Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am happy to move on because there is so much to talk about. We have heard all the fiction from the other side about how wonderful they have been and how great they have been. Let's go back and start talking about what they actually said. Every single one of those people on the other side lied to the Australian people when they said, 'We will deliver a budget surplus in our first year and every year after.' That never happened. You hear the lie that gets parroted from them over there, reading their little note saying, 'They're saying that we are going to tax your superannuation.'

Let's be very clear: that lot on the other side went out and took the $500 that the government paid to people earning less than $37,000 a year—people on the minimum wage. They took the money out of their superannuation. What they did do was then put the tax concessions back on to people whose superannuation has $2 million, $3 billion, $4 million and $5 million in it. You can understand that this is the best government that Gina Rinehart was able to buy, because they took away income-producing things which actually were benefitting the Australian economy.

They come in here and say, 'Look at all the things we've done.' But they do not talk about the budget papers where it says, 'An $80 billion cut to health and education.' They say, 'It's not a cut.' But you would watch them squeal like stuck pigs when they were expecting their thousand dollars a week wages if you only paid them $800 and said, 'Look, that's not a cut; it's a bonus.' That is the mentality there because they have a leader, Tony Abbott, who by his own words confesses you cannot believe what he says and you cannot believe what he has written down. That is what the leader said.

We had the member for Lyons in here—I tell you, Acting Deputy Speaker, you missed a comedy show—who says, 'We're gonna do a tax cut to small business and it will be ongoing.' The budget paper says, 'The 1.5 per cent tax rate is only for two years', not ongoing, for two years—slightly different to what they say in here. They do it because they think that no-one cares.

We have a good laugh when the member for Corangamite—temporary, as she may be—and the clowns over there say, 'You never put money into mobile phone towers.' We didn't and do you know why? We built these things called NBN wireless towers, which actually have capacity to put telecommunications on. Since those opposite got into government, there has not been one new NBN connection. Each and every day, they come in here, fluff their heads up and pretend it is great, but they are led by a man who cannot tell the truth. He lies in this place all the time.

Today, we heard his faux outrage, because Bill Shorten was man enough to admit that he had made a mistake. Let's be clear, none of the people on the other side have ever come in here and apologised for Christopher Pyne admitting that he lied about the James Ashby affair. Let's be very clear, one of the most significant things that has happened in this parliament that they have been complicit in is the theft of the diary of the Australian Speaker. Not once has any of them said that that wrong. They have been happy with it.

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