Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We've just heard it from the member for Calare: all is well; we don't have to worry about anything; put your feet up. That is the government's approach when it comes to managing our economy. Listening to question time today, there were the top-five hits that we focussed on inside the Labor Party. I think my favourite was when the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services got up to answer a question and said 'What's the point?' Then we had the message from the Prime Minister—as the member for Rankin, my colleague and friend, when defending aged-care workers, referred to—'If you're an aged-care worker and you're 60 years old, you haven't amounted to much and you should get a better job.' Then there was the hypocrisy from the government in saying that somehow members on this side of the chamber who attended university don't have a right to be in this place, or that somehow members who have achieved something from humble beginnings, if they'd gone to university, have risen above their station. Talk about class warfare. Talk about attacking those—like my family and my father and my mother, who came from very humble beginnings and who were lucky to finish year 7—who didn't go to university. My grandparents didn't go to university. The Prime Minister of this country says, 'You have no right to be in this place.' It's outrageous. What a pack of snobs.

Ms Henderson interjecting—

And the member for Corangamite, a second-generation politician, is laughing at me. Give me a break! Do not come in here and lecture this side of the chamber. We saw the assistant minister, in his grand defensive today, defending everyone and everything. Of course, defending payday lenders is his—

Ms Henderson interjecting—

All those opposite sit in complete ignorance about what is happening out in the real world. Let's be clear. Let's get some real facts into this debate. Labor members and the government have an opportunity this week to ensure that working and middle-class Australians will receive income tax relief starting in 12 days time. This could be passed today, as the Leader of the Opposition said, and passed in the Senate. If you are true blue about giving real tax relief, you will join us and make it happen.

No matter what the hissy fit, no matter what the dummy spit, like we saw from the Prime Minister and all those opposite in question time today, it doesn't hide the fact that the government are standing in their own way to deliver real tax cuts to millions of working and middle-class Australians. Instead, the priority of this Prime Minister and every other member of the Turnbull government is to give tax cuts to big business and high-income earners—at a cost to the budget of $25 billion a year in 10 years time. Over the medium term, this tax cut will cost the Australian economy a whopping $140 billion.

We also saw today that the Prime Minister was quite happy to see an executive earning $200,000 a year pay the same rate of tax as a cleaner earning $32,000 a year. That is the definition of fairness under the LNP. Come and speak to the cleaners in my electorate and come and speak to the food-processing workers who are struggling to make ends meet. In my community, a teacher in Mount Ommaney on $65,000 will receive a tax cut of $928 a year and a couple working in Forest Lake earning $90,000 and $50,000 respectively will receive a tax cut of $1,855 a year under a Bill Shorten Labor government. That is under a real government that will deliver real tax reform for those who need it. Almost 70,000 people in my community would be better off under a Shorten Labor government, with our bigger, better and fairer tax package—because we live in the community; we live in the real world every single day.

Let's vote on it and let's make it a reality today. But, if you don't want to do that, take it to an election. Take it to an election and, in the seat of Corangamite, Libby Coker will be standing up for real working people—in contrast to the sellout that we are seeing with the current member. In every electorate, whether it be Corangamite, my electorate or the 150 electorates in Australia, we will be reminding the Australian people that, when it comes to real tax reform and genuine tax relief for those who need it, only a Shorten Labor government will deliver it.

See this speech in context