Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the matter of public importance. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak once more on this budget in this place, as I have been in my electorate in the week between the sittings. Let everyone in this place be very clear: people in Scullin have no confidence in this budget nor in this government's twisted priorities. So I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this genuine matter of public importance.

The budget is, of course, cruel. It divides Australians into lifters and leaners and into haves and have nots. Importantly, it is also uncertain and incoherent. So we see the rhetoric of emergency and of tough decisions while there are also big, unjustifiable spends—most obviously, paid parental leave. We see the confidence-sapping gap between the pre-election promises that the government so solemnly issued signed by our Prime Minister, who talked so much about lifting standards in politics and public life, and today's reality, the reality of the broken promises now facing Australian businesses and Australian families. It is damaging our economy just as it fragments our society and indeed Australia's social fabric. Perhaps this is why the Treasurer always looks so annoyed and tired when he is held to account or even, in fact, when he is asked Dorothy Dixers. He produces that world-weary sigh that we are not worthy to hear his words of wisdom.

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