Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

How grubby do the major parties have to be in order to ram through legislation on the last day of parliament, just to give Tony Abbott his harsh budget-cut savings.

Honourable senators interjecting—

I will take the interjection here from Senator Lambie: 'What is next?' What are we going to expect in the next fortnight? We cannot trust what the Labor Party says any more in relation to the budget. What are you going to flick through next? You are being salami-sliced by Mr Abbott, and he knows it. It is going to be egg on the faces of those who have stood up for this harsh budget in the past, and rightly so. Now you are being salami-sliced all the way through to pass each and every piece of terrible legislation and more harsh cuts that this Treasurer and the Prime Minister want to see passed.

I grew up in a rural and regional area. To get the little extra help they need to move into the city and access higher education opportunities is absolutely vital for students from rural and regional areas. It is not just vital for them, but we know it is vital for their communities, because who is it who comes back as the doctors, teachers and specialists in our rural and regional areas? It is those students who have moved away for university and have come back to stay there. The impacts of these types of cuts are going to be harsh, not just on the individual students but, in years to come, on the communities they come from. We know that that is what has happened.

The Senate has inquired into this issue for many years. It is why the relocation scholarships were developed in the first place. It was to help rural and regional students to get the same educational opportunities as everybody else. And here we have the Labor Party and the government lining up to whack through almost half a billion worth of cuts. Half a billion ripped straight out of the pockets of students. What will the shadow education minister's press release be this afternoon? How are they going to explain what they are doing to the most vulnerable students across the country, who thought that the Senate was going to stand up for their welfare and their right to access good quality education?

And what about the single mums, who are about to be dumped onto lower payments, because Labor has gone weak at the knees here? What explanation are we going to see given to them for the fact that no longer do we have an opposition party in this country prepared to be an opposition party? They are just folding into the arms of the coalition government, because they were desperate for somebody, just somebody, to back these harsh budget cuts.

I do not agree with a lot of things that Senator Lambie, for example, says. But I will tell you this. She is going to stand up in a minute and say how terrible these cuts are. Why? Because she has listened to people out there on the street. It will be just as we heard earlier this week from Labor senators who did stand up in this place and say the cuts were terrible—and they were absolutely right. They were harsh yesterday and they are harsh today, and we should not be flagging them through just because a grubby deal has been done between the Labor Party and Tony Abbott's coalition.

What is the Labor Party going to say to people on disability pension, who have just been given another whack from this place because the Labor Party was not prepared to stand up and stand firm against Mr Abbott's and Mr Hockey's harsh cuts. Why is it that because somebody is on a disability pension they do not deserve to be able to go to visit a sick relative overseas, without having their pension cut? Why is it that they should be treated as second-class citizens in this country, simply because they are on a disability pension? That is not fair. That is not how we should be treading our most vulnerable Australians.

This is rushing through this legislation, at a stroke to midnight, just because a grubby deal has been struck. It beggars belief. Thankfully, there are still some people in this place who are willing to stand up and stand firm. Single parents are going to be shaking their heads today, thinking, 'I thought we had won this debate.' Clearly, their pleas for help have fallen at the feet of the Labor Party and they have been ignored. I am most concerned, as I said from the beginning, about the hypocrisy of cutting half a billion dollars straight out of the pockets of vulnerable students, while Gina Rinehart and her big mining mates get off scot-free. That is what is going on in this House today.

Why did we not tax Gina Rinehart in order to pay for the government's harsh budget savings measures? That is because taking on Gina was too hard of a task for the Prime Minister and so we have attacked single parents, those on the disability pension and students instead. This legislation is outrageous and should not be pushed through this place.