Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

This week will be the last week for five weeks that parliament sits. The government has an opportunity over the next five weeks to face the people being punished by its unfair and chaotic budget. This Prime Minister loves to talk about manning up and other references to his courage and strength. Perhaps the Prime Minister of Australia should show the courage to talk to the people being harmed by this budget.

Once upon a time, the once great Liberal Party loved to talk about the forgotten people of Australia. Tony Abbott should get out and talk to the people he has forgotten: the people who put him there. He should talk to families who will lose up to $6,000 a year because of this rotten, unfair budget. Does the Prime Minister have the moral courage to talk to a single mum on $50,000 a year and explain why the family payments are being cut? Does he have the strength of character that he likes to claim to talk to parents of modest income working hard who, because their children are older than six and not yet 16, will lose family benefit payments? I think not. Does he have the courage to talk to pensioners to explain why they will lose $80 a week once his full measure of pension changes are done? These are people who have contributed their whole life. This chap opposite, this Tony Abbott fellow, wants to take away from pensioners.

Before the last election, this Prime Minister of ours was very keen and always helpfully popping up at a petrol station bowser, talking about the price of petrol. Is he taking any petrol bowser photo opportunities now? I think not. Mind you, I acknowledge that, when he is talking to President Obama, he talks about his new carbon tax—the petrol excise—but he tore down Malcolm Turnbull, the only Liberal with the courage to stick to his convictions on an ETS. Well done you! Well done member for Wentworth!

Will he talk to students and teachers in the classrooms of Australia? Will he talk to them about the cuts? We think not.

Will he look at patients in emergency wards? Will he visit nursing homes and talk about the cuts to health care in this country? Of course not. Will he go and talk to the GPs so terribly worried about the poor health outcomes for so many Australians? He will not visit a GP surgery in this country to be told something that he does not want to hear.

I think Australia is, after 10 months, working out the character of this Prime Minister. What a narrow, prejudiced, unthoughtful person we have as Prime Minister!

Will he be talking to university students about increasing their fees? Will he be talking to women punished for taking time out to raise a family, the women who have to get the tertiary degrees and then pay them off over a longer time period than they otherwise would?

We know this Prime Minister loves the flag. He wraps it around himself. He would wear it every day. He loves a good parade. He is always there talking about how patriotic he is—except when it comes to veterans, their pensions and orphans.

As for the carers, I congratulate the Prime Minister on one thing: he gets on the pollie pedal. Good on him! If he raises money for carers, he is going to have to ride a lot more to raise more money because he is taking away from the carers.

What about Indigenous Australians? I said before that this Prime Minister is a narrow man with a bleak vision. I also say to you that he is the great pretender of Indigenous politics. He will certainly say that he cares, so why is it that he is cutting half a billion from programs to support Indigenous Australians? Will he visit an Aboriginal legal centre keeping young Aboriginal men out of jail when he is cutting their funding? The chances of seeing him visit an Aboriginal legal centre are none. I wish I could be as certain about the winner of the next Melbourne Cup.

Indeed, there is another group of forgotten people whom he will not visit. They are some of his backbenchers! I am not sure that Premier Napthine wants him in. I do not think he will get to the Stafford by-election any time soon either! Perhaps, even if he will not talk to the millions of Australians being hurt by his unfair budget, he will sit down with his backbench. Will he ask them one-to-one if they think it is the right budget for Australia? I think not. The Prime Minister will not do that. He will not visit the Australian people.

We have seen new records set in the last 2½ months. The period before the MPI may well be called question time; but, under this Prime Minister, it will never be called 'answer time'. He knows that in the last 24 hours his Treasurer, fresh from Fiji, has not helped the budget case. I respect some on the government backbench here, because they have certainly got a degree of loyalty even as the budget ship is sinking. But the Treasurer yesterday embarrassed the whole of the government. For weeks and months Tony Abbott would say, 'I might be wrong, but I'm dumb enough to stick to what I am doing on this unfair budget.' The Prime Minister said that there is no alternative and there is no Plan B. Well that's smart Sherlock! No Plan B! The Treasurer said yesterday that there is an alternative. I believe that Malcolm Farr in today's Daily Telegraph has noted that the Treasurer has moved from being 'cheerful Joe Hockey' to 'grumpy Joe Hockey', but what he really should have said is that he is still empty-headed Joe Hockey. The reason I say this is that this government has no alternative and, if they have alternative, it is in the Commission of Audit. We asked the government today and yesterday to rule out measures. They were happy to rule out some measures but not others. The very fact that they were not prepared to rule out all measures and yet rule out some shows that everything else is on the table.

We have sensible alternatives which have been articulated by Labor. We believe in cracking down on multinational profit shifting and tax minimisation. This government has never seen a vested interest it did not want to hug.

Fresh from the atrocities of financial planning and the Commonwealth Bank scandal, this government has cut $1 billion in measures to collect tax in Australia. This government certainly has no shame. They are prepared on one hand to slug all those people I mentioned—the pensioners, the sick, the vulnerable, the low paid—but when it comes to a multinational: too hard, can't be bothered, or why bother?

We have offered constructive compromises on family tax benefit B. I also know the greatest single weakness of this unfair budget is that the Prime Minister is so arrogant, so narrow, so proud that he will not cut the Paid Parental Leave scheme which everyone in Australia, including most of those in the government, knows is a turkey. How on earth can you propose a budget emergency justifying the sorts of atrocities, the creation of a new permanent underclass in this country, yet persist with this Paid Parental Leave scheme which everyone knows is unfair?

This government is not serious about its own so-called budget emergency. Labor are prepared to step up. We have seen them say here very clearly they are not ruling out putting a handbrake on the NDIS. This Prime Minister has swallowed the dictionary of weasel words when he says, 'We want an NDIS, in good time.' They want to abolish family tax benefit part B. The GP tax, once in, will go up and up and up. And, of course, they love cutting the minimum wage—they have got their minimum wage scissors in their pocket every day of the week. Nothing is safe.

This government, though, is so desperate to get through its shonky legislation that we have seen the chaotic week where, if this government wants to get something done, they have to go and doff their cap, tip their forelock, to Clive Palmer. What a fantastic state for the Liberal Party of Australia and this proud government 10 months ago so excited to do so much! What we have seen this week is that if the PUP are run by Clive Palmer there is a new party in Australia, the 'PUPpets', and these are the 'PUP pets'. They are being run by Clive Palmer. How embarrassing! They love to say how much they dislike Clive Palmer. They will go to black-tie gala events, rub shoulders with business and say: 'Yeah, this Clive Palmer—terrible man, terrible man. Quick, is that the phone? Clive's on the phone—excuse me!' The Prime Minister is the discredited figurehead of the 'PUPpet' government.

Labor in the next five weeks, I promise Australians, will stand up for Medicare. We will stand up for a fair pension. We will make sure that higher education is accessible. We will stand up to make sure schools and hospitals do not get cut. We will fight for what is right. This government, no matter how much bluster and bullying it does, will not defeat the will of the people. We will stand up for the people. What the Prime Minister really needs to do in five weeks is change his mind about the budget. He needs to change his mind because we will not be changing ours.

See this speech in context