Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

As the parliamentary secretary points out, we have had the fire truck analogy: the Prime Minister telling us that the fire truck pulled up on the day of the last election and started putting out the fire of the deficit. It turns out the fire truck pulled up and the fireman got out, had a look around and kicked the tires, popped back in the fire truck and drove back to the station. That is what happened with the fire truck, because you see the deficit doubled from just last year when the Treasurer stood at the dispatch box. The budget deficits doubled over four years in just one year. This is their impact. Apparently their way of dealing with a debt and deficit disaster is to double it. That'll fix it! 'That's our cunning plan,' says the Treasurer.

People are asking, 'What is the point of the Abbott government?' Australians said in 2013: 'I'm not sure about this. I don't really trust that Leader of the Opposition. I'm not sure that I trust Tony Abbott's judgement, but he's got a plan to get us back into surplus. He'll get the deficit down, so we'll give him a go.' Many Australians said they were not sure about it and not sure they trusted him, but they gave him a go. And so what has he done to those voters who put their trust in him? He has doubled the deficit as his plan to deal with a debt and deficit disaster.

Despite all this, the prejudice remains in the budget and in fact has got worse. We know that many of the measures in the budget of last year remain. The $100,000 university degrees? Still there. The $80 billion worth of cuts to health and education? Still there. The cuts to family tax benefit? Still there and linked to childcare reforms, turning the budget document into one long ransom note to Australian families, saying, 'We won't give you more money, more assistance for your child care unless we get to take even more money than that away from you in your family tax benefit.' This is the prejudice at the heart of the Abbott government. We saw that prejudice on display very clearly at question time today because it has got worse. Not even in the last budget—the worst budget in 60 years—did they try to take money and time with their newborn babies away from Australian mothers in an ambush of Australian families.

They claim Abbott's ambush of Australian families was an election commitment to remove the entitlement to the government paid parental leave scheme if your employer provides it as well. I do not recall it being a central feature of the election campaign of the opposition. I do recall paid parental leave being mentioned by the now Prime Minister but in a very different way from what he is now alleging he said to the Australian people. But the prejudice is clear. We saw the Minister for Social Services. I note that at the end of question time there is an opportunity for members who claim to have been misrepresented. I did not hear the Minister for Social Services jumping to his feet to deny calling it a rort.

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