Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is not a mention in the budget about that.

Mr Deputy President, regarding the budget, what a calamitous issue we have here. It was only 18 months ago when we had Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey, ably backed up by all the now government senators and members, telling us about some fiscal crisis we had and how they were the only ones who could fix it. They said they would fix this budget emergency not only by toughening up on, in their terms, too much spending or wastage but by making absolutely no cuts anywhere. We even had Minister Cormann, when asked a question by Senator Wong today about how many new taxes there would be, blatantly sit there and say, 'Absolutely none.' I cannot believe that the Australian people think that that mob over there can be believed. How do they think that they can fool the Australian public for another year?

With their big, tough talk and all the action and what they were going to do, we do not have a fiscal crisis; we have a spending crisis. We have a crisis from that mob over there, who have absolutely no idea. They went to the election and the now Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, clearly stated there would be no cuts to certain areas. He clearly stated on more than one occasion—through every media outlet he could get his face on—that there would be no cuts to spending, no cuts to education, no cuts to the ABC and no cuts to pensions. What a disaster. We are at budget No. 2 for Mr Hockey.

The commentators are clearly saying this is not a budget about what is in the best interests of the nation, this is not a budget about what is in the best interests of the Australian people or the future for Australia's kids, this is about two people. I will quote from some media sources who I would not call raving-mad lefties. One is none other than Mr van Onselen. I do respect and enjoy listening to Mr van Onselen, but he is not one of my mob. He is not a leftie, I can tell you. When I say 'leftie' I mean left of centre. In today's The Australian, on page 13—and this is friendly fire—he said: 'Hockey is delusional that reform is underway; however, I saw him utter the following words last night ….' He quotes Mr Hockey:

… the economic plan laid down by this government more than a year ago, is in place and it is helping us to deal with these challenges.

Mr Van Onselen goes on to say: 'How? By osmosis? That plan included the shelved Medicare co-payment, dumped changes to pension indexation, a higher-education package twice blocked by the Senate and family tax benefit cutbacks yet to be passed.' He went on to say: 'An economic plan already in place? He must be joking.'

This is not Labor people saying this, these are right-wing media people. He goes on to say—and I agree with every single word—'No wonder Costello thinks they have become a morbid joke.' He is talking about the opposition. The sad part is that there are two jobs on the line: Mr Abbott's, the Prime Minister, and Mr Hockey's, the Treasurer. How long will they last? God help us, but hopefully we will find out sooner rather than later.