Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When you drop $50 billion in tax cuts to the big end of town in your budget, you do not have a lot of dough left over to do the things that matter to ordinary Australians.

The one big disappointment in this budget is jobs. This is a government that used to run on the slogan of 'jobs and growth'. But if you look at the jobs projection in this budget, there will be 95,000 fewer jobs in the economy at the end of the forward estimates. No wonder they have dropped the jobs-and-growth slogan!

The Prime Minister spent a lot of time in this budget trying to distance himself from the member for Warringah. But the people of Australia will not be fooled by this. The proposition to extend the pension age to the longest and the oldest pension age in the Western world is still there. Only a bloke who has worked as a merchant banker for his entire life would think that you can work until the age of 70 and that everything is going to be okay. The working people of Australia are not buying it.

And when it comes to infrastructure, the bloke who called himself the 'infrastructure Prime Minister' is the guy who is actually spending less money on infrastructure in this budget than their woeful performance in the last budget. Is there any reason why they are looking at this bloke and saying, 'This is the greatest pea-and-thimble trick in Australian politics'? The people of Australia deserve a better Prime Minister and they deserve a better budget.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members' statements has concluded.