Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

There were a couple of questions in there, I suppose. I might take you to your claim that my disagreement with you about the claims the government makes about these issues is obfuscation. Obfuscation, of course, is the action of making something obscure or unclear or unintelligible. One, when confronted with sharp questions, engages in verbiage, I suppose, to divert the questioner from their original purpose. That is what I am doing now, Senator. That is what I am doing now by explaining obfuscation to you.

The problem is I disagree with you; the government disagrees with you. We don't agree—and we don't think anybody could sensibly agree, unless they were the most partisan of observers—that a reduction in growth over the forward estimates is a cut. You could quibble. If there were a scheme—another scheme—that was indexed by inflation, for example, and you decreased the growth of the scheme by less than inflation, you could argue that that was a real cut, but that is not what is happening here. I know that there is a sense of entitlement on the Liberal side that says no other party could govern the place properly. I know you lot don't think that it's conceivable. That's how you end up with the sort of complacency that characterised the last nine years of government. We are taking this approach seriously. If the reform is delivered consistent with the approach that the government has set out here, growth in the scheme will be around eight per cent per annum from 1 July 2026.