Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

Unlike those opposite, Labor understand that we have to make Australia more equal again and that we have to start by putting forward a good plan and good policies for the future. Despite what those opposite have been claiming, inequality is getting worse in this country. Under this lacklustre Liberal government, more and more people are finding it harder to put dinner on the table each night and it's becoming impossible for people to find secure work. People are getting sicker because they're skipping seeing the doctor because they just can't afford it. People are struggling to access quality education from primary school through to higher education. Households are being absolutely crippled by the rising living costs in this country, and home the ownership rate is now at a six-decade low.

I was shocked and appalled by comments from those opposite, who came out banging their drums saying that inequality had actually gotten better under this government. What a joke! That just shows how out of touch they really are. The facts have been laid bare: inequality is on the rise; Australians are struggling on all fronts. Something has to stop. This government needs to stop this. We need to see this reversed. What the Liberals are doing isn't working. Instead of denying the hardship that everyday people are facing, the least that those opposite could do was to pretend they had a plan to deal with it. But this government is bereft of any vision or any plan to reverse the inequality in this country. At a time where wages have flatlined and bills are going through the roof, the government's only plan is to cut payments to pensioners and support cuts to wages while giving tax cuts to millionaires and the biggest businesses. Why should the top end pay less and the rest of Australia pay more? When will the Turnbull government see sense and for once back the battlers over the billionaires? An economy that only benefits the Prime Minister's mates isn't just unfair, it's likely to be unstable, too. If those opposite spent half the time developing a vision and policies to benefit every Australian that they do talking about Labor and making things up, then Australia would be a better place to live.

Mr Malcolm Turnbull is under enormous leadership pressure. He needs to tell us he's a strong leader, like he did last week. If you really are a strong leader, Mr Turnbull, you shouldn't need to tell us, but it's probably more about telling yourself. If the Prime Minister were really that strong, he would have asked his Deputy Prime Minister to step aside until the High Court makes its ruling. Mr Turnbull, if you were as strong as you are telling us you are, you would be fighting as hard for all Australians to have secure jobs as you are fighting to save Mr Barnaby Joyce's job and your own. Instead of wasting your breath telling us what a strong leader you are, perhaps you could get to work and tell us what you're going to do to create a stronger and a fairer Australia.

The people who elected the Prime Minister to represent them and to have a vision, a plan and policies going forward are in fact looking to Mr Bill Shorten, the leader of the Labor Party, because we're the party of ideas, we're the party of policies and we're the party of vision and we're about ensuring that there is a change in the inequality in this country. But we have a Prime Minister whose only mantra is to give the top end of town a tax cut, to support big business, while at the same time cutting supplements to pensioners. We have an underemployment problem in this country that this government is failing to address.

This is a Prime Minister who is so out of touch, who is so arrogant and who is a leader of a dysfunctional and chaotic government, and that's going to be what is going to be written about this Prime Minister in the pages of history, because he lacks leadership. (Time expired)