Extract from ABC News
Updated
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has revealed in his
formal reply to the federal budget that Labor will oppose around $13
billion worth of cuts and tax hikes, including the changes to university
funding and student support.
Cuts to pensions and family benefits, the $2.3 billion fuel excise increases, delays on Newstart payments and the $7 GP fee are all on Labor's hit-list."Tonight I rise to speak on behalf of millions of Australians who feel shocked and angry," Mr Shorten told Parliament on Thursday night.
He said "the Australian people have been ambushed" and "betrayed" by the Abbott Government's "blueprint for a radically different, less fair Australia".
"This is just the beginning, turning Australia into a place most of us won't recognise - colder, meaner, narrower," he said.
"This is a budget that would seek to demolish the pillars of Australian society - universal Medicare, education for all, a fair pension, full employment."
Using modelling from the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) at Canberra University, Mr Shorten focussed on the impact of the changes on families.
The data reveals that a family with one income of $65,000 and two children will be $1,733 worse off this year, and face a $5,830 hit to the family budget in 2016.
"This is a budget that will push up the cost of living for every Australian family - a budget drawn up by people who have never lived from paycheque to paycheque," Mr Shorten said.
Labor has been critical of dramatic changes announced in the budget to the higher education sector - that would allow universities to set their own fees and force students to pay back their loans earlier and at a higher interest rate.
Shorten hits out at 'purely ideological changes'
On Thursday night the Opposition Leader announced Labor would vote against the "wantonly destructive" measures.He says the cuts "bring down the curtain on the Whitlam university legacy ... the legacy that gave Tony Abbott - and at least 12 members of his Cabinet - the same opportunity [to go to university]."
"Labor will vote against these cuts to university funding and student support."
The Opposition is also primed to fight changes to the jobless benefit - Newstart - that would force unemployed people under 30 to wait six months before they can receive the payment.
Mr Shorten says the move is "...probably the single most heartless measure in this brutal budget".
"Prime Minister, how are people under 30 looking for work supposed to survive for six months on nothing?
"These are purely ideological changes that go to the very core of the Prime Minister's character."
The Opposition leader has also hit out at $80 billion in cuts to funding for the states to pay for schools and hospitals.
The Government announced in the budget that it will dump the Gonski school funding plan in 2017-18, saving around $30 billion.
Hospital funding agreements, agreed with the states and territories under former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd, will also be wound back from 2017 saving a massive $50 billion over eight years.
The cuts have sparked fury from the states, who believe the Commonwealth is trying to "wedge" them into pushing for an increase to the GST - a tax distributed to the states by the Federal Government.
"The Prime Minister and the Treasurer are blackmailing the states into becoming the Commonwealth's cat's paw - a Trojan horse to a bigger GST but absolving the Abbott Government of fingerprints or blame," Mr Shorten told Parliament.
"We on this side of the House will have no truck with these brutal and cruel cuts to hospitals and schools."
However, Mr Shorten has given no detail about how a Labor federal government would pay for the increased funding, without massive deficits.
Treasurer Joe Hockey has dismissed the Labor leader's response to his first budget as "all politics, no policy".
"He [Mr Shorten] is in denial about the true state of the budget," Mr Hockey said.
"The second part is he offers no solution.
"He said there is a budget task but he didn't say how he was going to positively respond to it."
Mr Hockey said Labor was planning to block $20 billion worth of measures that would make the budget "situation worse".
And, adding to speculation that Labor may wave through the two per cent income tax rise for top earners, Mr Shorten does not mention the "deficit levy" in this speech.
Later, on the ABC's 7.30 program, the Labor leader called the tax rise a "cheap trick" but said the Opposition had not come to a final decision on how it would vote.
He denied his party was divided over the issue.
"No, not at all. The disagreement and division is within the Government ranks," he said.
The balance of power parties - the Greens and the Palmer United Party - also oppose many of the measures, setting the Government up for months of wrangling to try to push the changes through.
The Prime Minister has already conceded there will have to be some "horse-trading" in the Senate, but he also put the prospect of an early poll on the table, warning he would not accept attempts to "completely frustrate" the Government.
Mr Shorten ended his budget reply speech daring Mr Abbott to go ahead with the threat.
"If you want an election, try us," he said.
"If you think that Labor is too weak, bring it on."
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