Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

How out of touch are you? You come in here and you try to convince us that we should vote for this piece of stupid legislation. Of course, this is compounded by the current malaise in the government and their failure to understand the impact of the proposals on penalty rates. I often wonder, as I see the Prime Minister shuffling up to the dispatch box, poking out his chest, pointing across the dispatch box, pointing across to this side of the House and disparaging the Leader of the Opposition, how he sleeps at night. He is now proposing to support a proposition from the commission that will see up to 700,000 Australians $77 a week worse off. How does he sleep at night?

If you look at the broad canvas we have here you could say, 'On one side of the canvas we have these cuts to benefits and we have a proposal to give the big end of town a tax cut and, most deplorably, the banks—why we do not have a royal commission is beyond me, but we should have one—and on the other side of the canvas we have 70,000 people having their incomes cut.' Call me naive if you like, but I cannot see too many of those people standing around and applauding the government's decision. Remember, these are young people who might have moved from Alice Springs, where I live, to go to Sydney or Melbourne to go to university and rely on a part-time weekend job for their income to be able to live reasonably in a major metropolitan centre, and this is true for kids in the bush right around Australia. And now they have got to deal with the fact that, instead of working eight hours, they might have to work 10 to get the same income. And they are supposed to say, 'Well, that's terrific. We're happy to do that, Mr Prime Minister, because that's a saving we're going to give you—a saving you can use to help pay the banks'!

Again, just how out of touch are you? Don't you understand the impact of this unequal treatment of Australians? Don't you understand that those you are targeting are the most vulnerable—the weakest, in many senses; the sickest, in a lot of cases; the most exposed to the vicissitudes of the economy changing at any point in time? In addition, now you are supporting a proposition that they should have their incomes cut. Well, Prime Minister, you are on the wrong horse; you are on entirely the wrong horse. And the people of Australia will call you to account. I know that the people I represent in this place think you are horrible—horrible for what you are doing to this country, horrible for the divisive nature of the debates which you are prosecuting in this place, and horrible because of your failure to understand the nature of the plight of Australians who are the weakest and most vulnerable in this community and the way you are attacking their way of life.

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