Phillip Thompson (Herbert, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government's priorities are all wrong. Your mortgage is going up. People are doing it tough. Sitting around the dinner table, they're talking about what they're going to have to cut back on—groceries, school supplies, insurance, their mortgage. When asked about this, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer both laughed it off. They're not spending your hard earned tax dollars where they should. For an example, instead of putting your hard earned money back into supporting Australians, they're sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Afghanistan, to the Taliban. The Taliban are responsible for 41 deaths of Australian soldiers and more than 200 wounded in combat, including myself. Many ADF veterans have succumbed to their war within, and hundreds of thousands of Australian Afghan veterans have the memories of what that hell on earth actually is. As part of the Taliban government, they have a person by the name of Anas Haqqani, who ran the Haqqani network and who was sentenced to death. He's responsible for terrorist attacks around the world, killing women, children and soldiers. That's who is counting the money now. The Taliban hate us, and they should hate us for free.