Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have to say, Senator Back, I would love to live in the world you seem to inhabit where everything is fantastic, where this glorious budget has been handed down, where as you walk through the streets of your community peopled throw flowers and rose petals at your feet and thank you for the amazing job you have done—when you have put a $7 co-payment on Medicare, when you have cut funding to universities by 30 per cent, when you are putting in the Paid Parental Leave Scheme which is going to disproportionately hurt people in rural and regional Australia. Senator Back is shocked because clearly the people he is talking to keep telling him what a fantastic job the government have been doing. I would love to inhabit that world because no-one else appears to be there. You would be all alone.

In question time today we saw the government beginning to unravel. Just prior to question time, on the key government measure of a debt levy, a very senior former government minister—a backbencher who has been 30 years in this place and who, after 1 July, will be the longest serving member—said he had lost faith in this government on this issue, that he did not believe them and that the government could not convince its own MPs and its own backbench.

Senator Bernardi and Senator Williams are making clear their opposition to the Paid Parental Leave Scheme. Not only have they been backgrounding media about it but they have certainly been up front loading the media. I have to give them both credit. They have been quite upfront about their views. In this budget there are measures which are unfair, there are measures which are inequitable. This government cannot convince its own backbench. You wonder why so many Australians have so many doubts.

My state of New South Wales today handed down the state budget. We saw a figure in the vicinity of $2 billion coming from money that has already been cut. This is not money that is going to come before the forward estimates, which is in the tens of millions, but already the impact that this government's cuts are going to have on New South Wales families. You have strong opposition from state Premiers including state Liberal Premiers. You have opposition from the Liberal Party backbench. There is opposition out there from the community and, apart from a few elements of the conservative media, no-one supports these measures.

The government have convinced themselves that the tougher they are the fairer they are being. They have convinced themselves that it is a tough budget with tough measures, but it is not that. This is an ideological budget. These are ideological measures. These are value statements. When you are doing something like PPL but you are cutting university funding and when you have a research fund but you are putting a $7 tax on every time you go to a doctor, those are political decisions. They are value statements. The government have got it wrong on the values. They have got it wrong on their priorities. We now have a situation where even the coalition is starting to fray, with their own backbench are saying, 'This isn't fair, this isn't right, this isn't equitable.'

Earlier today a lot of us supported a measure that we were not happy with. If I had designed the debt levy, I would have made sure it was there for all three years. I would have fixed up the fringe benefit tax loophole and a few other measures as well, but we supported it because we are not opposed to action and we are not opposed to sharing the burden. We are opposed to inequitable measures like the PPL, measures that discriminate against those in bush, against lower income earners. We are opposed to increasing the Medicare levy which many Australians, especially those on lower income, cannot afford to pay. Today we saw the beginning of the government, certainly their Senate team, already starting to fall apart.

Question agreed to.