Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Williams started his contribution in this matter of public importance discussion by talking about amnesia. I am going to remind Senator Williams that the National Party, the Liberal Party and, as a group, this government obviously have amnesia, because they promised no cuts to health, no cuts to education and that they would not touch the pension, would not cut the ABC and would not cut SBS. I know Senator Williams is a bit conflicted here because he does not support the government's PPL. Unfortunately he was not able to touch on it in his short contribution here today. As he wanders out, can I say to him: the Labor Party are very concerned about the rural and regional areas of Australia. He talked about scholarships. Let us have a look what is happening with scholarships in terms of nursing and allied health in Tasmania. The government have ripped out the Tasmanian scholarship scheme just like that. Whether they had any discussions with the Tasmanian government, I would not know, because Will Hodgman, unfortunately, the Premier of Tasmania, has made no comments about standing up for Tasmania.

What we are talking about here today is fairness—the fairness of this budget and fairness of opportunity. As I have gone around and talked to people and gone to forums, I have not seen one federal Liberal member. They are all in hiding in Tasmania—not out there supporting their budget, not out there spruiking how wonderful it is, but hiding. There is a reason for that. It is that this budget is manifestly unfair. It hits the lowest 20 per cent of income earners in this country with a five per cent reduction in income and, in contrast, the highest 20 per cent of income earners have their income reduced by 0.3 per cent. It is manifestly unfair. What we have heard as we have gone around and talked to people is that they voted for this government on the word of the now Prime Minister, Mr Tony Abbott. He said he would not touch the pension—no changes to the pension. And we had Senator Fifield come in here today and say that pensions were going up—a complete and utter furphy in terms of what they are really doing.

We know, and the budget papers tell us, how much they are saving—nearly half a billion dollars—from pensions. If the pensions are not going to go down in real terms then how are they making those savings? They came in here in a flurry to tell us that the pensioners will not be affected and that pensions will go up—but there is a half-a-billion-dollar saving. We are talking about people, full aged pensioners, living on $20,000 per annum. It is manifestly unfair that they have to carry the burden of these budget cuts—not only that but carry the burden of the complete and utter lies that were told during the campaign as well.

I went to a forum in Launceston, which is a city in Mr Nikolic's electorate of Bass. At that meeting there was a woman who identified herself as having voted for the Liberal Party.