Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I do not deny for a second that there were a few tensions inside the government last week. There are tensions inside the opposition all the time. There are tensions inside political parties all the time. Political parties bring together a whole lot of tough, ambitious people with strong ideas for the future of their country. It would be amazing if, from time to time, there were not some tensions inside political parties, including this government. This government has always demonstrated that it can deal with them. Whatever tensions there might be inside this government, they have never stopped us from delivering extremely good and effective government for the people of Australia.

This MPI alleged ‘the government’s failure to properly plan for Australia’s challenges’. This government does not just plan for challenges; we actually meet them. There have been many challenges that this country has faced over the last 11 years. We have met them all and, through that process, real wages have grown by 20 per cent, real net wealth per head of Australians has doubled and there are two million more jobs. The reason that we have had these good results is that this government is always fixing problems—not in accordance with some ideological grand plan, but in accordance with decent values that resonate with the traditional values of the Australian people. We are a pragmatic problem-solving government, and because we have solved the problems of the day, we have built a great future for the Australian people. Let me say this: you cannot meet any challenges at all without a strong economy. That is why this government is best placed to meet the challenges of the future. You can rely upon this government to consistently deliver the strong economy on which everything else ultimately depends.

Members opposite can talk all they like about their plan for four-year-olds’ preschool or their plan to take over 750 public hospitals in one fell swoop. They can talk all they like about these things but, if you do not have the economic base, you cannot afford to do them. The first thing that members opposite would do, if they ever got to be the government of this country, would be to devastate our economy by sending the union bosses through the businesses of this country on day one of a Labor government coming to office.

Last week and last weekend, at a time when this government, according to the member for Lalor, was consumed, fixated and obsessed with its own alleged internal problems, at a time when this government was supposedly paralysed by self-doubt and fear, we were actually conducting the most successful and most important international meeting ever to take place in this country—a meeting of international historic significance. Quite apart from the fact that the Prime Minister personally negotiated, for the first time ever, a commitment from America, Russia and China to be part of an international scheme to limit and then reduce global emissions, he was also finalising a $45 billion gas deal with China, which means continued strength for the resources sector and, ultimately, continued prosperity for the Australian people. That deal would not survive any regime which increased industrial disputation and immediately made the workers in that superefficient energy sector subject to the inefficiencies and rigidities of the old award system. That $45 billion deal is hostage to the industrial relations policy of the alternative government of this country.

Members opposite suggest that economic management somehow does not matter anymore, that the economy is on autopilot and that it all happens by some process of automaticity. The instant they try to implement their industrial policy, the whole prosperity of this country, which they seem to take for granted, would be put at risk. As well as the $45 billion gas deal with China there was the $1 billion uranium deal with Russia, and members opposite seem to think that these things happen by accident. I tell you what: they do not happen by opposing these sorts of deals, and one of the many oddities about the position adopted by members opposite on this particular issue is that they support selling uranium to Russia but not, for some reason, to India, notwithstanding the fact that India has been a strong ally of good causes in recent times.

The problem with members opposite is that they talk about policies and talk about plans but they think that a headline is a substitute for serious work on making a difference for the future of this country. Let us dwell for a moment on a so-called policy which founded two questions to the Prime Minister today, and that is Labor’s $2 billion power grab for public hospitals. Public hospitals are not something with which to trifle. This is not a trivial issue. This is not something that can be dreamt up in an afternoon and dealt with by press release, and yet members opposite claim to have a plan for taking over not one, not two but 750 public hospitals in this country based on an unbelievably shallow 27-page document put out a couple of weeks ago. To deal with 750 public hospitals, their property, their staff, their programs and their patients in 27 pages is not just bizarre; it verges on fraud. It is intellectual and political fraud that members opposite are trying to perpetrate on the people of Australia.

We saw a clear tactic in question time today from members opposite standing up and claiming to have some gee whiz, you-beaut, brand-spanking-new policy on all sorts of issues and then asking the government, ‘What’s yours?’ Just because members opposite practise ‘me too’ on important policy issues is no reason for this government to practice ‘me too’, because our policies are serious. They are detailed, they are sustainable and they are not dreamt up on a long flight or on the back of an envelope on a short flight between Sydney and Canberra. On very substantial issues such as the intervention in the Northern Territory, which is a once in a generation chance to make a difference for the Indigenous people of Australia, and the $10 billion water initiative, which is a once in a generation chance to really do something about Australia’s most important natural resource, this government has done the hard work. What do members opposite say? They just say, ‘Me too.’ We had the finest and most acclaimed budget in Australia’s recent history, and what did members opposite say? ‘The government’s budget was actually our budget.’

What a bunch of political phoneys. What a bunch of deluded, would-be political impersonators. This idea that members opposite, riddled as they are with union officials and wedded as they are to old-fashioned notions of government intervention and state control, can somehow reproduce the policies of the Howard government and be trusted to resist the excesses of political correctness, which they all slavishly subscribe to, is absolute and utter nonsense. They talk today about political fixes—really and truly, the past masters of Tammany Hall, members opposite, talking to us about political fixes! As the Prime Minister said in this parliament today: what about the fix between Hawke and Keating at Kirribilli House, the lie on which the 1990 election campaign was based? What about the fix between Beattie and Bligh, the lie on which the last Queensland election campaign was based? What about the fix between Bracks and Brumby, the lie on which the last Victorian election campaign was based? These people have no shame.

What you have seen over the last 24 hours from this government is exemplary candour and honesty. We do not talk about these things after elections, when it is too late; we talk about these things before elections, when the Australian people can make their judgement, knowing what they will get if they vote for this government. That is the basic difference between members on this side of the House and members on the other side of the House: if you vote for this government, you know what you get; you do not know, listening to members opposite, whether you are going to get an economic conservative, an old-fashioned Christian socialist, the ex-executive officer of the Socialist Forum or a vehicle for the transition of communists into the Australian Labor Party. The fact of the matter is that these people do not know what they stand for. They tell you, at the moment, that they stand for many of the policies of the Howard government—policies that they could never deliver if they tried but that we all know they just do not believe in and would never even try to deliver were they in government.

Talking about fixes, just what is the fix between the member for Griffith and the member for Lalor? What deals did they do? What policy arrangements were entered into between them? We know, because the former member for Werriwa told us, that the relationship between them is absolutely poisonous. We know that their huge clash of ego and titanic ambition has previously made them bitter enemies. We know that the member for Griffith would never have become the leader of the Labor Party without the reluctant support of the member for Lalor. What was the price of that deal? Members opposite come in here talking about fixes. They should be honest with us. Talking about fixes, how did they get Kevin Harkins to withdraw as candidate for Franklin? What is the fix for the member for Brand, for him to go quietly? He is now telling everyone that he is going to be the ambassador to Washington. Please confirm that.

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