Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in a matter of public importance debate that was filed by the opposition and was supposedly about the cost of living pressures for Australian households and families. How can the Leader of the Opposition be so out of touch that, even though those words are written on a piece of paper, the one thing he says absolutely nothing about is cost of living pressures on working families? Instead, he chose to pose a question about what is different and what is the same today after the events in this parliament. I will speak about the cost of living pressures on working families, but let me just for a moment respond to the question that the Leader of the Opposition has really raised in this parliament: what is different and what is the same?

The truth is that for the Leader of the Opposition there is much that is the same. He is the same man. He is the same man who sat around a Howard cabinet table and supported Work Choices and rejoiced in its outcomes. I clearly remember being in this parliament, sitting where the Deputy Leader of the Opposition sits now, looking over here at the current Leader of the Opposition, as they would come to the dispatch box and not just defend but rejoice in examples like Billy, the minimum wage worker who lost every award condition, including penalty rates, overtime and shift loadings—you name it. That was justified. That was okay. That was Work Choices. The Leader of the Opposition is the same man who used to come to the dispatch box and say that Work Choices was good for working families, as the statistics flooded in about how young workers were being ripped off and about how women workers were being ripped off—statistics that are undeniable. It is not that the Leader of the Opposition did not know these things. I do not allege incompetence. He knew every fact; he knew every statistic; he knew the detail of every rip-off. He had the same dataset available to him as was available to us and the Australian people—and he still defended it as good.

When we on this side of the House said it was unacceptable for working families to face that kind of insecurity and indignity at work, he said it was fine. When working Australians in their workplaces came to the conclusion it was unfair and joined the Your Rights at Work campaign, he said it was fine. When the trade union movement of this country identified individual workers who had lost their rights, he said that was fine. Whilst the Leader of the Opposition poses the question—what is the same and what is different?—what is the same is his absolute commitment to Work Choices. When he sat here and defended Work Choices he told the truth. He believes in it; he is committed to it; he thought it was the right way for Australia.

The Leader of the Opposition says that he hopes there will be debates between him and me, and as we lead up to the election there most certainly will be in many, many contexts. In those debates what I would suggest the Leader of the Opposition really does is have the fortitude to present and argue for the things he really believes in. He says he is a conviction politician. Well, let’s stump up. Let’s have a red-hot go. Let’s put before the nation the real choice—the choice he believes in, Work Choices, versus the choice I believe in, Fair Work. Let’s be conviction politicians. Let’s follow those convictions. Let’s debate them long and loud right around this country. I am happy to do it. I am happy to wear my convictions on my sleeve. The one thing I ask the Leader of the Opposition to do is to have the fortitude and the guts to wear his convictions on his sleeve—and his conviction is Work Choices.

The Leader of the Opposition poses the question: what is the same and what is different? The Leader of the Opposition is the same man who took $1 billion out of our hospitals. It just seems to me truly remarkable that a man who is so keen to find fault in others and who has presented himself to the Australian people in the guise of a plain-speaking conviction politician resorts to graphs and figures and statistics about growth compared with what it could have been, or should have been or was going to be, to try to explain this $1 billion cutback. The Leader of the Opposition is a man of conviction, as he says he is and as he wants to be perceived. Why doesn’t he just front out a debate that says: ‘Yep, I took a billion dollars out of health care. I did it because I thought it was right and I would do it again given the opportunity.’ Why doesn’t he front out that debate? Why doesn’t he wear his convictions on his sleeve?

Again there is the question: what is the same and what is different? There are other things that are the same about this Leader of the Opposition. I have been opposed to him before in this parliament in many guises, including as shadow minister for health and as Manager of Opposition Business. We are back where we have been. It is a remarkable serendipity that brings us to this point, him and me, back debating as we have over so many years.

