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

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance, to reconsider this unfair budget that will hurt Australian families into the future. I am pleased to be following the member for Moncrieff. As many people know, his seat is just up the road from mine on the Gold Coast—my seat is on the border of New South Wales—and so I am happy to present him with some facts now.

I have been inundated with people from his electorate concerned about the impact of the budget. That is the reality and the facts that he should take on board about things like the education cuts, which are real. I can assure you that people from his electorate and those other electorates on the Gold Coast are very worried, so much so that many of them are coming to a rally I am holding next Thursday—and I will give you some more detail in relation to that later on. Locals in my electorate, and I think right throughout Australia, are really concerned about this budget of broken promises, its cruel cuts and unfair increases and its increases in the cost of living as well.

People feel so betrayed by this government because, of course, before the election we had the Prime Minister and the Liberals and the Nationals running around, saying: no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no cuts to the pension, no cuts to family payments. And what have we seen since then? We have seen cuts to all of those areas that are devastating families. I speak to families every day that are so worried about the impact of the unfair and cruel cuts that they see. There are pensioners as well who are devastated and really worried. The facts are that this budget means that families pay more every time they go to the doctor, and every time they fill up the car they pay more. They feel betrayed. In areas like mine in regional Australia they feel betrayed by the National Party. One of the things that they really feel betrayed about is the National Party petrol tax—and we will get to that one of the moment.

I mentioned before about the public rally I am having, Fighting for a Fair Go for the North Coast. It is on Thursday, 12 June at 10 o'clock at the Tweed Civic Centre. As I say, I have been inundated by people from seats over the border, like Moncrieff, that are very keen to come over and express how concerned they are about this unfair budget.

Let us look at some of the facts surrounding this budget. We go to health first. There is a $50 billion cut to Australia's public hospitals. That will be devastating for hospitals right across the nation in providing necessary health services. As for the GP tax, that $7 GP tax is terrifying people, terrifying families—

Mr Hutchinson interjecting—

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