Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Hughes for being one of the few members of the government that seems prepared to talk on this budget in this chamber. I remember the last three budgets, and the last two Labor budgets in particular, when all of us that are now on this side of the House were incredibly keen to get out and speak about the budgets and were incredibly proud of them. We took every opportunity to rise to our feet in this House in the times for three-minute and five-minute statements and 90-seconds statements in order to talk about the budgets and how proud we were of the many measures that the Labor government took to improve opportunities for Australians, particularly through education, through funding innovation, through building high-speed broadband for the future.

Members of the current government seem willing to interject, but they are not really willing to rise to their feet and speak proudly about this budget. That is not surprising because of course it is an incredible breaking of promises that were made less than a year ago before the last election. In fact, when the member for Hughes spoke about the bill we are talking about now he failed to mention that before the election the government—the opposition at the time—promised no new taxes. There were ads clearly saying no changes to pensions, no cuts to education, no cuts to health, that Labor would raise taxes but the Liberals would lower taxes. Yet here they are raising taxes in a clear breach of a commitment made to the Australian people. I wonder too, when they do rise to their feet, whether they actually believe what they are saying. I listened to the member for Hughes last night and I heard him refer to figures that are clearly inaccurate. I wonder whether he knows that or whether he is simply repeating words that he has been told to say.

Let me make a few things clear—and you do not have to believe me, you can just check this by going back to the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook and the budget papers from last year and comparing them to the budget papers that were presented to this House last Tuesday. Just do your own research before you keep repeating things that are clearly false in this House and to your electorate. For a start, if you take the outlook of the budget position in 2014-15 and through the forward estimates from the pre-election fiscal outlook and compare it to the government position, the government position on both debt and deficit is actually worse, not better. For all the savage cuts to pensions, to education, to health, to families, for all the pain that is going to be inflicted by this government on the people of Australia, the government has not done the thing that it claims is the primary reason. It claims the primary reason is to pull back the debt and deficit, and yet it has not.

The budget debt in 2014-15 is worse than that outlined in the pre-election fiscal outlook—which, incidentally, was the last time that the Treasury and Finance prepared budget statements without any influence at all. I do not agree with the current Treasurer that Treasurers are able to convince Treasury to massage their figures in a remarkable way, but the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, seems to believe that they do. But the pre-election fiscal outlook was prepared by the Treasury and Finance without the influence of either side of politics. If you look at those figures and the figures in the budget papers presented last week, the deficit for 2014-15 is slightly worse and the deficit continues right up to 2017-18.

Mr Craig Kelly interjecting—

Madam Speaker, it was extremely difficult for me to listen to the member for Hughes last night in silence, but I did. I would appreciate it, really, if I could have a little bit of politeness from the government. They are the government—a little bit of grace in government would actually be rather pleasant.

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