George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Senator O'Neill, please, you keep interjecting. I know I have touched a raw nerve with you, because you claim to believe in social justice—your leader does not, of course—and yet at every turn you try and get in the way of measures to focus the government's welfare measures on those at the bottom end of the income spectrum. That is what Senator Simon Birmingham, the minister, has been able to achieve with this legislation, but of course the Labor Party will vote against it. The Labor Party will vote against this legislation just as the Labor Party will vote against every measure that this government introduces in order to deal with the task of budget repair—a task that we inherited 3½ years ago when we inherited from them the most catastrophic set of financial accounts that any incoming government had inherited in Australian history. For 3½ years you have been standing in the way of budget repair, for 3½ years you have been standing in the way of social justice and you are going to try and do it again today.