Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I was elected to this place, I thought that members were here to make life easier for future generations, but not members of this government. They've climbed into the castle and now they want to pull the drawbridge up behind them. They clearly want to be a government that leaves things worse than it found them. This government, whose members got access to free higher education, now wants to make massive increases to the cost of university degrees. They've cut TAFE by $3 billion. It was fine for them to study for free, but they think young Australians should enter a tough job market, in the middle of a recession, with massive debts. Then there's superannuation. They're happy to claim 15 per cent superannuation, but they want to take superannuation increases away from ordinary Australian workers and stop the legislated increase to 12 per cent. Then there's their jobseeker—the jobseeker who gets a $4,000-an-hour jet to fly around Europe. Meanwhile, the rest of the jobseekers around the country are going to be living on $40 a day. I could go on. This is a generation of MPs who took advantage of an easier housing market, and they've got no plan to tackle housing affordability. They rose through the ranks of a secure labour market with strong wage growth, and now they're happy with stagnant wage growth. They've made it, and now they want to pull the drawbridge up behind them.