Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted and honoured to rise in the parliament today to speak in the debate on the address-in-reply to the Governor-General’s remarks regarding the opening of the 42nd Parliament. This is the third parliament to which I have had the great privilege of being elected—of course, coming here in the successful re-election of the Howard government in November of 2001. When I made my maiden speech in this House on 13 February 2002, I understand I was the 986th person to have been elected to the Australian House of Representatives since our formation as a federation in 1901, and I think this illustrates just what a rare and remarkable honour it is to be elected to this place.

With the class of 2007, I understand that we have welcomed to the House of Representatives our 1,059th member. I take this opportunity to extend personal congratulations to those 31 men and 11 women who come to this parliament representing their constituencies across the length and breadth of this wonderful country. The influx of 42 new members is one of the largest in recent history, outdone only by the 53 members elected in 1996 and the 69 new members elected in the 1949 election, when the House of Representatives expanded from 75 members to 123. So there is clearly an enormous turnover of members. More significantly, of course, it represents a fundamental shift in the parliamentary and political landscape of Australia.

Obviously for me, as a sitting Liberal member returned to this House by the people of Ryan, the election was a great disappointment in terms of the defeat of the Howard government. But, as someone who believes fervently in the democratic practice of our country and the values of representative democracy and free and fair elections, I say that one of the greatest assets of our country is that people can go to the polls on a given day and have their say to choose their political representatives—to choose their voices in the national parliament.

The coalition now faces a challenging road to rebuild itself as a group of parties that can go to the next election to seek the mandate and the support of the Australian people. Of course, it goes without saying that this will take good policies, quality candidates and a united party if we are to earn back the confidence of the Australian electorate. I take this opportunity to congratulate the Leader of the Liberal Party, Dr Nelson, and the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, Ms Bishop, for the confidence that the Liberal Party placed in them in electing them to their respective high positions.

I also want to briefly pay tribute to a former colleague of mine in this parliament: the Hon. Mal Brough, the former member for Longman, who I think will be recorded as one of the most successful and courageous Indigenous affairs ministers of our time. For those who knew Mr Brough, he was certainly a minister with genuine affection for Indigenous Australians. He was a minister who had great passion for his work and a great desire to see the situation of indigenous Australians changed from one of great disadvantage to one where they could share in the opportunities of our country.

The gap between black and white Australia is unacceptable, and it must be the priority of this government and, indeed, of all future governments that are elected to this place. The Governor-General, in his remarks at the opening of the parliament, spoke of the significance of the new government’s focus on Indigenous affairs. I certainly welcome that. I hope that this government will be true to its rhetoric. I hope that this government will be true to its high platform of making a permanent impact on the state of affairs in this country in terms of the gap between black and white Australia. I will, however, say for the record that I am not quite sure that history will be kind to this government, because of its focus on ideology rather than outcome. I think that history will not be kind to this government in the years ahead, when we look back. Now that we have given an apology to those who are very deserving of that apology, the focus must be on the cause of authentic and meaningful practical reconciliation that will give Indigenous Australians across this country a very real share in the great prosperity of our nation.

I also want, in this presentation, to make some remarks about the loss to the parliament of the Hon. John Howard, the former Prime Minister. He, of course, was a stalwart of the Liberal parliamentary team after his election in 1974 to the seat of Bennelong. I have no doubt that he will be recorded in Australian political history as the most successful Prime Minister since Sir Robert Menzies and certainly one of the most successful politicians of his generation.

I have often commented on the fact that one of the most remarkable features of his stewardship of this nation, and of the government of which I was proud to be a part for two of my terms hitherto, was the willingness to take very courageous decisions and, in many cases, decisions that were very unpopular with the electorate but were clearly in the best interests of this country. I think that is the test of any government, whether at state or national level. It is the capacity of the government to make the very hard calls—the capacity of the government to make the hard judgements when they might not go down well with the wider community. So far, I think, we have seen a fair bit of bread and circuses and very little substantial decision making from the new Rudd Labor government.

After all, one is elected to government for a purpose. One is elected to government to make an impact and to make the hard calls. If it was easy, then of course, anyone would be doing it. The Howard government can stand proud for some of the very courageous decisions it made during its time in office. I will just touch on a handful: reforming the waterfront; the gun control issue, in the first term of the Howard government; introducing sweeping taxation reform, particularly the introduction of the GST; the introduction of welfare to work measures; and, in the last parliament, the Northern Territory intervention.

Most importantly, however, the Howard government can stand very proud for having implemented a very successful range of policies that saw the paying off of $96 billion of Labor government debt which hung over the heads of all Australians when the Howard government came into office in 1996. Let us just consider for a moment this figure of $96 billion. It is a profoundly large sum of money, such an amount that one really cannot get one’s head around it. To break that down into a more meaningful context: when the coalition came to office in 1996, that $96 billion of Labor government debt represented $9,073 per taxpayer, or $5,230 per Australian. So in 1996, as a 26-year-old, I owed $9,073; my sister, who was not a taxpayer at the time, as a 16-year-old, owed $5,230. This gives some perspective to what a huge amount of money that $96 billion of Labor debt represented.

If anyone asks the question of why those on the coalition side of politics continue to raise this figure of $96 billion of debt, the response is quite straightforward. A government, just like a household, has an obligation to pay off debt. If it does not have the revenue stream, it does not have the financial resources to invest in the nation’s future; it does not have the funds to invest in critical aspects of the economy such as education, road infrastructure and hospitals. That is why the Howard government made it a central element of its economic policy to repay that $96 billion of Labor government debt.

