Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

If we ever needed a demonstration of what this government is all about, we have seen it in the last two speakers. To give credit to the last speaker, he did spend a minute talking about some of the promises made in the last election, but there was nothing about the promises on health, education, families or young people. There was nothing because they broke them. This is a government given a chance to talk about the promises it made to the Australian people that wants to talk about us.

Just as after the last budget—the day after the last budget—they came into this place talking about us, they could not even keep their focus on their own so-called 'achievements', and I do not blame them for not wanting to go there for a day. Day 1 they tried to take the focus off their own performance, and you cannot blame them. Let's look at it.

A recent promise was to act on domestic violence. There is a lot of talk about domestic violence, an incredibly important issue. The number of women who have died in domestic violence since the beginning of this year is unacceptable. It is important to talk about this, but they slashed funding to women's shelters and legal services. They walk about what they are going to do, but the reality is to cut the funding to women's shelters and legal services.

We have the 'rolled gold paid parental leave' as a policy of Tony Abbott for years now, and for years he said he was going to deliver this for parents. What they finally delivered is something that cuts paid parental leave to thousands of women. It actually cuts it. They promised to build this great system; the reality is the opposite. They have cut the level of existing funding that women will receive under paid parental leave.

They have done a wonderful advertising campaign on the ice epidemic. It tells you how bad it is—and it is; it is terrible, and we should take action on it—but in parallel to that they have cut funding for the treatment centres. They talk about it, but they have cut funding to the treatment centres.

I can see some of the backbenchers looking up in surprise. I can tell some of the backbenchers that the people who come to this place to talk about some of the changes you have made across education and training tell us that you do not know what your government has done. And we can tell from the interjections that you have made that you are not paying attention to what your government is doing. You are slacking off on the backbench, accepting the spin without looking at the detail. Please pay attention. This government is doing fundamental damage to our education system, to our health system and to our training system. Eventually, you are all going to be held to account. If, by some chance, there is an early election, quite a number of you will be sitting in the House today for the last time because you have not paid attention and held your own leadership to account.

So let's look at some of the promises that were made. Let's not just do the cherry picking that the last speaker did, let's actually look at them. No cuts to education. Remember that? No cuts to education—not even a cigarette paper between Labor policy and Liberal policy because they knew it was hurting them and they knew it was going to cost them votes, so they lied in order to win the election. Your leadership lied.

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