Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

What you hear from the member for Kooyong's speech and what you have seen over the last 24 hours provides a real insight into the operations of this Abbott government. You see a government of broken promises. You see a government that is for the few not the many. You see a government that is focused on the short term not the long term. Think about the broken promises just for a minute. I am, frankly, tired of repeating their promises: no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no change to pensions, no increase in the GST, no new taxes, no adverse change to superannuation. Yes, I have repeated that once or twice. I will tell you why I have repeated that once or twice. It is because every Australian who voted for Tony Abbott put their faith in the fact that Tony Abbott was up there saying 'adult government', 'you can trust us', 'we will keep our words'. And what did he say as clear as he possibly could have said? 'No cuts to health, no cuts to education, no change to pensions, no cuts to the ABC, no cuts to the SBS, no change to higher education, no new taxes.'

This particular promise about superannuation he made 14 separate times. Fourteen separate times he made a clear, categorical commitment to the Australian people that he was not going to make unexpected adverse changes to superannuation. Do you reckon actually ripping super money off ordinary workers counts as an adverse change? I think it does. Maybe what he is quibbling with is the 'unexpected' bit. Maybe we should have expected it because this Prime Minister has said that superannuation is a con. We have heard it from the member for Kooyong as well. Is it not a bizarre thing to have a government that is arguing against national savings?

Since when have savings been a bad thing? We hear that $128 billion will be ripped out of our national savings pool because of the changes that it has announced.

Of course that hurts ordinary workers. Who else does it hurt? It hurts businesses in Australia that are trying to borrow money. It hurts our economy. One reason that Australia has coped so well with economic shocks is that we have had domestic sources of finance. We have had the ability to borrow money at home and this government would compromise that.

So they hurt individuals but, as well as hurting individuals and breaking their promise to individuals, they hurt Australian businesses by compromising our pool of national savings. I will tell you something else: this is a government of the few not the many. We heard about the dirty deal with Clive Palmer and the Palmer United Party. The Prime Minister is benefiting one big miner against who? Against almost nine million Australians who will miss out on superannuation; against 1.3 million Australian families, who will miss out on the schoolkids bonus, which is $15,000 for an average family with two kids going through school; and against 3.2 million small businesses. They claim to be the friend of small business.

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