Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Tanya Pascoe simply rang me up and said, ‘Next year I will have two children going to university. My husband is an independent builder. We don’t make a lot of money. I work here to try to supplement that.’ Her five kids are tramping in and out of our office all the time and it gives me very great joy to have them tramping in and out of our office as we all love the Pascoe kids. She said, ‘I desperately need that $4,000 and the only way that I can get it is if this legislation is passed.’ I am not some big-time politician coming here knowing all about everything. Here is a woman, a very intelligent lady, who has gone into it and that is what she is saying. She is saying, ‘If you vote for this I get the $4,000. If you don’t I don’t. There have got to be thousands of people in your electorate in this situation.’ So it is about $4,000 plus $1,000 a year. I think there is merit and integrity in some of the arguments coming from the opposition on this, and I want to put that on record. I do think that there needs to be a little bit more liberalisation of the means test and the employment test, so I would add that to my remarks. All I can say is I have a person who assures me that there are thousands in my electorate in this situation. This is a very intelligent lady, and her daughter is doing medicine at the university, which I am not surprised by. She works like a dog and her husband works like a dog to try to help these kids to get a better way of life. She would not be making a mistake on this issue. That is a person speaking from the heart.

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