Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Fadden confirms that. It is not a matter of just looking at what we have to do as a community; they want to slice away at issues such as welfare and commitments that we make to communities. I know that my electorate has a high proportion of welfare recipients, and whilst it is the most multicultural electorate in the country it is also an area of great challenge in levels of income. It certainly has a high proportion of new arrivals, who are trying to make their way in the world and trying to do what is necessary to integrate into our community. Is it going to be one of these areas where we should make cuts?

Regrettably, politics does get into it. It was far better when we sat back, looked at the extent of the damage and all put our hands on our hearts and said that we would have to do whatever was necessary to make Queensland right. Apart from assisting members of our Commonwealth, what we do in Queensland is certainly significantly important to us all because of its income generation for this country through mining and tourism.

It is just something that we should do; but they come here now and have the audacity to start talking about what cuts we should make. I know that the member for Fadden was not in the parliament—he was a loyal member of our military—in the days of the Howard government, when it decided to put six levies on. I did not have a rifle, and I had to pay a levy for the gun buyback—but I thought that was for a good purpose. If you look at Labor’s record on the imposition of temporary levies you will find that we were very supportive, whether they were for the gun buyback, East Timor or a range of other areas; but when it comes to something as crucial as rebuilding Queensland, the push back now is simply to try to put budgetary pressure on the government. This is something they are embarrassed about; they want to blow the budget out and simply get to a stage of forcing the government to borrow in order to rebuild Queensland. (Time expired)

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