Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Werriwa, who is a strong representative of his constituents and is doing his best to defend the government. I have to say that ‘decisive action’ has joined ‘working families’ as the government’s cliche du jour. The fact is: this is belated action, at least insofar as pensioners are concerned, because the opposition has been calling for strong action to help pensioners since very early on in the year when it became clear that prices were skyrocketing, particularly the prices faced by pensioners and others on low incomes.

Along with other opposition members, I do not begrudge families this extra money. I especially do not begrudge pensioners this extra money because, as the member for Werriwa and others have pointed out, yes, they are doing it tough and, yes, they face extremely challenging circumstances, as we all do. Earlier in the year, the Australian Financial Review estimated that families were $30 a week worse off since the election of the Rudd government despite the very large tax cuts provided in the budget—tax cuts which, of course, were a virtual copy of those promised by Peter Costello prior to the election. Families were $30 a week worse off largely thanks to the sustained increase in prices that we saw in the early months of the Rudd government and continuing interest rate rises.

We all know that over the last couple of months petrol prices have fallen somewhat and interest rates have been very significantly reduced. But that has been in response to financial turmoil, financial turmoil which this government has not managed very well. If you look at the economic management record of this government, early in its term it talked up inflation. Early in its term it was waging a war on inflation. That has been joined in more recent times by the war on binge drinking, the war on obesity and the war on unemployment that the Prime Minister declared yesterday. In fact, I thought what we were seeing yesterday was ‘Kevin Rudd’s War on Everything’. I have to say that at times Kevin Rudd’s policies look to have no more coherence than the stunts of the Chasers.

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