Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

This afternoon we heard something which I think was an illustration of where this government is coming from. This afternoon in question time the Prime Minister, in response to a question about these matters, said, 'It's not all beer and skittles.' Dead right it's not all beer and skittles! It is not all beer and skittles for small businesses in this country. It is not all beer and skittles for families in this country.

Let's make it very clear. At this last election we went to the polls and in my electorate I canvassed the community on the issue of the schoolkids bonus. In fact I can tell you, certainly without debate from my perspective, that the reason I am here is because I campaigned on that very issue in bush communities. Remember, 40 per cent of my constituents are Aboriginal people living in remote communities—the poorest Australians. The average age in the Northern Territory is 30 years. It is the youngest constituency in this country. Aboriginal people have large families. These kids are the most disadvantaged in the nation and they live in communities with the highest cost of living in the nation. They have benefited from the schoolkids bonus more than almost any other Australians would have.

Yet now we have got to tell them that it's not all beer and skittles, that you've just got a cop it, because the Prime Minister went to the last election saying to the Australian people: 'We're going to give you one up the ribs. You'll feel it all right, because we're going to take away the schoolkids bonus. We're going to affect your lives in a way no other government has done and we're going to do it to make sure you feel it.' And today we had confirmation that that is what it was meant to do. It was designed to hurt the community. And he stands up here, proud as punch, and says, 'Well, we had to tell the community it's not all beer and skittles.'

Dead right it's not all beer and skittles—a disgusting episode by a Prime Minister who should have more faith in the Australian community. Not only the Prime Minister; but all of those people on the other side who go into their communities and no doubt tell all the families, the low-income earners, what this is going to do to them. How many of them actually went to the election telling people that they were going to abolish the schoolkids bonus? How many of them? How many of them went to the last election saying they were going to abolish the income support bonus? How many said they were going to abolish the low-income superannuation contribution? Not one of them. That is the truth of it—not one of them. Did they go out knocking on doors saying, 'Oh, by the way, how many kids have you got?'

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