Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I am tempted to say that maybe the same installers went to Mildura. Sadly, there were so many cases like that. The first instinct of the government was to pretend that it was not happening. In doing that, they knowingly let this bad and catastrophic program continue.

This third Rudd government budget has answered the question for many in the Australian community. This government cannot manage money, cannot implement programs and cannot be trusted on anything it says in the lead-up to the next election. If the government will break promises it made before the last election, it will break promises in the future if it gets a chance. If the government is not competent to implement basic policy, that will never change. At the next election, the people of Australia will have a choice, and they will have that choice having seen the Rudd government over three years of policy failure, broken promises, waste and mismanagement. This budget is a budget that is starkly different from the budgets of the Howard government. Back in those days, those opposite complained about how money was spent in times of surplus budgets. Now, their promises on reducing the deficit and reducing debt must be kept alongside their track record on broken promises to date.

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