Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I spent Saturday at five street stalls, in Springvale, Noble Park, Dandenong, Dandenong North and Mulgrave. I spent an hour or more in each place talking to people. I must say, as someone who actually participates in this institution, respects it and holds it in high regard—I always have—it saddens me how little people think of us. And you wonder why so many people in Australia say they hate politicians. Well, you can't get a straight answer to a question. You duck and you weave, and you read out key messages and eventually you come out with a number of, 'Well maybe 30.' You could have just said that at the start, if these changes are going to hurt 30 people. So now what we're doing is debating an amendment to take $1300 off 30 people and pretending that is in some way welfare reform. That's your government's priority? That's welfare reform? I would have thought reform was about making something better—improving something—but instead reform now under this government has boiled down to using the House's time to take $1,300 off Australian people whose partners have just died—30 of them. That's what we're now doing.

So we keep getting told the other reason that we have to have these kinds of bills, apparently, is because we have got a structural deficit—a debt and deficit disaster. Well, let's just read into the Hansard a few facts—the context that this bill sits in. This year's deficit has blown out by eight times. The 2017-18 deficit was $2.8 billion in the Liberal's 2014-15 budget and it's now $23.6 billion in the mid-year financial update. Net debt since this government has been elected more than doubled: net debt was $175 billion in September 2013 and was $335 billion in January 2018. Gross debt is more than half a trillion dollars, it has never been higher and it is growing with no end in sight. Both types of debt are growing faster under the Liberals than Labor. That is the context that this nasty, mean, sneaky little measure that we're standing here debating sits in. It's not too late, Minister Tehan. You could just stop this. You have the delegation; you could say: 'We'll put this debate aside. I'll go back to the government and say, "Maybe we've got this wrong. Maybe we don't need to try to pretend we're going to fix the budget in Australia by picking on 30 vulnerable people."' How much of a contribution do you think that's going to make to closing the debt and deficit gap? Do you think this makes any contribution in any meaningful way to budget repair or to addressing the structural deficit? Words fail me.

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