Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

This is a budget designed to do one thing, and that is to try to get this government back into power after the next election. It's got nothing much to do with good economics. As Senator Whish-Wilson has identified, it's a budget that simply works off the back of a global economic upturn. It's got nothing to do with any great economic expertise by this government, because they've proven they don't have it.

We've heard so much about their plan. Well, look at the plans that this government have had over the last period of time—nearly five years—they've been in government. They had a plan which was about austerity: attacking pensioners, attacking the vulnerable and attacking the weakest in our community. It was about making sure that their mates got looked after. It was about trying to attack welfare recipients. That was their first attempt at a plan—an austerity budget.

Do you remember Senator Cormann sitting there with a big, fat Havana cigar, celebrating cutting back on family tax benefits and every benefit that working-class people in this country had. That's what Senator Cormann did. He got out the bottle of wine and the big, fat Havana cigar and celebrated it. And what did the Prime Minister do? The Prime Minister went on radio and said he supported every aspect of the budget.

We know what the coalition are really about—that is, attacking the poorest, attacking the underprivileged, attacking the weakest people in our country and looking after their big business mates. That was the first plan. The second plan was to make changes to the capital gains tax, and that plan, I think, lasted about one week. Then it was about giving the states taxing powers. I think that lasted a couple of days. So there are three plans that have come and gone, but the first plan is still there because that's what they really want to do—look after their big business mates and attack the vulnerable in our community.

And this plan, trickle-down economics, doesn't work. The government have done this because the people that actually put the money into their election coffers at elections—the Business Council of Australia, the big banks, the finance corporations—are the ones who want this because they'll get $80 billion at least. And you saw Senator Cormann here today—absolutely incapable of telling us what the real cost of this will be over the 10-year period they talk about, running away from the cost that this will deliver.

This is a government that have no economic credibility. They are still cutting the pension by $14 a fortnight, taking the energy supplement off pensioners in this country and giving an $80 billion handout to big business. Retirement at 70 is all right if you're sitting over on the other side as a senator, with your pants getting shiny-arsed. That's okay but, if you do what I did—work as a maintenance fitter in heavy engineering at Liddell power station—at 70 years old, you can't crawl into a confined space and work all day. You can't have a 14-pound hammer and be hanging off the end of that all day. They just don't get it. And the tax cuts—