Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister has been pitching an anti-welfare line over the last week, suggesting that those receiving benefits of any type are un-Australian 'leaners'. But many of the 6,692 families in my electorate that are helped by family tax benefit part B are working families. Tax benefit B helps them to provide for their children at a time when they have high mortgage commitments. Now this benefit is to be stripped from them once their children turn six. Yet, at the same time, we see these extraordinarily generous tax concessions to wealthy superannuants being vigorously defended by the Prime Minister.

My concern is that Australia is becoming an increasingly unequal society. The statistics bear this out. Over the past generation, the income share of Australia's top one per cent has doubled and that of the top 0.1 per cent has in fact tripled. The percentage spent on wages compared to that diverted to profit has declined, to the disadvantage of those on wages. We need to address this issue of rising inequality, and aspects like family tax benefit part B are part of that. (Time expired)