Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

This is a government that has surrendered the national interest for its own political interests. What we have seen this fortnight is a government that has had an absolute shocker: bungling incompetence followed by embarrassing retreat; one humiliating withdrawal after another.

This week we have seen a modern physiological feat, a man without a backbone performing backflip after backflip after backflip: the Prime Minister—no backbone but plenty of backflips. Since the Prime Minister had his big win over the great pretender all we have seen is the great surrender: surrendering our borders, surrendering on conscience votes, surrendering on petrol prices, surrendering Middle Australia, surrendering on climate change—simply surrendering our future. In fact, ever since the Prime Minister said that he was sticking around, it has been all downhill, and not just for the Treasurer.

Every day we have seen one blackflip after another—no agenda. The Prime Minister’s daily walk is really a warm-up for his daily backflip. And while this government frays at the edges, the needs of Middle Australia are surrendered. Their hopes and aspirations are left out in the cold by a government more obsessed with itself than with the needs of families. It has been an extraordinary fortnight, with surrender after surrender and one embarrassing retreat after another.

We had the Prime Minister surrendering on petrol and then coming up with an on-the-run, cobbled together plan pinched from our fuels blueprint; he took some of it but not all of it. His colleagues, including Senator Boswell, went out and bucketed the plan straightaway. We saw the surrender on interest rates as we blew out of the water the government’s claim that it would keep them low. We saw an absolute surrendering and humiliation of the member for Menzies when he was given a support minister to ramp up the spin. But it is not about spin; it is about cutting the wages of Australians, giving them the choice of that or having to face the sack.

We have seen a surrender on the promise that there would be no $100,000 degrees. There are 96 degrees that cost more than that, there are five that cost more than $200,000 and one, at least, that costs more than the average mortgage. We saw an absolute surrendering on the immigration bill, when he could not even convince his own party that border surrender was in the national interest. And then we saw a surrender on parliamentary procedure because the vote was not even allowed to be held in the Senate, showing contempt for our democracy. We saw a surrender on the conscience vote for government MPs after trying to dictate a cabinet view. We have seen a surrendering of the Treasurer’s view, held also by the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, by the department of the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, if not by the minister himself, by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and others supporting a national emissions trading scheme. They have been left grasping for an alibi since we raised that question yesterday. We have seen a retreat to the same old tactics of playing the man rather than playing the issue, promoting fear rather than hope in the community.

One of the biggest issues in the community is petrol prices. The Special Minister of State belled the cat on that. He wrote to the member for Throsby and said, ‘We think it is a pretty bad idea for the government fleet.’ It is all right to have rhetoric out there, but when it comes to real action we see that he withdrew and the member for Throsby clearly finished off, in a day, the weakness of the government’s position on petrol.

We need to look at how many Australians will benefit from this announcement. We reckon it is about three per cent. We have asked and asked and received no answer. That leaves 97 per cent of Australians getting nothing—not today, not next week, not next month and not next year. They will have to wait for a Beazley Labor government to do something about these issues.

Then we come to interest rates. The Prime Minister says, ‘I never promised interest rates would not go up.’ We all know what the government campaigned on at the last election. The ads were still on the website last week. Perhaps the person who belled the cat on that was the member for Wentworth, the man born with a silver foot in his mouth! He gave it all up. This member has never seen an interest rates hike that he did not like—how arrogant and out of touch. It might be okay campaigning with the people he goes on his yacht with, as the Liberal candidate for Wentworth, wearing their ‘Malcolm for Wentworth’ T-shirts. It is not too far to drive out to Marrickville. The people in my electorate are struggling big time with their mortgages. I reckon the member for Wentworth will get a bit of a shock. I reckon lots of people in Kings Cross, Paddington and Woolloomooloo, fine constituents of the member for Sydney, are about to go over to the member for Wentworth. I reckon they will give him a message about whether this interest rates rise really is no big deal, which is what the member for Wentworth thinks.

We have seen from the Prime Minister arrogance, indifference and breaches of trust. This Prime Minister has changed. He has been in office simply too long. It happens. It happens in politics and in lots of forums. Last week he went for a walk with Georgie Gregan around the lake. Sometimes it is just time to move on. We are seeing a Prime Minister who has surrendered Middle Australia. We have now seen seven consecutive interest rates rises since 2002 and just this morning we found out that average home loan repayments for a first home have exploded past $2,000 a month for the first time ever. We know that Australians now are paying more as a proportion of their income on interest rates than ever before. We know that the government was elected on the basis of a falsehood—that they would keep interest rates low. We know that interest rates are near to the point the Housing Industry Association calls a no-go zone because people are paying 28 per cent of their income. That has an impact on them and on the economy, but today the Treasurer is wandering around trying to shift the blame. Blaming the states is much easier than taking it on the chin, although maybe he has given up because today we had the extraordinary feat whereby, when the Treasurer was asked a question, he said, ‘Pass. I won’t answer that.’ The Prime Minister simply does not have answers.

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