Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to take note of our MPI today, which is on the Prime Minister's broken promises. Certainly, we have heard, over and over again in this place—and we will keep repeating it—that Australians are entitled to have confidence in their politicians. But what the Abbott government has shown us is that you cannot have any confidence in them. You cannot believe anything they say because everything they have committed to has amounted to broken promises. We heard the pledges of no cuts to health. We heard the pledges of no cuts to education. We heard the pledge of no cuts to the SBS. We heard the pledge of no cuts to the ABC. I think that someone who puts themselves up as a future prime minister of the country should tell the truth. Yet, what we have seen, with every single one of those commitments, is a broken promise.

We heard, 'No change to superannuation,' and yet one of the first things the government did, in a dirty deal with the crossbench senators, was to freeze superannuation employer contributions—somehow trying to hoodwink workers that that money would end up in their pockets. Well, nobody believes that, and even the government has stopped trying to pretend on that one.

We also heard that there would be no changes to pensions, and yet we know, and Australian pensioners know, that if this government goes ahead with the cruel cuts they will be worse off—make no mistake. It does not matter how they dress it up. They can talk about savings because they do not like the word 'cuts', but whether it is cuts or savings, under the Abbott government, pensioners in this country will be worse off. Make no doubt about that.

Budgets should be the centrepiece of a government's agenda. They should represent the commitments made during an election campaign. They should be forward-looking and they should deliver to all Australians. With the Abbott government, we are seeing quite the opposite—nothing but broken promises and backflips. Worse than that, their first budget was so bad, so full of broken promises and so detrimental to Australians, that Labor rejected it outright, because we stand for fairness. Fairness is not something you can buy; fairness is something you believe in, and that first Abbott government budget clearly missed on the fairness agenda.

The Prime Minister said there would be no cuts to health. Despite repeated claims by the Abbott government that the GP tax is dead, research published in the highly respected Medical Journal of Australia and, more recently, in Deloitte Access Economics' Budget Monitor finds that the four-year rebate freeze, some sneaky backdoor deal of the Abbott government, will lead to even higher charges than the original GP tax. Low-income earners, pensioners and those who are unemployed will be slugged the hardest, as research tells us that the freeze on rebates will hit the hip pockets of ordinary Australians. This backdoor GP fee will hit harder than any of the GP taxes proposed by the Abbott government, as GPs will be almost $9 per patient worse off—and that cost will be passed onto patients. Australians will remember that the Prime Minister promised them 'no cuts to health', and they will remember that broken promise every time they pay more to see a doctor. They will remember that broken promise when they make the hard decision that they cannot afford to see a doctor—that they cannot afford that extra almost $9 that the Abbott government is pushing on them through some backdoor rebate freeze.

We have heard today from Mr Freudenberg on higher education. It is still on their agenda.