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

I am of course directly answering the question that was asked, and if the member for Flinders thinks it was badly drafted then he should take that up with others.

To directly answer the question that was asked on trust and delivery of promises, of course we delivered our promises to get rid of Work Choices. And on the question of trust, clearly who cannot be trusted on that area is the Leader of the Opposition. Already—the member may not be involved in this yet—the opposition is cooking up plans to toss overboard its written promises at the election about not introducing Work Choices.

We will of course deliver our policy and plans to keep expanding the productive capacity of our economy. We have emerged from the global financial crisis stronger than most, stronger than others in the world, but in order to harness the benefit of that strength we need continuing rounds of reform, including investment in infrastructure. That is why we will continue to deliver on infrastructure and on our promise—the member asked me about the question of trust—to deliver the National Broadband Network. Do we have obstacles in relation to that? Yes, we do: the position of the Leader of the Opposition. But we will deliver the National Broadband Network because of its capacity to transform the economy.

Of course, the list of what the government can be trusted to deliver could go on. How can I say very clearly to the member that you can trust the government to deliver these things? It is because during the election campaign, as we made these promises, we carefully costed them. We found offsetting savings. We made sure that our figures added up and we made sure that the budget would come back to surplus in 2012-13.

So, if the member is truly concerned about questions of trust, then I hope that within her political party she is trying to find out why she went to the election with a $11 billion black hole and a shadow Treasurer who had not even bothered to look at the costings—

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