Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It does feel like deja vu: Turnbull, Abbott, Turnbull. You might want to add that to the rolling prime ministers list. I was there when Turnbull was leader, I was there when Abbott was leader and now Turnbull is the leader. So we see this time and time again. But I have also seen the scare campaigns. If you want to talk about scare campaigns, there was a doozy of a scare campaign in the last election. We had the 'great big tax on everything', but it is the Liberal Party that wants to put a great big tax on everything.

Indeed, it was the Liberal Party who would 'never, ever' have a GST. I was here in the parliament in 1998—the 'never, ever' GST. Mind you, I am going to miss not having Joe Hockey in the House this time, because we will not be able to do the Joe Hockey pyjamas stunt again. We will not be rolling out tins of soup or cakes to work out which bit has GST and which bit does not, because now the GST is going to be on everything. So it is not just increasing to 15 per cent; it is being put on everything.

Who will it impact? Of course, it will hit low-income households who cannot mitigate any costs. The impost upon them will be enormous and they are scared. They are rightly scared because it is you, the Liberal Party, who says we are 'having this conversation'. It is all very interesting. In question time it is 'no, no, no', but out there in every press conference it is, 'We have to debate this issue.' Well, we debated it for a very long time. Craig Emerson came in each day and the pile of legislation got bigger and bigger. Where is he now? It is just deja vu. (Time expired)

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