Page 2401 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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MR HANSON: Let us refer to them by their correct names: the Labor Party, the friends of Gillard, the friends of Rudd, the friends of Shorten, the friends of the mob up on the hill who, through their own incompetence, their own infighting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Hanson, do you mean the federal government or the previous federal government?
MR HANSON: The previous federal government. At the time, the federal government came down to the ACT and said, “I have got a deal for you”—this will get you—“Come on, let us have a deal, and we will all sign it together and skip along. This will keep Prime Minister Gillard in power for at least another week. And all it will cost your kids, all it will cost your school children, is $30 million.”
The Chief Minister has arrived, hopefully to stand up and explain to us why she signed up to a deal that cut $30 million out of our education budget that we were getting from the feds. I hope the Chief Minister will stand up and explain that to us. No? It does not sound like she will.
Anyway, I thought it would be worth standing up, after we heard Ms Burch’s sad tale of the money that was not coming for the fifth and sixth years and that was on the credit card, and pointing out that when it comes to funding from the federal government, the people with blood on their hands, or ink in this case probably, the people that signed away $30 million of funding for our kids, were Katy Gallagher and Joy Burch. And they have the hide to come in here and complain about federal funding.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Housing and Minister for Tourism and Events) (9.37): I cannot let the Leader of the Opposition’s ramblings, even at this late hour, go by and not respond to them. It is particularly interesting, perhaps galling, that those opposite would attempt to come into this place and argue as they did, given what their party has done to education and health expenditure in this country and the priorities that they have chosen.
They want to give tax cuts to miners, to people who have more than $1 million in superannuation. That is their priority. It is tax cuts to their mining billionaire mates, and it is big tax benefits to those who have massive amounts of superannuation, whilst at the same time ripping away what small bonuses were given to low income households for their superannuation, ripping money out of health and education in order to fund the Prime Minister’s series—not even universally supported within his own party—of election commitments that he is ultimately having a great deal of difficulty convincing the Senate to support.
Then it is putting a tax on the visit to the GP. What have we got there? We have a very clear statement of values from the Liberal Party that we will tax you if you are sick. We have got this series of contrasts where the Liberal Party is in favour of driving down public expenditure on health, on education and on assistance for low income families but providing massive tax concessions for the miners, for insisting on
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