Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for McMahon proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Prime Minister’s plan to make Australians and their families pay for his broken promises.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have heard a lot of speculation in recent weeks about how the role model for this budget was the 1996 Peter Costello budget, about how Peter Costello was the intellectual godfather of this particular budget and about how the John Howard government was the role model for this government. I do not think that is quite right, with due respect. I think it goes back further. I think the role model was the 1979 minibudget, which inspired a famous headline that could equally apply to this budget delivered by the Treasurer last night.

That is because this budget shows more effectively than anything else that the last election campaign waged by the Prime Minister and Treasurer was one of systematic and wilful deceit of the Australian people. It was systematic and wilful deceit of the Australian people, because the Prime Minister and Treasurer knew that if they told the Australian people in September what they were planning in this budget, then the Australian people would have been a lot less likely to vote for them.

On that basis, they campaigned for office on a web of deceit. They promised the Australian people cost-of-living relief. That is not what they delivered last night. They promised the Australian people they could return the budget to surplus with no new taxes and no cuts to spending over and above what they had already announced. That was always voodoo economics and we now know that it was deceit as well. It was more than voodoo economics; it was wilful and systematic misleading of the Australian people.

They told the Australian people many things. At last September's election, never before has so much been promised to so many people by so few as was promised by the Prime Minister and Treasurer and never before has so much been reneged on as there was in last night's budget. This is a budget of broken regard for the Australian people and their right to insist on political accountability in this nation. This was a budget that was cynical when it came to dealing with election promises. This was a budget that introduced new taxes, which the Prime Minister of Australia solemnly swore he would never introduce. The Treasurer of Australia solemnly promised the Australian people they would never happen. There are cuts to families, family payments, hospital funding and schools that they both said would never happen on their watch.

This budget is so fundamentally misleading that I must confess it is difficult to choose where to start. It could be Medicare, it could be family payments or it could be the fuel tax, but I am going to start on the $80 billion worth of cuts to schools and hospitals. There are $80 billion worth of cuts to schools and hospitals. This will affect frontline services that are so important to the Australian people. Australia really needs cuts to schools and hospitals at the moment. We need to close more schools and we need fewer services in our hospitals, according to the government. The Treasurer had a shocker on 7.30last night and, when he was asked about the impacts of the cuts on the service deliveries of the states, this is what he had to say—and it is very profound: that it was up to them. He said it was up to his state and territory colleagues. The premiers and treasurers of Australia have given him a free character assessment today. That well-known socialist Campbell Newman said:

I am afraid it is a non-transparent and up-front way with dealing with that and it is very disappointing. We are calling on an emergency COAG.

I have to say: when Campbell Newman says you have cut too much, you know you have a problem. There is only one budget emergency in this country, and it is the budget emergency the states and territories copped from the Treasurer last night.

He has caused the premiers of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria to condemn his budget because they know the types of cuts it will lead to in schools and hospitals. Alternatively, they will need another source of revenue. They will need a different type of funding. I wonder what that type of funding might be—maybe a Commonwealth tax that gets distributed to the states, known as the goods and services tax. As sure as night follows day, we are going to see the premiers and state treasurers calling for an increase in the rate of the GST or a broadening in its base. In the meantime, they will have to cut, and cut to the bone. We will see schools close, make no mistake. We will see hospital services reduced, make no mistake. There is no alternative. State treasurers—with all due respect to them, whether they are Labor or Liberal—could not find collectively $80 billion over the next 10 years without massive cuts to services. This is a Prime Minister who said, 'No cuts to health and no cuts to education'—that is, 80 billion broken promises to the Australian people.

Then we move to Medicare. Medicare happens to be very dear to members on this side of the House because Labor created it and Labor will defend it. We will defend it in this House; we will defend it the other place; we will defend it in the community; and we will fight and fight for universal health care in this country. The Treasurer might not think that $7 is much money—he might say it is a cup of coffee or a cigar perhaps, to pick commodities at random—for people to give up to go to the doctor, but there are a lot of families for whom $7 to go to the doctor with a sick child or sick children is a lot of money. They have to pay for medicine, too. We are seeing the medical fraternity point out the impacts of these cuts on health services right across the country. There will be Australians who decide they simply cannot afford to go to the doctor. There are two central principles here: firstly, your wealth should not determine your health; and, secondly, the health of every single Australian should be the concern of every Australian. If this government gets its way, there will no longer be universal health care in Australia. Medicare will be trashed. But we will not let that happen. We will stand in defence of Medicare, we will fight for Medicare and we will fight for universal health care. The Prime Minister says he is the best friend Medicare ever had. Well, I would hate to see an enemy of Medicare because, if he gets his way on his watch, he will destroy Medicare. Make no mistake: he will remove universal health care from Australia—but we will not let them do that.

