Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

We see the priorities of the opposition, and we see yet again their laserlike focus on negativity and their complete refusal to ever tell Australians what their plans for the future would involve, which of course we know would involve cutting to the bone because that is what Liberals do. That is what Liberals do.

That question is the same sort of thing we heard from the Leader of the Opposition today—it might have been last night—when he said this budget offered 'no hope'. No hope. What a thing to say of a budget that delivers disability care for over 400,000 Australians with permanent and significant disability in this country. You go out and say, 'There is no hope.' The extraordinary negativity in the face of what is supposed to be a bipartisan reform reflects very, very badly on the Leader of the Opposition and his representative, Senator Abetz, in this place.

And it is extraordinary in the face of a reform of schools to fund the schools of Australia so we no longer leave so many students behind, something we on this side regard as unacceptable. Why should someone's chance in life be determined by their postcode? That is the attitude of the opposition. It is not the attitude or the vision of the Labor Party. That is why we have done the hard yards in this budget to reform our schools and to provision for it.

But all the opposition can talk about, all they ever want to talk about, is asylum seekers. All they ever want to talk about is negativity. What they will not tell the Australian people is that they actually have no plan to manage this. It is amazing. Mr Abbott's position has gone from, 'I'll stop the boats,' to, 'We'll demonstrably diminish the flow.' (Time expired)