Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Assistant Minister for the Public Service, Assistant Minister to the Attorney-General
PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER: We are back for 2025. Welcome back to Parliament for another sitting fortnight. Another opportunity for us to build Australia's future and to talk about the real alternative risks of how people will be worse off under Peter Dutton. And when you are going back to school, or when you are going back to Parliament, you have got to pack your lunch.
Our government packs the nation's lunch box full of nutritious policies. Full of nutritious policies like fibre broadband, making sure that you've got the fibre you need to get the work done that you need to get done. We make sure we pack the nation's lunch box for those who are hungry to learn with be Fee-Free TAFE, and we make sure that for those who've got a little bit too much HECS debt, that we cut the crusts off. Because we know that we can do more to support families across Australia and support those who want to learn.
And that's exactly what we're doing in Parliament this week with our initiative to legislate three days of early childhood education without the unfair activity test. Again, making sure that more kids across Australia can take their lunch box to early childhood education, and more families get the benefits of three days of early childhood education.
And then - what's in Peter Dutton's lunch box? What was his big idea to bring back to Parliament for 2025?
We had nine weeks off. Nine weeks, and all that Peter Dutton could find was an absolute stinker of a policy, like a lunch box that had been left in the bottom of a bag since Term 4, 2024.
Mr. Dutton's 'lunch tax write-offs for bosses' policy absolutely stinks. Why would you give people tax write-offs for movie tickets, footy tickets, golf games, Wagyu beef? Why is Mr. Dutton's only idea that he's had over the last nine weeks to give us an absolute stinker of a policy?
Free lunches, tax write-off lunches for people who don't need it. No one was asking for it. And what we now know in Treasury modelling released today says it would cost $1.6 billion.
That's $1.6 billion out of the pockets of workers, out of the pockets of the Australian people and subsidising lunches and golf games for bosses across Australia, if that's Mr. Dutton's only big idea to pack in his policy lunch box, it absolutely stinks.
