Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I think the biggest risk is the oppo­sition. We saw, by their performance when I was speaking earlier, that they have no interest in education, they have no interest in health. They only have interest in negative political point-scoring. They only have interest in opposing. What we do know is that they have plans to slash the investment we are making in schools and in education more broadly and in health. We know they went to the last election promising to cut hundreds of millions of dollars out of funding that would have supported low-income students going to university. They targeted those people's opportunities. We now know that they want to cut $70 billion—$70 billion—from our budget. That would mean, for instance, stopping paying pensioners for two years. That is the size of the cut they are going to impose on Australians. We believe in investing in Australia's future, not slashing opportunities. (Time expired)