A grubby backroom deal between Labor and the Liberal Party
Senator DI NATALE (Victoria) (13:54): For those people who are following this debate and are not clear about what it involves, it is worth explaining it in a little bit of detail. This bill that is before the parliament is an omnibus bill. For those people who have not heard that term before, if you are listening in, an omnibus bill deals with a whole range of seemingly disconnected acts of parliament, looks to cobble together a whole range of different legislative amendments and puts it in the form of one piece of legislation. What we have got is an omnibus bill that deals with things like supports for people with disabilities, issues around single parents and issues around young people. I think of this bill not as an omnibus but as omni-bulldozer, because it just seems to be a bulldozer through the rights and supports of people with disabilities, single parents and young people.
I want a focus on one issue in particular and that is the issue of the supports provided to people who are seeking to get an education. This is something that the National Party should be most interested in. If you live in a regional or rural community, as I do, getting an education often means packing up, leaving your local community and moving to a big city, finding accommodation and meeting all the expenses associated with accessing an education that is far removed from the place that you live. In fact, it is a really important support for those people in my community. What we are doing is effectively ripping out half a billion dollars—
Senator Ian Macdonald: Where do you live? You live in Weerabi!
Senator DI NATALE: I will take that interjection. The people of the south-west of Victoria would be offended if they were compared with people living in urban community. I live on a 50 acre property in the Otway Range, in a small community of 2,000 residents called Deans Marsh. It is in between Colac and the coastal town of Lorne. It is a rural community. There are people who live in my community who rely on these supports.
Senator Ian Macdonald: You are a Brunswick latte!
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Back): Order on my right. Senator Di Natale will be heard in silence.
Senator DI NATALE: What we are seeing is half a billion being ripped out. The great surprise here is not that the Liberal Party has proposed this change, because after the last budget nothing could surprise me about the cruelty that could be inflicted on the poor, the sick, the elderly and the vulnerable by the coalition. The great tragedy is that we have got the once proud Labor Party—who stood up for the rights of the poor, the sick, the vulnerable and the young—now doing a grubby deal with the Liberal Party in a backroom and ramming these changes through. This was the party who stood up and said, ‘We will stand against this cruel budget and we will fight against Abbott’s changes to education and health care and so on.’ Now they have done a deal with them!
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: That is Prime Minister Abbott, Senator Di Natale.
Senator DI NATALE: They have done a grubby deal with the Liberal Party. The Labor Party is the party who attends rallies and who stands up with megaphones saying, ‘We are going to stop this budget.’ Now what we are hearing is that there is a deal done between both parties to ensure that young people no longer have access to supported to get education. Considered in the context of the broader education changes, where a higher education degree is now out of reach, it represents everything that is rotten with politics. We get the rhetoric and we get the action. The rhetoric and the actions very, very rarely come together.
We have got the rhetoric of this cruel and harsh budget and the Labor Party was standing up against it. Now we have got a backroom deal between the Labor Party and the coalition saying, ‘Let’s just keep this quiet. Let’s remove supports from young people, single parents and people with disabilities. Let’s ensure that those people who need these supports no longer have them.’ Why? I do not know. You have got to ask this question of the Labor Party: ‘Why on earth would you do this at this time, when we are seeing the harshest attack on the Australian community by a coalition government ever witnessed? They are taking on pensioners, people with disabilities, single parents and young people. Why would you capitulate and support these changes? Why would you do it?’ I do not get it. It makes no sense. The only context in which someone can understand it is that there has been a grubby deal struck; that there is more to this. In fact, once again, the Australian community is being sold out in the name of grubby politics.