Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I will tell you what the Howard government is about: it is about this nation’s past, not its future. We could not have seen that more clearly on display than we have seen it in that speech and the performance of the government over the last few days.

Governments have a natural life cycle. At the start, when they are fresh, every day they get up and they ask themselves the question: ‘What else can we do for the Australian community today? What else can we do to improve the lives of Australians today?’ Then, at the end of their life cycle, they do not ask that question any more. Instead, they stand at dispatch boxes and they say, ‘This is what we’ve done for you.’ The minister just did it then and, even more spectacularly, the Prime Minister did it yesterday when he got up at the dispatch box and said, ‘Australian working families have never been better off.’ The Prime Minister was telling the Australian people, ‘This is what I’ve done for you.’ The one thing he would not do was walk to the dispatch box and tell the truth about his plans for the future.

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