Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Cuts to family benefits and an increase to the GST will hit middle- and low-income families in my electorate the hardest. This is hardly what you would call tax reform. But as we have seen, this Abbott-Turnbull government does not have a plan for tax reform but it has a program for cuts to family tax benefits, attacks on universal health care with cuts to the Medicare safety net and cuts to grants for the community services sector. There are cuts everywhere.

The Prime Minister loudly pontificates about increasing the GST and then—surprise, surprise—feigns outrage at being called to account by Labor. Maybe we hit a little bit too close to the bone, knowing that some of his Liberal colleagues are more than a little bit nervous about the public reactions in their own electorates. We have seen what happens when the Prime Minister acts on his thought bubbles. We end up with a third-rate copper network NBN. Is it any surprise, then, that Australians are concerned about the GST?

We get it: the Prime Minister and his frontbench do not care about the Australian people. The Minister for Social Services can hardly bring himself to use the word 'family' unless it is in the title of a bill. He is the real Grinch. With significant cuts across his portfolio and calling people with disabilities 'a burden', what could be more inhumane and Grinch-like than that?

We are up for a discussion on fair tax reform. Fair tax reform means that all options should be considered. It means we stop increasing the cost of living for families who can least afford it. It means that middle- and low-income earners do not bear the brunt of the unfair cuts for the prince of Point Piper's pals.