Then we have other examples like the new taxes. We saw the Treasurer dancing through the rain drops at question time, saying, 'Oh, I did not actually say that.' There are a few million viewers who might recall that he did. We have the fuel levy, the indexation of the fuel excise. The Prime Minister, you might recall, did a bit of travelling over the last three years. He went around the country talking about the impacts of the carbon price on the cost of living and he promised to restore support for the cost of living by dealing with the carbon price. He just forgot to mention that they were going to change fuel indexation at the same time. I can see people pulling into the service station—they might choose BP—and, as they are filling up, they will be saying, 'BP, broken promises, thank you very much, Prime Minister Abbott.' It is a broken promise to every Australian and every Australian driver. The Prime Minister says: 'It's terrible to tax polluters and you wouldn't want to tax mining companies, but, jeez, taxing families and drivers, there's a good idea. Why don't we do that?'

There is a fundamental principle in politics: you hold people to their own tests. You hold people to what they say. They set the bar and then you hold them to it. The Prime Minister promised something different. He promised that he would uphold every single promise that he made. Now we have the core and non-core dance of the seven veils. He has said: 'There is an overarching promise or there are fundamental promises.' We have heard it from the frontbench; we have heard it from the backbench; we have had the pathetic denial that there are any breaches of election promises in this budget. If the government breaks a promise, just fess up to the Australian people. Just be honest with the Australian people and say: 'It was too hard; we were not up to it; it is all harder than we thought; we got it wrong.' You might at least get a bit of respect for that, but this pathetic denial of reality we have seen from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer is going down very badly with the Australian people, who feel insulted at their antics. In question time today we saw them refusing to acknowledge that they have breached promises. They have breached promises and they have effectively attempted to attack the social fabric of this nation. They have attempted to dismantle Medicare. They have attempted, after all their rhetoric, to take $3,000 from single-income families with a child of seven years. A child of seven is so much cheaper than one of six! It just shows how fundamentally out of touch this Prime Minister and Treasurer are. We will continue to hold them to account and we will continue to hold them to their promises. We will continue to point out the fundamental dishonesty—(Time expired)

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is disappointing to hear a Labor Party who seem to have learned absolutely nothing from the election and nothing from their time in office. They are living a life of fiction where money grows on trees and where we throw it around and promise everybody everything. You fudge and you fiddle with numbers in budgets. You have assumptions that live in make-believe land. You ignore the reality of the consequences of your actions and you simply boot the consequences down the street for some responsible person to deal with.

That is the Labor way, and we have seen more of it here today. Labor should be hanging their heads in shame. They fit the nation up with six years of the most abominable governance this country has ever seen. They learned nothing from those areas of failure, mismanagement and waste. They fit up the next generation of kids through intergenerational theft, spending on the visa card for someone else to service, and then they come in here as if there is no work to be done.

It is little wonder that a once Treasurer of Australia, the member who just spoke, has not even got his time as Treasurer listed on his bio. Why is that? It is because it was one of the most lamentable periods of treasurership we have ever seen, so he does not fess up to it. He subscribed to the argument of the former Treasurer Wayne Swan, the member for Lilley, when confronted with the reality of the debt trajectory Labor put this nation on. When asked: what are you going to do about the debt limit? His response was, 'That will be someone else's problem.' Didn't that say it all? That is the Labor way. It is always someone else's problem.

The Australian public know—and they sent this message to the Labor Party at the last election—that these political problems do not just swap from one side of the chamber to the other. They are the nation's problems. They are the people's problems. They are the debt and deficit burdens that our citizens must carry. They are the impairments to our economy and people's livelihoods and living prospects. They are our problems. They are made the problems of all Australians.

The problem they also have is that Labor is failing to address this harsh reality. We have seen the populist politicking. We have seen Labor's headline hunting. We have seen the scaremongering. What we have not seen today and what Labor continue not to demonstrate is any sense of accountability and responsibility for its actions to deal with the consequences it created or the leadership needed to steer this nation and its people out of the dark corner of debt and deficit Labor has taken us into. It has no plan for the hard work that is needed to restore the great promise that we should be talking about—and that is the promise of our nation.

We have the promise of a great nation, of living standards that are envied around the world and that we want to carry forward and sustain for future generations. That is the great promise of Australia. What did Labor want to do? They wanted to trash and junk that and not even address the consequences of their actions—debt and deficit. And we have nothing to show for it. We have no improved productive capability. We have no better chance to succeed. We have no opportunities that have been enhanced. We have no infrastructure that is to be the building blocks and sinews of enterprise and commerce. We do not have that. We just have fudged numbers that Labor left to the incoming government, claiming these absolutely ridiculous revenue projections that were never going to materialise. Instead, they spent every last dollar on that fiction of revenue and then went even harder.

Do we see Labor addressing any of that? No. But this budget does. This budget is our action plan to take responsibility not for what we created but for what we understand impairs our nation and the damage it does to our citizens, the intergenerational burden it puts onto our kids and the impairment it causes our economy. The chance for us to be all that we can be—that is what drives us. That means we have to deal with the debt and deficit legacy that Labor gave us.

