Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Question time is about to start, and I'm sure there will be plenty of accusations about the Labor Party engaging in class war—that's very predictable. But the truth is class war is occurring right now and it's being driven by this government—a government that have an intent and have declared war on working families and pensioners in my community, where the median income for a worker is $47,000, the median income for a family is $65,000 and retiree households live on $32,000 a year. They're all dependent on government services to survive, and this government are cutting those services. They're cutting $17 million a year from my schools, they're cutting $37 million from my hospitals, they're cutting $270 million from TAFEs that my electorate depends on. They're cutting $2.2 billion from universities that supply my electorate. They're giving a $9.80 tax cut to workers in my community, while those in the member for North Sydney's electorate, for example, will get $7,200. How is that fair? The answer is it's not, because this government are arrogant and out of touch. They have only one policy and that's an open class war against the working families and pensioners in my electorate, and we will fight them every day on that.