Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The pink and grey galah is having a bit of a squawk down there at the dispatch box, so I'd ask him to pipe down.

We believe in trickle-up. We know that the best growth comes from feeding the roots, not the leaves. You don't spray the leaves; you feed the roots. You provide strong foundations to an economy—strong foundations in health, education, infrastructure and community services. You feed the grassroots. You feed the people. You feed the masses at the bottom. You don't feed the top; they're getting enough. You feed the bottom. You provide strong foundations in all of these services.

Yet this Liberal budget, like all Liberal budgets before it, fails this test. It's all about the top end of town, and that does not help the people of my electorate. The medium household income in Lyons is $981 per week. That's less than both the Australian average and the Tasmanian average. People in my electorate are not wealthy. It doesn't mean they don't work hard. They do. And it doesn't mean they don't deserve respect. But this government believes that, for a $10 tax cut, the people of my electorate will forget about the health and hospital cuts, they'll forget about the cuts to schools, TAFEs, trade centres and universities, they'll forget about the cuts to pensions and the robo-debt scandal, and they'll forget about the second-rate NBN. Well, the people of my electorate are smarter than that. They won't forget about these cuts and the difficulties that this government has placed upon them.

We all know this is a government that can't be trusted. It says it will build a new $461 million bridge in Bridgewater in my electorate. But a detailed look at the budget pages shows a glaring hole in the budget allocations. Just $25 million is earmarked in the forward estimates. Now $25 million is a lot of money, but it's not going to build a bridge. There is no time frame and no detail. It is a promise from a government that also promised no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no cuts to pensions, no cuts to the ABC and then cut the lot of them. It provides little comfort to the people of my electorate that this is a government that cannot be trusted.

This budget shows just how much disregard this government has for rural and regional communities and people by failing to commit to new rounds of the Mobile Black Spot Program.

Mr Fletcher interjecting—

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