Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought I'd heard it all in this place, but yesterday I was appalled when we heard the Prime Minister telling a 60-year-old aged-care worker from the electorate of Braddon that they should aspire to get a better job. How shameful! How insulting! But it did remind me of the former member for Braddon and Liberal member in this place Brett Whiteley. When this government was planning to have young people live on nothing for six months whilst looking for a job, he said, 'Some people will cry a little longer than others, but it's for their own good in the long run.' But it gets worse. When the member for Gellibrand was talking about it in this place, he commented that what the Liberal government was trying to do to young people was to have them 'earn, learn or starve', and the former member for Braddon is on the Hansard as saying, 'Hear, hear!' to young people who wanted to get a job. He wanted them to starve. That is this Prime Minister and the former member for Braddon Brett Whiteley, the current candidate for Braddon. It appears that there's nobody in the electorate of Braddon that they don't want to insult. They want to insult old workers; they want to insult young people. They should both apologise. They should come into this place, on the record, with the Prime Minister, and apologise to the people of Braddon for what they are saying about the people of Braddon. It's not okay.