Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

Yes. I must say I found it very interesting that the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the member for Watson, began his contribution to this debate by once again making sneering remarks about older Australians which he thought were pretty amusing. But he too got it wrong, as I pointed out often through his address. He had not read the papers that had been produced this morning and simply came in here with his old rhetoric. I want to compare the 30 pages of information that we put out today with the so-called policy details that the Labor Party went to the last election on. It said:

Labor’s plan for climate change and primary industries—‘Australia’s Farming Future’—is a key component of Labor’s overall strategy on climate change. A Rudd Labor Government will—

ratify Kyoto and reduce emissions. But then it said it will:

• implement an emissions trading scheme in 2010 to provide the right market signals for industry and ensure our trade exposed sectors are not disadvantaged …

That is it; that was the policy—no costings, no details on how this grand tax on everything would affect the Australian economy, no details of how it would impact on small business, no details of how it would impact on grocery prices, which are already going through the roof, no details still.

We have had this debate which the Leader of the Opposition asked for, one on one with the Prime Minister, half an hour each, and we have been debating it ever since. The Prime Minister ran away, but we still have no more information from him about how the legislation that he is reintroducing into the parliament would impact on the people. We heard the finance minister talking about an attack on his budget but there was no mention about whether or not there was a bad impact on people. I might be old-fashioned, but I have a good old-fashioned view—that is, I think governments should be poor and the people should be rich, not the other way around, which is what the Labor Party always wants to happen. It believes it will always spend people’s money better than individuals will spend it on themselves. I thoroughly disagree. (Time expired)

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