Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

What we have here is another multipurpose motion for an matter of public importance from the Leader of the Opposition. It is a life support system for not much more than banter and bluster. We have had these motions parliamentary sitting day after parliamentary sitting day. The truth of it is that they are merely about creating a media opportunity for an opposition leader who only lives from media opportunity to media opportunity. The international banking crisis is seen merely as a chance to get his face up on TV and an opportunity for the opposition leader to pretend that he knows something about that of which he knows nothing.

Unfortunately, the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, when he concluded his excellent contribution to this afternoon’s debate, was cut short in his quote from Terry McCrann in the Herald Sun. Terry McCrann, as the finance minister said, is not a noted Labor supporter; I doubt that he has ever voted Labor in his life. But here is what he said on 8 October:

OK, I’ll take Malcolm Turnbull at his word. The Opposition Leader really is an idiot and doesn’t understand how financial markets work.

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There’s a bigger worry than Turnbull just making an idiot of himself. Again, he apparently doesn’t understand that we are living in extremely dangerous times.

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It is the height of irresponsibility for an opposition leader to go blundering around in matters he doesn’t understand.

It’s not just a case of the boy playing with matches in the dried-out forest; apparently this boy doesn’t even know he’s got matches in his hand.

I suspect very strongly that Malcolm Turnbull does know what he is doing. I suspect that the opposition leader is acutely aware that he is placing the highest priority on a media grab and the lowest priority on meaningful commentary, meaningful debate and a meaningful bipartisan approach to assist our nation work its way through the immense global crisis that is faced by our banking sector. Almost certainly, the opposition leader is well placed to understand elements of that crisis.

The question that we have before us relates to decision making in government. What did decision making look like in the years when the Leader of the Opposition was firstly a parliamentary secretary and then a minister? We can only conclude that they were sloppy, self-serving and poll driven. They were poor decisions. I looked at the record. When I was asked to speak in today’s debate I was really pleased because it allowed me to have a look at a couple of things on the public record. I went back and considered the role played by the opposition leader when he was a parliamentary secretary. I thought that I would read for you a quote from the Financial Review:

Key federal departments, including Treasury, Finance and Environment, were cut out of the process of formulating the Prime Minister’s $10 billion Murray-Darling water package, triggering concerns about the fiscal impact of the package.

I remind members of the House that this debate is about government decision making. This debate is about how governments understand the challenges before them, how governments marshal their forces and how governments make decisions that are in the national interest. The article goes on to say:

The lack of consultation has also raised questions about the level of detailed work undertaken on the government’s first major election year policy statement.

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… the government has not indicated when the $10 billion would be spent—

or how it would be spent or how it would affect the budget over the next few years. Fiscal responsibility was allegedly an area in which the former government had the upper hand. The article goes on to say:

The package—likely to be one of the biggest single spending initiatives of the election year—was not subject to federal cabinet consideration …

That means that it was not subject to any kind of meaningful departmental consideration that would have made it a package that had integrity or resilience or, for that matter, even met the most basic requirements of public administration.

I looked at another report on the very same water plan. This report said:

On Friday, November 3, John Howard gathered a small group of bureaucrats and advisers in his parliamentary suite. It was just days before the Melbourne Cup Day summit with the premiers, convened to discuss the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin.

I will jump through the rest of the article to protect the innocent:

Another key figure in Howard’s suite was Malcolm Turnbull, the parliamentary secretary on water who had been hearing first-hand from irrigators about the devastating effect of the drought on rural communities.

The article goes on to talk about how the detail of the $10 billion package was kept secret. It goes on to talk about how the many federal public servants who may have had some insight to bring to that decision were excluded from the decision and kept in the dark. I remind members that this is a debate about how governments make decisions and about why governments make decisions.

We have had many debates in this place about the Australian National Audit Office’s critique of government decision making. We have been through in great detail the grotesque chaos of the $350 million advertising splurge to try and sell the Australian Work Choices legislation of the former government. More importantly than anything else, we have seen the repeated decisions of those opposite that seek to do nothing more than to damage the budget of our nation at a time when everyone should be working as hard as possible to keep the financial integrity of our government as high as it can possibly be.

They have opposed measures that total $7 billion. And they have done that by supporting big oil companies, big insurers and other big companies. They have ignored both the national interest and the interests of Australian families. Those opposite come in here and talk about extending the hand of bipartisanship to the government in order to assist our nation through the current global financial crisis. Yet in this place and in the place across the hallway there they oppose responsible measures that both reduce taxes on families and build a budget surplus. They have opposed the alcopops measures.

They have opposed the changes to the Medicare levy surcharge thresholds, which is an interesting one. I thought to myself, ‘I’ll have a look at the decision-making process’—and remember that this debate is about decision-making processes—‘that underpinned how that surcharge was put in place.’ It was introduced in 1997 with the stated goal of targeting high-income earners and driving them into the private health insurance system, with thresholds of $50,000 for singles and $100,000 for couples or a family.

One might wonder how the former government arrived at those thresholds. We discovered the answer to that just recently. The thresholds were not developed through a scientific or empirical methodology. No, the former health minister Michael Wooldridge admitted they were negotiated with Senator Harradine over a bottle of Jameson whiskey. Several things come to mind about that. Firstly, it is the offhand, light-hearted way in which a minister would describe how public policy is made. Secondly, it is the harsh reality that they did not care about the integrity of that measure. All they cared about was introducing a tax in order to drive a herd of families into an insurance system they did not need and which they could not afford lest it be for fear of paying a massively increased tax.

We see those opposite standing up for big oil companies—a matter about which I know more than most—and the removal of the exemption of the crude oil excise on condensate from the North West Shelf. Those members opposite lined up to support a $2.4 billion tax advantage for one corporate operation. There was no consideration at all for the interests of other producers that might be operating in Darwin or other producers that might want to bring their oil and gas onshore not sharing the same obscene advantage—an obscene advantage created by those opposite when they were in government. I am appalled to consider that government decision making over the course of the last 12 years not only ignored the national interest wherever it could; it ignored Australia’s families; it ignored those in need; and now it turns up in this place masquerading as a life-support system for a media appearance this afternoon in a debate which the opposition knows it cannot win.

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