The Australian Greens say Tony Abbott’s budget has been written for big business and will further divide Australia between the haves and have-nots, especially for sick, young and vulnerable people.
“This is a divisive and brutal budget written in the boardrooms of big business,” Greens Leader Christine Milne said.
“Tony Abbott’s rhetoric about sharing the burden is a lie. Big business has been quarantined. Young people, the sick and vulnerable take the biggest hit.
“This is a budget for a merciless world where corporate profit is put first. Bigger profits for mining and banking corporations will be coming directly out of the pockets of the people who can least afford it.
“Serious challenges like global warming and inequality are ignored in favour of Tony Abbott’s fake budget emergency.
“It is a budget that will hurt us now, without building anything for our future. This government has no plan or vision. It will leave our children worse off.
“Instead of getting a fair share from billionaire polluters, miners and banks, they will be forcing young people into homelessness and punishing the sick.
“The vicious attack on payments to vulnerable young people confirms this is a government of old men, out of touch with the reality facing young Australians. It is a recipe for dislocation and homelessness.
“Tony Abbott’s medical research fund will be funded by the already sick. He is trying to con Australians. Long-term structural reform could support medical research without the need to cut hospitals and make patients pay more.
“The is no plan for renewable energy jobs, just a tunnel vision for motorways and stranded fossil fuel assets that will be worthless to our economy within decades,” said Senator Milne.
“Broken promises litter the floor. The only way this is a no-surprises government is that it is no surprise that Tony Abbott’s first budget is written for his mates at the big end of town and not ordinary Australians.
“If you are privileged, Tony Abbott will protect that privilege. If you are already struggling he will stamp you down and make your life harder.”
Big business will not share the burden of Tony Abbott’s brutal budget, with up to $80 billion of costed revenue opportunities from big business and the super-rich ignored, such as fixing the mining tax and keeping the price on pollution. Instead, the Abbott government’s budget will hit the vulnerable and ordinary people hard: