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

This is a budget that was built on lies and broken promises. But what is really disturbing is that it has perhaps hurt the Australian psyche and the Australian community to the point where there really is no faith and trust in the political system. Before the election Tony Abbott made it his tenet in his life, of his whole being and reputation, that he personally would restore faith in the political system. He went out to the Australian people and said, 'I'll restore faith. There'll be no broken promises.' This was not a man playing at the edges. Sometimes people make promises, believing they will carry them through, but circumstances change. Sometimes through compromise and negotiation in the political system what you intend and set out to do does not end up being that way. Sometimes that is called a broken promise, and I can understand how the community feel about that.

But with this budget I think the Prime Minister set out with no intention of doing this. It is clear to me from the myriad broken promises, the vast number of broken promises, that the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, did not have an intention of ever keeping any of them. He wilfully and deliberately went out and just said anything. It just did not matter. There were the three word slogans 'we'll restore faith' and 'we'll not break any promises'. How can you say you will not break any promises? How can anyone ever say that? How can anyone say, 'We will not break any promises'?

I remember when the Prime Minister gave an absolute ironclad guarantee that promises would not be broken—and then he turned around and broke them. I think that has done grave damage to the Australian psyche, the Australian community and public perceptions of our institutions. But that is nothing compared to the damage done to ordinary people. This is a government that promised to help people, to do a whole range of things, and it has not done that. It is a government that promised to deliver so much but delivers so little. It is a government that has broken its promises to the elderly. It has broken its promises to students. It has broken its promises to pensioners. It has broken its promises to families. It has broken its promises to workers. It has broken its promises to the sick. It has broken its promises to small businesses and to superannuants in the protections provided through the Future of Financial Advice legislation. It has broken its relationship with the states. You can ask the states if they think there are some broken promises. I think the Liberal states will tell you that Tony Abbott lied to them as well. They were not of the view that there would be broken promises of the magnitude—or broken promises at all—

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