Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak today on how the Turnbull government is starving essential services and abrogating fundamental responsibilities in order to fund their deeply flawed, neo-conservative, trickle-down economic agenda. In fact, I'll take any opportunity to highlight the brazen heist on our national budget that is being undertaken in broad daylight by this government. It was not so long ago that Liberal ministers and backbenchers couldn't make it through five minutes without screeching about the debt and deficit disaster. They are very quiet on that front now, and I'll tell you why. It is because their shameful mismanagement of the economy has resulted in our national debt crashing through half a trillion dollars. That's an unimaginable figure for most Australians. A more sensible group of leaders would see reason for caution and for constraint, but not this government. No, this hasn't stopped them at all. In fact, if anything, they have renewed their zeal to hand over as much wealth as possible to the top end of town as quickly as they possibly can.

The 2018 budget gives billions of dollars in tax cuts to big business, multinationals, the banks and high-income earners. It makes Australians pay for that with savage cuts into health, education and vital public services. Meanwhile, it launches a radical overhaul of Australia's income tax system, which would see a carer on $40,000 pay the same rate of tax as a lawyer on $200,000. On every single measure, everyday Australians miss out. On every single metric, the government utterly fails the test of fairness. It fails the test of fairness on pensioners. Mr Turnbull is cutting the energy supplement, which is costing pensioners—

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