We saw in this parliament today shadow minister after shadow minister reframing contrived arguments about cuts, only for them to hear time and time again, 'No, there are more resources going into those areas. There is more effort going into the building blocks of our future potential. There are more opportunities that we are working to create for our citizens.' We do not ask for our people anything other than a chance for them to be their very best. But the Labor Party come in here and talk about a young person's future as if it is inextricably linked to a life on welfare. When did we give up on people? When did we give up on our potential? When did we stop striving to enable people to be their very best? When did we stop recognising that economic opportunity and prosperity needs to be won? It needs to be earned. It is not a gift that we just pull off the shelf. When did we stop saying to young people and to all of our citizens: 'Be the best you can be. Have a go.'

We will support people through targeted expenditure and by transferring consumption into investment in our future prospects by tackling the debt and having an economic management plan that says, 'We as a nation can do so much better if we all pull together and tackle the horrendous legacy that this former Labor government has left us,' and that gives us the chance to be our very best and recognises that in the middle of this century there will be three people working for every one in retirement compared to the five working for every one in retirement now.

If that were not enough of a challenge, what do Labor want to do? They want to fit people up with the burden of debt and deficit. They have already started. Did you know $1 billion a month goes into servicing the debt that Labor created? That is right now. What could we do with that $1 billion? What new potential could we support? What enterprise investment could we make? What chance could we as a government have to provide the framework for our citizens to be their very best? What could we deploy those resources to do? There are so many things. Instead, what do we get? We get politicking. We get a fanciful creation of hardship and harm, when Labor do not even want to look at what is in the budget.

We have said to the Australian public that the great promise of our land is something that we all need to work for together. We have mapped out our economic strategy. The budget is a key part of that. We are faithfully honouring our commitment to build a strong and prosperous economy because, through that strength, we can be safe in the assurance that we can sustain the living standards that people look for and secure in the knowledge that the safety net we provide the vulnerable is not vulnerable itself because of our inability to finance it.

We said we would stop the boats, and we have done that. We said we would axe the carbon tax. Do you know what is ironic? So did Labor. We had tax rises and an expenditure explosion under Labor and, in opposition, they are still causing that. Because of Labor, the carbon tax that they promised we would not have and that they said they would terminate will go up again on 1 July. It will extend its reach to on-road heavy transport. Here is a chance for them to do something. If they believe anything that they have said today about the cost of living, they should help lift that financial burden. But they will not. Of course they will not, because it is all about politics. It has always been about politics. It has never been about anything else for Labor but politics.

Do you know what our nation is calling for? It is calling for leadership. It is saying to our parliaments and our governments: take a longer term view, realise the changes that are happening in our world and in our nation and build the economic capacity so that we can fulfil that promise—the promise of a great country, with a living standard that is envied around the world. You cannot achieve that if you hock your future on debt and deficit, on false promises, on popularity stakes, on squibbing the tough call to repair the budget. If we do not repair it, that will kill our promise for the kind of life that we hope for ourselves, for those who have already gone before us and for those who will follow us. That is what this budget is about. That is what this economic action plan is about. That is the challenge that this parliament faces and, frankly, our nation faces. Do we want more of the Labor style of politics?

Government members: No!

I have never met anybody who wants more of this headline hunting, this crass populism or this politicking that is all about trying to win the headlines tomorrow but losing our future. Nobody wants that. That is why the government was changed, with adults in charge who have real competency and a considered measured plan to build that strong, prosperous economy, who recognise through that strength that we can be our very best. We can say to the vulnerable: 'Don't be uncertain about our capacity as a nation to meet your needs for the future.' We can say to our young people: 'Please invest in yourself so that you have brighter prospects, a livelihood you can aspire to. We will invest in you, but invest yourself.' We say to those in the workforce, 'You know this can't keep going,' and they do know. They are prepared to make a contribution. They are prepared to make a second effort. They are prepared to share in the rebuilding of our potential and the great promise of our country. We are up for that. We are on board for that. It is not easy.

Labor probably has not realised that politics and governance can be hard sometimes, because it is about principle; it is about consistency; it is about shaping a plan and helping our citizens be their very best as we are working to make our nation have the best prospects, to be its very best. So I say to those opposite: 'Ditch the Labor playbook. Get on board. This is too important for you to muck around with.' (Time expired)

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When the minister indicates that the country wants leadership, I dare say the country wants more. What the country wants more of is honest leadership. It wants people who are going for high office to honour and to uphold the commitments they made to the Australian people. What we have found is that a reaction has occurred across the country—a recoil has occurred—from people seeing what the government have done and contrasting it with what they committed to do when they were in opposition—and they cannot even defend themselves. When people questioned the Prime Minister about whether or not this budget is fair dinkum, legit and upholding what they said, he said that the budget was 'fundamentally honest'. It is not wholeheartedly honest; it is 'fundamentally honest'. It is like 'I'm fundamentally not guilty' or 'I may be fundamentally right.' They cannot even uphold what they are doing. The reason is that there are a plethora of quotes which demonstrate that he is going to have a problem saying that he is 'fundamentally honest'. It is sort of like 'honest John' was really honest! You do realise that when they used to be called him 'honest John' it was done tongue-in-cheek—just like this commitment about your own budget being fundamentally honest.

