Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Today I want to give credit where credit is due. While there is no doubt that one of the Labor Party’s great skills is its ability to create myths and rewrite history, exaggerating its achievements and ignoring its failings, I will not be so churlish as to claim that previous Labor governments have failed to undertake any significant reforms. It has been said that the character of a government, in terms of its reformist zeal, is established in its first couple of years. It is during this time that a new government has a bank of goodwill from the voters, and a good government takes that opportunity to make some hard decisions that may be unpopular in the short term but will bring long-term benefits to the nation.

For example, the Hawke Labor government made some important economic reforms during its early years, and those reforms were supported by the coalition because they were in the national interest. They were reforms such as floating the dollar, deregulation of the financial sector and tariff reductions. Senior coalition figures have, rightly, given Labor credit for those reforms many times over the years. In contrast, the Howard government faced constant opposition from Labor to its reform agenda. Labor voted against virtually every reform of the Howard government—not just in its early years but throughout its four terms—even when Labor knew that the reforms were in the national interest.

If one judges a government and its appetite for reform by its actions in its early years, consider the coalition reforms: gun control; the implementation of the GST, which not only reformed our tax system but placed state funding on a long-term sustainable footing; reform of the waterfront to make Australia more internationally competitive; and the tough decisions to cut spending that ultimately led to the repayment of all Commonwealth net debt. The coalition took tough and often unpopular decisions and thus established the reform credentials of the Howard government very early in its life.

I ask members to compare this with the current Labor government. Last year, former Labor leader Mark Latham described the first 100 days of this government as a ‘circus of symbolism’. He said:

If a government lacks policy substance early on, it is unlikely to achieve much later in its term.

Even Rudd’s strongest barrackers concede that he lacks an ambitious reform agenda. Nearly 18 months later, those observations are even more pertinent, because all this government has delivered has been relentless spin and myth-making in pursuit of a short-term, populist political agenda. It has delivered reactive measures that will leave this country burdened by the biggest debt, with the fastest and deepest budget turnaround from surplus to deficit in Australian modern history.

What significant reforms has this government undertaken in its first two years that will make a long-term and positive impact on the Australian economy? While members ponder that imponderable, let me read from a speech:

Policy innovation and evidence-based policy making is at the heart of being a reformist government.

Policy design and policy evaluation should be driven by analysis of all the available options, and not by ideology.

We’re interested in facts, not fads.

In fostering a culture of policy innovation, we should trial new approaches and policy options through small-scale pilot studies.

Who made these strong commitments to using evidence based policy and trials, small pilot programs and innovation? It was none other than the current Prime Minister, who was speaking to the heads of government agencies in April 2008.

Now let us examine how well this Labor government has lived up to these big, lofty and worthy ideals. Take Labor’s campaign promise of a national broadband network. Labor promised to spend $4.7 billion on a network but, after it hopelessly mismanaged the tender process, it scrapped it. Rather than admitting that it had made a mistake and going back to the drawing board, it announced a new proposal to spend $43 billion for a broadband plan. But there was no cost-benefit analysis, no economic modelling, no business plan, no consideration of likely take-up and no consultation with key stakeholders. It failed every single aspect of proper public policymaking as well as ignoring the very lecture that the Prime Minister had given to public servants on evidence based policy.

Another reform was to be in industrial relations. But, instead of continuing the Keating and Howard governments’ decisions to deregulate labour markets, this government has moved to reregulate labour markets in a way not seen in this country for many decades—and at a time when Australia needs to be much more competitive than ever in the global markets. This would have to be the first national government since Federation to reverse a major economic reform. The government is pushing this country off a cliff, because no-one in government has released data or done analysis to show what the impact of this reregulation will be. Will it destroy productivity? Will it destroy jobs—in what sectors of the economy and what parts of the country? But all the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations could point to was her divine intuition. She declared on the ABC last year:

We understand the economic effects of our industrial relations policy. We understood them on the day we released it last year.

Yet she refuses to share that understanding of the economic impact with the Australian people.

A third campaign was, of course, the Education Revolution. This same minister who did no economic modelling or analysis on the likely impact of turning the clock back 30 years in employment laws is now presiding over monumental waste and mismanagement in the school halls debacle. This minister committed almost $15 billion—now $17 billion—to the construction of school buildings without any cost-benefit analysis, with no consideration of whether schools wanted them or had other more pressing priorities and with no evidence that it would improve the learning environment or educational outcomes.

Reports abound of schools being forced to accept new halls, whether they wanted a hall or not; being given large grants for which they did not apply. We have had reports of schools saying that they do not know what they will do with the money, and schools marked for closure that received grants while other more needy schools have missed out. This waste, this mismanagement, this incompetence spells a lack of ministerial oversight, for which this minister is entirely responsible. No wonder the Auditor-General has had to step in. This is taxpayers’ money. This $15 billion, now $17 billion, debacle is taxpayers’ money. The Minister for Finance and Deregulation observed:

… when a government takes that tax dollar it has a very real responsibility to ensure it provides value in return.

This minister has no concept of value for money when it comes to the money the government takes off the Australian taxpayer. Last week the Secretary to the Treasury said:

Government spending that does not pass an appropriately defined cost-benefit test necessarily detracts from Australia’s wellbeing.

This government does not undertake cost-benefit analysis. This government does not undertake economic modelling. This government does not care that it is driving the country into an unsustainable level of debt from which it will not recover unless it raises taxes through the roof, which will also drive up interest rates, or—the old Labor standby—waits for the coalition to get back into government to pay off its debt and clean up the mess.

So let us stop this charade now. There is no education revolution. There has been no great education reform under this government. There has been no long-term reform. This government’s character has been exposed. This government is just like other Labor governments. It is a hollow government, populated by spin doctors from NSW Labor Right—which has so fundamentally failed the people of that state and now infects federal Labor. After almost two years, the character of this federal Labor government has been exposed—characterised by waste, mismanagement, an addiction to debt and an utter failure to embrace the economic reforms of governments of all persuasions over the last 30 years. (Time expired)

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