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

I have to say at the outset that the previous speaker for the government, when she talks about the tax record of the Abbott government, obviously has not been reading what the former Treasurer, Mr Costello, said about the fact that the Abbott government believes that their taxes are lower, simpler and fairer. He thinks it is a morbid joke. I can actually tell the previous senator who spoke that that is exactly what the community is thinking. We have got 17 new taxes under this budget. It was actually quite interesting in the previous contribution that they could not use the five minutes to actually say why their budget was good. She maybe gave it two minutes, tops; there was three minutes of furphies all over the place. She did not talk about the fact that the Abbott government has failed their test: spending is up, taxes are up, the deficit is up and unemployment is up. That is the record that they have. They should own it.