Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Women earn less per week than men. Women face less job security than men. Women retire with less than men. So what did the Abbott-Turnbull government do about it in this Tuesday's budget? They delivered a budget that reserves its deepest, harshest cuts for women. This is a squib of a budget. It does nothing to advance the priorities and aspirations of Australia's women. It does everything to undermine them. This Prime Minister had an opportunity to mend the damage done by his predecessor, but he decided it was more important to give multimillionaires a tax cut.

But that costs money, and where was he going to find the money? Where did he go? He cut paid parental leave. By locking up the cuts from the 2015 budget he ensured that up to 80,000 women are left as much as $11,800 worse off. He cut Medicare by nearly $1 billion and shut down the Child Dental Benefits Schedule. He made cuts to women's diagnostic imaging and tests such as pap smears. He did all of this to pay for the tax for the wealthy. More than one million low-income families will lose vital family payments and their tax will not change by a dollar. This is an unfair budget from an unfit government. It is an unfair budget for women. (Time expired)