Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (2014 Measures No. 6) Bill 2014. Now, I like the member for Fraser; I think he is a reasonable man and I think he is a good man. But perhaps I could just tell you a story. When I was a young fellow, when I was playing subdistrict Rugby Union in Brisbane, I was very keen on this girl who was working for the Commonwealth Bank. I was very keen on her. I was playing for the Westpac Rugby club, and she was associated with the Commonwealth Bank Rugby club. So we sent each other our match reports. We were both speaking about the same game, but the two reports were completely and utterly different. You could not possibly have seen what the game was about. Similarly, when we were all sitting in our offices and talking about family law conflicts and child custody, the mother of the children would come in and tell you her side of the story, and then the father of the children would come in and tell you his side of the story, and you would never know that they were the same marriage.

That is what we have just heard here. The member for Fraser has stood up here and lambasted us over changes to the single parent's pension. I do not want to rake over this, and I was not going to touch on it. But what Labor did to single parents when they were in government had nothing to do with helping people to go to work. It had nothing to do with anything, because most single parents—most single female parents—actually do work. What they did by changing the single parent's pension back to Newstart was to cruelly, harshly and unjustly target single parents' pensions, not to give people an opportunity to get to work but to get their budget back into order. I know that the member for Jagajaga has come out and said that they probably got that one wrong, but for the member for Fraser to stand there and lecture us about the treatment of single parents is just a little bit rich.

I just want to quickly go through what these bills actually say—

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