Thursday, 29 May 2025

Budget 2025–26

Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (10:04): Budget season always reveals more than it intends. Behind Labor’s glossy figures and spin we see the same old playbook: take more from working families, grow the bureaucratic class and give more control to those who already have it. For Labor socialists, government and leadership are not really about service, let alone service delivery; it is about self-insulation, a lifestyle and a kind of entitled attitude that leads you to believe that when you are in government the state pays for your mistakes. The state is just a euphemism for the ordinary people who are expected to pay for the mistakes and abuse of authority from those in power. Even when they get caught paying for ghost shifts, phantom Commonwealth Games, chauffeurs for dogs, road accident cover-ups or almost $200 billion in debt, they still have no shame. They blame everybody else and expect somebody else, often their own victims, to pick up the tab. Thankfully the Liberal Party stands for genuine equality before the law, the principle which ensures that no king, no leader, no Premier – former or otherwise – no CEO and no union boss will ever be excused for breaking or corrupting the law just because they are rich or powerful. We stand for fair laws, fair taxes and a fair go. That is the Liberal way, and that is the only way that the state’s finances and fortunes are going to be turned around.