Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to set the record straight. I sat in this chamber last night listening to those opposite say that this government had left no-one behind in this pandemic. There was laughter. I tell you what, there was no laughter when you counted the people they have left behind: casual workers, university workers, Kiwis living in this country and paying tax for years, local government workers, aviation workers and workers at dnata. They've left behind pensioners—left them out of indexation. They cut JobKeeper for childcare workers in Victoria in the middle of a lockdown. The government left a lot of Australians behind, but, shamelessly, they come into this place and claim they haven't. They let Victorians down time and time again. The chief credit-taker stood in this chamber suggesting that everything that happened in Victoria was someone else's fault, as if it wasn't the responsibility of a pandemic.

And they're still leaving people behind. They're planning to leave students in my electorate behind. They're going to lock students in my electorate out of a tertiary education, in a recession, by outpricing them—by making the fees so high that the young people that I represent won't make that choice because they won't be able to afford it. And they're locking out current workers. Every worker in the country is at risk if they can be replaced by someone younger and eligible— (Time expired)