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

There are a few things I want to talk about, but let me respond briefly to the previous speech. It sums up this government, really: it's a random grab bag of platitudes and spin. There's no vision, no strategy and no point to it—a bit like that member. We read in the newspaper that the only reason he's here is that he stacked a bunch of branches in the Liberal Party for Senator Michaelia Cash. This is his little reward: to hang out in federal parliament. Unbelievably, the first thing he talked about that concerned the residents of his electorate were their asset values and their investment outlook. Let me tell you what concerns the people in my electorate about your government's budget. They are terrified about what's coming down the pipeline in this budget: the cuts to wages, the cuts to JobKeeper in March, the cuts to Newstart, or JobSeeker, or whatever platitude and spin you want to put on it and call it—$40 a day. The budget that you're speaking in support of is going to push millions of Australians back into abject poverty, to live on $40 a day, and you think that's a good thing. There are the attacks on superannuation and the refusal to guarantee their superannuation entitlements. You've effectively privatised half the stimulus by getting the most vulnerable people in this country to clear out every last dollar of their retirement savings just to survive, because you didn't act fast enough or do enough. Your industrial relations agenda to cut penalty rates—

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