Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are in a cost-of-living crisis, but instead of spending a quarter of a trillion dollars on giving people real and immediate cost-of-living relief, like getting dental into Medicare or making child care free, Labor is spending a quarter of a trillion dollars on stage 3 tax cuts for politicians and billionaires. Make no mistake: the stage 3 tax cuts are the centrepiece of this upcoming budget. They are the black hole that sucks everything else in with its gravitational pull.

I mentioned dental care. The average household is spending about a thousand dollars a year on dental treatment, and many people just can't afford to go, so they put off going at all. Instead of giving people cost-of-living relief by making it cheap or free to go to the dentist, Labor is giving $9,000-a-year tax cuts to politicians and billionaires. The Treasurer is asking everyone else to find cuts to make way for any new spending measures. Well, the biggest cut is in the Treasurer's own portfolio, of a quarter of a trillion dollars that is being spent to drive a flat tax nightmare in this country.

If Labor doesn't deliver real cost-of-living relief to people in this budget by getting dental into Medicare, by making child care free, by building affordable housing, it is because they are spending a quarter of a trillion dollars giving the likes of Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart and every politician a tax cut instead of spending that money to deliver real cost-of-living relief.