Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The people of Australia look to their federal government for a vision, and they look for that government to be competent in delivering that vision. When they look at this government, they see a government whose vision is for every Australian to have to pay to go to the doctor; whose vision is to rip up the universality of health care; to wreck Medicare, that great social compact; to give Australia's pensioners, who have worked hard all their lives, an unfair system of indexation; to take $80 billion out of the health and education systems of Australia; to deliberately create an underclass of Australia's young people by denying them access to Newstart; and to rip away family tax benefits. That is the sum extent of the vision that this government intends to give the nation.

And, when it comes to competence, it is even incompetent in delivering that cheap and nasty vision for the nation. This is a government which likes to talk about being calm and methodical. We hear it all the time: how calm and methodical this government is. The last 24 hours have been about as calm and methodical as schoolies week on the Gold Coast. We have had chaos in policy implementation.

We had the Prime Minister's office out last night, fanned out across the building, talking to journalists, saying: 'You can write with great authority that the GP tax is dead. Tony Abbott's killed it.' You can just imagine them over there in the Prime Minister's office saying: 'We've got an election on Saturday. You know what we do about election time? We mislead people about our intentions. That's what we do at election time in the Liberal and National parties. Let's brief out that we're killing the GP tax, authorised by the Prime Minister's office, talking to journalists right across the building.'

There was only one little problem. Nobody told the Treasurer, the Minister for Finance, the Leader of the Government in the Senate or the Minister for Health, apparently. 'Calm and methodical'—this bunch, this cabinet, led by the Prime Minister, marauding about, attacking the social compact of Australia, attacking those things which have been part of our social compact for 40 years; a 40-year community standard in Medicare! This gang of marauders cannot even shoot straight. They cannot even shoot straight in their attack on Australia's social compact. If you give us a cheap and nasty vision, at least be competent as you implement it. At least provide a bit of consistency and a bit of logic as you implement it. But the government cannot even do that. They cannot even trash Medicare competently. They cannot even abolish universal health care with the degree of competence that the Australian people look for.

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