Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

They have done a grubby deal with the Liberal Party. The Labor Party is the party who attends rallies and who stands up with megaphones saying, 'We are going to stop this budget.' Now what we are hearing is that there is a deal done between both parties to ensure that young people no longer have access to supported to get education. Considered in the context of the broader education changes, where a higher education degree is now out of reach, it represents everything that is rotten with politics. We get the rhetoric and we get the action. The rhetoric and the actions very, very rarely come together.

We have got the rhetoric of this cruel and harsh budget and the Labor Party was standing up against it. Now we have got a backroom deal between the Labor Party and the coalition saying, 'Let's just keep this quiet. Let's remove supports from young people, single parents and people with disabilities. Let's ensure that those people who need these supports no longer have them.' Why? I do not know. You have got to ask this question of the Labor Party: 'Why on earth would you do this at this time, when we are seeing the harshest attack on the Australian community by a coalition government ever witnessed? They are taking on pensioners, people with disabilities, single parents and young people. Why would you capitulate and support these changes? Why would you do it?' I do not get it. It makes no sense. The only context in which someone can understand it is that there has been a grubby deal struck; that there is more to this. In fact, once again, the Australian community is being sold out in the name of grubby politics.