Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

That was actually one of the most delusional speeches I have heard in this place. This MPI debate is a great opportunity to talk about how this government has undermined conditions for families. At every stage of their lifecycle Australians have missed out. Literally from cradle to grave Australians are missing out because of the two budgets this government has brought down.

Think about paid parental leave. First the Prime Minister said, 'Over my dead body,' and then he came up with the most generous scheme that gives the highest amounts to people on the highest incomes. Now he has gone back to a scheme that has a maximum, a cap, of $18,000, rather than a minimum, as it was under Labor.

Let us look at the cuts to preschools and child care. Families are pitted against one another. One family is told that for them to benefit the family next door has to miss out. Kids will miss out because the most vulnerable kids will have their hours cut when it comes to child care. Schools: a $30 billion cut from schools. Our plan for fairer funding for schools that lifted the standard of all schools making every school in Australia a great school is gone. Thirty billion dollars has been taken out of schools across Australia; millions taken out of every school across Australia. The previous speaker spoke about jobs for young people. We have youth unemployment at a 16-year high, and successful programs like Youth Connections, which used to operate in all of the electorates of the members sitting opposite, keeping people in employment or education, are gone. Gone! The previous speaker was boasting about these terrific new programs—they are not new programs, and it is not new money. Jobs for young people are a real problem.

If you are lucky enough to be clever, work hard and go to university, what then? You will have a $100,000 university degree. One hundred thousand dollar university degrees are hitting at the same time as housing prices, which the Treasurer of Australia ignores warnings about and says are perfectly affordable—you just need a good job and a good income. Well, tough if you are a nurse, teacher, firefighter or have any of those 'good jobs' that do not pay the sort of money that you are required to have if you want to buy a house in the Sydney housing market. At the same time that all of these cuts are being made to families we actually have flat wages. So costs are going up, family tax benefit is being ripped away from families, the cost of visiting a doctor is going up, the cost of medicines are going up, wages are flat and there is higher unemployment. How does this government imagine that families can balance their family budgets in the face of cuts to support, higher costs, flat wages and with the threat of increasing unemployment floating above their heads?

All of this is happening at a time when the Assistant Treasurer is boasting about what a great job they are doing managing the budget. We have the highest rate of tax since the Howard government and a higher deficit—double the deficit in one year from $17.1 billion to $35.1 billion on their own figures and their time in government. They have nobody to blame but themselves for doubling the deficit. Debt has increased. They did a dirty deal with the Greens to do debt unlimited and they are using that to its full extent. At the same time as this poor economic management with higher tax, higher unemployment, higher debt and higher deficit we now have the final insult of telling hardworking part pensioners that they are welfare bludgers, that all of the years they have worked contributing to the tax system when they have done exactly what successive governments have asked them to do—that is, save hard, put some money into super and put a little bit of cash away for a rainy day, and now they are being attacked by this government. We saved full-rate pensioners from the cuts this government proposed, and now the government is going after part pensioners who are on as little as whole assets of $289,500. It means all of your super, it means your car, it means your caravan if you have one, it means your jewellery, it means all of your household effects, it means the paid-out value of life insurance policies— (Time expired)

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