Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

We can endorse them because we announced them! We can endorse them because they are Labor policies announced by the Leader of the Opposition, by me and by my colleagues over the course of the last two years to deliver budget repair which is fair, such as dealing with high income superannuation. Why don't we make $250,000 the threshold for the surcharge? Who thought of that? We did. The Treasurer personally led the campaign against it. He said it was an attack on the retirement of incomes of all Australians. He was going to fight to the last drop of his blood to oppose it. Last night, he announced it. That was his great big plan. We had tobacco. Of course, not only did the Treasurer oppose that, the health minister opposed increasing tobacco tax. The health minister said it was a tax grab. It is just unbelievable that a government could spend two years campaigning against things, announce them and then argue that this was their plan all along. What we saw last night was not a budget; it is was an alibi for the last three years. The last three years did not happen.

What we are told is that this budget is a plan for jobs and growth. I will tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, what a jobs and growth plan would not do. A jobs and growth plan would not cut $1 billion from Australia's infrastructure budget. That is what a jobs and growth plan would not do. We were told that this budget was going to be great for infrastructure. It was going to have a cities policy—

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