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

This is a budget of broken promises and nasty surprises like we have never seen before. This is a budget paid for by pensioners, by the sick and by the elderly. This is a budget that was sold, hawked, on the basis of a manufactured budget emergency that does not exist. This is a budget not just of broken promises but in which every single promise that was made by this government has been broken, including the core tenet expressed by the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, when he said: 'We will not break any promises.' That was his core promise—not to break any—and he has done the exact opposite and broken every single promise.

If you listened to government members speaking on this, including the Prime Minister or the Treasurer, you would think that somehow a tax hike was a tax cut. You would think that, somehow, taking money away from pensioners and making life more difficult for the sick and elderly was a good thing for them—that this was what they wanted and expected and that this would make their lives easier. We have heard all of those nice, touchy-feely words from the government about 'being your best possible self', about giving you the opportunity to be the best you can be and making your life easier. And how are they making life easier? With a great big new tax on everything—a massive fuel tax hike. People did not expect that. It came as a bit of a surprise to me. It came as a bit of a surprise to all Australians. But who does it hit the hardest? It hits families. It hits individuals. It hits you wherever you are. The further you are in regional Australia, the harder it hits you. The sicker you are, the harder it hits you because you have to travel to hospital more often.

Who else does it hit? It hits small business. It will hit small business harder than anyone else. Small businesses, who are the engine room of this country and provide job creation, are getting hit hard and they are getting hit hard every day. Yet Tony Abbott and the members of his government go out there and say: 'We're the friend of small business, so just bend over a little while we give you a little sting. You'll be fine with it, because we're your best friend.' Just remember: every time you bend over and feel that little paddle, that little sting, that is the Liberal government being your friend. They are not the friend of small business people I know.

This is a budget that breaks absolutely every core promise that was made. This is a budget that destroys Medicare and bulk-billing. In a pernicious and nasty way, it not only hits the elderly—the sicker you are, the more you pay—but also hits doctors directly. A doctor will be penalised if they bulk-bill you; a doctor's Medicare schedule fee will come down to disincentivise them from providing bulk-billed services. Who will be the people who suffer the most? I can assure you it will not be too many of the people sitting in this chamber today. It will be the elderly; it will be the veterans; it will be people in rural and regional communities. It will be those people who have to take their children to the doctor or the hospital—and it will be not just for a visit to the GP but for your scripts, your X-rays and your blood tests every time you go. They are the people who will suffer. They are ripping the guts out of Medicare by stealth, because there was no discussion of this prior to the election. Finally, Tony Abbott gets to do what he has always dreamt he would do. He is on the public record as hating Medicare; he has always hated Medicare. He does not believe in universal health care. This is his one opportunity and he has done it. He is attacking doctors and attacking patients.

He is attacking self-funded retirees. Here are a group of people in the community who were 100 per cent behind the Prime Minister: 'Go in there and make life easier for us!' He has done just that by stinging them as well. They will lose access to their healthcare cards through means testing. Again, I did not hear about that before the election. Self-funded retirees right now will be looking over this and saying, 'When did we vote for this? Where was our opportunity to make an informed decision prior to the election?' Prior to the election all we heard was a repeated rant, like a mantra from somebody squatting in a cave: 'No cuts to health. No cuts to education. No changes to the pension. No adverse changes to superannuation.' We heard this mantra repeated over and over, until he had hypnotised everyone. I suppose there was a good reason people would believe him. He said, 'No excuses. No broken promises. We will not break our promises. We will not break our commitments to the Australian people.' Then he turns up the next day and says, 'We did not make any of those promises.' Black is white; white is black.

There is a great big new tax on everything, including a fuel tax hike. For pensioners, there is the cessation of proper indexing, which means pensioners lose and they lose today. The increase of the pension age to 70 is completely unreasonable and there was nothing about it in the pre-election promises the government made. It is a disgrace. (Time expired)

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