Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the matter of public importance on the Abbott government's 2015 budget, which locks in the unfairness of last year's budget. We know that last year's budget was one of the worst and most unfair in history. It hit pensioners, it hit students, it hit families and it made savage cuts to health and education. The budget handed down last night is simply more of the same. It is unfair. The unfair measures in last year's budget live on in this budget. The $80 billion of cuts to health and education live on. The cuts to the family tax benefits are still there. The $100,000 university degrees are still there. Unfairness remains at the core of this latest budget. The language may have changed, but the cuts remain.

In the last budget we were told that the family tax benefits had to be cut because we had to repair the budget and get the budget back to surplus. Now we are told by the government that the cuts to family tax benefits are needed to fund the childcare package. As the shadow Treasurer, Mr Bowen, said this morning:

The alibi has changed but the cuts have remained.

The Abbott government's second budget simply locks in the unfair cuts to family payments that were made the first time around. We know that this government cannot be trusted. It said that the family budget would not be hit in this year's budget, but that is not true. The Abbott government still wants to cut families off Family Tax Benefit B when their youngest child turns six. Kids do not get cheaper when they turn six. Mr Abbott still wants to freeze family tax benefit rates, which will erode the value of these payments. For example, a single-income family on $65,000 a year with two children at school will be $6,000 a year worse off. The Large Family Supplement will be abolished and the Low Income Supplement will also be abolished. These cuts are still in the budget, and these cuts will have a huge impact on the lives of low- and middle-income Australian families. They will hurt millions of families across the country and I can assure you that Labor will continue to oppose these cuts.

To add insult to injury, Mr Abbott wants to rip a further $967 million from paid parental leave in a new cut that will push around 80,000 mothers off PPL, leaving them up to $11,500 worse off. This will also leave them with less time with their babies in the early years of their child's life. One of the most unfair and cruellest cuts in the Abbott government's first budget was the move to force jobseekers to live on nothing for six months. His second budget will leave jobseekers under the age of 25 with nothing to live on for one month. This is unfair and will continue to hurt young Australians who are struggling to make ends meet. The government has learnt nothing from the cuts that they sought to make in their last budget. They moved from six months because they knew that it was deeply unpopular within the Australian community and now they are trying to trick the community into accepting that maybe one month is okay. Well, it is not. It is unfair and it is not okay.

We need to support and encourage our young people, not treat them unfairly and leave them out in the cold. We need to make it easier for them to find a job, not harder. There is no justification for this measure, as the Australian Council of Social Service chief, Cassandra Goldie, said after the budget was handed down. No amount of sugar-coating, spin or glossy brochures will change the fact that this budget fails the fairness test. It certainly will not help one Australian family. (Time expired)