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

I would be the last person to impugn the decency and the compassion of the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, who has just spoken. I am sure she brings to her serious responsibilities a great deal of commitment. But the ministerial statement that she has just given to the House on seniors and carers was seriously lacking because it did not tell us anything that we did not already know. Certainly, it did not give the seniors and carers of Australia any certainty or security that they did not already have. All the minister did today was tell us that there would be yet another inquiry. I recall the first budget speech that was read in this House back in 1908. That prompted Billy Hughes, no less, to say that there were only three things wrong with the Treasurer’s budget speech: first, it was read; second, it was read badly; and, third, it was not worth reading. The last thing I want to do is cast nasty criticisms in the direction of the minister, but I was rather reminded of Billy Hughes’s statement as I listened.

What we have seen from this government is a further refinement of news management techniques. Over the few weeks that this parliament has sat this year, we have seen an abundance of very insubstantial ministerial statements—because, I suspect, they delay the matter of public importance debate, when ministers fear they might hear something that the government would rather were not said. Certainly, the statement that we have just heard was bureaucratic, it was unnecessary and, as I said, it did not really achieve its purpose. But what it did indicate was that this government knows it has a problem with seniors and carers. And I have to say the government is right to think that it has a problem with seniors and carers.

Why wouldn’t it have a problem with seniors and carers? Everything that this government says and does it is couched in rhetoric which seniors and carers find intrinsically unsettling, even offensive. Everything that this government does is supposed to be for ‘working families’, and, every time they mention that phrase, seniors and carers feel that they are being marginalised; they feel that they are dealing with a government that is not interested in them. So why wouldn’t seniors and carers feel unhappy with this government? Why wouldn’t they gravely mistrust this government, when we learnt earlier this year, during the phase when the government was looking for deep cuts to the budget, that the deep cuts were to be made precisely by not giving the seniors and carers of this country the bonus payments that they had come to expect under the Howard government?

Now, I know the minister does not like me referring to this, but I feel—

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