Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was an interested observer of the media conference that the opposition leader, the shadow Treasurer and the member for Jagajaga conducted just before question time on the issue of the childcare package. There were lots of words spoken, and there was the usual feigned indignation, but when you strip away all the frippery here is the bottom line. Of $3.2 billion needed to fund the childcare package, Labor have only supported $500 million of spending. So, on the one hand, in that media conference I heard the shadow Treasurer talk about fiscal responsibility; and then they oppose over 80 per cent of the cost of delivering the childcare program.

So I ask the member for Jagajaga, the shadow minister for families, to reconcile that position with her conversation with David Speers on Sky on 25 May this year. It is an instructive transcript.

MACKLIN: … We certainly can understand that for many families child care is very expensive, and we want to improve that -

SPEERS: That has to be paid for somehow?

MACKLIN: It does have to be paid for somehow …

I say 'Hear, hear' to the member for Jagajaga—absolutely.

I ask her: how will the childcare package be paid for? What about the clear challenges to Australian families in other areas of the childcare package that you are not going to fund? Do you understand those challenges? Do you even care about those challenges? How is it fiscally responsible to want to have all of the spends when it comes to governing but none of the saves? Because that is the path we followed from 2008 to 2013 that put us on a trajectory to $667 billion of debt. You cannot have all of the spends and none of the saves, particularly when you are dealing with the sort of economic circumstances that we inherited after 2013.

The Australian people will not be fooled. They know that Labor's uncontrolled spending is at the heart of our budget problems today. On almost every significant policy measure Labor has demonstrated the same sort of behaviour that the people explicitly repudiated. The reason the Labor Party got its lowest vote in 100 years is that Australians can see the inconsistency between what Labor promises and what they actually deliver.

You might recall that this was meant to be the 'year of ideas'. It is just over a month before the end of the year of ideas and it seems the latest idea is not to fund 80 per cent of the childcare package—voting against billions of dollars of budget savings, including Labor's own budget savings, ratcheting up spending in some of the biggest portfolio areas of social services, education and health. Even the public broadcasters have been promised more money under Labor's constant spend-and-borrow strategy. That is over $60 billion in new spending since the 2013 election—a growing black hole to the black hole that we inherited after 2013.

You might have heard at that media conference before question time, and from previous speakers on the other side, the words 'harshness' and 'fairness' and every multisyllabic permutation of the word 'cuts!' that you would ever want to hear. Let's discuss fairness for a moment. What is unfair and harsh is Labor's planned changes to people's superannuation. Recall that on 22 April this year the Leader of the Opposition and shadow Treasurer said in a media release that Labor will 'ensure that earnings of more than $75,000 during the retirement phase are taxed at a concessional rate of 15 per cent instead of being tax free'. They said they would lower the threshold for the 15 per cent high-income superannuation charge by $50,000. How is it fair to unexpectedly and retrospectively tax people's retirement savings that they have been putting away for 20, 30, 40, 50 years? That is what people in Tasmania are telling me is unfair—

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