Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a big day today. Today the Abbott government turns two, and hasn't it been a terrific two years? The deficit is up. Debt is up. Unemployment is up. Taxes are up. The number of flags at press conferences is up. They have cut $30 billion from schools. They have cut $50 billion from hospitals. Last year they tried to cut the pension. They also tried to introduce a tax to go to the doctor. This year they are still trying to jack up the cost of university degrees. They declared war on wind farms and the ABC. And they have even doubled the cost of their second-rate version of the NBN

But that is not the best of it: the Attorney General George Brandis told us that 'people have a right to be bigots'. The Treasurer Joe Hockey told us that 'poor people don't drive cars'. The Minister for Agriculture Barnaby Joyce threatened to kill Johnny Depp's dogs—poor old Pistol and Boo. Prince Philip got a knighthood. The Speaker got a helicopter. And the Prime Minister ate an onion—or two—apparently. What a cracking government we have got here.

You know that taste you get when you bite into an onion? That taste is the taste that has been in the back of the mouths of the people of Australia for the last two years, having to put up with this hopeless, hapless, divided, backward-looking government.