Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

Well, here we go to the next election. We all know this is the last day. So I think it is important that we remember what this lot promised before they went to the last election. Remember what they promised last time: no cuts to health. And what did they do in their first budget? They slashed public hospital funding. They promised no cuts to education. And what did they do? They slashed school funding. And what was the third promise they made? They said: 'No cuts to pensions.' And in the 2014 budget, of course, they decided that they would cut pensions by up to $80 a week over a 10-year period. Of course, we were able to defeat that measure. So, as we go to this election, every Australian will be listening very carefully to what these people say, because they know: nothing they promise can be believed.

This Prime Minister is taking the following things to this election. This is what is in this week's budget: cuts to Medicare—and my colleague the member for Ballarat will set out how the cuts to Medicare will lead to increased prices every time someone has to go to the doctor—cuts to schools; cuts to family tax benefits; cuts to pensions; cuts to Paid Parental Leave; and cuts to young job seekers.

This Prime Minister's budget is fundamentally unfair. What this Prime Minister is doing, at the same time as he is cutting Medicare, pensions and schools, is giving a tax cut to the wealthiest Australians while, at the same time, cutting money out of the pockets of millions of ordinary Australian families. One and a half million Australian families face enormous cuts to their budgets. And this genius at the dispatch box says, 'These are cuts from two years ago.' Yes, they are—they are still in the budget, you genius! You're an absolute genius!

How much better off is a single working parent going to be, with an income of $87,000 and with two children in high school, after this $6 tax cut they will receive? Once you take into account the cuts to family tax benefit that she faces, she will be $4,463 worse off each year. They are the promises you are taking to the next election. That is what you will have to face up to every time you walk down the street and talk to families who are working hard with children in both primary and secondary schools. You are going to leave those families worse off and there are 1½ million of them right around Australia.

We also know that the other measures from the 2014-15 budget are now election policies that all of you are going to have to defend over the next two months. You are going to have to say to all of those people born since 1966 that you will have to work until you are 70, and, of course, when you retire you will get less.

They are also taking to the next election a cut to paid parental leave that will mean 80,000 new parents will be up to $11,800 worse off. That is what you are saying to young mums, 'You are going to be $11,800 worse off when you have your newborn baby.' There are cuts to family payments and of course there is still that cut in the budget, as they are saying to young unemployed people: 'You are going to have to wait a month, living on nothing, before you get access to Newstart.' All of the cuts from the reviled 2014 budget are still in this budget. They are still policies that this government is taking to the next election, all done with a special kind of incompetence, because at the same time they have trebled the deficit. What an extraordinary achievement. (Time expired)

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