Ms MACKLIN (Jagajaga) (09:32): What an extraordinary defence of four years' work! What an unbelievable defence of four years work! It is a thousand days since the 2014 budget, when some of these extraordinary measures were introduced by this government, and they come in here today and say, 'I move that they be discharged.' No argument, no defence for the complete waste of the Australian public's time that they have done for four years! Unbelievable! I am gobsmacked. I cannot believe that they cannot even come up with a defence of the measures that they have been trying to get through this parliament for the last four years. Four years of trying to get these unfair cuts through this parliament, and here they are today of course— Ms Catherine King: Mealy-mouthed! Ms MACKLIN: Why is it, do you think, that he will not actually say what is on his mind? It is because they actually believe in these cuts. This minister has stood at this dispatch box day after day and defended these cuts—defended the cuts to families, defended the cuts to the unemployed and defended the cuts to pensioners, because they do not 'get' fairness. These Liberals do not understand fairness. It has been a long and very, very hard battle. It has been a hard battle. We have fought every single day of the last four years, and stood by the Australian people as we have stopped these cuts going through the parliament. Every single Labor member of parliament has done everything possible to stop these cuts going through the parliament. And today here we see this government—temporarily—removing them out of the Notice Paper. But of course we know, and the Australian people know, that we are not out of the woods. Do not think for a second that this Prime Minister is doing this for any reason other than to protect his own skin, to protect himself against the member for Warringah and to protect himself against the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, who happens to be here in the chamber today. Maybe even the Minister for Social Services has aspirations for leadership. We know that these Liberals would bring back these unfair and harsh cuts in a heartbeat if they ever got the chance. I happened to hear the Prime Minister on Fran Kelly's show this morning, talking about these zombie cuts. What do you think he might have said, Mr Speaker? Fran Kelly said, 'Are you just getting rid of these zombie measures because you're sick of them and sick of the fights over them, or are you getting rid of them because you think they're bad measures?' The Prime Minister said, 'Um, they can't be legislated.' Fran Kelly said, 'But are they bad measures?' The Prime Minister said, 'It's not a question of good or bad; they were measures which we thought and which we believed had merit.' That is what they do believe. They believe these cuts to families, to pensioners and to the unemployed have merit. They think they are good cuts. That is why they pursued them for the last four years. Let's go through them. First of all, in my view, the worst of all is the cut that was announced in the 2014 budget to say to young unemployed people, 'You will have nothing to live on for six months—nothing!' That is what this government said to the young unemployed people of this country. They could not get that through the parliament so they tried a different approach. They said, 'You have to wait for five weeks and have nothing to live on.' Fortunately, they could not get that through the parliament either. What this shows is they absolutely believe in those sorts of harsh cuts, like the cuts to young people who are aged between 22 and 24. They want to push them off Newstart, which is already low enough, and onto the lower youth allowance—a cut of $48 a week. That is what these people opposite want to do to the poorest young people in the country. Of course, none of us forgets the absolute mess that this government has made of paid parental leave cuts. We know that this government really want to cut into paid parental leave. They would have actually cut paid parental leave to 70,000 new mothers every year. Mothers just getting home with a new baby would have found out that this government wanted to take away some of their paid parental leave. They want to scrap family tax benefit end of year supplements, leaving families worse off. They want to scrap the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment. They want to cut the pension of pensioners who were born overseas. And so it goes on. For so many days we have stood at this dispatch box defending the pensioners and defending families, and all we have gotten from those opposite—particularly from this minister—is a lecture about fiscal restraint. They have actually told us with a completely straight face that they think these measures are fair. This minister in particular has form. Do you all remember the snakes and ladders interview? Mr Dreyfus: We remember! Ms MACKLIN: We all remember the snakes and ladders interview. What were the snakes waiting for families as he tried to cut their support? He gave this absolute train wreck of an interview on Sky TV and he tried to pretend that these measures—these cuts to family payments and to grandparent carers of teenage children—were fair. When he was asked about it he said to David Speers: Well, that depends on their capacity to access childcare and re-enter the workforce. David Speers said: I'm talking about a 15 year old. The minister said, quizzically: 'A 15-year-old. Oh, maybe Labor's got a point.' So David Speers asks if they are $2,500 worse off, and the minister responds, 'Well, in isolation. It depends on their willingness to enter the workforce or go into child care.' This is a 15-year-old, and he is saying this to a grandparent carer who is 70 years old. Honestly, if you ever wanted a definition of how out of touch these people are, it was that absolute train wreck of an interview. I remember that on Mother's Day in 2015 I was at the Mother's Day Classic when I heard that the Treasurer and other cabinet ministers were out there talking about mothers being involved in a rort. Mothers were being told they were frauds for accessing paid parental leave that they were entitled to. Ministers lectured us day after day, saying that the only way to make paid parental leave fair was to take away paid parental leave from 70,000 mums. Now they expect us to believe that they have had a change of heart. Well, we do not believe you, and nor do the budget papers demonstrate that we should. If you look at Budget Paper No. 1, page 3-38, up the top, it says 'Decisions taken as a result of Senate positions'. It is not that the government do not believe in these things anymore. It is not that they are taking these things out of the budget because they are not government policy. They are only taking them out of the budget for now because they cannot get them through the Senate. If they ever get the chance to put these measures in front of the parliament again, that is exactly what they will do. We do not believe you. We do not believe that you are committed to getting rid of these things, and neither do the Australian people. We know what else you still have left there too, which of course did not get mentioned in the budget papers last night. They still want to say to Australians, 'You're going to have to work till you're 70 before you get the age pension.' They have not changed that. They still want to axe the clean energy supplement, which of course means a cut of $365 a year to new pensioners. So nothing has changed with this minister or this government. We know that these cuts will be back.