Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What I'm saying is that aspiration is not exclusively for people already doing well. We want every Australian to be able to get ahead. We want our nurses who are earning $73,000 a year to get a tax cut of $1,504 a year. That is $800 more than what they would have got under stage 3. I don't walk away from that.

What I find just amazing is that, even with the fresh memories of this wonderful series that we've been watching called Nemesis, they have learnt nothing on that side of the chamber—nothing at all. They don't understand and relate to Australian workers. They obviously don't appreciate how difficult people are having it out there and how hard it is to make ends meet. They did nothing about the housing crisis, they did nothing about homelessness and they did nothing about improving Australian workers' wages, particularly in the service sector of aged care, early childhood education and disability. If it is so bad, if this tax policy is so bad, why are you going to support it? Why don't you stand up for once and do something that you actually believe in? If it is such bad policy and you don't want people to get this tax cut, then don't support it. You're doing it because you know in your heart of hearts that it is the right thing to do, which the Australian people can rely on us to do each and every day while we are in government. (Time expired)