Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to the 2015-16 Budget.

This really is a government in chaos. This really is a dysfunctional government. This is a government who would stand here and tell the Australian public and this Senate that budgets are about choices. We know budgets are about choices, and what Labor has chosen to do is not cut pensions, not cut the health system, not cut the education system, and make sure that young kids that cannot get a job do not end up with six months with absolutely no income. These are the choices that Labor takes.

What about the federal government? They went to the last election and they argued that there would be no cuts to pensions, no cuts to health and no cuts to education. Then we did not even find out about the cuts until the first budget—the worst budget in living memory; the worst budget this country has ever seen. We are about to go to the second coalition budget tomorrow, and the first budget is still a shambles. The first budget was so bad that almost one-third of the coalition backbench moved against the Prime Minister—including six ministers. That is how bad the budget was. The budget was a budget that the government could not sustain. It was a budget that the public looked at and said, 'We are not prepared to accept cuts to health, cuts to education, cuts to welfare, when these were areas the Abbott government promised not to touch.'

This is a dysfunctional government which cannot be trusted—they continually misrepresent their position to the Australian public. We saw an example of that again today when Senator Abetz responded to Senator Wong, who asked about cuts to the health system. Senator Abetz indicated there were no cuts to the health system; we have simply had a reallocation. I would put to Senator Abetz: have a look at your own budget paper. Have a look at the chart on page 7 of the 2014-15 budget overview. What does that chart show? It shows a cut to health funding for public hospitals of $57 billion. This is a reallocation, according to Senator Abetz. According to the government's own budget papers, it is a cut of $57 billion—and that was not the end of it for this government in terms of attacks on the health system. A $7 co-payment was supposedly going to fund some massive research funding. We have seen the big backflip on that. Every doctor you speak to, every group you speak to and every eminent health economist you speak to will tell you that putting a $7 cost on going to see a doctor will result in even bigger costs when people end up not getting timely medical intervention and end up in hospital. That leads to massive costs.

This is a government that has no credibility when it comes to economic matters. This is a government that said it would reduce the budget deficit—and what do we have? We have an increase in the budget deficit of $68 billion under this dysfunctional government—a government that is now split between the National Party and the Liberal Party. Let us see how the National Party stands up for those families on $65,000 a year who will lose $6,000 a year because of the blackmail that this government is going to try and impose on this Senate. They say there will be no improvements to their budget bottom line unless we give in to their blackmail. We will not be giving in to the coalition's blackmail. (Time expired)