Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

The fundamental point is this: there is no evidence whatsoever that the Leader of the Opposition has the slightest inkling of how to address those matters which he constantly runs around this country complaining about. There are things that government can control; there are things that government cannot control but can influence. I would say that, when it comes to the things that government can control, this government has delivered benefit after benefit to the people of Australia. When it comes to things which government cannot control but can influence, this government has put the policies in place to try to deliver the right outcomes for the Australian people.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the fundamental thing which governments can control is the tax that they expect the Australian people to pay. And let me remind the chatterboxes opposite that in the last budget a single income earner on $40,000 a year, with three dependent children, received a tax cut of over $40 a week. That is $40 in the pockets of average Australians, which will enable them to meet, when they occur, the higher prices which sometimes regrettably they face. And over the life of this government a single income earner on average weekly earnings, with two dependent children, is better off in real terms to the tune of 36 per cent.

This is a government which wants to govern for Middle Australia. This is a government which wants to be known as doing the right thing by the battlers of this country. I do not say for a second that everything this government has done has been applauded by everyone. I do not say that this government can protect everyone from the thousand shocks which inevitably we are prone to in this mortal life, but I do say that when it comes to putting more money in people’s pockets, and when it comes to delivering more real benefits to the ordinary people of Australia, this government is the best friend the battlers have ever had.

Let us look at some real things that this government has delivered. Over the life of the former government average mortgage interest rates were 13 per cent. Over the life of this government average mortgage interest rates have been just seven per cent. In 1996 the real household wealth of this country was $2,000 billion. Ten years later the household wealth of this country has more than doubled to $4,500 billion. And if you look at the statistics published by the OECD you will see that our standard of living, which did rank 13th in the world, is now eighth in the world, thanks in large measure to the sensible policies pursued by this government.

We had, from the Leader of the Opposition, a series of bland assertions that this government cannot manage the economy. Who would you believe: a Leader of the Opposition who was, just a few short weeks ago, in danger of losing his job, who was making a self-interested and self-serving plea, or the most reputable financial newspaper on the planet, the Financial Times of London, which said—as the Treasurer reminded us earlier today—that the Australian economy is ‘a textbook case of good policy, well executed’?

Who would you believe: a Leader of the Opposition, a failed former finance minister, a former employment minister who gave us unemployment rates of over 11 per cent—almost a professional failure when it comes to his former ministerial record—or the Financial Times, which said that Australia’s economic report card is straight As, and further pointed out that Australia had higher living standards now, after 10 years of the Howard government, than all of the G7 economies except the United States?

Now, again, let me make it crystal clear: no borrower likes interest rate increases; no motorist likes petrol price rises. We like them less than anyone else because we know that we will be blamed for them—unfairly or not, we will be blamed for them—but this government has done more than any government in the Western world to try to ensure that the Australian public are protected against these eventualities that they dislike so much.

We heard the now standard slag-off of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. The Leader of the Opposition, who was once widely respected as being a decent bloke, cannot seem to stand up in public these days without using a series of nasty personal smears and sneers at the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, even stooping, today, to a fairly pathetic parody of the Prime Minister’s speaking style. But this is a good, strong partnership on this side of the House, and whatever may have been thought—or whatever may have been implied about all sorts of things on this side of the House over the last few weeks—it pales into insignificance compared to what the Leader of the Opposition has said recently about his predecessor but one, whom he claims to be able to work with should the member for Hotham become the president of the Australian Labor Party. When it comes to passionate hatred it is difficult to quote the former Leader of the Opposition—the man whom members opposite wanted to make Prime Minister of this country 18 months ago. It is difficult to quote him in this House without an absolute barrage of caterwauling interjections and points of order.

This Prime Minister has not changed, in the marrow of his bones, in his concern for the ordinary people of this country. My fear is that the Leader of the Opposition has changed—and he has changed for the worse. While his capacity to make decisions is as deficient and as defective as always, that decency which was once attributed to him is no longer in much evidence.

This MPI claimed to be about poor policy settings which, according to the Leader of the Opposition, were contributing to higher interest rates and higher petrol prices. Perhaps the shadow Treasurer, who I presume is going to follow in this debate, might have some answers here. I ask members opposite: what are their policy settings to keep interest rates low? Were they going to scrap the tax cuts perhaps—is that their policy? What spending might they cut? Is it going to be health spending? Is it going to be education spending? They constantly say that we are not spending enough in this area, so I ask the shadow Treasurer exactly what will he do to try to ensure that interest rates stay low.

We heard from the Leader of the Opposition today that part of the problem was bottlenecks in rail and port infrastructure. Perhaps the shadow Treasurer will tell us what he has been saying to the state Labor premiers about their rail systems. What has he been saying to the state Labor premiers about their port authorities? If these are problems, and the Leader of the Opposition says they are, what has he said to the people who control them? What has he said to his ideological brothers and sisters in arms on these issues? We heard from the Leader of the Opposition that there were problems in our labour market. The Leader of the Opposition does not want to make our labour market more flexible, more free and more fair; the Leader of the Opposition wants to send our labour market back to the 1980s, the 1970s or the 1960s—and we all know that they were the dark days for Australian productivity and Australian competitiveness. Not only am I appalled by the Leader of the Opposition’s Jurassic Park attitude on workplace relations but I quote from the Sydney Morning Herald of Saturday, 17 June this year. One shadow minister, speaking of the Leader of the Opposition, described his policy on AWAs by saying:

‘This is a gutless rollover to appease a mob of gangsters in Sydney,’ ...

This is what the Leader of the Opposition is doing. What difference is that going to make to interest rates? If anything, the Leader of the Opposition’s policies in all of these areas are going to make a situation, which just at the moment is somewhat stressful for Australian families, infinitely worse.

On petrol prices, what is the Leader of the Opposition going to do? He is not going to reduce excise. He told us that on the weekend—a skerrick of economic responsibility from the Leader of the Opposition—but perhaps the shadow Treasurer could give us some plan. We had plenty of rhetoric from the Leader of the Opposition; let us have a plan from the shadow Treasurer actually to bring petrol prices down. All we got from the Leader of the Opposition was something about monitoring. Monitoring is all very well; several thousands of petrol stations are monitored on a daily basis by the ACCC. The question is: what do you do, having monitored? If the shadow Treasurer and the opposition are to be taken seriously, let us have a clear, precise, detailed plan. Suppose all this monitoring shows that prices are going up? What will the opposition do to make a difference? If they cannot tell us what they would do to make a difference then, yet again, we have a pathetic attempt to scare the Australian public without offering anything at all as a solution. Let me again quote the former leader, the former member for Werriwa, the man whom members opposite preferred to the current leader at the only time they had to vote between them:

The Beazley culture is scab-lifting—see an issue, a public sore, and try to lift the scab without offering your own remedy.

It is not good enough. It was not good enough the first two times the Leader of the Opposition contested an election and it certainly will not be good enough for a third time, if the Leader of the Opposition gets that far. He was the finance minister who gave us the $11 billion black hole. He was the employment minister who gave us 11 per cent unemployment, the defence minister who gave us the dud subs that we have spent 10 years fixing. He was the communications minister who gave us the $4 billion cable duplication. He might have been a nice bloke but he was a total failure as a minister and I do not think he is ever going to be Prime Minister.

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