Of course, today the new government does not have the misfortune of having inherited an enormous amount of government debt. After all, a government that is fundamentally broke is not able to do much for its citizens. So there is no way that I, as the member for Ryan, am going to let the constituents that I represent in this parliament forget the capacity of Labor to manage the economy. I know that those opposite are going to try and improve their lot, their skills. I certainly wish them well, but I have very great reservations about their economic management skills.

It is not to be forgotten that the new Prime Minister opposed so many of the initiatives of the Howard government which did so much to pay off this enormous government debt and he did so much to oppose the initiatives that really brought Australia forward out of the economic malaise of the mid-1990s under former Labor Prime Minister Keating. We all know that he clearly opposed the introduction of the GST, he opposed the privatisation of Telstra, he opposed tariff reduction scheduling for manufacturing industries and he opposed the protection of small business owners by voting against unfair dismissal laws. These are not the voting actions or voting patterns of a fiscal conservative, but of course the Australian people were convinced that he was a fiscal conservative. We will see in the next 2½ years whether conduct reflects rhetoric.

The new Labor government takes the reins of a nation that is no longer drowning under the burdens of public sector debt and high unemployment. The country has been relieved of $96 billion in Labor debt and now has a AAA credit rating and the lowest unemployment rate in over three decades—for some 34 years. This is something that all of us should be very proud of, irrespective of the colour of our politics. The most significant thing that a government can do is to provide the climate in which all Australians who seek employment—young Australians, men and women—can acquire jobs. There must surely be nothing more crippling, for a young person in particular, than to stare into the climate of the times and see that his prospects for employment are very minimal indeed. The Howard-led coalition government of 11½ years leaves an economic picture for the new Labor government that is quite outstanding. We have higher pensions, better living standards, more funding for health and education, more money for the state governments and an economic resilience that surely is the envy of the rest of the developed world—and I have not even touched on the 10 out of 12 budget surpluses that the former Treasurer delivered.

I am not quite sure which other country’s economy the new government would have preferred to have inherited. The Treasurer talks very frequently about the inflation genie being out of the bottle, but I am not sure whether he would have preferred to have under his stewardship the Chinese economy, the American economy, the French economy or the British economy. Maybe he would prefer the economies of Malawi and Rwanda, which one parliamentary secretary spoke of as a reference point for how good Australia was in the dark recession days of the Keating era. I would have thought that the new government would have been very pleased to have the economy that it has inherited rather than the likes of the Chinese economy—or the American economy, which currently faces a major challenge.

For the coalition, the foremost challenge is to hold the Rudd government accountable for the campaign promises it made to the electorates across the country, including to the people in my electorate of Ryan. The Rudd government did make some very significant election promises, and it needs to be held accountable for those promises. If the government delivers on its promises, then it should be commended for delivering them. Equally, if does not deliver, it should be hung, drawn and quartered by the Australian electorate. I can certainly make a commitment here that, as the Liberal member for Ryan, I will keep a very close eye on the Labor government and its rhetoric. The government left a very heavy inference in the community that grocery and petrol prices would go down and the solutions to very difficult, complex problems would be resolved once the people of Australia elected a Labor government. As we know, in life things are not always as simple as that. There is a bit more to government than just making rhetorical comments. The members of the coalition, and I as the member for Ryan, will certainly be watching like a hawk the policies and the conduct of the new government.

I want to touch on the issue of climate change. A big issue that the now Labor government raised in the election campaign was its capacity to bring Australia in step with the rest of the countries that it said the former Howard government was not in step with. On behalf of the people of Ryan, I want to ask a question about the costs for the families and businesses of Ryan. What costs will the Australian government’s policy solution incur? There must be some cost—some financial imposition. Climate change is a genuine and significant issue. We all accept that; I certainly accept that. Equally, I am also candid enough to say that there must be a financial cost. All I want to know, as the representative of the Ryan electorate, is what the cost will be. In the parliament, there have been circumstances when the shadow environment minister has asked questions of the executive about petrol price rises and so forth. In my opinion the ministers, reflecting their inability to provide an answer, were dumbstruck and quite seriously out of their depth.

I want to comment upon a very significant development last week. The federal opposition, on behalf of the carers of Australia, was able to force the Prime Minister and the Labor government to back down from quite remarkable plans to axe the $500 seniors bonus payment and the $1,600 carers payment for those who look after disabled dependants. It defies belief that a Labor Prime Minister would target one of the most vulnerable groups in our society as part of his drive to save money in the budget. If inflation is as serious a problem as the government wants to make out, I would have thought cuts could be made in other areas, but not in the areas where the most vulnerable people in our society would be affected.

No doubt most members of this parliament—and certainly, I suspect, most members of the government—would have had their electorate offices flooded with constituents expressing great anger, frustration and disbelief. I certainly have a range of constituents from the Ryan electorate who made it very clear that they were dumbstruck by the message they were receiving on their television sets and in the newspapers that a newly elected Labor government would dare to touch an area that made a significant impact on the lives of ordinary Australians who are, in fact, doing the country a favour by looking after their loved ones rather than having them in institutions. Regrettably, time does not permit me to read the very eloquent and moving statements of my constituents, but I do want to assure them that I have heard their concerns, their anxieties and their voices. I take the opportunity to express their views, as they have asked me to do, for the record because I think they are deserving of acknowledgement in this parliament.

In conclusion, I want to thank the people of Ryan for showing their faith in me and returning me to this place. Ryan is an electorate that sits in the western suburbs of Brisbane. Its most iconic landmark is probably the University of Queensland. It is a wonderful part of Brisbane in which to bring up a family. As one of the younger members of this parliament, I acknowledge the great faith that the people of Ryan have placed in me by re-electing me to my third parliament. I assure them that I will honour their faith in me. (Time expired)

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