Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is an old adage in this place: the louder the bark the less you usually have to say. We have just seen two very good examples of it, one from the LNP member across the chamber, who did not actually refer to or speak to this MPI but, with rank opportunism, attacked the Queensland state government because there is an election on. How about actually dealing with the issues at hand right here in the Commonwealth, the issues that are affecting everybody in Australia, not just those in Queensland?

What a load of confused rhetoric we got from the former minister for cutting workers conditions and stripping away their rights. I have to say that the new shadow minister for the Treasury portfolio, the member for North Sydney, does put on a good show. There is no question of that. We all have a good laugh; he is a bit of an entertainer. But the sad part of his performance is that it comes at the cost of jobs. I do want to congratulate the member for North Sydney on his appointment to the shadow Treasury portfolio. I say to the member: give it your best shot, because the points of difference between the government and the opposition could not be any greater or any better differentiated.

While I am on the subject of the shadow Treasury portfolio, I want to wish him luck, because it has already claimed two scalps—the scalps of Julie Bishop and Peter Costello. They are both victims of the shadow Treasury portfolio. The member has a larger-than-life reputation, but he will need more than just huff and puff in coming into this place if he wants to provide a positive alternative or support the decisive action of the government on the impacts of the global financial crisis on the Australian economy and more importantly on people, on families and on jobs.

With that in mind, can I say how disappointed I am at this MPI. This MPI is an attack on our economy, it is an attack on families and it is an attack on jobs. I do understand the need that the opposition has to simply oppose, but it should do so in a constructive manner and in a manner that does not actually make matters worse. While in government, the mob on the other side were feverishly working up arguments, saying that we talk the economy down. I do not agree that that was the case, because I do not believe we talked the economy down once. The very first thing they did when they got into opposition was do everything in their power to talk the economy down. While the Rudd government is out there feverishly working to sustain Australian jobs and help families, the opposition just wants to play games. We just saw evidence of it, with one of the LNP members deciding that he would have a go and attack the Queensland state government and not actually address the MPI put up by his own side.

While the government offers up its second stimulus package, its second round of supporting and creating jobs and helping families to dampen the full impact of the global financial crisis, the opposition just carps and whines. While the government does everything it can to help families, schools and business, the opposition is busy arguing with itself on leadership, portfolios and self-interest. Nothing could have been made more clear in the policy approach to Australia’s and the world’s single biggest and greatest downturn in history than the comments of the former shadow Treasurer, Julie Bishop. She was asked on radio what the opposition would do, what was going to be their policy. If they were in government today, what would they be doing? Were they just going to whine and carp and complain and whinge? What was their alternative? Her answer was very simple. She said they would sit and wait and see what happens. None of us can afford that—not one of us in this place and not one of us in Australia. In other words, what she was saying is that they would sit and wait for jobs to go, for business to fail, for families to lose their homes, for schools to struggle and for the Australian economy to falter like the rest of the world is faltering. This position was simply not good enough for anybody in this place or anywhere else.

Although the former Treasurer was in the end removed from her role because of her views and her failure in this very technical, very difficult portfolio area, she was professing the views of her leader. Her views are the views of the Leader of the Opposition. She was not acting alone in her comments. She was acting in concert with and with the support of the Leader of the Opposition. She paid the price but it is the Leader of the Opposition that continues the mantra of ‘just sit and wait’, because at every opportunity the opposition does everything it can to destroy the stimulus packages that the government are putting up. No clearer evidence of that is available than the sheer fact that they all voted against the package. They voted against the $42 billion. They did not want the money. They did not want it in their schools; they did not want it anywhere else.

I started by saying that there was a massive differentiation between the government and the opposition. There could not be a bigger difference between what we want to do in Australia’s national interest and what the opposition want to do in their own self-interest. The greatest difference between the government and the opposition is simple. It is that we have a strategy and we will work hard to deliver that, and the opposition just have an excuse.

This MPI is as spurious as it is disingenuous. The whole point of the stimulus package in the first place is to protect and create jobs. You will hear all sorts of numbers about where the jobs are being created. Yet every speaker on the government side explains exactly where those jobs are. They are being created in schools through construction; they are being created in industry, where money is being invested; they are being created in small, medium and large businesses; they are being created in industry, in innovation and in clean technologies; and they are being created in retail. They have been created right across the board. The opposition come in here carping on, repeating the same mantra over and over and over: ‘Where are the jobs being created?’ You have your answer: they are being created right here, right now in the Australian economy, not somewhere else but right here in every community—in large communities, in small communities. In every community where there exists a school there are jobs being created right now.

If the opposition do not believe us, they can ring up a school principal and ask them what they think about the package. If they do not believe the government, I ask every member in the opposition to ring up a builder that they know and ask where their next job is coming from and if the government stimulus package is not helping—if the public housing policy we have got and the creation of 20,000 new homes over the next two years is not helping. I can tell you what they are telling me in my electorate, and I know what they are telling government members in other electorates. I know what those very same people would be telling members of the opposition in their own electorates: ‘Get out of the road, do something positive for the country and help the economy.’

But all we hear from the other side is doom and gloom and rank political opportunism. We get LNP members in here who have no mandate whatsoever, and if their numbers purely as reflected in Queensland determined the sort of mandate they would have in this place they would barely register a hiccup on the Richter scale. Self-interest can often cloud the mind on what is right and what is wrong, what needs to be done and what needs the goodwill of all Australians—even for politicians. But it is regrettably clear that the opposition has lost direction and has lost focus on the national interest in favour of self-interest. If the opposition cannot understand or will not support measures the government is putting in place to sustain or create jobs, it just proves how out of touch they really are and how out of touch the Leader of the Opposition is with ordinary people and the economy. I suppose it is a case of ‘once a merchant banker, always a merchant banker’.

For the rest of us here, there is much work to be done: to fix and build infrastructure; to build schools and invest in children’s education; to invest in public housing; to invest in the construction industry and build new homes, including through first home owners grants; to invest in older Australians and families; to support innovation and invest in our universities; to invest in green and clean technologies; and to support training, job creation and new training for the job opportunities that are coming in the future and are needed now. We are reducing red tape and bureaucracy, to support small business and other measures through the tax system. We are supporting industry through increased grants to create more jobs. We are supporting the real estate sector through incentives to families and, while there are almost too many to list here today in the few minutes that I have got, the government is working very hard to at least protect families and workers against the very worst effects of the global financial crisis.

The shadow Treasurer stumps up to the pulpit in this place and preaches doom and gloom, loud and full of huff and puff, but in the end says nothing at all. When the opposition talks about the ‘cash splash’, what are they talking about? Are they saying that we wasted the $10 billion on ordinary families and pensioners? Is that what you are saying—that we wasted it on pensioners? When the opposition talks about the ‘cash splash’—the $42 billion in schools—are we wasting that on children’s education? I think not. (Time expired)

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