Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Heffernan is exactly right. I am concerned about the flight path for Badgerys Creek airport. I am concerned for my community. I am standing shoulder to shoulder with my community to get a change to the flight path, to get a curfew in Western Sydney, the same as it is in the Eastern Suburbs and the Inner West. It is absolutely no problem. I am glad you reminded me of that issue.

I want to come back to the issue of tax and the issue of the Prime Minister who promised so much and delivered so little, a Prime Minister people are looking at and saying, 'What does this man stand for?'

The answer is that nobody knows. He is a Prime Minister who basically stands for himself, for No. 1. He is a Prime Minister who will do anything to grab and maintain power, who uses language and rhetoric against the former Prime Minister that he now uses in debates against the opposition. And because the opposition have said we do not want the big end of town, the richest people in this country, being subsidised by the ordinary working families of this country when the rich go out and buy four, five, six, seven and eight investment properties, the Prime Minister has now changed his mind about negative gearing. Sometime ago, in opposition, he described it as a tax rort but he now thinks it is fine. Instead of dealing with the facts, instead of dealing with the clear issue that we all need to deal with, that the structural imbalance in our budget, brought about by the worst Treasurer ever in this country, Mr Peter Costello—maybe we are getting pretty close with the current Treasurer—was brought about by bad economic decisions, by profligate economic and fiscal decisions, by the Howard government, this current Liberal government, led by Mr Malcolm Turnbull, want to put the onus on resolving a budget imbalance, a fiscal imbalance, straight on the working class of this country.

The current Prime Minister, Mr Malcolm Turnbull, said in an interview that he supported every element of that 2014-15 budget—that budget that would have ripped the heart out of any type of financial security for working-class people in this country. He supported that. Because it was unpopular, because the Labor Party drove them back on every one of the key elements of that budget, Mr Turnbull used that budget as another example of why he should lead the Liberal Party. And yet major elements of the budget are still there. This is a Prime Minister who has absolutely no claim to being even-handed, no claim to understanding the needs of working class families in this country. How could he? How could this Prime Minister understand the issues facing ordinary working class families in this country? These are working class families who battle every week to pay their bills; working class families who go through the Coles or Woolies or ALDI supermarket checkouts with their fingers crossed that when they put their card through there will be enough money in their account to pay for their food. That is what we have to deal with in this country—more and more inequality. If there is one person in this country who knows nothing about inequality, it is our current Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull—he has absolutely no perception. He has a $50 million mansion overlooking Sydney Harbour—