Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Watching the Treasurer's performance selling his 'true Liberal Budget' to the public has been one of the most extraordinary spectacles we have seen in Australian politics in recent times. It has been like watching someone trying to reverse parallel park a shopping trolley—ricocheting from one collision to another, crashing into and inflicting damage on everyone in the general vicinity.

We have watched as the Treasurer has transformed before our very eyes from a strutting rooster in the wake of the last election, to a blowhard Foghorn Leghorn in the lead-up to the budget, to a badly-tattered feather duster after it. The Treasurer has shown that he does not understand marginal tax rates, claiming that his attack on Australians doing it tough is justified by the fact that high-income households already pay half their income in tax, when the real figure is a closer to only 36 per cent. He showed that he does not understand his GP tax when he told a chronic disease sufferer that he would not pay the GP tax when, of course, he would. When called out on his incompetent advocacy of this mean, unfair budget, the only response has been the sound of a glass jaw shattering. Ignoring Disraeli's sage advice that a politician should never complain, never explain, the Treasurer has whinged that 'Everyone's against me'—as though he were the real victim of this budget.

If the Treasurer wants the support of the Australian people, he needs to listen to what they are telling him. The Treasurer needs to take some time out from launching books about himself. He needs to fold up the cabana lounge on the Fijian beach. He needs to take fewer cigar breaks and he needs to start this budget again from scratch. Australians did not vote for this budget and they do not want it.