Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am going to give some sage advice to the opposition. We, unfortunately, spent nine years on that side. When you put up a matter of public importance and you think it is important, you actually put people on the benches. Look at their side: one, two, three. They have got three people in the chamber. If they thought this was a big issue, they would have them over there giving us lectures, hectoring and interjecting. But they are nowhere to be seen, because they know they should hang their heads in shame for nine years of failure in this space.

We've got a Treasurer that's delivered a strong budget, a resilient budget, fulfilling our election commitments. I'll tell you what those people opposite did in their first budget. Their first budget resulted in the Prime Minister losing his job. Tony Abbott lost his job over that budget, and Joe Hockey, the then member for North Sydney, was never the same again. He sat there, a diminished man. What that mob did was have a commission of audit, and they cut $80 billion out of health and education. Remember the Medicare co-payments to make the cost of living harder for people in our areas? They are the people that did it. Then they froze the indexation of Medicare, year after year. And they have the gall to come into this place and give us lectures about the cost of living.

What about wages—10 years of failure. Have they ever supported a wage rise for low-paid workers? Not at all. Not once. When the former opposition leader, the now Prime Minister, held up a coin during the election campaign and talked about a $1-an-hour increase for low-paid workers, they called him a loose unit because they didn't support and still don't support wage rises. There has never been a wage cut or a wage freeze they haven't supported. That's the view that they took. That's what their former finance minister Mathias Cormann said in a moment of candour and honesty. That's what they truly believe. Those people opposite will never support the representatives of the workers. They'll never support the workers—the heroes of the pandemic.

When it comes to child care, they haven't supported that policy. There are 8,900 families in my electorate who will benefit, but those opposite will not support it. So they'll oppose that improvement for low-paid workers, for young families in my area—more than 10 per cent of the people living in places like Spring Mountain, Springfield Lakes, Ripley Valley and South Ripley in my electorate. Those opposite will vote against, not support, the childcare changes that will help those young families in my electorate. That's why the candidate that ran against me could not even talk about those issues in the last election. They should be ashamed of what they've done.

When it comes to education, they wouldn't support needs based funding. We on this side of the chamber believe that everyone has got a right to go to a cathedral of learning, a great state school—but parents have the right to send their kids to a private school and to support those private schools as well. We believe in education. Those opposite wanted to freeze—we've talked about the cost of living—pay rises for the military, the ADF, and only a campaign by military families and the Labor opposition, supporting the ADF, got pay rises for the military. So don't come into this place and give us lectures about the cost of living.

What about dementia supplements and aged-care supplements? It took them 32 minutes to get rid of $1.3 billion in funding to the most vulnerable people in this country: people living with dementia struggling with cost-of-living pressures. That is what those opposite did in 2013-14. That was their first budget. That's what they did when they came into office.

What we've done now that we've got into office is help people with cost-of-living pressures, like childcare and paid parental leave to help families. Under that mob, there wouldn't have been a budget paper from the Treasury that had wage indexation or expected wage rises. It wasn't achieved. It never was achieved. So don't give us lectures—because there's a 3.75 per cent wage increase in the budget papers. That's what's going to happen across the board. They never achieved any of that, not once when they were in government. It was nine years of neglect—nine years of not caring less about families, working families, and individuals, people in my electorate, people in working-class areas, young families in regional and rural areas. They pose—they preen in this place—about how they're concerned about helping working families and people in need. But they do nothing when they're in government; they make those people's lives that much harder.

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