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

Senator Bernardi let the cat out of the bag when he talked about Gonski just being a slogan. That is not the case. Before the last election the then opposition was saying that they were on a unity ticket on education funding. Of course Senator Bernardi does not seem to be on anyone's unity ticket—he has been on the losing side so many times he just does not know how to win. I want to take issue with Senator Brandis's response to the very first question asked by the opposition, which was on the GST. As usual we do not get a straight answer from the government when it comes to the GST. They talk about being innovative, agile or creative but they do not want to talk about what their real plans are. They talk about having a conversation with the community, but it is not about that—it is about hiding what they are intending to do. We know and the community knows that they said they were not going to increase the GST. I can talk about the other broken promises that they have carried out since the very beginning of the Abbott government. Now we have Mr Turnbull, who is supporting another broken promise—the promise not to increase the GST. The community knows what they intend to do.