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

The research I was referring to was not looking at Parliamentary Secretary Lundy’s letter but looking at the assertion that the Leader of the Opposition and the member made about promises by this government. As I am advised by the Minister for Health and Ageing, no such commitment was made. I am very happy to stand by local promises we made. It would be very intriguing indeed to see if the shadow Treasurer and the shadow finance minister could ever spend enough time together to give us a costed list of the local promises they made, because as we know they allowed local candidates to make, and they themselves made, promises that they never bothered to cost. They were heading for an $11 billion black hole and a fundamental breach of trust with local communities.

So I presume that the member for Hume is fairly embarrassed by that performance by his political party. He might therefore want to advocate to the Leader of the Opposition that, in preparation for the 2013 election, the Leader of the Opposition should try to find a way to live by the Charter of Budget Honesty. He promised to do so in the run-up to the 2007 election but did not do it because he was covering up an $11 billion black hole and the littering, right around the country, of promises made to be broken.

See this speech in context