Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

When people in my community ask me to describe the Abbott government's second budget I say it is a lot like the first budget but with a dodgy coat of paint. Nowhere is that more evident than when you look at the substantial cuts to family payments that are at the core of this second budget. The families of my community and right throughout middle Australia saw the government's real intentions in its first budget, and the unfortunate fact is that those intentions have not changed. My own community, Logan City and some of the surrounding Brisbane suburbs, are among the hardest hit by these changes to Family Tax Benefit Part B—15,745 families in my electorate alone will be adversely affected by the government's cuts to family payments and next door, in the electorate of Forde, represented by a Liberal member, 12,867 families will be affected by the cuts to Family Tax Benefit Part B.

I make this commitment to the people of Logan City: I will work with the newly preselected Labor candidate for Forde, Des Hardman, a local radiographer who works at Logan hospital. We will stand up together for the almost 30,000 Logan families who are being attacked by an unfair and divisive budget from an unfair and divisive government.

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