Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

For the sake of those people listening at home and the kids up in the gallery, I would just explain what the topic for today's MPI is, because the member for Petrie drifted right off the topic. The topic is:

The Government’s failure to listen to the Australian people on its unfair Budget—

Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—

Maybe the member for Hinkler can go back to having a blue with his mates, all right? Just settle down for a minute; we are talking about the budget.

Government members interjecting—

The member for Herbert—I beg your pardon!

I just want to remind those opposite of a few words that I heard hundreds of times before the last election. They were from the Prime Minister, and he said a million times—I know you know it—that there would be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions and no new taxes. I heard it time after time after time. These were lines that we just heard time and again. Obviously, in this job, as a politician, the only currency we have is our ability to be true to our word. Yet when we saw the budget delivered in May by Treasurer Hockey we had a complete backflip—a complete volte-face, I should say, in terms of those promises. Do we see cuts to education and health? Well, the budget papers clearly detail $80 billion in savings—$80 billion, in their own budget papers. There are changes to pensions, as confirmed by Treasurer Hockey today in question time. As to taxes, there is $8.8 billion in new and increased taxes, including $2.2 billion in increased petrol taxes which will affect the people from Petrie, particularly, who make that long commute into Brisbane. As to the $3.4 billion in the new GP tax, let us be honest about what that is: $2 in red tape; $5 on the never-never; a tax to be paid by sick people. As confirmed by Treasurer Hockey, it is a tax.

This MPI is all about whether or not those opposite are listening to the Australian people. Well, this is my first time standing at the dispatch box, and you get a new perspective up here. You can actually look down the corridor, and you look down the corridor from the representation of people power, that being the Speaker or the Deputy Speaker. You go down the corridor, under the Australian flag, through to the Senate, which is the expression, obviously, of the states' intentions at the ballot box. Here we have the House of Representatives representing the people's view, and then there is the states' view. We know that the architecture was designed so that there is an intersection of power. There is a line of power from here to the Senate. The other line of power is obviously from the Prime Minister's desk, through the cabinet, under the flag, straight out to the people. In between those two, you can go and find a black fountain, and that fountain is designed so that people can talk and have discussions and their conversations can be private. Well, I would suggest, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you speak to the Speaker and the President about turning that fountain off, because that fountain currently is disconnecting the Australian people from the cabinet and the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, because they are not listening. They are not getting the message.

What did we have, when there was a little bit of people being concerned about the budget? What did the Prime Minister say? He said, down in South Australia: 'If the budget stays weak, that means higher taxes; that comes out of your pockets; that means more borrowings and that means higher interest rates.'

And what did Matthias Cormann say on Insiders on Sunday?

… the only alternative to balance the books is to increase taxes.

This is the same group—the same mob of clowns—that before the election said that there would be no new taxes. The same group that said there would be no cuts to education, no cuts to health and no changes to pensions. And it has terrified people.

I do drive around a bit in the 111 square kilometres of my electorate—massive that it is. I get to hear the radio quite a bit, and on Triple M the other day, they were mocking Joe Hockey about his petrol comments. And I thought that when Triple M is sticking it up the Treasurer you know that the Treasurer has lost the Australian people. Triple M were doing a much better job at listening to the Australian people than Treasurer Hockey, than Prime Minister Abbott and anyone on the opposite side. (Time expired)

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