Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

But they are now. The Abbott government are there now. Mr Abbott went to the election as the opposition leader, Senator Williams, on the basis that he told the Australian people there would be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no cuts to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts the ABC or SBS. But how they have quickly turned their backs on those promises and turned around completely to betray the Australian people that voted them in on the fact that those promises would be honoured. The Australian people voted this government in on the basis that they accepted that those promises given prior to the election would be kept. But, no; we have seen the cuts to health, we have seen the cuts to pension, we have seen the cuts to education and all the attempts to undermine all those promises. In fact, in getting the keys to the ministerial wing it did not take those opposite long before they changed their agenda completely and backed away from all of those promises. They completely backflipped. They had broken promises and bad policy in the area of health. That is what this appalling, sneaky and mean Abbott government have done.

Firstly, what did they do with hospitals? They ripped $50 billion out of hospitals in last year's budget. Then they attempted—not once, not twice—three times to levy a GP tax on Australian people.