Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion condemning the Prime Minister and his government for seven months of watching, committees, inaction and indecision.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition moving immediately—That this House condemns the Prime Minister and his Government for seven months of watching, symbolism, inquiries, summits, committees, stunts, spin and buck-passing—anything but making a decision. In particular, for:

(1)

standing by and watching petrol, grocery, childcare and household costs rise significantly, while doing nothing about it;

(2)

watching consumer confidence plummet to 16 year lows, not seen since the days of Paul Keating’s recession ‘we had to have’;

(3)

watching the largest decline in small business confidence since the start of the survey, while doing nothing about it;

(4)

walking away from pensioners, carers, seniors, farmers and small businesses by failing to assist them in the recent Budget, while only delivering the Howard Government’s tax cuts to workers and families;

(5)

slugging Australians with $19 billion of new inflationary taxes that Labor hid from the community prior to the election;

(6)

promising the Australian people last November that he would deliver ‘new leadership and fresh ideas’ when instead, the Prime Minister has outsourced leadership and decision-making to 135 committees, reviews, inquiries and summits; and

(7)

misleading the Australian community into believing that he wanted to end the ‘Blame Game’ when on over 420 occasions in this chamber alone, the Prime Minister and his Government has variously blamed the Coalition, OPEC, the Iraq War, his own staff, the international credit crisis, the mining boom, China’s energy demands, international banks, alcohol companies, heatwaves, pubs and clubs, an ‘overheating’ solar panel industry, oil companies, overseas travel entitlements when in Opposition, State governments and State oppositions, the RACV, RACQ and RAA of South Australia, his own public service, alcopops, the drought, urban traffic congestion, global warming, four wheel drives and Taragos, the US subprime crisis, drinkers, smokers, teenagers, parents, and even the Japanese Government for the challenges he faces, but won’t do anything about it,

It is now seven months that this Prime Minister has governed Australia—and I use the word ‘governed’ loosely. George Megalogenis, who is one of the most respected journalists in the Canberra press gallery, who writes for the Australian newspaper, wrote recently of our Prime Minister:

Will he become our first federal premier, a master of the media cycle who ultimately runs a do-nothing Government?

We have a Prime Minister who, when in opposition, went around Australia and said a lot of things to Australians—that, if he were chosen to be the Prime Minister of Australia, were he to govern the country, interest rates on home loans would be more affordable. He led Australians to believe that he would do something about rising petrol prices, that he would do something about grocery prices, that he would do something to assist pensioners and those that struggle in day-to-day and week-to-week life.

But what we have had for seven months, it is now clear, is a government led by a Prime Minister who is more concerned about his popularity, who is more concerned about his image in the media, who is more concerned about micromanaging every decision that has not been made in the government, who clearly has disdain for his own public servants and who has ignored the advice of four major departments in one of his many stunts, called Fuelwatch. He had disdain for the Chief of the Australian Defence Force, keeping him outside his office for hours for no good reason. He has commissioned 135 reviews, committees, commissions, boards, working groups, inquiries, discussion papers, summits, consultations and a whole variety of things to avoid actually making a decision.

Australians have experienced in the last seven months two official interest rate rises from the Reserve Bank and another 40 basis points from the banks in unofficial rises. The average Australian family are paying more than $152 a month more on their mortgage today than they were in November last year. Confidence in the business community is the lowest on record. The Sensis survey of the small business community in May, for example, showed that only 10 per cent of Australia’s small businesses actually have confidence in the policies of the current federal government, down from 47 per cent in November last year.

We also have consumer confidence in the Westpac-Melbourne Institute survey at the lowest level since 1992, when, under the last Labor government, more than one million Australians were out of work and when, only a year earlier, Australians had been paying more than 17 per cent interest on their home mortgage and when small business had struggled with 22 per cent interest on business overdrafts. That is the lack of confidence the business community has had in this government since it came to office.

We had the Fuelwatch stunt. The Prime Minister decided that, in order to make it look as though he were doing something about petrol, he would have a thing called Fuelwatch—in other words, he would watch the price of petrol. No-one is opposed to consumers getting information, but what he is most cruelly actually doing—as opposed by the RACV, as opposed by the RAA amongst many others, as opposed by four of his major government departments and as opposed by his blowtorch, the member for Batman, in a letter—is making it difficult for those families who line up on a Tuesday night for the maximum discount on their petrol, making decisions about which cut of meat to buy or whether they will put another 10 litres of petrol in their car. They, Prime Minister, are the cruellest examples of the people who are suffering most under this government, which is more concerned about a media image than it is about making real decisions.

Then we had $35 million in taxes—and damned hard work on the part of everyday Australians who had earned that money—given to the Toyota motor company, which made a profit last year in the order of $17 billion—that is, $35 million that it did not ask for and does not yet know how it is going to use. This $35 million was announced so he could have his photo taken in Japan sitting in the front seat of a hybrid car which the Toyota motor company was going to make in Australia anyway, as we subsequently discovered.

Then, because the government had inherited $60 billion invested in Australia’s future and no Commonwealth debt because Labor’s $100 billion deficit had been paid off, because it inherited an economy that was the envy of the rest of the world, what did he decide to do? He decided to talk up the problems, as he saw them, with inflation in Australia. We were told by a very nervous Treasurer that we had an inflationary genie out of the bottle on the day before the Reserve Bank had a meeting to talk about interest rates that affect those of us in this country that have a mortgage. So in the cruellest possible way, for political advantage and opportunism, the government talked up an inflationary crisis to give cover for the fact that it was delivering a budget that would increase taxes by $20 billion and cut only $1 in spending for every $2 added to it.

This country needs a government that has a strategic direction. It must have a sense of priority. In desperately trying to appear to be Hawke on the outside, this government, as we know from John Lyons in the Australian and many other sources, is much more like Whitlam on the inside. We unashamedly stand up for Australians, who deserve good government and deserve a government that will make decisions with a sense of priority for Australia’s short, medium and long term. (Time expired)

Is the motion seconded?

See this speech in context