Peter McGauran (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

No, he proclaimed, ‘Labor will surf the wave of GST into office.’ He relied on that. He did no work. He did not try to combat the government on ideas, beliefs, values or policies. As a result, he was dumped by that same wave. We have seen it all the way through. The Leader of the Opposition will oppose the government for what he and his colleagues, especially the member for Grayndler, think are popular reasons and then do a backflip. The GST was going to be rolled back. We do not hear about the GST being rolled back now. Once the Labor Party fiercely, unrelentingly and deceptively opposed the GST. Now they embrace it, as do their Labor premiers. Try and take the GST off the Labor premiers and see how far you get.

This is the track record of the Labor Party. They opposed waterfront reform. When we came to office, the average container movement on the waterfront was 16 per hour. We were told, again by the Labor Party, that it was physically impossible to move more than 22 containers per hour. At present they are moving 27 containers per hour and are increasing that. The wages are higher now than they were before because they are paid on a productivity basis. They opposed waterfront reform. Now that we have had waterfront reform and are helping exporters and farmers across the country, the Labor Party have dropped their opposition. They have opposed almost every budget measure that this government has brought in. We inherited a debt of $96 billion. Now we have no net Commonwealth debt, yet the Labor Party opposed every fiscal initiative of this government. We wiped that debt in the face of the opposition of the Labor Party, especially in the Senate. They have done that all the way through our term in office. They opposed our tax cuts, but now they support them.

We do the heavy lifting, as is the requirement of government normally, in the face of stringent opposition and obstructionism in the parliament and then Labor accept the reforms in the national interest. They have opposed policy to make the Reserve Bank independent. They have opposed reforms to the welfare sector to help people find work. Every step of the way they oppose the government, not because they always believe on a basis of conviction in their opposition but because they want to make life more politically difficult and because they want to stir up constituents in the wider electorate. All of that is done on the basis of extortion, deception and at times outright lies. They have opposed our measures to strengthen our borders and to give more powers to our security agencies, to make arrests and make Australia safer.

There is one thing the Labor Party have not done a backflip on. They still oppose the government on border protection and on proper and balanced security measures. They have opposed our reforms to Medicare and they have opposed our support of private health insurance through a rebate system. All the way through the Labor Party oppose, yet they put up this for the matter of public importance debate today:

The Government surrendering the national interest in favour of its own political interest.

You will not sell that in the Australian electorate. Whilst people disagree at times with the government, as is their right, on many of our policies and policy directions, we will explain them. At times we will be responsive to public criticisms but at other times we have to show leadership, win the argument, put the facts, engage in the debate and respect Australians and give them credit for their capacity to have an informed debate. The Labor Party instead sells out Australians. It will not engage in policy debates. This is not a debate about policy. How can it be? The Labor Party does not have any. We do not see a publication from the Labor Party that it believes is worthy of debate in this chamber. Instead, we got ridiculous questions during question time today. It was by and large a waste. To the extent that there were serious questions, they went over old ground. There is no innovation and there is no freshness about the Leader of the Opposition, nor the party he leads.

I find it amusing that the Labor Party would attack the government for putting its interests ahead of the national interest. Does everybody remember former Leader of the Opposition Mark Latham? This is a well-known poster of the now Leader of the Opposition with the former Leader of the Opposition, on which Kim Beazley writes a letter to everybody and endorses Mark Latham. He says things like:

Labor is ready to govern, and Mark Latham is ready to be Prime Minister.

It’s time for a change in government.

Mark Latham and Labor will have a government that solves problems and takes the pressures off families.

The Leader of the Opposition gave a ringing and unqualified endorsement of Mark Latham. Either he was selling out the national interest and presenting somebody that the Labor Party themselves now concede was unfit for the office of Prime Minister or he was lying to the Australian people.

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