Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With Christmas almost upon us, I thought it might be a good time to write a couple of lists for families on what this government is doing on their costs of living. We will call one list 'naughty' and the other list 'nice'. What is the government doing for Australian families this Christmas? What is it they doing that is naughty and what is it doing that is nice?

I am sorry to say that the nice list is very short. In fact, it is completely empty. What about the naughty list? That is a lot longer. It includes axing family tax benefit supplements. It includes cutting payments to leave a typical single-parent family $4,700 a year worse off. A typical two-parent family will be $2,600 a year worse off because of this government's cuts. Axing the schoolkids bonus will rip hundreds of dollars a year out of families' pockets. Of course, the naughtiest of all is the 15 per cent GST that will increase the cost of everything and hurt every single Australian family. They are hurting families instead of helping them. They are increasing their costs of living instead of easing them. There is no other way to describe it: the Prime Minister is the Christmas cost-of-living Grinch! (Time expired)