Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If the coalition is re-elected on 2 July, Australian pensioners, families and job seekers can expect more pain and more cuts. The unlegislated measures that were contained in the 2014-15 budget form part of the budget that was announced on Tuesday night, and that means that if the coalition is elected they will become law. It will mean increasing the pension age to 70. It will mean cuts to paid parental leave that will affect 80,000 new mums. It will mean cutting family payments that will hurt 1½ million Australian families. It will mean cuts to young job seekers that will force them to live on nothing for a month.

All of that describes my electorate of Geelong. All of that impacts the very heart of the electorate. When you look at the various scenarios published in the papers around the effects of the budget, all of them make depressing reading. A couple on a single income of $87,000 with two children in primary school will be $2,300 worse off, largely through cuts to the schoolkids bonus and the end-of-year supplements for the family tax benefits. If you go through each of these scenarios for people who make up the electorate of Corio, they are all going to be worse off. This was a government that, when it was elected, began de-industrialising Australia. They goaded Australian manufacturing offshore, and now they are shredding the safety net that people rely on.