Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In 2007 Prime Minister Rudd appointed me parliamentary secretary for disabilities. I thought I had seen unfairness in workplaces as a union rep, but nothing prepared me for this second-class deal that Australians with disability and their carers were receiving. Jenny Macklin, Bruce Bonyhady and I, and thousands of people with disability and their carers, designed and campaigned for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. But I never ran into the member for Wentworth in the meetings that we were campaigning at, and now the government is seeking to rewrite history and frighten Australians with disability and their carers. Labor has a better, fairer plan for the budget, which raises $4½ billion more. We reject the notion that the only way to protect the NDIS is to increase the taxes on working-class and middle-class Australians. Today I offer the government a fairer, better way: do not give millionaires a $19½ billion tax cut, do not give large corporations a $65 billion tax cut and remove the concessions for property investors worth $37 billion. If you want to try and raise taxes on 10 million ordinary Australians, you will have to come through us. You will have to come through Labor. The last bloke who sat in that chair thought he could, and look where it got him.