I was wondering why there were so many senior people who looked like they were getting a sunburn. In actual fact, they all had these red foreheads. It was from the palms that keep going up to their forehead when they read all the Tony Abbott quotes. Let us look at the Prime Minister's quotes—and I have some here, funnily enough. He said:

It is an absolute principle of democracy that governments should not and must not say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards.

That is what he said.

We stand for lower, simpler, fairer taxes, not great big new taxes …

That was in 2010. What about the other one on the flood levy.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don't you worry about all these little boiling frogs that are starting to jump on the back bench. You will be getting a lot hotter—trust me!

The one thing that [people] will never have to suffer under a Coalition government is an unnecessary new tax, a tax that could easily be replaced by savings found from the budget."

That is Tony Abbott in 2011. People who work hard should not be 'hit with higher taxes'. He said that in 2012. This next one is a pearler. The member for Corio and I had to sit through this one in the last term of parliament. Do you remember it? This is in the 'Best of Tony Abbott' DVD:

… there can be no tax collection without an election. If this government had any honesty, any decency, that is what we would have: an election now.

Remember that one. 2011 was a very productive year for the Prime Minister. He was churning out these quotes left, right and centre. I will give you another one:

No country ever got rich by increasing taxation. No country ever built a strong economy by clobbering itself with tax after tax after tax.

The GP tax, the hospital tax—look at all the things that you have done. And there is your other tax on top of that.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Carbon tax.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I actually welcome that interjection, because the absolute principal quote that I read out earlier, Member for Riverina, is that conservatives often say: 'What about the carbon tax?' But you built this edifice. You clobbered us for a whole term of parliament on the basis that you would be better. You said that the whole time.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are? Oh, really, you think you are! I do not think the public thinks you are when they see 'no cuts to health'—cuts to health; 'no cuts to education'—cut education. It is an $80 billion hit that you have committed under this budget. 'No changes to the pension.' You have got pensioners shirt-fronting the Prime Minister on morning TV. They know full well that they are being hit. What is fundamental here is the fact that you have deliberately gone out and misled the public, and your chickens are coming home to roost. That is why you get this little smattering from time to time of backbenchers chipping in, because it is getting a bit uncomfortable on that side of the House—like I said, those palms are hitting the forehead—when they see the quotes from the Prime Minister and remember, 'Oh, yes, he did say that.' You have a plethora of them. The final one I want to hit is the one in Real Solutions—the one that came with the 'conditions apply' little caveat on it:

We pledge to the families of Australia that we will never make your lives harder by imposing unnecessary new taxes.

It was a shameful display through the election and it is a shameful effort in this budget for failing to honour what you said you would do. (Time expired)

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for McMahon has some hide. The member for McMahon has brought this MPI into the chamber, completely in denial of the voters of Australia at the last election. The voters of Australia gave us the most emphatic mandate in 100 years. Labor's primary vote was the lowest since 1903. And do you know why? Because voters saw a bad government that had no idea how to manage the Australian economy.

Despite 600 promises that they were going to deliver a budget surplus, those opposite gave us world-record budget deficits—climbing mountains of debt equivalent to $667 billion over the coming decade, $123 billion of cumulative deficits and, what is worse, an interest bill of more than $12 billion a year, or $1 billion a month. You would think that, when you are handing out that amount of money, you would become popular. But in fact the contrary happened. The Australian people woke up to the reality that every man, woman and child in Australia today had been saddled with $13½ thousand of debt which, in the next 10 years, will climb to a record $24½ thousand. That is the legacy of the Labor Party.

When the IMF looked at the spending commitments that the Labor Party left us, it found that they were the highest among 17 advanced economies of the world. Our spending commitments were higher than Korea and China, more than Japan, the United States and Canada or France and Germany. That was your legacy.

So we made one fundamental promise to the Australian people, and that fundamental promise was that we would bring the budget back into balance and we would move it into surplus over time. In Joe Hockey's budget last night, he did exactly that. There were two major themes in the budget last night. The first was to start to pay back Labor's debt. Over the next 10 years, we will pay back $300 billion of Labor's debt and we will, as a result, save $16 billion in interest payments alone. That is an incredible start on the major job ahead of us. The second key theme in the budget last night was the structural reform that will lay the foundation for the future growth and prosperity of the Australian economy.

First is infrastructure. A record $50 billion is being invested in transport infrastructure; and, when you add that to the contribution of the states and the private sector, that is $125 billion. There are major road projects in every state, including the WestConnex project in New South Wales and the East West Link in my own state of Victoria. This is a massive commitment to get people into work and to make Australians' lives that much easier.

A second component of our growth strategy is to build education and innovation for the future. A medical research future fund worth $20 billion, without parallel around the world, will be the pride of the Australian educational and medical sectors. Deregulating uni fees, which the member for Fraser completely agrees with, will have a huge impact on lifting excellence in our university sector. Those who are on apprenticeships, those who are in TAFE and those who are getting sub-bachelor degrees will also get assistance, for the very first time, from this Commonwealth.

