Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, Mr Deputy Speaker. This government’s inertia and incompetence in office have allowed $300 million worth of bribes to be paid to the Iraqi dictator through its own failure and inability to discharge its basic functions under the relevant UN Security Council resolutions. That is why the way in which this government is trusted and looked upon by the Australian people is now in such a fundamental state of breach.

This government has breached the people’s trust when it comes to ‘children overboard’. This government has breached the people’s trust when it said at the last election that it would keep interest rates at record lows. This breach of trust goes, of course, into the back pockets, chequebooks and family budgets of every working family in this country. This breach of trust has resulted in seeing five increases in interest rates since the last election. And now the government seeks to wriggle out of that promise which now dare not speak its name.

This breach of trust continues also into the workplace. This government breached trust with the Australian people when they went to the last election and said not a word about altering fundamentally the laws governing the workplaces of our country. They then introduced Work Choices. They then produced laws which stripped away people’s penalty rates and overtime for zero, and they wonder why there is a sense of breach of trust across this country.

We then come to the matter which has been the subject of debate here today—the absorption of this government with its own internal conflict, its own internal ambitions writ large and its own internal inability to resolve this dysfunctional, destabilising division between Prime Minister and Treasurer, which sucks out and saps what energies were left in this government to provide leadership for our country’s future.

I am not all that interested in who did what when or who said what when, because with these ministers at the dispatch box, as we all know from history, we will never actually know. It is like Blue Hills: it just rolls on and on, without conclusion. It is like those radio broadcasts: it is volume 67, chapter 28 of the Howard v Costello leadership battle which has never become a leadership battle. On these questions, the core issue in people’s minds is this: why is it that when the nation faces such huge challenges for its future, such a huge slice of this government’s energies is being consumed by this destabilising, dysfunctional relationship between a Treasurer and a Prime Minister? It is the worst-kept secret in Canberra, the worst-kept secret in the boardrooms of this country and certainly the worst-kept secret among those who populate the press gallery that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have such a degree of mutual loathing that it has reached cancerous proportions and is unable to be sustained into the future. That is why we have probed these questions today, because we have before us a relationship which is now in tatters.

Remember that it was the Treasurer who reminded us recently that the Prime Minister’s record on interest rates was very poor: 22 per cent. We know that. It was the Treasurer who reminded us recently that the Prime Minister has an appalling record when it comes to spending like a drunken sailor on the eve of an election. It was the Treasurer who said that; we did not. And we all remember how many billions of dollars were racked up by the Prime Minister in his campaign speech last time. You see, when it comes to the future direction of economic policy, the worst-kept secret in Canberra is that the member for Higgins has a fundamental distaste and disdain for the member for Bennelong. That is the story which has been told across the country, and the problem with today’s revelations and with the Howard biography is that it all seeps into the public domain and saps the energies of this government’s ability to deal with the real challenges facing the nation’s future—that is, working families under financial pressure. That is the future challenge which faces us as a nation for tomorrow.

When it comes to this government losing touch with working families, the Prime Minister stood up here earlier this year and said, ‘Working families in Australia have never been better off.’ I can think of no greater evidence of a Prime Minister losing touch with working families than for him to stand up there with that level of arrogance and say to people who are suffering under Work Choices, people who are suffering under five interest rate increases on the trot, people who are suffering through the escalation of grocery prices and people who are suffering from a 12 per cent annual increase in childcare prices that these working families have never been better off.

It demonstrates what has happened inside the engine room of this government. Their energies have been so sapped away from the business of government and of remaining in touch and in contact with the community that, instead, they believe that their personal ambitions are far more important than dealing with these basic challenges to the ability of working families to survive into the future. The question is: do they stand here and believe that they have some plan for the future?

When it comes to the future, where are this government’s plans for this nation’s future over the next 10 years? Where are the government’s plans for an education revolution? Where are the government’s plans when it comes to climate change and water? Where are the government’s plans when it comes to infrastructure bottlenecks? Where are the government’s plans when it comes to broadband? Where are the government’s plans when it comes to ending the blame game with the states? Where are the government’s plans when it comes to providing a viable, credible exit strategy for our troops in Iraq? Where are the government’s plans when it comes to dealing with the unfolding challenge across Melanesia as one Pacific island state after another rolls into the dust through inaction through our foreign aid vote? We have no evidence of plans across any of these great challenges facing the nation. But there is a core reason. The energies of this government are being directed inward, no longer outward. The energies of this government are about their personal ambition, not about an ambition for the nation. And the Australian people have woken up to it.

By contrast, in these areas we, as an opposition, as an alternative government, have said that the nation requires leadership. We have said on the question of an education revolution: ‘Let us build early childhood education. Let us rejuvenate our universities. Let us enable our kids studying trades in schools to have 2,650 trades training centres built in each of the secondary schools of this nation.’ That is a plan, whereas this government has none. When it comes to the future of infrastructure, we will have a body called Infrastructure Australia and we will build a $4.7 billion high-speed broadband network across the country. Then there is the National Party, represented here in this chamber, which is ticking the box when it comes to a second-rate, second-tier, lower-speed system for everyone in rural and regional Australia because it does not have the guts to stand up against the Liberals and deliver anything decent for its own constituency.

We have plans when it comes to an education revolution, plans when it comes to infrastructure, plans for a future of broadband, plans when it comes to climate change. How can you have a serious commitment to dealing with climate change when those opposite are still in a position of not having the courage to identify a carbon target for the future? How can you be serious about a plan for the nation’s climate, the future environment of our children, when you refuse to identify any such target?

The tragedy of this government is this: they have had 11 years in office. They have been the beneficiaries of a mining boom. They have had, for the last five or six years, a huge injection of public revenue from around the world into the coffers of the Treasury. And what have they done with it? It has been a squandered opportunity. You have not invested in productive capacity for the future; you have sat around that cabinet table in each of your own private councils of the Liberal Party and National Party and planned instead for your own political futures. You have not had the energy, the discipline, the leadership or the vision to craft out a long-term plan for the country. Despite the fact that you have been uniquely gifted by providence with the product of this resources boom, with the resources to invest in our country’s future productive potential, you have not done anything with that. We stand ready for the future. Your government is not just— (Time expired)

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