Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

He does not know what he is doing. He is in annihilation mode. The purpose of the legislation was to restore indexation provisions stripped away when the $600 supplement was introduced, which would have seen its real value erode completely over time through less-generous indexation arrangements for fortnightly family tax benefit payments. This was a typical sneaky attempt to give with one hand before the election, only to take back with the other hand after the election. We so embarrassed them during the campaign and put them under such political pressure that they were forced to backflip. They were going to take it back. They fiddled the indexation provisions, and it was going to erode over time. We forced them to redress it under enormous political pressure.

Yesterday the Treasurer said voters should be wary of the fine print from Labor. This heist which the coalition tried to pull on families shows it is the fine print from this Treasurer that families certainly need to be worried about. I would urge the Treasurer and government members to familiarise themselves with the legislation which they were forced to introduce to preserve the value of the $600 supplement. Without this legislation the value of the $600 supplement would have been whittled away. The sorry excuses for parliamentarians who sit opposite should have the decency to own up to this fraud which they tried to inflict on families rather than mindlessly repeating the Treasurer’s political mantras.

That brings us to the area of state taxation—and the Treasurer’s porkies are evident here as well.

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