Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you Deputy Speaker. I am grateful for your protection and your good judgement in the chair. We can only hope that you get more of a go in the chair in the future. We all know what was in the 2014 budget—a miserable attack on pensions. That is what they would have done—ripped $23 billion out of pensions over the next 10 years. The only reason it has not happened is that the Labor Party stopped the government from implementing their 2014 budget. It is the same with the GP tax; they have now had to resort, as Brian Owler says, to a co-payment by stealth, pushing up the cost of GP trips by hacking into the rebates that doctors get. What will that result in? An $8 per visit GP tax every time you go to a waiting room. What we have got is their 2014 attacks by stealth. What do we find in this budget? A $2.5 billion attack on part pensioners, with 90,000 people losing all of their pension. Never mind what plans they had for the future. Never mind that that is how they structured their finances, given what the government said, given the commitments the government had made in this miserable pack of lies that was their election manifesto. We know that there are pensioners out there who are doing it tough, and we know that none of them believe your spin and lies.

What do we find with families? Six thousand dollars ripped out of some families' budgets—no consideration, no notice; just a brutal attack on families.

What do we find in my electorate? The member for Bass was talking about jobs. I can tell you what is happening to jobs in South Australia. We have one of the worst unemployment rates now of all of Australia. Do you know why? It is because this government turned its back on investment in Holdens. This government turned its back on investment in Holdens and put 10,000 people into unemployment. And the great tragedy of that is that the dollar was US$1.06 at the time. It is now at US77c, when we would have been exporting police cars to the United States. That is the brutal reality.

What have they done on superannuation? You hear them saying, 'Oh, we're going to get stuck into people's superannuation.' What was the first thing they did when they came to government? They got rid of the tax offsets for low-income workers. They put up taxation on superannuation for workers, while they are protecting millionaires'—multimillionaires'—super's tax concession in this budget. And that is really the parallel that they want.

This is a miserable government with a miserable record of spin and lies, twists and turns. But we will not let you get away with it. If you think that you are going to go down there to Hindmarsh with all of those hardworking Greek-Australians who have now retired and are about to lose their part-pensions, if you think you are going to get away with that at the next election, you have another think coming. People will see through your spin and lies.

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