Federation Chamber
31 March 2022

The federal government has made one thing very clear this week with their budget PR exercise: they couldn't care less about Queenslanders. We have seen, time and time again, the Prime Minister's willingness to let the political plans of his government outweigh the very real needs of everyday Queenslanders. First, we saw the people in my electorate and across Queensland who have been impacted by flooding receive a mere third of the support that many in New South Wales were given. This was a transparently political move. And now, with the budget, they have once again short-changed Queenslanders and laid bare their political cynicism for all to see.

This is a budget for the next six weeks, not the next four years, and it's designed to launch a re-election campaign that will make voters forget about the arrogance and incompetence of the past nine years. The budget papers reveal Prime Minister Morrison will cut $21 million from the Queensland public hospitals next financial year. Prime Minister Morrison is also cutting $176 million from Queensland hospitals in 2023-24 and 2024-25, compared to funding promised just four months ago. Queensland hospitals losing federal funding will mean people in my electorate of Oxley will have to wait longer for the health treatment they deserve.

There are also key discrepancies between what Queenslanders were promised and what they are now being delivered. The Prime Minister says this budget contains $3.3 billion for road and rail in Queensland. But, when you check the figures, there's only $446.5 million across the four years of this budget and not one dollar for the SEQ so-called city deal. Queenslanders have been robbed by a whopping 86 per cent of the money...

[interjections]

...announced by the Prime Minister. It's in the budget in black-and-white detail: the Morrison government does not care about Queenslanders.

After almost a decade, my constituents have struggled with stagnant wage growth and the rising cost of living. I've had families in my electorate telling me they can no longer afford the cost of their grocery bills or to fill up their car. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has left Queenslanders behind in the floods and now he has left them behind in the budget. It's time to leave the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and his incompetent government behind and move forward with an Albanese Labor government that has a real plan for a better future for all Queenslanders.