Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

That was a remarkable contribution. The speaker was talking about managing the Prime Minister's destiny, because he is about removing him from being Prime Minister of this country. The budget that will be brought down tomorrow is a budget that is all about saving Tony Abbott's job. It is not about doing the right thing. If Senator Sinodinos was honest with the Australian community, he would now acknowledge that changing the indexation of the pension in this country was about cutting pensioners' benefits. There is not a pensioner in this country who believes Tony Abbott and this government. They know that he cannot be trusted.

In answer to my question in relation to cuts to the pension, Senator Fifield said, 'We haven't made any cuts that were going to have effect in this term.' That is not what Tony Abbott said as Leader of the Opposition when he went out the night before the election and promised that there would be no change to the pension, no cuts to education and no cuts to health. We know that he has failed that test, because there have been cuts to education and there certainly have been cuts to the health budget. We know that they were about changing the indexation of the pension, which meant—