Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a budget which is full of Orwellian bravado, spin and short-term sugar hits. It is a direct attack on Australian families, nowhere more so than in my electorate. We know that the Prime Minister before the budget claimed, 'We know it will be good for families.' The NATSEM modelling shows that nine out of 10 of the lowest income families lose out under this budget while nine out of 10 of the wealthiest families benefit. So it is a bit of a reverse Robin Hood. This budget makes the Sheriff of Nottingham look good.

And we know that this is just the continuation of a lot of bad decisions: a bad budget last year that was manifestly unfair. The government was reeling in the face of electoral opposition to that budget. I know in my electorate you go down and look at some of the decisions that were made on submarines. We had the Minister for Industry and Science on May 26 this week in the Financial Review confirming: 'Ian Macfarlane concedes SA may not build first few submarines'. We will be lucky to build any of them, despite the defence minister's promise before the election.

We know that Holden's workers and other car manufacturing workers in this country have suffered a great deal. There was an article on 21 May this year that said:

Holden staff have been made forcefully redundant.

They are the first forcible redundancies in that factory in quite some time. So we know what this budget is all about. (Time expired)