Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is always good to follow a great comedy act. It gets the crowd a little warmed up, doesn't it? This Prime Minister has been shedding identities like a fussy kid trying on Halloween outfits in a costume shop. The first costume is Captain Optimism. He was very excited about start-ups. Do you remember that period? He invented the internet and there had never been a better time to be in Australia. He moved on. The second costume was that of a very serious conservative, who said no to action on climate change, no to same-sex marriage and yes to deals with One Nation. The third costume, which has only recently been revealed, seems to be the ghost of John Maynard Keynes—a big-taxing and big-spending Prime Minister who wants to take on debt like it is 1949.

The problem of course with all of these costumes is that none of them really fit and none of them have been in any way convincing, because with each outfit one thing has remained exactly the same: the Prime Minister's willingness to sacrifice whatever principles he had remaining in order to save his skin for another day. It must be very easy to stand up for what you believe in when the only thing you believe in is yourself. Is it any wonder at all that Peta Credlin said that this is a budget short on Liberal values and long on survival instincts for a Prime Minister? Is it any wonder that former Treasurer Peter Costello is today wondering where the coalition's commitment to deficit reduction has gone?

You do not have to even go outside the parliament to find criticism of the budget. You can simply turn to the government itself. This Prime Minister has flip-flopped and changed his mind so very often that he has placed his own ministers in the embarrassing situation of having argued very strongly against the measures that are contained in this budget. In February the Minister for Finance, Senator Cormann, said:

We do not want to increase taxes. Our commitment is to lower taxes.

This budget has made him the highest-taxing finance minister in a decade.

In 2009, as opposition leader, the member for Wentworth described $200 billion of gross debt as 'colossal' and 'unprecedented'. His government now presides over a debt that is several multiples of this number. Just this morning he admitted that he thought that the zombie measures that he ditched in the budget had merit, which leaves one to wonder why exactly he is ditching them. Australia is learning the lesson, which the Liberal Party party room has probably absorbed by now, that you cannot rely on the Prime Minister's commitments.

Australians know that we cannot depend on the Prime Minister's new-found commitment to fairness either. Indeed, earlier in question time Senator Cormann confirmed this because he acknowledged that many of the things in this budget were 'not really what we wanted to do'. As much as this Prime Minister and this government now like to use the word 'fairness', we all know that their hearts are not really in it.

It is not fair to cut $22 billion from schools whilst simultaneously giving a $50 billion tax cut to big businesses. It is not fair to give a tax cut to high-income earners while at the same time demanding that university students pay thousands extra for their degrees. I note that, whilst Senator Brandis thinks it is fair for them to pay for half of the cost of their degrees, Australian students already pay a far higher proportion of their university costs than most comparable nations. It is not fair at all to future generations to have a whole budget speech that makes no mention of climate change and provides no new initiatives to tackle climate change, despite the fact that we are in no way on track to meet our fairly lacklustre targets.

For a proper fair budget we will probably have to wait for a change of government. In the meantime, though, I do hope that the coalition party room enjoy their new high-taxing, high-spending Prime Minister.