Page 3520 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010
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up and give me the numbers. Show me the numbers. Give me your impact statement. Give me the business impact statement, the regulatory impact statement that says you can bring the price of electricity down by this reform. I do not believe you can. And I do not believe any of the Greens can stand up, when I finish, and prove me wrong and show me where is the caveat. Where is the rider on this that it will not affect those poor, less well-off, 3½ million Australians by taking away their private health insurance?
If you go down to the next measure, they are going to introduce an estate tax with full provisions. This is the comparison. On private health insurance rebates, it is mute. At least in their estate tax proposal, they do say that they will exclude a few things. In measure 23 on the same page, page 80, they say:
23. introduce an estate tax with full provisions to protect the family farm, the family home and small business with a threshold of $5 million as indexed from the year 2010.
For now. I would like to see the full detail on that. If you are not going to include those 3.4 million Australians under $35,000, why do you not state it in your policy? And the reason is: you are caught out. You are exposed. You just do not care. It is lazy policy. You do not do the work. You have not got the numbers. You do not care.
Then we go to childcare. I want to see the numbers. The demand of the coalition is: “We want to see your numbers.” I want to see the numbers from the Greens. Measure 24 on page 54, under “Childcare”, there it is:
24. establish nationally consistent childcare standards including carer-to-child ratios of at least 1:3 for children up to 2 years old and 1:4 for children older than 2 years old.
Every one of us wants the best childcare we can provide for our kids. But again, what about those families on a single income, potentially under $35,000 per annum? A lot of young families starting out have one income, because, let us face it, one of them at least, normally the mum, is at home minding the kids. And if you want to get back in the workforce early you have got to use childcare of some sort. But we are going to make, through this Greens policy, childcare more expensive.
You are paying more for your electricity in a cold Canberra winter. You are going to either have to reduce the benefits that you have in your private health insurance or get out of it because the rebate is going for 3.4 million Australians. Some of those 3.4 million do live in the ACT. And we are going to charge you more for your childcare. Where are the numbers on that? We do not get any numbers from the Greens’ financial spokesperson. Perhaps one of the other Greens could tell us how they are going to fund that and how they are going to make sure that the poor are not disadvantaged.
If, perchance, you earn under $35,000 and you used to have health insurance and you wanted to access childcare and, because you have a faith, you want to send your kid to a non-government school, whether it be Catholic or Muslim, under the Greens you are going to pay more for that. At the Press Club luncheon today, Bob Brown was asked
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