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

Since 2004 the Howard government has changed. It has stopped governing for Australian working families and it has started governing for itself. Prior to 2004 you could have said that there are some things this government could have been proud of—its resolute response in East Timor in helping to create peace and its brave reaction to the Port Arthur gun massacre and the introduction of gun controls. They were things that this government did in the nation’s interest.

But, since 2004, the government has stopped governing in the interests of the nation; it has turned inwards. Now, of course, we know the days of government ministers are spent plotting and planning against each other. They spend their days eyeing each other’s jobs rather than worrying about fairness at work for Australian working families. They spend their days eating canapes at Liberal Party fundraisers at Kirribilli rather than worrying about the cost pressures on Australian working families. They spend their nights making secret deals in hotel rooms rather than working on the policies for the future of this nation.

As well as turning inwards and cannibalising itself, the government has been swept away with its own ideological obsession—radical labour market reform. This, of course, has delivered the extreme Work Choices laws of this government and ensured that those laws have hurt Australian working families. It is undeniable that those laws have hurt Australian working families. People have had basic pay and conditions stripped away from them, with overtime and penalty rates gone. A new study released today by the University of Sydney shows, for workers in areas like retail and hospitality, these laws have brought up to a 30 per cent reduction in income. There is an ideological obsession possessing this government as it moves towards extreme laws.

Today I want to track the inward turning of this government—its increasing and unhealthy obsession with itself rather than with the interests of Australian working families. Increasingly, this government has become like a soap opera. I am a bit of a fan of soap operas—I am a very regular watcher of The Bill. You become very familiar with the characters and you follow the plot lines, but, as much as I love The Bill, like most devotees of soap operas I would have to say: if you watch long enough, the same old plot lines come around again, don’t they? If you watch long enough you see them all again. So it is with the Howard government: the plot line now just repeats and repeats—disunity, instability and leadership crisis followed by patch-up deal, and then the cycle starts again.

If we count out what has happened in the life of this government since 2004, let us see how many times that plot line has repeated. We had ‘Walletgate’—the leadership crisis sparked by a more than decade old note in Mr McLachlan’s wallet. Walletgate came to the attention of the Australian people when journalist Glenn Milne wrote about a secret meeting that took place in 1994, where Howard undertook to serve only two terms as Prime Minister. The note said it was an ‘undertaking’. It said that Mr Howard had used words to the effect: ‘I can’t guarantee this to you, Peter, but my intention is not to hang around forever. If I win I will serve two terms and then hand over to you.’ Do we remember Walletgate? And don’t those words sound very familiar in the context of the patch-up deal we saw on the 7.30 Report last night: ‘It is going to be all right, Peter; I am going to retire, I am going to hand over to you.’

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