Dr Dennis Jensen MP

At a time when Australian families are facing severe cost of living pressures Labor’s Budget has cut support for families and hit them with new and higher taxes.

The Budget strips $2 billion from families by freezing for three years the indexation of key family tax payments and income thresholds. Australian families also face being whacked by the Gillard-Brown Carbon Tax. Instead of ending months of uncertainty surrounding the Carbon Tax, the Budget fails to give details of how it will impact living costs and jobs.

Julia Gillard is out of control and wasteful spending has resulted in the Budget deficit soaring to $49.4 billion this financial year. The expected deficit for 2011/12 has blown out by $9.6 billion to $22.6 billion.

Labor’s reckless spending is fuelling a debt binge that has now climbed to $107 billion – or more than
$4,700 for every single Australian. That means Labor has to spend around $20 million a day, every day, for the next four years on interest payments.

This financial year alone the Labor Government is borrowing $135 million a day to pay for its reckless spending.

Labor’s failure to control our borders has increased the cost of offshore asylum seeker management by a
whopping $1.75 billion since last years Budget. Labor’s “Malaysian Solution” will cost $292.3 million.

And Labor is spending another $11.6 million to clean up its Building the Education Revolution mess.

This Government is weak, unstable and directionless. It lacks the leadership to do what’s right for Australian families and businesses.

Whether it’s installing and removing roof batts that catch fire, building over-priced school halls, losing control of our borders and detention centres, needlessly digging up people’s front yards, threatening to kill the mining boom or imposing a carbon tax that won’t clean up the environment but will clean out people’s wallets, this government always has the same basic failing.

The government lacks legitimacy, not because it lacks a majority but because it lacks integrity. This is what should gnaw at the consciences of MPs who support the carbon tax. How can this parliament honourably decide to introduce a carbon tax when no fewer than 144 of the House of Representatives’ 150 members are in parties that were committed not to have one?

The Prime Minister and Bob Brown should finalise the carbon tax details including its impact on jobs, industries and Australians’ cost of living and then she should seek the people’s verdict before trying to legislate it. Otherwise, the next election won’t just be a referendum on the carbon tax. It will be a referendum on governments that betray the people.

That’s what Australia needs: not a carbon tax but an election.

Only an election could make an honest politician of this Prime Minister. Only an election can give Australia a government with authority to make the tough decisions needed to build a stronger Australia and help Australians get ahead.