Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

To get back to the real world, it is abundantly clear that this government would like us to think that somehow there have been no cuts to the ABC in this budget. They would be the only ones, and they would be denying what is actually in their own MYEFO and on page 79 of budget paper No. 2. But if they wish to deny that these are cuts, we are very happy for them to go out and keep telling the Australian public that there are no cuts to the ABC. Australians know full well that in 2013, just before this government was elected, we had then Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott look down the barrel of a camera, the night before the federal election, and explicitly promise no cuts to the ABC.

And we know that it was the now Prime Minister, when he was communications minister, who presided over a quarter of a billion dollars in cuts in this government's very first budget in 2014. So if those opposite want to deny that this happened, if they want to deny their own MYEFO, if they want to deny that somehow they had their own cuts, then, please, be my guest. Not only are they treating the Australian public like mugs on their policy for the ABC and denying how important the ABC is, they're treating the Australian people like mugs for denying that a pause in indexation is actually a cut. It is actually a cut.

So what are they saying? Are they saying that Michelle Guthrie is wrong? Are they saying that Justin Milne is wrong?

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