The third element of our growth agenda is to boost participation—helping aged Australians get back into the workforce with incentives for employers, helping mothers to stay in the workforce with the Paid Parental Leave scheme, helping young people move off the DSP or other welfare payments and into employment.

That is what we are on about, and it all comes back to our fundamental values of free enterprise, support for the individual and a smaller role for the state. That is what the Australian people elected us to do at the last election, that is why it is a fundamentally honest budget that the Treasurer has delivered and that is why we will continue to win the confidence of the Australian people.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a budget of broken promises and nasty surprises like we have never seen before. This is a budget paid for by pensioners, by the sick and by the elderly. This is a budget that was sold, hawked, on the basis of a manufactured budget emergency that does not exist. This is a budget not just of broken promises but in which every single promise that was made by this government has been broken, including the core tenet expressed by the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, when he said: 'We will not break any promises.' That was his core promise—not to break any—and he has done the exact opposite and broken every single promise.

If you listened to government members speaking on this, including the Prime Minister or the Treasurer, you would think that somehow a tax hike was a tax cut. You would think that, somehow, taking money away from pensioners and making life more difficult for the sick and elderly was a good thing for them—that this was what they wanted and expected and that this would make their lives easier. We have heard all of those nice, touchy-feely words from the government about 'being your best possible self', about giving you the opportunity to be the best you can be and making your life easier. And how are they making life easier? With a great big new tax on everything—a massive fuel tax hike. People did not expect that. It came as a bit of a surprise to me. It came as a bit of a surprise to all Australians. But who does it hit the hardest? It hits families. It hits individuals. It hits you wherever you are. The further you are in regional Australia, the harder it hits you. The sicker you are, the harder it hits you because you have to travel to hospital more often.

Who else does it hit? It hits small business. It will hit small business harder than anyone else. Small businesses, who are the engine room of this country and provide job creation, are getting hit hard and they are getting hit hard every day. Yet Tony Abbott and the members of his government go out there and say: 'We're the friend of small business, so just bend over a little while we give you a little sting. You'll be fine with it, because we're your best friend.' Just remember: every time you bend over and feel that little paddle, that little sting, that is the Liberal government being your friend. They are not the friend of small business people I know.

This is a budget that breaks absolutely every core promise that was made. This is a budget that destroys Medicare and bulk-billing. In a pernicious and nasty way, it not only hits the elderly—the sicker you are, the more you pay—but also hits doctors directly. A doctor will be penalised if they bulk-bill you; a doctor's Medicare schedule fee will come down to disincentivise them from providing bulk-billed services. Who will be the people who suffer the most? I can assure you it will not be too many of the people sitting in this chamber today. It will be the elderly; it will be the veterans; it will be people in rural and regional communities. It will be those people who have to take their children to the doctor or the hospital—and it will be not just for a visit to the GP but for your scripts, your X-rays and your blood tests every time you go. They are the people who will suffer. They are ripping the guts out of Medicare by stealth, because there was no discussion of this prior to the election. Finally, Tony Abbott gets to do what he has always dreamt he would do. He is on the public record as hating Medicare; he has always hated Medicare. He does not believe in universal health care. This is his one opportunity and he has done it. He is attacking doctors and attacking patients.

He is attacking self-funded retirees. Here are a group of people in the community who were 100 per cent behind the Prime Minister: 'Go in there and make life easier for us!' He has done just that by stinging them as well. They will lose access to their healthcare cards through means testing. Again, I did not hear about that before the election. Self-funded retirees right now will be looking over this and saying, 'When did we vote for this? Where was our opportunity to make an informed decision prior to the election?' Prior to the election all we heard was a repeated rant, like a mantra from somebody squatting in a cave: 'No cuts to health. No cuts to education. No changes to the pension. No adverse changes to superannuation.' We heard this mantra repeated over and over, until he had hypnotised everyone. I suppose there was a good reason people would believe him. He said, 'No excuses. No broken promises. We will not break our promises. We will not break our commitments to the Australian people.' Then he turns up the next day and says, 'We did not make any of those promises.' Black is white; white is black.

There is a great big new tax on everything, including a fuel tax hike. For pensioners, there is the cessation of proper indexing, which means pensioners lose and they lose today. The increase of the pension age to 70 is completely unreasonable and there was nothing about it in the pre-election promises the government made. It is a disgrace. (Time expired)

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I sit here today listening to the debate on this matter of public importance, and earlier in question time, I am beginning to wonder whether I am in some sort of a parallel universe. Watching the opposition today is like watching a mob of graffiti artists jeering as someone cleans up their mess. The appropriate form of behaviour for the opposition at the moment would be to sit there quietly and hang their heads in shame.

They have some sort of a hide to come in here and say anything at all. The task that has been given to the government is to fix the economy. Today we are talking about the budget. The budget outlines how the coalition is going to reposition the Australian economy and get things back on track. What is a pity and a shame, and what makes me disappointed, is that we cannot go back and fix everything the Labor Party did in government. We cannot go back and change those overpriced school halls to some sort of meaningful education program. We cannot help the people who went broke because of Labor's ill-conceived home insulation program. We cannot get those contractors in my electorate who were contracted to the federal government the hundreds of thousands of dollars they are owed because of Labor's mismanaged schemes. It is just a shame we cannot go back and repair all the damage that has been done.

