Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I've some basic principles with respect to how one should conduct themselves in public life, and one of those principles is: if you promise to do something before an election, if you make a commitment to the people before an election—especially in a highly contested area such as taxation policy—and then the people vote on the basis of your commitment, of your promise, before the election, then you should actually do what you said you were going to do before the election after the election. That's a pretty fundamental principle.

With the proposal of these bills, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living Tax Cuts) Bill 2024 and the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living—Medicare Levy) Bill 2024, the Labor government, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer are breaking that fundamental principle. But it wasn't just broken before the election; it was broken after the election. As Senator Babet said, the Prime Minister said, 'My word is my bond.' As soon as December last year, Treasury was commissioned to do the work to reverse the stage 3 tax cuts. When the Prime Minister was asked, at the same time Treasury was doing the work to unwind the stage 3 tax cuts, whether or not the government's position was changing, he said, 'We're not reconsidering that position', when Treasury was, at that time, doing the work to change the position. How can you actually look the Australian people in the eye and say that, when you know Treasury, in the background, is doing the work to change the position that you're saying you're not reconsidering? It is just disgraceful.

Senator Hume, in her contribution, as the first speaker on these bills in the Senate on behalf of the opposition, described the cost-of-living committee's inquiries in Gladstone, in my home state and Acting Deputy President McGrath's home state of Queensland. It really touched me that she said that representatives from the local council of Gladstone—these aren't federal politicians or state politicians—were saying:

… younger people were being forced to choose between paying their rent or seeing a GP, because there are no longer any GPs in Gladstone that allow for bulk-billing and those young people's budgets are simply at breaking point.

What a shameful state of affairs.

It's the same in my region, the greater Ipswich region, where my office is located. Through 2023, the number of bulk-billing medical practices in the greater Ipswich region fell from 25 to 16—a fall of 36 per cent in 12 months in my region, the greater Ipswich region, where my office is located. That is a shameful result—the fall in GP medical practices offering bulk-billing in the greater Ipswich region from 25 to 16. And people in Ipswich are choosing whether to pay the rent or go to the doctor under this Labor government.

Debate interrupted.