Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

go into budget repair. We do not pretend that it is absolutely possible to make savings proposals universally popular. That is a very, very difficult thing to do. In fact, the member for McMahon said this:

We will go to the next election with an alternative vision for the nation, with detailed policy commitments and with savings proposals which will ensure that our election commitments are funded and that we have plan for a sustainable budget.

Not all these savings proposals will be universally popular or will necessarily win us votes.

But the member for McMahon has found that the way to make savings measures universally popular is just to not tell anyone what they are; then you are absolutely guaranteed that they will be universally popular savings measures!

What is absolutely fascinating is that we have proposed savings measures which pay for sweeping reform to child care by making rational restraint to the family tax benefit system. Some of that rational restraint you are agreeing to; some if it you are not. But what I have said previously is absolutely fascinating is that you all recognise what we recognise, and that is that if you are to move back towards surplus and pay for necessary reforms such as in areas like child care, you must look inside the welfare budget and you must look inside the social services budget; a large part of that budget is the family tax benefit system; you must look at that. Our proposals are well known, your proposals are this. The fascinating thing is that at the end of this little press release out today appears this interesting phrase:

Labor … will continue to investigate fair ways of ensuring our Family Tax Benefits system remains targeted to those who need it most.

That is code for saying that they realise what we realise: you must find savings inside FTB. The only difference is that we are explicitly stating where the somewhere is and for them the somewhere is just somewhere not known and thereby never unpopular.

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