Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak tonight on the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2013. As previous speakers have outlined, it contains some provisions that are largely unobjectionable: they deal with administrative arrangements and adjustments, some of which have been explained in terms of synchronicity of payments with the end of the school year and ensuring eligibility is extended to people of care responsibilities that might not have originally fallen within the scope of the legislation—that is the relatively innocuous part of the bill. What is most significant about the bill is its tax-grab character against families where there are stay-at-home parents. That has achieved a half billion dollar budget recovery hit, designed to help paper over the extraordinary budget deficits that now have become part and parcel of Labor administrations.

We heard earlier in question time today that it was in 1989 when Labor last delivered a budget surplus. For those that think back that long, I remind them that was when Mick Hucknall had a No. 1 his song that year: If You Don't Know Me By Now. That is quite topical, as it illustrates that for those members of the Australian public looking to Labor—

Ms Bird interjecting—

I did go to one of their concerts, which was quite special. Thank you for that, I was just reminding myself of that era. Thank you for the encouragement and a reflection on some years gone by. It was a long time ago. Mick is still around, but budget surpluses are not under Labor administrations. What the Australian public does understand and does know by now is that Labor does not deliver budget surpluses. In this bill, there is an attack on stay-at-home families with second and subsequent children to create a half a billion dollar improvement in an extraordinarily deteriorating budget position. We have seen about $172 billion worth of accumulated budget deficits—the four largest in Australia's financial history—accumulated under this administration in an effort to try and go some way towards honouring one of the rolled gold, etched in a tablet of stone, promises to restore the budget to surplus.

This was one of the measures that was included in the 2012-2013 MYEFO—the Mid-year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. It was an interesting outlook statement from where the major measure in this bill arises. Did you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that in that bill there was no mention of any support for small business? It is quite remarkable at a time when everyone is talking about employment and there has been a quarter of a million jobs lost in small business over the last five years. Despite population growth—

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