Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I am a generous man; thank you for that, Member for Charlton. This Intergenerational report took its time to get here. They need consultants to work out how to sell it. You spent $400,000. You outsourced your political skill. You have no political skill in selling your budget, so you had to bring people in to sell this.

An honourable member: And how's it going?

Exactly, and that is going sensationally! It would be interesting to see whether this is actual fact, and it ain't. When they talk about debt going out in 50 years, they do not talk about the decisions they made to load up debt, the fact that straight after PEFO they brought out MYEFO and they doubled the debt; they handed $9 billion to the Reserve Bank and made cuts. Talking of leaners and lifters, they leaned on low-income earners and took their superannuation away so that they could lift off the tax required out of wealthy superannuants. This is a shameful document. It is a shameful document because it has been abused. It should be a good policy document. It has been abused by those opposite.

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