Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I notice the interjection from those opposite but I did quote the Prime Minister completely accurately.

So we see a cut to domestic violence and homelessness services. This funding should have been renewed months ago.

These vital services were left hanging for months and the employees did not know whether the services would continue. Staff were being told that they probably would not have a job and many of them left yet they have mortgages to pay, children to feed. But this government would delay it and delay it. So now the government will let this vital funding for services get underway yet they are still suffering from a $44-million cut imposed by the coalition government last year.

In February, I was taken aback to see the government announced the funding of the severe behaviour response teams to assist older people living with dementia. However, the coalition government, the Liberals and Nationals, had left dementia sufferers and their carers in limbo for eight months after axing the dementia supplement previously introduced by the Labor government, a Labor government that knows how to care for those most vulnerable.

There is no indication from the government that the next budget is going to be any less unfair than the last one. So batten down the hatches, here comes the next ship of horrible. The Abbott government has already made it quite clear in the next budget they have plans for: a GP tax; cuts to Medicare which will cost families more than $2 billion; hiking up the cost of medicines, which will cost families $1.3 billion; overseeing large increases in private health insurance premiums while ripping money out of public hospitals and Medicare and the states will suffer; $100,000 degrees at universities leaving school leavers unable to afford to obtain a chance to show their skills; pension cuts—in real terms over time the budget papers reveal this; and a petrol tax unannounced that will cost families more than $2.2 billion.

So the Prime Minister has cut and run from his 2013 election promises, those promises made to the Australian people before election night. The Abbott government's intergenerational report confirms that the GP tax, the $100,000 degrees, the cuts to education, the cuts to training and pensions are all in the offing. The intergenerational report contains eight pages about the future and 80 pages about the past and that really sums up the coalition government's current approach to policy.

The experts have decided to give this intergenerational report a wide berth. Instead of thinking up new fairer policy ideas, the coalition keep rehashing the same unfair policies that were in the last budget, not policies that were announced before the last election. This is a classic example of the coalition government being defined by what they are not. All they can do is talk about the past and Labor because they are defined by being 'not Labor' rather than having a core reason for existing. Sadly, as we saw in the last budget, they say in education terms that the best indication of future behaviour is past behaviour—so we will see this budget in 39 days—(Time expired)

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