Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We just had five minutes from the opposition talking about anything but the cost of living. They propose an MPI to talk about hardworking households, families and small businesses, which I'll actually talk about, but those on the opposite side have no plan except to take $350 billion out of services in this country for hardworking Australians. They have no plan except to get rid of 36,000 people who provide services to hardworking Australians and who live and work all over this country and through our regions. That's what they've got organised.

When you start thinking about the things that they haven't done yet, you've got to think about what they are doing. Under a Dutton government, we would have all been $7,200 worse off in terms of the cost of living because of the things that they've opposed. Every Australian would have been $7,200 worse off on the basis of what the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Dutton, has been saying in the battles over what should be done about the cost of living. Their strategy in the battle over the cost of living is to do nothing, to take more out, to rip off services and to damage the community. That's their strategy—no strategy at all except cause harm and more harm and more harm.

We see the cuts that they continue to put forward. In the press release, Mr Dutton described cutting 36,000 public servants across this country who provide essential services right across our community, whether it be in the childcare area, in the NDIS, in veterans affairs or in Centrelink. We know how long veterans were waiting to get their cases even touched, and those opposite want to go back to that. People were waiting 12 months for the file to even be opened up. These are people who fought for and protected the country. That's what those opposite think about service and fellow Australians. That's what they think about people who deserve to have a government that acts for them—cut it further; cut it back.

Of course, when you look at all the cuts they've said they're going to make, you have to think about the ones that they won't tell us about, because they're going to have a meeting after the election to talk about where the other billions of dollars are going to be cut from. They come in here and propose an MPI, a matter of public importance, to talk about small business, households and the cost of living, but not for one second do they talk about any of that in the debate on their own matter of public importance.

Then you start looking at the sorts of things that they want to do to the Australian workforce and community. There's the right to disconnect so that people have a reasonable opportunity to say to somebody, 'Ringing me at two in the morning is not an appropriate time to be ringing me and waking me up, unless it's a matter of absolute urgency.' Unreasonable times and arrangements are unreasonable times and arrangements. But those opposite have said they're going to get rid of that right, because they want people to work harder and longer for less. That's the party that actually believes that everyone in the country is getting paid too much. Time and time again, strategies and policies have been put forward by this government to make sure that we can lift wages, but they want to bring things back to where they crush the middle class in this country. Wages in the middle class declined during the 10 years under the conservatives, and they want to do it worse. In terms of the right to disconnect, think about what the Police Association Victoria said about it. They spoke about the culture of being constantly contactable after hours, and they said:

It just causes undue stress for people. That's not necessary when the job is stressful enough.

Police Federation of Australia's Scott Weber said very similar things. He described the unpaid time thus: 'Otherwise it's simply wage theft.' When you see that proposals have been put in place to make sure that the right to disconnect takes place, you see that people have been able to turn around and manage it. Managers manage—the system still works—and people just aren't having their time thieved from them for nothing. But they want to go back to that, because they want people to work longer and harder for nothing. That's their strategy; that's their plan. They are against 'same job, same pay' as well. They want tens of thousands of dollars taken off hardworking Australians around this country.