Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

What we have heard here today, not only in the responses to questions by the opposition but also in the responses by the coalition senators, is that nothing has really changed. After the chaos that we have seen in the government in the last few days, nothing has really changed. We have a Prime Minister who has admitted today that good government starts today—some 16 months after they came into office, 520 days since they came into office—good government starts today. And yet we have heard here today from coalition senators and their ministers that nothing has changed. Their responses are all the same. Nothing has changed. They need to understand what their back bench has been telling them. The Australian people have been telling them that their problem is that they delivered a manifestly unfair budget. They know it and the Australian people know it. The only difference is, they do not care. They did not care. The Australian people will not let you get away with this. No amount of restarts or reboots are going to change what this government is all about. They just do not care. They will continue their attack on low- and middle-income Australians. They will somehow continue with their GP tax, they will continue to inflict $100,000 university degrees on our children, they will continue with the cuts to pensions and family supports, and they have cut $80 billion from schools, education and hospitals. All of these things they said they would not do, and the Prime Minister said they would not do. He lied. He lied to the electorate. What we have now is—