Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The election, of course, was a devastating loss for the Liberal Party and I can understand that they have not quite got their balance and bearings today. It will take some time for the party to settle down and get a decent policy position, because we have seen some amazing U-turns and backflips on policy here today—none more than this one here today as outlined by Senator Colbeck. I mean, this sympathy for the states is just extraordinary when before the election, for month after month, we heard attacks on the states; attacks on their health policies and attacks on every policy that they had; attacks about not spending enough; and attacks about their management of the hospital system. And now we have sympathy for the states. Now we have acceptance of their costings; now we have acceptance of their estimates of what is going to happen with their health policies.

The difference is that the Rudd Labor government are actually talking to the states; they are actually discussing funding needs with the states and what they need with their health systems. So it absolutely rings hollow to have this pretend sympathy as to the state system because no sympathy was shown under the Howard government—no sympathy at all. They were squeezed down in their health budgets and their funding; they were squeezed down in every direction so that the Howard government could claim superiority and direct money to programs that they wasted their revenue on.

So we now have this attack on this policy. What is this policy going to do? It is going to remove from lower income earners a tax slug that was put on them in the past. The Liberal opposition is trying to stop the removal of a tax slug on low-income workers on the basis that it subsidises the hospitals. I am sure, if you spoke to anyone who is struggling on $50,000 a year, that they would have absolutely no sympathy for that argument whatsoever—and neither should they. For year after year the Howard government refused to adjust that income level and the result is that people on those low to medium incomes were paying more than they should have into the healthcare system while tax cuts kept being given to higher income earners. The Rudd government are now redressing that system and they are balancing that by discussing with their state counterparts how to make sure that the health system starts to work properly after 12 years of neglect by the Howard government.

It just astounds me that, having suffered that devastating loss in the election, the Liberal Party have not, it seems, learnt a thing. They are now telling people in that income group that they are going to block a provision by the Rudd government that removes this tax impost on people earning $50,000 a year or more. It is just breathtaking. I have to say that it just shows how little the Liberal opposition have got in putting together their policy. The Leader of the Opposition said at one stage that he believes that people earning over $150,000 are doing it tough. We also have the opposition trenchantly opposing the luxury car tax, and yet it is okay for people on a $50,000 a year income to pay this extra tax impost that gradually crept upon them over the years of the Howard government. I would be very astounded if the opposition again go to an election with that kind of policy. I mean, if they are a good opposition then I think they need to go back to the drawing board, recover from their devastating election loss, look again at their policies and look again at the kind of legislation they are blocking. (Time expired)