What is being debated this week is the economic damage that has been done. We are trying to turn this around. The chardonnay-sipping socialists that sit there on the opposition benches are so disconnected from the Australian people that they do not know what they are talking about. I can tell you what the people are saying in my electorate. I represent people with real dirt under their nails. I represent the real workers of this country and I tell you what: they want us to fix this mess. They want an opportunity for their children to have a job and to go to university; they know what it is like to live within their means. In this budget we have seen a refocus: a focus on things that will improve the productivity of this country.

In infrastructure, we will see the inland rail finally begun after years of discussion. The great irony of this is that the interest this country is paying at the moment could build two railway lines from Melbourne to Brisbane a year. Every six months we could build another railway line. By the time we pay their debt back, we could have a six-lane railway link from Melbourne to Brisbane just on the interest.

As we set about fixing the mess of the Labor Party, we are redressing their mess in other ways. We are re-establishing our relationship with our trading partners. As we speak, cattle are being shipped to Indonesia again, despite the fact that the northern cattle industry was pretty well destroyed. They are a resilient bunch and they are coming back thanks to the work of this government. We are organising the signing of a free trade agreement with our major trading partners South Korea and Japan. We are in negotiations with China. So, as we debate matters around the budget this week and the opposition has the hide to come in here and raise a matter of public importance of such a frivolous nature, it is important to remember how we got here—how we went from a country that had money in the bank to one with a hopeless debt. I tell you what: the Labor Party might not realise it, but the people in my electorate—the pensioners and the people who actually work for a living—understand that you have to live within your means. While they may not be happy with every decision that was made in this budget they understand the need for it.

I was listening to the debate today on the Green Army project and the members of the opposition are treating this as some sort of assault on the trade union movement. The most stabilising force you can bring to a family is a job. I can tell you that people in western New South Wales and regional Australia do not think the opportunity to have a job is some sort of an imposition. They realise that to bring stability to a family, when we are talking about generational unemployment, is a real turnaround. Those people understand that you need a government that has the guts to do what is right and not just what is popular.

It is an unusual day when we have the arsonist arguing with the fire brigade. But that is what we are seeing today. I would suggest that members of the opposition go home, have a good cup of humility, sit down and think about the error of their ways.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on today's matter of public importance, which is actually about broken promises. To those opposite, who may not understand what a promise is: today's matter of public importance is about the fact that Tony Abbott said one thing before he came to government, and did exactly the opposite once elected. He broke the promises he made to the Australian people, and particularly to people in the regions, like the people in Bendigo. And when he was in Bendigo, he did not mention a word of what was in last night's budget. In fact, when Tony Abbott stood out the front of the Bendigo hospital in September 2012, he made no mention of the health cuts we saw in last night's budget. He actually said that the Bendigo hospital budget was already under pressure, and that it would only get worse under the then current government. The only problem with what the then Leader of the Opposition said was that he was about 12 months too early: the budget for the Bendigo hospital got worse on the day of the election of this government—because the Prime Minister did not keep his promise and he has cut funding to the Bendigo hospital.

On local radio in my electorate of Bendigo, a regional community, the Prime Minister also said on schools in Bendigo that they would not be worse off. He said, 'We don't want any existing schools to be worse off'—another broken promise. Last night in the budget, the government did proceed with cutting funding to schools in the Bendigo electorate. And it was not just the fourth and fifth years of the Gonski reforms; it was also the funding for students with disability. Schools desperately need this funding to help the students in the most need.

The broken promises do not stop with the Prime Minister. Last year, we also had a visit to the electorate by Joe Hockey, who dared to turn up at a manufacturer in Bendigo and walk around in his high-vis vest, shaking hands with the workers—and not once did he to talk to them about the fact that he was going to increase the petrol tax. Not once did he talk to them about the fact that has was going to introduce a GP tax. If the then shadow Treasurer had been genuine and honest about engaging with those workers, he had a chance to be up-front and to tell them exactly what he would do in his first budget. But he did not. He lied. And he broke a promise. When he said there would be no new taxes, he lied to those people in Epsom. He lied by introducing—

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Bendigo will desist from accusing someone of lying. I ask her to withdraw those words.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw those remarks, and rephrase them: he did not tell the truth to those workers when he was talking to them about the increases in tax. He did not let them in on the government's secret that it would be introducing a petrol tax.

For those who do not know much about regional Australia, petrol is a big issue. The drive from one end of the Bendigo electorate to the other takes 2½ hours. It is 150 kilometres. That is a lot of petrol required to get from top to bottom. An increase in the petrol tax hits regional Australia the hardest. For those rurally based members of parliament, good luck when you get home and have to hear the onslaught from your constituents, upset about the fact that every time they put petrol into their cars they will be blaming you and this government, because you are the ones that have increased the petrol tax.

