Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

The Liberal Party are a bunch of insiders. Let's get this straight. I am getting all sorts of heckling and interjections and I welcome it—please bring more on—because it just reminds me of who these guys are. They are the great insiders in this country. They are the inside men—inside government, inside big business, inside the Liberal Party. These guys are the inside traders of government—

A government member interjecting—

Every dollar they are trying to save, they are charging it back to you, whether it is coming out of your education for your kids, out of your schoolkids bonus, which has disappeared, whether it is coming out of the low-income pockets of people earning less than $37,500 a year. Let's think about this for a minute. Put your hand up in here if you are earning less than $37,500 a year. It is not a lot of money. But, if you were going to get more savings for government, who would you target first? Let me tell you who the Liberals and Nationals target: very low income earners. About two-thirds of those are women, working part time. What this government has done is save themselves $500 measly dollars a year and taken it off them. They have taken it directly out of their back pockets. Even if it was just that measly $500 a year out of your salary, that would be one thing; but it is worse than that, because they are taking it out of their long-term retirement savings future. It is a low-income superannuation contribution. That is where they are taking it from.

Labor introduced the low-income superannuation contribution to do something really specific: to give low-income earners just a little bit of assistance. It is only $500 a year but it goes a long way to ensuring that, when people come to retirement—particularly women, who we all acknowledge in this place have lower superannuation balances and less opportunity to build their super balances because of time out of the workforce for family reasons—why would you target them? Why would you make them the victims of your callous behaviour? Why do they have to bear the brunt of what government wants to save while you charge it to the lowest income earners in this country? That is my question back to the government, to the Liberal Party and the National Party. They come in here full of confidence—

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

I am glad to take whatever interjection is coming.

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