15:59:25 Let me say to the Leader of the Opposition: on the questions in the debates of the past—on the questions he seeks to raise about political honesty and being forthright—does he recall going to an election giving a rock-solid, ironclad guarantee and then taking it away? Then, after the election, having promised the Australian people that the Medicare safety net would not be cut back, he said, ‘I got rolled at Expenditure Review Committee’ or ‘Peter Costello didn’t like me’ or some mumbo jumbo. He said, by way of explanation to Laurie Oakes: ‘It’s okay, because I did consider resigning. I didn’t resign, but I did have one dark night of the soul, and surely that’s enough to square up a promise smashed as well as that one was smashed—a promise as big as that one was.’ That is the track record on honesty of this Leader of the Opposition.

Why does the Leader of the Opposition not actually own that? Why does he not go out to the Australian population and say: ‘I want to have a debate about political honesty. This is my track record; I own it and I stand for it.’ With all of this affectation to conviction, the real question in front of the Australian people from today is: who stands by their convictions, who lives by them, and who is the phoney? That is the real question before the Australian people today.

On the question of conviction, let me say to the Leader of the Opposition that I have a conviction about serving the interests of working families. I have been in the Labor Party all of my adult life because I believe in some things that I will never let go. I believe in working hard. I believe it is appropriate to work hard—to give of  your all—and I believe fundamentally in the power and the dignity of work. I believe that there is nothing more self-destructive for an individual—for their self-perception, for their perception of their role in a community and for their sense of self-worth—than to be excluded from the benefits and the dignity of work. That is why I have been driven, as a member of this government, by a conviction that if we can do things to ensure, during bad economic times, that people have the benefits and the dignity of work then we should do them. Not everything has gone right. I freely and absolutely concede that. I expect that the Leader of the Opposition will make much use of that between now and election day, but I stand by this. It is the right thing to do if you can extend the benefits and the dignity of work to working Australians to do just that. And we did.

The other conviction by which I have lived and which is the explanation of my own life is the constructive power of education. I am here as a result of great schooling. I have lived a different life from that of my father and my mother because of the power of education—education provided versus education denied. The truth is that in this country today there are kids who effectively still experience education denied. If we have the ability to change that—and it is not easy—then we should. What drives the Building the Education Revolution and what drives my passion for and commitment to education each and every day is that delivering on this nation’s promise as the nation of a fair go requires us to look at and say to each other in honesty that every child has the benefit of a great education provided and no child is held back because a great education has been denied.

I say also to the Leader of the Opposition that I, obviously, opposed him as shadow minister for health. I do not claim the great intellectual depth and fortitude of the current Minister for Health and Ageing. She is far better than I ever was with the details, the understanding, the depths and the dimension of the portfolio. She is truly remarkable. What I take from those days as shadow minister for health is that it is so important for people to know that the healthcare system is going to be there for them when they need it. That is not an easy thing in an era of an ageing community. It is not an easy thing in an age of increasingly sophisticated and expensive technologies. It is not an easy thing in a vast continent like this one, but it is a task that we are building on and working towards. Benefits have already been delivered and we are absolutely determined to deliver more. That stands in contrast to the Leader of the Opposition’s measly record as health minister. Will anybody ever bother to write the book about the Tony Abbott era of reform? The answer to that is no, but I warrant that in five, 10 or 15 years time they will be writing books about the Nicola Roxon era of reform in health.

On the question of cost-of-living pressures on working families, we have taken action to support our economy during difficult economic days. We did what had to be done in order to keep Australians in work, and we were opposed every step of the way by this Leader of the Opposition. Our efforts have obviously been rewarded in the sense that we have kept Australians in work and our unemployment rate is at 5.2 per cent, but there are families out there doing it tough. The Leader of the Opposition is so out of touch with cost-of-living pressures that he wrote down the term ‘cost of living’ on his MPI and forgot to use it. I say to the Leader of the Opposition that we want to work with working families to help them manage those cost-of-living pressures. That is what the tax cuts on 1 July are about. That is what our childcare tax rebate reforms are all about—taking the amount of that tax rebate to 50 per cent. That is what our education tax rebate is about—helping with the costs of educating kids at school.

I conclude by saying to the Leader of the Opposition that when I walked into the chamber today for the first time as Prime Minister I shook his hand and said, ‘Game on.’ I mean it.

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