Claire Clutterham (Sturt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is much that I love about this place—the chance to represent my community, to meet interesting people and to be part of a government that is delivering for working Australians. As much as I love this place, though, there are things I find pretty strange and sometimes downright confusing, such as when members on the opposite side of the House share stories of hardship from people in their electorates—stories of people telling members opposite that they are struggling to pay bills, struggling to make ends meet or struggling to fill a script. The reason I find this so perplexing is that members on the opposite side of the House voted against tax cuts for all 14 million Australian taxpayers—tax cuts which would help the very residents who are telling the members opposite that they are doing it tough. Do these residents know that the coalition went to the last federal election with a policy of higher taxes and bigger deficits, that they voted against Labor's measures to increase wages for low-income workers and that their voting track record illustrates a repeated pattern of voting against Australian workers earning more and keeping more of what they earn? On this side of the chamber, we listen to residents of our electorates who are doing it tough, but we don't just listen; we act, and we deliver meaningful cost-of-living relief for Australian families. Labor is the party of lower taxes, higher wages and bigger surpluses.

See this speech in context