Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services, Indigenous Affairs and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Hansard source

I will tell you what we have seen today from the Prime Minister. We have seen him reverting to type: a heartless bureaucrat who thinks that people are something to be the object of government policy. The carers of Australia are going to find out over the next few weeks precisely why this Prime Minister was called ‘Dr Death’ by the public servants of Queensland when they had to work with him, when they had to experience what the Prime Minister’s compassion was really like. What we have also seen today is a striking contrast between a heartless bureaucrat, who sees people as items to be moved around on a policy chessboard, and someone who has spent most of his adult life as a doctor in general practice, who understands that human beings are creatures of flesh and blood and they have to be dealt with with decency and compassion by governments.

I regret to say that this government, which was elected with so much hope by so many Australians—to the disappointment, admittedly, of people on this side of the House—is already dashing their hopes. It is one thing to sign up to Kyoto. It is one thing to apologise for the past. It is one thing to promise to change legislation. But it is quite another to consistently deliver decent benefits to the people of Australia.

The fact that members opposite think that it is more important to deliver the mother of all budget surpluses than it is to deliver benefits to the people of this country who need it most just goes to show the extent to which modern Labor has lost its soul. There are too many millionaires sitting opposite. There are too many people who spend their time talking to developers and the big end of town. That is the only possible explanation as to why this government has completely forgotten the most vulnerable people in our society, the carers and the pensioners who are doing it tough, who, but for government benefits, entirely miss out on the prosperity that this country has enjoyed in recent years and who deserve better from a government which calls itself a Labor government.

Because of this Prime Minister’s ineptitude, because he is unable to reconcile the conflicting demands of his hairy-chested economic ministers and his backbench—who understand, I suspect, just what this is going to do to the carers and pensioners of Australia—we have had five days of vacillation and muddle.

John Howard, the former Prime Minister, was never one to boast about his compassion credentials. He was never one to strike his chest and say, ‘Look how good I am.’ Unlike the current incumbent Prime Minister, he just delivered. That is what John Howard did: he delivered four years of lump sum payments to the carers and pensioners of this country. That is what he did: he delivered. He did not boast. What we have from this Prime Minister is a series of pious platitudes, a series of empty assurances not backed up by any specific assurances whatsoever.

What we have seen from members opposite, in the words of one of their former leaders, is ‘a circus of symbolism’. The first time they are actually put on the spot, the first time they actually have to come up with a hard commitment, the first time they are faced with a difficult choice, what do they do? They choose a bigger budget surplus over tangible, concrete benefits for the carers and pensioners of this country.

I am more confident than ever, having watched the stumbling, halting, embarrassed, shamefaced performance of the Prime Minister today—attested to by the shocked, white faces of the backbench behind him, who know he is getting himself into a hopeless muddle—that the longer this government lasts, the better the Howard government will look. The longer that members opposite take the $500, the $600 and the $1,000 lump sum payments away from vulnerable people, the more the Howard government years will look like a golden age of compassion and decency.

This Prime Minister is the person who opined at great and pious length in The Monthly magazine at the end of 2006 about how all John Howard was interested in was ‘me, myself and I’. I tell you what: John Howard delivered. John Howard gave the people of this country the support that they needed. This is the Prime Minister who attacked what he called ‘Howard’s Brutopia.’ Who is running a brutopia now? Is it a brutopia to pay people a $1,600 lump sum payment yet somehow a nirvana to take it away? There is something rotten in this government’s make-up if this Prime Minister cannot find it in his heart to give those decent, struggling carers and pensioners of this country the lump sum payments that they have been given over the last four budgets, which they have increasingly come to rely on and which they deserve as a dividend from the economic prosperity of our country.

In conclusion, the Leader of the Opposition had some very good advice for this L-plate Prime Minister: stop talking to the bureaucrats, stop cutting deals with the faction chiefs, stop trying to bail out the debt-ridden state governments at the expense of the carers and pensioners of this country. The Prime Minister said to his members: ‘Go visit a school. Go visit a homeless shelter.’ As the Leader of the Opposition has said: ‘Spend a bit of time with the carers of our country. Feel their pain; see their need.’ It does not stop; it is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They deserve this payment and this payment should be paid. (Time expired)

See this speech in context