Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The evidence is mounting: the Abbott government's first terrible budget is carving up a social divide, disgracefully, along social and political lines. A study by the University of Canberra's National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling—NATSEM—has found that 16 of the 17 seats hardest-hit by the Prime Minister's budget are electorates represented by the opposition. On the national hit list, Chifley ranks as the fifth-worst affected electorate, with families to lose an estimated $806 a year due to this budget.

By contrast, how do families in the Prime Minister's and Treasurer's north shore electorates fair? According to NATSEM—and, remember, this is NATSEM's work not the Labor Party's—families in the PM's seat of Warringah will be $145 a year worse off. In the Treasurer's electorate of North Sydney, families will be $139 out of pocket. The seat best protected from a budget in which we were told we would all have to suffer is the seat of Wentworth held by the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull. Over there, families will only be $69.50 worse off annually. So, $70 if you live in Wentworth; $806 if you live in Chifley.

People in Wentworth might be a couple of dollars short each week due to the Abbott government budget, but the hit on families in our area would roughly equate to three or four weeks' groceries for some. The Prime Minister promised, hand on heart, a 'no surprises' government, but this budget is turning out to be an absolute shocker for Western Sydney families.