Let's not stop at the petrol tax. When these two were in town, they did not talk about the GP super-tax; they did not talk about slugging every single person that goes to a GP clinic and every single person that accesses bulk-billing in the Bendigo electorate with an extra $7. At the moment, bulk-billing in Bendigo is at 76 per cent. It is at its highest rate in over a decade. Yet now those households will have to pay an extra $7 every time they go to the GP. And, like people in most rural areas, they are not wealthy people. Thirty per cent of the electorate is surviving on less than $600 a week—and yet in this budget, the government are asking them to pay the most. Whether it be an increase in the cost of going to the doctor, an increase in the cost of paying for their medicine, paying extra via a petrol tax, cutting funding to their schools or cutting funding to health, the government have demonstrated one thing—and that is they simply do not care about Bendigo or regional Victoria.

I am going to finish on an email that I received from a single mother who lives in Strathfieldsaye. Strathfieldsaye is one of those suburbs in the growth corridor of Bendigo. It is an area where people are just starting to get by and are doing it tough. This single mum has three children, and she is worried about the attacks in this budget. (Time expired)

Louise Markus (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What the members opposite have failed to reflect on today are the facts. What legacy was left by the former Howard government to them and to the Australian people? What did they do with that legacy? And what legacy have they left for the Australian people, and for the coalition government? The question that we are attempting to address in the budget is: what legacy do we want to leave and invest in for the future of every Australian?

Let us just mention for a moment the former government: they left Australians with $123 billion of deficit and no path back to surplus. I have not heard one member opposite talk about how they would do that, although they made that promise too many times in the last term never to have met it.

Our budget repair efforts mean that deficits in our first four years are now projected to be $60 billion, with a surplus of well over one per cent of GDP projected by 2024-25. Gross government debt is now forecast to be $389 billion in 2023-24, compared with the $667 billion left behind by the former government. This reduction in projected debt of nearly $300 billion also assumes that we provide future tax relief to address bracket creep—I do not hear the members opposite mentioning that.

Let us reflect on the mess that Labor have left us. Let us remind both members opposite and the Australian people—I am sure many understand this—that every time Labor step in they create a mess, not just in terms of the budget and government debt but also for Australians and their opportunities. But what we on this side of politics do is get the budget back under control and, again, set a framework where Australians can prosper, and where people who are the most disadvantaged have greater opportunities.

That is something members opposite do not understand. We want to create an environment where our young people and people with disabilities have opportunities to reach their fullest potential. You sell them short when you relegate them to a life of dependency. That is not what we espouse or want for them. We believe they can achieve their best.

When Labor came to office it inherited a surplus of $20 billion, with no debt, and $45 billion in the bank. Over six budgets, Labor increased spending by over 50 per cent. In fact, the International Monetary Fund recently found that if Australia's spending were to continue in the same way it would grow faster than any of the 17 advanced economies profiled.

What are we contributing towards, for the future? This is about all Australians contributing towards building a future where young people and single mothers have opportunities to gain employment and to provide a future for their families. Contributions from the budget will enable delivery of a critical infrastructure growth package, the world's biggest medical research endowment fund and a competitive deregulated higher education system. Our future standard of living is at risk if we do nothing. But we have a plan. The days of borrowing and spending must come to an end.

It is time for all of us—every one of us in this place, including members opposite—to contribute to our future. Our future depends on what decisions we make today, whether it be our turn to contribute or our turn to build. This challenge is not of our making, but we are willing to take the responsibility and make the tough decisions for our future. Let me remind the members opposite: we did promise to get the budget back under control. We did promise to scrap the carbon tax, to end the waste, to stop the boats and to build the roads of the 21st century. That is what this budget is doing.

We are paying $1 billion of interest every month. That is $1 billion of wasted money because of the decisions of the former government. It is money that could be well spent in the electorate of Macquarie—and in many other electorates, including the electorates of those on the opposite side. We are all having to bear the brunt of this legacy. Labor got into the habit of promising and then changing its mind. The first example that springs to mind is the world's biggest carbon tax, where families are forced to pay higher electricity bills. We the coalition are setting up for the future. The commitments we have made and delivered are—(Time expired)

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a government that was elected on a wave of nostalgia, wishful thinking and a pack of lies. There can be no greater evidence of this than the budget, because what we have here is a budget of betrayal of those commitments given in the election campaign and the period running up to it. It is fundamentally a betrayal of the old. In an interview on 6 September 2013 Tony Abbott said there would be 'no changes to pensions'. What do we have in this budget? There are new indexation arrangements for pensions. The Prime Minister is getting rid of the male total average weekly earnings index and the Pensioner and Beneficiary Living Cost Index and replacing it with the inflation rate. He is doing the same thing for disability, carer and parenting payments. This is hacking into pensioners, after a solemn commitment was given. It is a betrayal of pensioners.

