Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Here we go again: another sitting of this parliament where the Liberal Party, the National Party and One Nation are here attacking the retirement incomes of ordinary Australians—attacking probably the single biggest reform to our finance sector and to the potential for ordinary working Australians to have a decent retirement—because in this government, in what passes for a government, there is only one set of ideas that bind this misanthropic group of characters, and that is to tear down the achievements of previous Labor governments.

The Liberal Party can't be trusted on superannuation, they can't be trusted on workers' retirement incomes, they can't be trusted on wages and, as we're discovering, they certainly can't be trusted on the age pension. The Liberal Party message to working Australians, to families in the suburbs and regions, is earn less, retire with less: earn less—'We're going to keep wages down'; retire with less—'We're going to trash the superannuation system.'

Senator Van interjecting—

The lowest wage growth on record is the achievement of this eight-year-old tired sclerotic government. Senator Van—silly as a two-bob watch, down there—can hector and carry on as much as he likes, but everyone in the country knows—

Senator Van interjecting—