Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

But he is listening, which is what Australia has stopped doing with you people. Now just listen and give me some respect.

I reply to you not from my position at the Ariah Park Preschool but as a voter who lives in rural NSW and has to sort through our countless emails.

We have received many of your labor emails and I am completely sick of them. If you cannot simply tell me what you are doing and accomplishing in a positive manner, without all the rubbish about the Liberal party, please cease and desist and remove our preschool from you email listing. Letters like the one below do you as a party no favors. It makes you look small, petty and childish.

She could be talking about the member for McMahon, but she is talking about the entire Labor Party.

Do you not understand that this isn't what Australians want? We want leaders, not bickering children ... which

is what you look like with this sort of crap!

That is Sharon Gordon speaking.

Let me just remind you while you deride the GOVERNMENT (you lost the election remember???)—

that is a good point—

I walk out of my office every day and look over to our Central School at the $800,000 monstrosity of a library that is no bigger than a one bedroom flat and should have cost no more than $300,000 at worst and was built by NO LOCAL BUILDERS at all (except one who got to be the foreman) and I think to myself, you have no right to talk about another party doing a bad job because sunshine, we're in this mess because of all the money you wasted.

Anyway, I would appreciate it if you would either send us productive and informative emails or remove us from your list.

A very annoyed voter!

Sharon Gordon is like many annoyed voters right throughout Middle Australia and indeed right throughout Australia.

Today the Prime Minister said that this is a building and a saving budget. He is right of course. We heard the Treasurer in question time say that it is a budget about living within our means. Labor left us with a huge mess. Labor inherited the best set of figures when it took office in 2007 and it left us with the worst economic mess when it was voted out, kicked out, punted on 7 September 2013. We heard the Treasurer today talk—not just going to Wagga Wagga and talking about nothing—and spruik about jobs growth three times that which Labor achieved in its last 12 months. 15,000 new jobs, each and every month this year. That is getting on with the job of fixing the debt and deficit and economic malaise that Labor left not us as a government but us as a nation with.

We have a plan for getting the nation's finances back on track. We did not create the problem, but we were elected to fix it. We heard the opposition leader suggest that we have no mandate. Let me remind him that we do, because we were elected on 7 September last year to govern this country. We were elected to fix the mess—the six years of economic discrepancies, the economic mess and the economic malaise that Labor left us and our nation with.

We could squib out of it, but we are not going to. The budget does contain some tough measures. It has had to. You do not get in the sort of debt problem that we are in without then having to make some tough calls to fix it. We understand that Australians are doing it tough in many places, but there is nothing fair about forcing future generations to pay for the debt and deficit legacy that Labor left us with. That is why we are talking in detail with senators, to get Labor's mess cleaned up. When they came to office, as I say, Labor inherited a surplus of $20 billion, with no net debt and $45 billion in the bank. And they wasted it. There were so many portfolio areas, not least of which was immigration under the worst immigration minister in history, the member for McMahon, who is sitting opposite.

But we have a plan to get Australia working because the best form of welfare is a job. We want Australians to be working if they can, preferably for a wage and not for the dole, and that is why we are reinvigorating work for the dole. I want to commend the good work being done in this area by the Assistant Minister for Employment, the member for Cowper, in this particular area. It is important work that we have underway through 18 pilot areas which are providing valuable lessons to get the national roll out of the program from 1 July 2015. It is happening; it is underway thanks to the good work by the member for Cowper. The 18 selected locations have high unemployment, a soft labour market and clear opportunities to address local needs.

We all know that politics is all about local and we all need to understand that when we go into our local areas and listen to people. We on this side are listening to people. We listen to them each and every day. We are out in shopping centres, at sporting venues and those sorts of places listening. People are telling us that they appreciate that it is tough but they realise, they acknowledge, they know that we have got the mandate to get the job done and they have every confidence in us.

We heard from the Treasurer in question time today talk about the biggest infrastructure program in Australia's history that is getting underway thanks to the Deputy Prime Minister and the minister at the table, the member for Mayo. They are getting on with the job of building the biggest infrastructure program in Australia's history. There is $300 million in the Bridges Renewal Program. I had a meeting at Carrathool in my electorate last week. Carrathool is hopeful of getting some funding for that particular program. I see Paul Fletcher, who is helping the $100-million roll out for the Mobile Black Spot Program, which is so crucial to regional Australia and something that was ignored by Labor for six long years.

We have a plan to secure the future of higher education in Australia. We heard from the Minister for Education in parliament today about the good initiatives that we are doing there. Labor are the ones who are not listening. They did not listen in government. They just ignored the will of the people. They were totally oblivious to the fact that they lost the election last September. They are not listening in opposition and history is going to judge them very harshly, as it should, because of that.

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