Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

What we have seen in this matter of public importance debate and over the last 20 hours or so since the budget was brought down is the essential problem with this Rudd Labor government: their problem with the truth. We saw scripted performances and the stretching of the English language—everything possible to mislead or conceal the truth from the Australian people. When the Rudd government was first elected, we heard a lot about working families. Before that, before the election of the Prime Minister, we used to hear a lot about how the buck stopped with him—not a phrase you hear very often anymore. All of those opposite know that because they get the script from the Prime Minister’s office. They must get cookies or Caramello Koalas for every time they say the word ‘decisive’; we hear them all saying it. We used to have a Prime Minister who said the buck stopped with him. We also used to hear another phrase more often than we do today: ‘working families’. We do not hear that as often today, as working families become redundancy families.

Exactly a year ago today, the first Rudd budget was brought down, and it is interesting to have a look at the language of that budget speech compared with the language absent from last night’s budget speech. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition has pointed out the astounding omission of the budget deficit figure from the budget speech last night. In over 30 minutes and around 3,000 words, the Treasurer did not mention the budget deficit figure. He thinks that, if he does not mention the figure, the Australian people will not know. It was interesting that last night he mentioned working families once in the speech. Last year, he mentioned working families 13 times—he even had ‘working families’ as a heading in last year’s speech—but last night just once.

We have seen the ridiculous language of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer in recent days about ‘temporary deficits’. These are temporary deficits that will last for six years if nothing goes wrong and everything they say is right, when almost everything they have said since the last budget has been wrong. ‘Temporary’ for six years—let us think about that for a second. We should be glad that Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan do not run a garage. When you put your car in for a service, you would get a temporary car, which you would normally expect to have for a day. Imagine turning up every afternoon for six years to get your car back, with the Prime Minister and his sidekick the Treasurer coming out with another excuse—the excuse factory.

This misleading language, this omission, this inability to say the most basic, truthful statement to the Australian public is catching up with this government halfway through this parliament. On the Neil Mitchell program this morning, the interview started like this:

Mitchell—Will you apologise to the Australian people for directly breaking the promises you made before the election?

Rudd—Neil, I accept full responsibility for that and for not being able to fulfil some of those policy commitments.

Mitchell—No, it’s not that—it’s the promises broken.

Rudd—No, policy commitments.

Mitchell—Promises broken, Prime Minister.

Rudd—Policy commitments that we haven’t fulfilled.

(Time expired)

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