Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week we saw more reckless comments from this Leader of the Opposition. This time around, as part of another shameless attempt to put his values above everyone else's, he's targeted workers in the Public Service. He has deemed their efforts, as well as the livelihoods of the Australians who depend on them, wasteful. Again, this is an opposition leader that has no idea about communities like mine, where tens of thousands of households rely on federal government services like the NDIS and Centrelink, and I have serious concerns in particular about the effect his ideology will have on veterans.

This government inherited a backlog of nearly 42,000 DVA claims left sitting there by the Liberals. As of the end of last year, the DVA estimates that 97.7 per cent of those claims have been cleared under Labor's watch. How did we do that? We backed our Public Service. We gave the department the staffing and resources it needed to get those claims done because our veterans need those entitlements. We did that because the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide made abundantly clear the results of a DVA that doesn't work. We know that; the opposition leader knows that, too. For him to threaten to bulldoze our Public Service just to put his image ahead of veterans and other everyday Aussies is absolutely disgraceful. It's a policy that only leads to cuts, job losses and long lunches for the bosses.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

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