NSW Opposition Leader Chris Minns delivers budget reply speech and rips into Premier Dominic Perrottet

The NSW Opposition Leader accused Dominic Perrottet of having a ‘collection of Trump hats’ in his first major speech.

NSW Labor Leader Chris Minns has accused the Premier of having a “collection of Trump hats” in his budget reply speech delivered on Wednesday.

Mr Minns, in his first major speech as Opposition Leader, went hard on Dominic Perrottet and his deputy Stuart Ayres.

Mr Minns accused Mr Ayres of favourably treating his own western Sydney electorate of Penrith while on the coronavirus crisis committee, exempting large parts of the area from harsh lockdown rules that applied elsewhere in the city’s west.

”What would you expect that politician to say, three days after these divisive restrictions were lifted after 16 weeks of harsh lock down for two million people? He’d utter those hollow words, ‘We’re all in this together,’” Mr Minns said.

But he went on to say the people living in the western and southwestern suburbs had “yelled at the government for 15 weeks straight” and what had resulted from the lockdown was a “tale of two cities”.

NSW Labor Leader Chris Minns gave his budget reply speech on Wednesday. Picture: Bianca De Marchi / NCA NewsWire

“The only possible way that you would not know what the people of this city were saying is if you chose not to listen,” Mr Minns said.

He also brought up Mr Perrottet’s support of the former US President Donald Trump.

Mr Perrottet wrote in a Facebook post following Mr Trump’s election in 2016 that the polling result would herald “a new conservative spring”.

“Now, I suspect that the taxpayers will be more concerned about his shocking record on tolls, taxes, fines, charges than about the Perrottet collection of Trump hats and toy nuclear power stations,” Mr Minns said.

“Every time you pay a toll, send your kids to an overcrowded school, are stuck in traffic, or find the cost of living just that little bit harder, that’s the record of the former treasurer – the new Premier.”

Chris Minns took over as Opposition Leader shortly before the Sydney lockdown. Picture: Bianca De Marchi / NCA NewsWire

Mr Minns characterised Mr Perrottet’s latest budget, delivered in June when he was Treasurer “as revolving around fines … tolls … blatant revenue raising from low-range speed cameras” and causing housing affordability to worsen.

He offered four measures he said would be Labor‘s plan to “avoid an economic crisis” caused by coronavirus restrictions.

Mr Minns said Labor would lobby to extend Covid-19 economic support, and to keep a payroll tax break that lowered the rate from 5.45 per cent to 4.85 per cent “for another year at least”.

He also said jobs could be brought back by “a big build in social housing and schools” and that an intensive learning program to help students cope with school work should be extended.

“We honestly believe that if you do these things, it will make a difference,” he said.

“The 2023 election, in 18 months’ time, will be a contest about the future – an argument about what kind of future we build after the pandemic is over.”

Mr Minns was originally scheduled to give his budget reply speech in June, but was prevented from doing so due to the Sydney lockdown.