Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, no. The Labor way, of course, is to get the government to give them a job. We have a Labor government in Queensland that has replaced nearly 14,000 jobs that had been shed, properly, to fix the economy in my home state. They have now been reinstated. They are on steroids. But it is the private sector that provides the jobs. It is the private sector that provides all the welfare that is needed for a family and their community to be able to take a position, create an income and make a contribution to the tax base. For them to do that, from time to time the government of the day have to get out of their way.

You talk about this as a tax cut. This is not a tax cut. This money that you talk about is a reduction by our government of the percentage that will be taken as taxation. It is money that belongs to these people in the first instance. We are just a government that is taking less of it. This is not a tax cut. This is a reduction in the tax position. It is not a cut. The money that remains with them, as you know full well, is reinvested in those businesses. This is where the employment will come for these students—whom I have funded. If you take my contribution to the tax base and apply it all to supporting students at universities, I have put thousands of them through university. I have put thousands of them through university for no benefit for myself, and now we find that 25 per cent of them are not even prepared to pay it back. We have made a moderate adjustment: $8 a week for someone who is now employed and earning $42,000 a year.

I have been waiting for today to watch your attacks. I wanted to see whether there would be any depth and energy in the reaction from the Australian Labor Party, in particular, to the budget yesterday. There is none. Your performance today in question time and in the speaking opportunities you have had has been flat. The reason it has been flat is that there are no fractures in this budget. It is a terrific budget. The people of Australia have received it splendidly, and it leaves you with nowhere to go as you try to respond to the most fiscally responsible budget in your living memory. (Time expired)