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

Sometimes I wonder! We have the lowest average unemployment rate of any government over the last 50 years—1.1 million new jobs, and the fact is that half of the jobs are for women. Interestingly, these characters over here don't really like that very much, either. They complain that many of these jobs are in the private sector but are about looking after people. They don't like that, either.

While I'm interested in Senator Rennick's broader philosophical argument, the people of Australia are confronted with a pretty stark choice this year. We saw it on Sunday on the Insiders program, didn't we? These characters over here and in the other place say that there's $350 billion worth of additional spending. They say that our vision for the economy—a soft landing where unemployment stays low, where people are in jobs, where wages are rising, where living standards are rising, and where people are earning more and keeping more of what they earn—is a bad thing and not their prescription.

Their prescription is the old economics 101 one—they never got to second year, let alone third year—which is cut, cut, cut. You cut public services and you cut expenditure to socially useful things because you want to create unemployment, create misery and drive the economy over a cliff. That is the alternative vision. We saw it from Mr Dutton. He said there will be cuts, but they won't tell you what they will be until after the election. Australians aren't dumb. They are not mugs. They are not going to be taken for mugs. What that is is a prescription for the old Abbott routine. Remember, Mr Abbott said, 'There won't be any cuts,' and then, in 2014, he delivered the most savage budget, with cuts to Medicare, cuts to the ABC and cuts to public services—cuts for all sorts of things that mattered for ordinary people. Well, this will be that on steroids, because Mr Dutton's told Australians that the cuts will come after the election, and they certainly will.

Debate interrupted.