Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be speaking on this matter of public importance today, namely:

The hurt and division caused by the Government’s unfair budget and broken promises.

That is exactly what it is—an incredibly cruel and unfair budget based on a whole series of broken promises. We all remember all those commitments we heard before the election about no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no new taxes. That is exactly what has happened. They have reneged on all those commitments they made prior to the election. How do Australians feel? They feel completely and totally betrayed by the Liberal and National parties.

Seats like my seat of Richmond in regional Australia have been really hit hard. I know looking across the chamber that there are many members who know that their seats are impacted, particularly those in regional areas. This has been such an unfair and incredibly, incredibly cruel budget. I have been inundated by appeals, particularly from many older Australians, who quite frankly are devastated and in total fear about the implications, particularly in relation to the health measures. In fact, they have are so much in fear that we are having a rally very soon called 'Fighting for a Fair Go' on Thursday, 12 June. Indeed, there will be many people coming from Moncrieff, from the previous speaker's electorate, coming over the border to express their concerns. Those concerns are wide-ranging and I will run through some of those.

First of all we are seeing this government dismantling Medicare, pulling apart those very important parts of universal health care with their $7 GP tax. People are very concerned, particularly older people who have complex medical and health problems. We have also seen it with their $80 billion cuts in funding to schools and hospitals. Again, this will impact regional Australia so severely. When we look at seniors, first of all they will be hit with that GP tax. We have the Prime Minister saying today that it is a 'modest' amount. How appalling and arrogant is it that that he speaks like that of the GP tax? People are terrified of this. People are cancelling their appointments to doctors now because they are so concerned about the impact of this tax. Seniors will also have their pensions cut. They will have them cut with the changing indexation rates. They are also worried about the petrol tax. In regional areas the petrol tax will really hurt. We have also seen cuts to seniors' concessions. For seniors who get rate rebates that makes a very big difference. I know, for example, in the Tweed shire their rate rebate is over $400 per year. That is at stake. So add that to the GP tax and the petrol tax and we see seniors very worried.

Families are concerned as well because of the freeze on the rates of family tax benefits. Families are also impacted by the cuts to funding for hospitals and the $30 billion for schools. What sort of values do the people who make these sorts of funding cuts have? For those in regional areas it is a real betrayal by the Nationals. We see that so many times but this is a complete betrayal by them.

I also want to touch on the impacts on young people. Young people in the regions will be severely impacted—not just through the cuts to schools but also through the cuts to training. There have been billions of dollars taken out of youth training and apprenticeships. For kids in the country who aspire to go to university the government have taken that opportunity away. The Liberal Party and the Nationals have taken that away from regional Australia. The changes to university fees will make it almost impossible for those kids to get to university and to afford it.

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