Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Two weeks ago, I met a pensioner at his home in Pagewood in my electorate. He was a man in his 70s who outlined to me his struggles to live his life. He still had a mortgage on his home, which he has lived in for decades. His wife was still at work. He enjoys no luxuries in life—the annual holiday and the odd night out here and there. He has not seen a dentist in years. He told me that his fortnightly fixed income passes through his bank account on the way to his bank to pay his mortgage and to the supermarket to pay for groceries and essential items.

A day earlier I had spoken to a single mum who was dropping off her daughter at the Maroubra Bay primary school. She relied on the schoolkids bonus to help meet the cost of sending her kid to school. She described it as a 'big help' in meeting the cost of buying uniforms, books, shoes and musical instruments to ensure that her child could participate actively in school activities. She was receiving family tax benefit B. She worked, helped to put food on the table and paid the bills to ensure that her kid did not go without.

These are the battlers of our community. In the wake of last night's budget, I cannot stop thinking about that pensioner in Pagewood and his wife, unable to sleep at night and concerned about the fact that he knows that his fortnightly costs are about to increase and his life is about to get a lot harder. I cannot stop thinking about the mother from Maroubra worrying about her kid's education and the family budget.

The Abbott government's budget does not reflect the struggles of Australian families to make ends meet. There is no sympathy and no concern for families in my community who see most of their monthly pay packet or weekly pay packet disappear into their mortgage or their rent. Those opposite do not seem to realise that pensioners have a set income each two weeks and that a $7 co-payment for a couple of trips to the doctor once a month, or an increase in the payment for prescription medicine, is enough to blow their budget each month and put them over the limit when it comes to their family budget.

It appears that the government is not conscious of the fact that, for many families in my community, the childcare rebate is the difference between having a child in child care and mum and dad being able to work and not having your kid in child care. Freezing the childcare benefit and the childcare rebate is going to make it much more difficult for them to afford child care. I feel for the parents of kids in our community who are living with disabilities, hopeful that their kids would finally get the support that they needed at school through the Gonski funding reforms and the loadings for disabilities. They had their hopes dashed last night by one of the most callous decisions that I have ever seen from a government: to renege on the commitment to fund the disability loading under the Gonski reforms for kids and students at our schools with disabilities.

These are the Australians that government should be trying to help out. The government should not be making their lives harder. Yet, this is exactly what the Abbott government will do with this budget. It will make life harder for Australians. I understand the need for a sustainable budget—to restrain spending and to generate more income to fund education, health and infrastructure. But I also know that some large multinational mining companies are making billion-dollar profits off resources owned by the Australia people, and that asking them to pay a little bit more in tax is not a big ask. I also know that Australians with whopping large superannuation accounts worth more than $2 million earn significant incomes off those superannuation accounts. Asking them to pay a little bit more is not too much. But the Abbott government does not believe that these people should pay a bit more. No, the Abbott government wants to hit the pensioner from Pagewood and the mother from Maroubra. Budgets are about priorities and this government— (Time expired)

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