Mr RIPOLL (Oxley—Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) (16:03): Hell hath no fury like a shadow Treasurer scorned! Mr Hockey: Amen! Mr RIPOLL: And 'amen' he might well say. Mr Hockey: Remember that! Mr RIPOLL: Yes, Your Honour! If you listened to the shadow Treasurer's speech or read it later, you will know that what he is doing is belling the cat in terms of what the coalition's program is—what the opposition plan on doing to this economy if they get into government. The reality of this MPI, 'the urgent need for the government to address the cost-of-living pressures on Australian families', is a complete distraction. It is a distraction from their own failures, from the $70 billion black hole in what they have promised to fund. On one hand, they are saying they are going to provide more; on the other hand, they are saying they are going to make savings. If you add the two together, it makes for a very big funding black hole, and that is exactly what they have got. The MPI also highlights the fact that the opposition are in popularity mode: 'What's out there? What group can we please? What group will just side with us, on the basis that we'll promise to do or say anything to garner a few votes?' Unfortunately, that is not how you run an economy and it is not how you run a country, and it should not be how you run a political party either. Their strategy right now is just to frighten people—families, small business, everyone they can find. They particularly want to frighten schoolkids. Their latest rant and rave is about cutting, slashing and burning funding for schools as well. But if we need to be serious about cost-of-living pressures, if there is an 'urgent need' for government to address those issues, then let's talk about that. Let's talk about the government's record. What has this Gillard government done? It has done quite a lot, actually. Sometimes it is easy to forget just how much you have put into an area and how difficult it was to do so in tough economic times—unlike in the glory days, when the opposition were in government for nearly 12 long years, when the 'rivers of gold' used to run into Canberra. Revenue was so large, so indiscriminate, they could not spend it all. They had trouble even estimating how much the surplus would be because they did not have a clue. No matter how hard they tried to spend, no matter how much they raised taxes—the highest taxing government in Australian history—there was always plenty of spare money because we had a very strong economy. But, in these much more difficult times, we also have a strong economy because we are doing the heavy lifting, the hard work, the hard yards, and making the tough decisions—not always the popular decisions but the right decisions, the decisions that are required to run this country properly, to ensure this economy continues to provide jobs and keeps the numbers strong. And no-one can question the numbers. This is the fallacy coming from those on the other side. They talk about the economy as though we were Spain or some other country where there are in fact some very disturbing numbers related to where their economy is going. Instead, in Australia we see an economy that is running with inflation well under control, with interest rates at the lowest they have been in a very long time, with the total government tax take lower than it has been in 20 years and with unemployment at around five per cent. In my state of Queensland, we also have a really strong economy, with $500 billion worth of projects in the pipeline, about $150 billion of which are well advanced. These are advanced projects. Mr Dutton: What about the rising debt? Mr RIPOLL: Look, there will always be this issue of debt. Who doesn't understand borrowing for a house? I think most Australians get that. They understand that, sometimes, to build really good things you need to borrow. But you need to do it responsibly, and that is exactly what we have done, with one of the lowest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world, a debt that can be easily managed by the government. Let us talk about what we know about the coalition. What are the facts? We know about Work Choices—and it has never been more real and it has never been more violent. There is one thing workers in this country understand—that is, the reality. It is a rolled gold guarantee. The Leader of the Opposition wants to slash the Public Service—whether with you need it or not, you are just going to have to cop it. The opposition want to cut funding to schools. It is really clear now that not only do the opposition have a hit list on schools but, in the view of Tony Abbott, public schools have too much fun. He did not say it just once. In case you did not hear the Leader of the Opposition, he repeated himself. Mr Ewen Jones interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Rishworth ): I warn the member for Herbert that he is not in his seat. Mr RIPOLL: He said twice that it is just too much money. How can any credible Leader of the Opposition say that there is too much money in the public school system? Not only do they oppose our investment at a really important time in the economy for school infrastructure, but also they say there are too many teachers, that we should cut one in seven. The shadow education minister said that there are too many teachers and that none of them are good enough so let us start by cutting one in seven, that class sizes do not matter. In which part of the world do they not matter? The opposition is clearly setting out a slash and burn agenda and it is a rolled gold guarantee. Let us look at the lived experience. What are people experiencing right now? I will give you a really good example—let us just go to Queensland. You want to talk about frightened people not just in the public sector but right across the economy? People are genuinely scared because they are seeing a government with an enormous unprecedented majority out of control to the point where they are having really big fights internally over the cutting, slashing and burning of the Australian economy. They are trying to have it both ways. On one hand the Queensland government is saying that it is so bad in Queensland that they will be the next Spain, that there is a collapse imminent. At the same time, the Queensland Treasurer is going overseas and lauding it to the rest of the world that we have the best economy in the world because we have such great numbers and opportunities. Let us turn now to the living experience of the really good things we have done. We have the schoolkids bonus to help families educate their kids. We understand that families are doing it tough and we are doing something about cost-of-living pressures. It is urgent and we have a $3.6 billion cost-of-living package for families under pressure. The beauty about us is that we got this package through a hung parliament, in difficult circumstances, but the opposition opposed it every step of the way because they do not want families to get relief from those cost-of-living pressures. I agree: there are cost-of-living pressures and the opposition make them more difficult by not supporting any measures to ameliorate them. Not only have we made a commitment to increase the tax-free threshold but also we have tripled it to $18,000, which means that more than one million working Australians will no longer have to fill out a tax return. This is something people dreamt about two decades. I do not know how many times constituents would come into my office and say, 'Why can't you lift the tax-free threshold from $5,000 or $6,000 up to maybe $10,000?' We took it to $18,000 and we did it in a tough economic climate. We did not just do it when it was easy, when anybody could have been a good Treasurer and you literally just had to turn up for work and you did a good job; we did it in tough times when you have to manage an economy, to make hard decisions, to make savings in the right areas, to spend in the right areas, to invest in schools and education, to invest in health, to reform parts of the economy and to make big structural changes including a new carbon economy in step with what the rest of the world is doing. The Climate Commission has come out with its report which says we are now in step with the middle of the pack when it comes to our policies on climate change and carbon pricing because the world has a number of schemes in place. There is one thing clear about that report and that is, if we do not do something now, we will be left behind and it will cost 10 times as much. That is the lived experience. That is what happens in real life. What else is happening right now? Since we got into government we have lowered taxes. If you are on $50,000 a year, which is a fairly basic wage, you are now paying $1,750 less tax than you were in 2007-08—that is, 18 per cent less tax. Under a Labor government you pay less tax and the total tax take from government is a figure which cannot be disputed. You cannot just accept a figure when it suits you and then not accept it when it does not suit you. In fact, all taxpayers with incomes up to $80,000 get a tax cut. That is the lived experience. That is what we are doing as a government to make cost-of-living pressures come down. We understand cost-of-living pressures are real. We do not just oppose them, bleat about them and frighten parents about their kids' education. We put more money in and that is how to deal with it. Family payments will increase by $1.8 billion from1 July next year. That is on top of the increases we have already put in place. We understand families are doing it tough because we had a GFC and one of the worst natural disasters in Australian history. The Queensland floods had a bigger impact on this economy, a whole percentage point on GDP, than the GFC. We responded. We took action to make sure that the economy did not suffer. What did that mean? People did not lose their jobs. The economy is still going. It means that people can still go to a hospital. They can still send the kids to school. It means they still have a job to pay the mortgage. The best thing you can do to reduce cost-of-living pressures is keep people in jobs. (Time expired)