SHAYNE NEUMANN:
I’m here with the Treasurer Jim Chalmers, the Member for Rankin, which takes in Logan. And Logan and Ipswich are pretty similar, aren’t they Jim? They certainly are. And I want to thank Jim for handing down the Budget. It’s good for Australia, good for Queensland, good for Logan, good for Ipswich. Because here in Ipswich 80,000 people who are taxpayers will get a tax cut, 90 per cent of them will get more of a tax cut than they would have under the previous Coalition government and that’s great for Ipswich. There’s very important infrastructure spending in the Budget – $177 million for the upgrade of the Mount Crosby Road Interchange and the Bremer River Bridge as well. And also there’s great support for local people with the Commonwealth Rental Assistance going up. We’ve got nearly 13,000 people benefiting from that in their households, great cost‑of‑living relief for so many people who are doing a tough with inflation. So it’s really important. We’ve also got some great support here in the Budget for students and we’ve got 2 university campuses. One next door here, USQ, one in Springfield in my electorate of Blair and they’ll get help of course, students who graduate with their HELP get indexation relief in the Budget. So I welcome Jim here to Ipswich, he’s been here many times before. I’m not sure we played basketball against each other but we’re both basketball fanatics and have been involved in basketball across the board. Jim’s been in Ipswich many times delivering money and I tell you what, it’s great to have him back here because it’s always good to have a bloke with a chequebook in Ipswich.
JIM CHALMERS:
Thanks very much, Shayne. It’s really wonderful to be here at the Ipswich Show with Shayne Neumann. Now, Shayne is a really important voice of reason and a voice for this region. I support him 100 per cent, enthusiastically, without any reservation whatsoever. Shayne Neumann is one of the most important members of the Albanese Labor government. He is the gold standard when it comes to local members and he is a very influential voice, a very powerful and important part of the Albanese Labor government. Shayne would have been at hundreds of these over the years so it’s good to join him here again today.
The Budget we handed down on Tuesday was about 2 things. It was about easing cost‑of‑living pressures and it was about investing in the jobs and industries which will power the future. Compare the Budget on Tuesday night, which was a plan to ease cost of living and a vision for the future of good, secure, well‑paid jobs, compare that with the risky and unhinged rant we got from Peter Dutton. Peter Dutton would divide our country and damage our economy. That is very clear from the Budget reply that he gave on Thursday night. We hear today that they’re still not prepared to tell the Australian people where they want to build the nuclear reactors. They told us that they would come clean before the Budget. The Budget has now been and gone and they still won’t fess up. They still won’t come clean when it comes to the location of the nuclear reactors. They won’t tell us how much this uncosted nuclear fantasy will cost the Australian people. They said that they would tell us by now and they haven’t.
When it comes to Peter Dutton, nuclear negativity is no substitute for economic credibility. Labor has a plan for a tax cut for every taxpayer, energy bill relief for every household, help with rent and medicines and in other ways, at the same time as we strengthen Medicare, and reform our universities, and invest in the care economy, and create the good, secure paid jobs of the future and more particularly a Future Made in Australia. The contrast is really clear now. A plan to ease cost of living, a vision for the future from Labor versus the unhinged, risky rant that we saw, the nuclear negativity that we have seen from Peter Dutton and from a Coalition which still won’t tell the Australian people where the nuclear reactors are going to go, how they’re going to pay for bigger tax cuts for the wealthiest Australians, how they’re going to find the money for all of the extra spending Peter Dutton announced on Thursday night.
Peter Dutton and Angus Taylor are creating at least a $40 billion hole in the budget. They would damage our economy. They would destroy the budget. The only way that Angus Taylor and Peter Dutton can fund the commitments that they have made is to go after Medicare and go after pensions and payments like they did last time they were in office. The last time they were in office they went after Medicare, they went after people on pensions and payments via Robodebt and changes to the pension and that is the only way that they will be able to fill this tens‑of‑billion dollar hole that they are creating in the budget. We can’t risk Peter Dutton. His nuclear negativity is no substitute for economic credibility, we’ve seen that in recent days. In contrast with our plan and good local members like Shayne as part of the Albanese Labor government, we are all about easing cost‑of‑living pressures and investing in the future. Peter Dutton is all about nasty negativity which is no substitute for economic credibility. Thanks very much.