Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I know those opposite are looking a bit tired and we are coming to the end of a parliamentary week. They will be going home very shortly but, hopefully, when they go home to their electorates they will actually talk to their constituents. Because their constituents actually learnt something this week, if they didn't before.

When those opposite talk about a budget emergency, people on that side will have to go home and explain that Australia's proportion of debt to GDP is, currently, a tad under 14 per cent, compared to that of our trading partners in the OECD, which is 75 per cent. They will also have to explain what people already know, that our economy is AAA rated by each of the three major world-rating agencies. By the way, I think most people knew that.

But what they did not know, until this week, is that the economy is growing at 3½ per cent, growing above trend. That is precisely what was put out in the Pre-election Fiscal Outlook. So when the coalition get up here and say: 'We didn't know the state of the books; we've got to do these things. There's a budget emergency and we have to hit families, hit pensioners,' they well and truly knew the precise state of the books before the election.

Do you know what? Because they knew the state of the books then, that is why they could make an election pledge. They could pledge: no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions, no changes to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS. No prizes for guessing how many of those promises they have already broken. What they have done is shameful when it comes to families, particularly those in my electorate, which, as you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, are not rich. About 15½ thousand families in my electorate are on family tax benefit B. They are on some form of support as they raise their families. There is a reason for that. The average median income in my electorate is a tad over $20,000, with the average household income at $55,000.

These are the people on whom the government are going to impose the harshest measures of this budget. Like those opposite, we also earn reasonable money in this place. Anyone earning over $180,000, which takes in parliamentarians and those richest and most privileged in society, will also have to shoulder the load. I understand that. For three years, they will have a two per cent adjustment to their tax rate.

Mr Hutchinson interjecting—

And, by the way, for those who want to defend that, bear in mind that it only lasts for three years and then there is no permanent impediment on those on the other side, those who are privileged in our society. But what the government are doing to families and pensioners, by imposing the GP tax, to the unemployed and young people, who are trying to gain their first job, are all permanent impositions on the lowest areas of society, people who can least bear the pain.

There is no justice in what has been happening here. If the government want to take any degree of solace in the fact that our economy is growing at 3½ per cent, if they come off what the Treasurer has said and puff their chest out on that hen, quite frankly, why do they turn around and unjustly punish the pensioners not only in my electorate but those sitting back in your electorate? The same with families on welfare. You will find them sitting back there in your electorate—and, by the way, they get a vote. A single parent family, earning around $55,000, is going to lose up to about $6,000. If they have got two kids, they lose their allowances, they lose family tax benefit B and lose access to family tax benefit A. Have a look at it. It works out to be almost 10 per cent of those most in need of assistance and support in our community.

This is a shameful position to be in in this parliament, trying to ask the Prime Minister to reconsider his position, because we know that they do not reconsider anything. But when they want to come back and crow about the performance of the economy at the moment, why go out and persecute those least able to bear the pain?

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