David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer ) Share this | Hansard source

You came into this place and voted against it. How often is it that you come into this place and vote against your own policy?

And they talk about the taxes. I started this speech with reference to what the member for North Sydney said about their new taxes. Let us just talk about their new taxes. We already know that low-income earners are going to get a tax hike on their superannuation from these people. They talk about raiding superannuation, as long as it is the superannuation of some of the poorest people in this country. 'We don't want to touch those who are on the superlarge incomes. We don't want to touch them. They vote for us. We won't touch them.' But they are never, ever afraid to take a meat axe to those people on low and middle incomes; jacking up taxes on their superannuation.

Then there is paid parental leave tax. Even the member for Mitchell—once again just a moment of clarity and truth coming from these people—said, 'unfair, unaffordable'. They say there is a budget emergency. Rubbish! But, if there were a budget emergency, this would be precisely the worst possible time. It is a flawed policy, but this would be the worst time to introduce a $20 billion new tax on business.

Then there is the GST. They cannot go away from it. They just keep coming back to it. The state Liberal premiers are out there saying: 'We want more. We want more. We want more.' Well, we know you never stand between a state premier and a bucket of money. But the bucket of money is actually the money in the pockets of Australians all around this country.

They want to jack up the GST; they want to broaden the base of the GST. The Leader of the Opposition has been given plenty of opportunity to say, 'I will rule it out,' and he will not rule it out. The reason he will not rule it out is that is exactly what he intends to do. They want to jack up the GST. They want to slug health. They want to slug education. They are going to slug business with their paid parental leave tax. They are going to jack up taxes. And that is just the start of it; I have not even got to talk about the secret commission of cuts, where they want to hack away at government services and the support that families are getting.

See this speech in context