Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a government that was elected on a wave of nostalgia, wishful thinking and a pack of lies. There can be no greater evidence of this than the budget, because what we have here is a budget of betrayal of those commitments given in the election campaign and the period running up to it. It is fundamentally a betrayal of the old. In an interview on 6 September 2013 Tony Abbott said there would be 'no changes to pensions'. What do we have in this budget? There are new indexation arrangements for pensions. The Prime Minister is getting rid of the male total average weekly earnings index and the Pensioner and Beneficiary Living Cost Index and replacing it with the inflation rate. He is doing the same thing for disability, carer and parenting payments. This is hacking into pensioners, after a solemn commitment was given. It is a betrayal of pensioners.

If that were not enough, it is a betrayal of taxpayers everywhere. Tony Abbott, on 20 November 2012, said 'We're about reducing taxes, not increasing taxes. We're about getting rid of taxes, not imposing new taxes.' Again, this is a betrayal of the commitment he made at that time. It is a betrayal of the young. We know Christopher Pyne said that there would be no plans to increase university fees, yet now students face the prospect of $100,000 degrees. They face the prospect of having to borrow to get a trade. They face the prospect of having no income support for six months if they are under the age of 30. That will make some people in my electorate couch surf. It will make them homeless. That is the reality of it. It is a brutal reality. It is a betrayal of the young. It is not welcoming them with opportunity; it is betrayal.

It is betrayal of families and particularly single-income families, who are, let's face it, the support base of the coalition. Yet there is an attack on them with a reduction in family tax benefit part B. Once your child hits six, you are off it. It is a betrayal of those families who now have to pay $7 to see the doctor. It is a betrayal of motorists, who will now have to pay every time they go to the bowser. Motorists in my electorate—in places like Clare and Kapunda, my home town, up the track—will now have to pay a petrol tax to pay for infrastructure in the cities. That is who will have to pay for it. If I were a rural MP from the coalition side I would be very worried about going home next week.

It is also a betrayal of the states. We saw that with the New South Wales Premier today and the Queensland Premier. It is a betrayal of every local government in the country because their financial assistance grants have been frozen—another great thing for country roads. It is a betrayal of rural Australia. They are the ones who will suffer hardest under this budget. It is a betrayal of everybody who needs a school or a hospital or expects a decent school or hospital in the future, because $80 billion is coming out over the next 10 years. That is $18 billion coming out of schools and hospitals. It is a betrayal of GPs—those GPs who do want to bulk-bill and those GPs who do want to provide a good service. Now they will be turned into tax collectors so that the Treasurer can build his research fund. It is a betrayal of the Australian people and a betrayal of straight talk, of the idea that your word is your bond. The Prime Minister lifted expectations in this regard. On 22 August 2011, he said:

Nothing could be more calculated to bring our democracy into disrepute and alienate the citizenry of Australia from their government than if governments were to establish by precedent that they could say one thing before an election, and do the other afterwards.

They are his words, not mine. Yet what we have here is a budget that can only be defended by the cynical, by the sanctimonious, by the deluded. It is a budget only Judas Iscariot could be proud of. That is the truth of it. It is a budget of betrayal of all those decent people who went out there and believed the Prime Minister and believed the Treasurer and believed the education minister and the commitments they gave. All of those people feel betrayed. If this government thinks they can get away with that betrayal with this spin and these excuses, then they have another think coming.

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