Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What remains is a 2014 Liberal Party budget, the one that cuts $30 million a year—not just last year but this year and the next year—out of pensioner concessions. In electorates like mine and in electorates like Hindmarsh it is pretty unpopular, because many people rely on those concessions for their cost of living. For a government that talks about cost of living all the time, they are now savaging those least able to pay. So it is an extraordinary thing for Mr Williams, the member for Hindmarsh, to want to propose this motion and then retreat from it. It is an extraordinary thing that the member for Bass interjects at all. I am stunned that they would pick a fight on this issue. We have all this talk about how fair this year's budget is, but currently what is happening is that the unfairness—the $60 billion worth of cuts—from last year and this year are slowly rolling out. There have been $1 billion in cuts in health this year—that is $1 billion extra out of health this year.

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

There have been $30 million out of South Australian pensioners' pockets every year.

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

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