If that were not enough, it is a betrayal of taxpayers everywhere. Tony Abbott, on 20 November 2012, said 'We're about reducing taxes, not increasing taxes. We're about getting rid of taxes, not imposing new taxes.' Again, this is a betrayal of the commitment he made at that time. It is a betrayal of the young. We know Christopher Pyne said that there would be no plans to increase university fees, yet now students face the prospect of $100,000 degrees. They face the prospect of having to borrow to get a trade. They face the prospect of having no income support for six months if they are under the age of 30. That will make some people in my electorate couch surf. It will make them homeless. That is the reality of it. It is a brutal reality. It is a betrayal of the young. It is not welcoming them with opportunity; it is betrayal.

It is betrayal of families and particularly single-income families, who are, let's face it, the support base of the coalition. Yet there is an attack on them with a reduction in family tax benefit part B. Once your child hits six, you are off it. It is a betrayal of those families who now have to pay $7 to see the doctor. It is a betrayal of motorists, who will now have to pay every time they go to the bowser. Motorists in my electorate—in places like Clare and Kapunda, my home town, up the track—will now have to pay a petrol tax to pay for infrastructure in the cities. That is who will have to pay for it. If I were a rural MP from the coalition side I would be very worried about going home next week.

It is also a betrayal of the states. We saw that with the New South Wales Premier today and the Queensland Premier. It is a betrayal of every local government in the country because their financial assistance grants have been frozen—another great thing for country roads. It is a betrayal of rural Australia. They are the ones who will suffer hardest under this budget. It is a betrayal of everybody who needs a school or a hospital or expects a decent school or hospital in the future, because $80 billion is coming out over the next 10 years. That is $18 billion coming out of schools and hospitals. It is a betrayal of GPs—those GPs who do want to bulk-bill and those GPs who do want to provide a good service. Now they will be turned into tax collectors so that the Treasurer can build his research fund. It is a betrayal of the Australian people and a betrayal of straight talk, of the idea that your word is your bond. The Prime Minister lifted expectations in this regard. On 22 August 2011, he said:

Nothing could be more calculated to bring our democracy into disrepute and alienate the citizenry of Australia from their government than if governments were to establish by precedent that they could say one thing before an election, and do the other afterwards.

They are his words, not mine. Yet what we have here is a budget that can only be defended by the cynical, by the sanctimonious, by the deluded. It is a budget only Judas Iscariot could be proud of. That is the truth of it. It is a budget of betrayal of all those decent people who went out there and believed the Prime Minister and believed the Treasurer and believed the education minister and the commitments they gave. All of those people feel betrayed. If this government thinks they can get away with that betrayal with this spin and these excuses, then they have another think coming.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The hypocrisy of those opposite never ceases to amaze me. They came into this place seven years ago and threw money around like confetti. They racked up a deficit faster than ever before in the history of our country and left debt fast on its way to reaching $700 billion. Their legacy includes an interest bill of almost $12 billion each year. Each year, that is $12 billion of wasted taxpayers' money. After leaving a tsunami of debt in their wake, they then criticise. They moan and groan and whinge and whine when the voters call on the coalition to clean up their mess. It is as if a delinquent child has run through the family house with paint and dirt and garbage, leaving behind a monstrous, chaotic mess in their path. And when they are sent to their room as punishment they refuse. They do a dummy-spit, they drag their feet along the floor, they toss their toys and they throw a tantrum.

The Australian people recognised that the country could not afford another term of a Labor government. They voted in the coalition to clean up Labor's fiscal disaster, to get the economy back on track—promoting growth and jobs—to implement an economic action strategy that allowed everyone to get ahead and ensure prosperity for generations to come. Yet, when it comes to delivering on this promise, Labor ignores the mandate Australians gave to the coalition government. It is typical of those opposite to focus on petty politics when the real issue at hand is our nation's economy and our international standing.

Is the opposition floridly psychotic? They rack up $123 billion in cumulative deficits, introduce budgets with massive structural deficits and think that no-one will ever have to pay it back. They inherit a $20 billion surplus, and in just six years leave behind a projected $30 billion deficit, turning nearly $50 billion in the bank into a projected net debt well over $200 billion, causing the fastest deterioration in debt in dollar terms and as a share of GDP.

Australians know that the coalition would never allow our nation's finances to become this bad. But unfortunately, due to the incompetence of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments, they are this bad. Perhaps, instead of forcing the Australian people to pay back the money squandered by the previous Labor government, they would like to offer to pay it off themselves. However, sadly, history shows they simply do not care. They do not care about the hard-earned dollars the Australian people give to the government with the trust and belief that it will be spent efficiently, effectively and in the best interests of the Australian people. Those opposite took to the budget like an arsonist takes to dry bushland in the heat of summer—setting fire to it all, burning all that is standing in their sights, letting it spread and get bigger and bigger and bigger until it was totally out of control. And then in come the firefighters, the coalition government, working hard to put out the fire. And what does Labor do? They squeeze the hose, cut off the water and fan the flames. And that is where we stand today: with the fire still burning on our nation's budget and with Labor playing politics and disregarding sense and good policy, completely ignoring their responsibility to all Australians and ignoring their responsibility to future generations. Enough is enough. Let the government get on with the job. Let us act in the best interests of all Australians.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time for the discussion has concluded.