Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

A budget normally tells you what a government believes in, a budget normally tells you a lot about a government's core beliefs and its values, but a budget always tells you a lot about a government. This budget tells us a lot about this government, but it tells us in a different way than normally, because this budget tells you that this government is desperate and that this Prime Minister in particular is desperate. It tells you that the most important value for this government is its survival and the survival of the Prime Minister in particular in his party room. That is what now drives every action and what drives this budget, and they will say and do anything to achieve that end.

The government is desperate to tell us that this budget is fair, but we know why. The member for Rankin, the shadow minister for finance, reminded the House yesterday why. The Liberal Party had to spend $200,000 on a focus group to tell them that they have to say that this budget is fair, after the 2014 budget and everything that followed. You should not need a focus group to tell you that a budget should be fair. We have been fighting for fairness against this government since 2013, and we have fought for it because we believe in it. We have not needed a focus group to tell us that fairness should be at the core of economic policy; it is at the very fabric of why we are here. That is why we fight for fairness. This government is coming very late to the party when it comes to fairness, and it is inspired by spin as it does so.

It underlines the point: when this Prime Minister gets up and talks about fairness, he does not believe in it. The people sitting behind him do not believe in it, and they do not believe in him either. If you want a party to defend Medicare, turn to the party that created Medicare. If you want a party to defend the National Disability Insurance Scheme, turn to the party that created that scheme. If you want a party to defend fairness, turn to the party that has fairness at its core in everything it does.

The government have finally dropped some of those zombie measures from the 2014 budget: making unemployed people wait longer for Newstart, cuts for families on less than $80,000 a year, or the infamous 'double dipping' maternity leave and parental leave measure, which they announced on Mother's Day. They have finally dropped these measures, but I looked in the budget papers in the lockup yesterday for the explanation as to why they have changed their minds. I thought, 'Maybe it says, "We accept we got it wrong," or maybe, "Our values have changed."'

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