Kym Richardson (Kingston, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today on the matter of public importance both frustrated and annoyed at the disservice, dishonesty, scare tactics and misinformation that those opposite are trying to sell to the Australian people. I realise that rule No. 1 in the Labor Party book of how to be a good opposition is to simply oppose government policy for the sake of it, similar to The Latham Diaries. But I have a tip for the Leader of the Opposition and his team: the Australian people are not interested in your stunts or your behaviour during question time, which the young people in the galleries and young people in general see. It is disgraceful. Get onto the real issues—you are the leaders of the nation.

The member for Gorton spoke about the mining arena which will be disadvantaged. Perhaps he should go and speak to the opposition leader’s own home state of Western Australia, where over 8,000 miners have told their unions: ‘Please stay away: we are happy on our AWAs.’

The Australian people want good government, and that is why we sit on this side of the chamber. The Australian people want the opposition to support this government. They want an opposition that has the moral fortitude to stand up and support government legislation when it is good legislation that will move our nation forward and keep the economy strong. Most importantly, the Australian people want an opposition that will support government policy when it is policy that will create jobs and keep them off the dole. We saw this appalling opposition in action when dealing with the introduction of the GST, when they ran around claiming the sky was going to fall in and our economy was going to be ruined.

The proof is in the performance: the Howard record. The member for Adelaide wants to compare the Howard National-Liberal coalition government to the Labor Party.  Since their time, and in our time, we have seen an increase of 16 per cent in real wages. We have seen an exceptionally low level of unemployment—when the Leader of the Opposition was minister for employment, unemployment hit 10.9 per cent—which, under this government, has just hit a 30-year low of 4.9 per cent.

Under Labor, we saw home loan interest rates reach 17 per cent—let alone business loans, which peaked with the small business sector overdraft at a 20.5 per cent interest rate—in contrast to this government which has managed the economy so well. We now see the official rate of interest at only 5.75 per cent. So, if the member for Adelaide wants to compare our record to their record, look again at the facts.

Federal Labor, please do not try to fool the Australian public again. You have no credibility left when it comes to economic management. Labor put the Australian people behind by passing to the coalition government a $96 billion debt when we took over in 1996. For over 10 years now, taxpayers and the government have paid out $8 billion in interest. Mr Deputy Speaker, members opposite and those in the galleries, just imagine the additional moneys we could have provided to essential services and the people of this country if Labor had not put us in that position.

The opposition has done nothing but try to scare Australians with its lies and deception over industrial relations. That continues today in the appalling MPI brought by the member for Gorton. The member for Gorton is foolish if he thinks the Australian people are going to take his half-baked complaints and criticisms seriously. The Australian people are sick and tired of the Australian Labor Party’s innuendos. As the member for Gorton is a member of the Labor Party, he labels himself untrustworthy and unreliable on the subject of industrial relations and good economic management.

There is no greater evidence of the campaign of lies and fear than the exposure of the Leader of the Opposition’s lies in relation to workers on AWAs. First of all they came to this place, waving newspapers, claiming that the world was going to end for Australian workers. Then this week prominent union leader Joe de Bruyn comes out confirming what we had always known, that the members opposite had ‘been taking a lot of liberties with the facts’. I will say it again: the ALP and the opposition leader have ‘been taking a lot of liberties with the facts’. Sorry, let me clarify that: a union boss—one of the very people who run the Australian Labor Party—came out and told the Australian people that the Leader of the Opposition and the entire Labor Party had not been telling the truth. They distorted the facts to suit themselves in an attempt to scare Australian workers as much as possible. The scare tactics continue. Those are not the actions of a responsible or effective opposition—and it does not end there either.

Next we have the case of Esselte Pty Ltd where, in the Labor Party’s imaginary world, workers were going to be $65 a week worse off under a proposed AWA because of a loss of Saturday penalty rates. Thank God for the honest employer from that company who came out and told the Australian people that this was a complete lie because they simply do not roster staff to work shifts on Saturdays. Thank God the employer was able to set the record straight because, again, the Labor party were not going to. After all, you cannot scare Australian workers with the truth when it comes to the industrial relations reforms, so members opposite have to rely on blatant lies and misinformation.

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