Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

It is always interesting when you work through a budget. You deal with the parliament and you get a very quick and clear idea about which parties and which members of parliament are more focused on policy and those which are more focused on politics.

At the last budget, we took forward a measure—a series of measures, actually—and we listened carefully to the response to those measures and those measures were unsuccessful. But what we have learned from the Labor Party is this: the answer is always 'no'. They are not interested in a policy conversation about the future of the nation. They are interested in causing havoc and riot in the parliament. That is what they are interested in doing. They are the wreckers of the parliament. When you go to the parliament with the budget and you say, 'We are proposing to do these measures,' and those measures are rejected, we accept that. Those measures were rejected.

We were told that six months was too long, we were told that the age of 30 was too high and that these things had to be changed. Additionally, they said that there needed to be greater investments in employment programs to get people—particularly young, disadvantaged people—in a position where they could get a job. So what did the government do? The government said, 'Fair enough. We've listened, we've heard you and we've come back with an alternative proposal, which is to cut the six months to one month. We've cut the age from 30 to 25 and we've increased the amount we are spending on programs to assist young people to get into jobs by over $330 million.'

See this speech in context