current Treasurer, delivered the four biggest deficits in Australian history. He wants to be known as Surplus Swan; he will forever be known as Wasteful Wayne.

This budget—the budget that he is so proud of, where he thinks we might achieve a surplus so small as to be invisible to the naked eye—is achieved by cooking the books and moving $6 billion of national broadband network spending off budget. Honest accounting—even as things stood at budget time—would have produced a deficit of at least $12 billion, not the microsurplus that he is promising.

As I said, taxes just go up and up, and they are all ultimately paid by the struggling families of this country—the forgotten families of Australia. There is the alcopops tax, the extra tax on employee share schemes, the cigarette tax, the LPG tax, the flood levy, the private health insurance tax, the mining tax and the carbon tax. Then there is the means test that they put on the family tax benefit part B, against a clear election promise. There is the means test that they whacked on the baby bonus—again, a clear broken election promise. There is the freeze in indexation for the family tax benefits and the baby bonus—again, an absolute rip-off of the forgotten families, the working families that Labor said they were here to represent. And, coming in 2014—safely, just after the election—there will be massive additional charges on people going into aged care.

This is a government which has ripped off the working families of Australia. The working families of Australia want change and they want change for the better. Briefly in the time left to me let me give you 10 important areas where there will be change for the better—because, yes, change will come. There will be no carbon tax, because we do not believe in hurting the economy for no environmental gain. There will be no mining tax, because we do not believe in penalising our most successful sector. We will have stronger borders because we will implement not just one, but all three of the Howard government's policies that worked.

There will be higher productivity because, amongst many other things, we will restore in full the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which gave that sector $5 billion a year in productivity improvements. There will be higher participation because there will be a proper paid parental leave scheme at long last—and aren't we in the coalition so proud to be giving the women and the families of Australia this long-overdue benefit! There will be less red tape because there will be $1 billion worth of savings for small business. There will be a cleaner environment because a green army, 15,000 strong, will be going to the rescue of our Landcare groups. We will have modern infrastructure, including the M4 East, the CityLink in Melbourne and the Gateway extension in Brisbane.

We will have better services from community controlled public hospitals and from independent public schools. Finally, there will be greater engagement with Asia through more language training in our schools, and a two-way street Colombo Plan.

This is a great country. We are a great people. We have been tragically let down by our very bad government. The message which the Australian people are coming to understand is that there is nothing wrong with this great country of ours that a change of government would not substantially improve.

See this speech in context