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

Are you still here? Under Tony Abbott's budget, more than 100,000 young people under 30 who are looking for a job will be forced to wait six months before receiving any income support. Labor have said that the changes to Newstart are perhaps the single most heartless measure in a very ugly, brutal budget, sentencing young people to a potentially endless cycle of poverty when they should be getting a hand to find a job. It is just a blame-shifting, cost-shifting measure that puts the price of unemployment on to the unemployed and their families.

The human rights committee chaired by Liberal Senator Dean Smith agrees. They have concluded that Mr Abbott's proposed six-month Newstart waiting period for people under 30 'breaches the right to social security and the right to an adequate standard of living'. Labor have clearly and consistently called this policy for what it is. It is a vicious, victim-blaming measure that does nothing to address youth unemployment or the challenges of finding work at a time when youth unemployment has soared to 13.4 per cent, around double the national average. Now is not the time for the Abbott government to turn its back on young Australians.

We know in this place, the Prime Minister's literary propaganda aside, that reducing pensions and attacking the poor and vulnerable does not help this country grow. It is long overdue in this country that we have a debate that the link between a more equal society and economic growth is inextricable and it is true. This is a government who talk about growth yet they would create greater inequality in our society. You cannot have fair dinkum, sustainable growth unless you have measures which create more equality in our society. I say it again: if the Liberals want to go after the pensioners, the vulnerable and the families, they are going to have to come through Labor.

We say to the government today: you have drawn the battlelines for the next election. Labor have always pioneered advances in social services. We have always believed in the betterment of the people and we have been most interested in the great welfare of the middle-class, the lower income people, fixed income people and the most vulnerable in our society.

The current Liberal Party does not deserve the name 'Liberal'. At the next election Australians will be asked to choose between a party that protects the pension and a party that cuts it, between a party that stands up for families and a party that forgets them, between a movement that will always fight for them and a Prime Minister who lied to gain their vote at the last election.

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