Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

'Have they acknowledged them?' the member for Moreton asks. Well, I never hear anything about that these days. And if anything is said about it, it is always put in a negative light: talk it down, talk it down, talk it down. A family with a mortgage of $300,000 is paying around $4,500 less a year, something I think benefits the families I represent in this parliament. And the responsible savings made by the government have led to the biggest increase in age pension and paid parental leave in history. My electorate is an older electorate, and I know that the pensioners I represent in this parliament live in trepidation of the Liberal Party—the opposition—gaining control of the government benches. They know that means they are going to have payments ripped away from them, just as the families that live in the Shortland electorate and other areas know that the opposition plans to destroy the Schoolkids Bonus. That will hurt 1.3 million families, and in the Shortland electorate 8,500 families will be punished if there is a Liberal coalition government sitting on the government benches. At the same time, they will not reinstate the education tax bonus, and they will slash $600 a year in extra family tax benefit payments from 1.5 million families in Australia and from 16,000 families in the Shortland electorate.

A little bit of honesty here: the plan from the government is to continue strong economic growth; we will continue to step up to the plate in very tough economic times; and we will make the hard decisions that need to be made, whilst at the same time maintaining strong employment. Employment has been mentioned in this debate. We have an unemployment rate of 5.4 per cent, which is the envy of countries throughout the world. When I look at the MYEFO forecast for jobs, last year in the budget 500,000 jobs were created against a forecast of 175,000—performing above the forecast.

It always surprises me when I see the shadow Treasurer make his appearances on TV. It is quite obvious that he has only read half the papers. He does not bother to get all the facts; he does not bother to let truth stand in the way of what he is about to say. The Australian people are really waking up to him. They are really beginning to understand that he yells and blusters and speaks loudly but he delivers nothing. He has no vision; he has no plan. He talks about the plan that the government has to reach a surplus. The MYEFO statement looks at apprenticeships and targets to areas of high need. On the baby bonus change, his comments were just ludicrous—

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