Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do not know what is in the water today. You had better check, because it would seem that the briefing notes that the government senators have been provided with for today's debate were written last night over a few glasses of red!

Senator Whish-Wilson interjecting—

And a cigar or two! Let me just say one thing: Senator Back is here in the chamber, so this is a good place to start. The way that the budget affects people on high incomes of $200,000 or more—people like you and me—is that we are going to pay $400 a year extra tax. That is $7.60 a week. It would not even buy you a cheap bottle of red.

Consider the single parents who are out there, with two children, whose parenting payment has just been cut to the tune of $65 a week. Their weekly income is about $600 a week all up. What does that $65 a week get them? Guess what? It does not get them a doctor's appointment, it does not get them a visit to a GP, which in my home town currently costs $76, and it does not even get the kids their antibiotics prescription, because that will now cost $47 under the announcement made yesterday. So we have a family—a mum with kids, trying to decide what on earth to do. Will she consult Dr Google, and even that will not get her a prescription? She actually has to get to the doctor to get a prescription for her sick child. What will she do? Sixty-five dollars is more than some people pay for food for their whole family for a week. These are the kinds of decisions that last night's budget is actually going to force people to make. It is a disgrace. This is a budget that hurts so many people and helps so few.

Andrew Leigh, member for Fraser, wrote an article yesterday and it was very thought provoking:

In an environment when the three richest people in Australia have more wealth than the bottom one million, the government is cutting foreign aid and student support to make room for tax breaks to multi-millionaire superannuants and multinational firms.

That is the truth of it: this budget is a clear victory for Australia's one per cent.

If you think that people are not gutted by what they heard last night—and I have to say it was a gut-wrenching read, and I join with Senator Siewert in the rage that I felt—people know that single parents and parents with disabled children will be the hardest hit under the changes announced last night. One woman rang my office this morning in tears. This is what she said:

I have four kids and they all have disabilities. This budget, in every way, kills my children's future—their ability to get an education, their ability to be part of society, their ability to earn a living. They are penalised because they are disabled and because they are young.

As Senator Urquhart said, the whole commitment to supporting kids with disabilities and mainstreaming kids with disabilities in schools, worth $100 million a year, has gone.

If that were all that is gone, people could maybe manage. It is such a stress. On one hand we are trying to force people into work and on the other hand we are taking away every mechanism there is to help them get work. Outside school hours care and child care are critical issues in this whole debate, and there was a $450 million cut last night. For Indigenous children and family centres, $78 million a year is gone. And $500 million a year has been taken out of the universal access to preschool program. The thresholds are frozen for the childcare benefit and for the childcare rebate the cap is frozen. That is fundamentally going to change the lives of Australian families.