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

We have been through a dreadful summer, a summer where Australians have turned to each other, a summer where Australians have shown that they want to look after each other. Australians have acted to help each other. Australians are now looking to this parliament to give them the leadership the nation deserves at this time. Australians know that the nation needs to rebuild from the devastating summer that was. When Australians turn to this parliament they do not expect to see this tragedy being used for cheap politicking. They do not expect to see this parliament degenerate into a rabble around what needs to be done to rebuild the nation. Instead, they expect decisions to be made and action to be taken, and as Prime Minister I am going to do just that.

That is why I have outlined a $5.6 billion funding package. That is why I have outlined plans to start the rebuilding now. That is why we are prepared to make a $2 billion payment available to Queensland. That is why we have set in place measures to make sure value for money is obtained, including a reconstruction inspectorate, including audited accounts, including a national partnership arrangement and including the involvement of people like Mr John Fahey and Mr Brad Orgill. We want to get on with the job of rebuilding the nation. That is what the national interest requires. And the national interest requires this burden to be shared. Yes, the government have to make room for it in their budget—and we have. We have done it through making some tough and difficult decisions. We have done it through reprioritising infrastructure to deal with questions of capacity constraints. We have done it by making sure we streamline the skilled migration we may need to build the nation. We have done it by making the decisions necessary to get unemployed people to step up to the jobs they can get in rebuilding the nation. We have put together a comprehensive package and, yes, it includes asking Australians for a contribution too. That is the right thing to do at a time when the nation needs it. At every point we have been motivated by the national interest.

Unfortunately, what we have seen on every occasion from the Leader of the Opposition is the national interest cast aside in pursuit of narrow political interests. At a time when Australians were turning to each other, urging each other to dig deeper for flood victims, the Leader of the Opposition was out there asking them to dig deeper to fund the Liberal Party. The Leader of the Opposition is very keen to throw insults around; let me say this: I have never seen such a tin heart. Of course, the Leader of the Opposition may have been let down by his party organisation, but what he needed to then do was say they had done the wrong thing. But he was asked by Barrie Cassidy:

But to do it in that way, to attach it—

the fundraising request—

to a letter detailing information about the floods—you don’t think that was just a little insensitive and in poor taste on the part of the party?

And the Leader of the Opposition replied:

Well people will make their own judgements.

Never a truer word was spoken. People will make their own judgments on a man who did not condemn fundraising for the Liberal Party when the nation was turning to fundraising for flood victims.

On the question of the national interest versus narrow political interest, what we have seen on each and every occasion is the Leader of the Opposition out there seeking to pursue narrow political interest. Did you hear his speech at the Gold Coast to a group of Young Liberals, when the nation was still reeling from the shock of these natural disasters, before we were even touched by the cyclone and there was more devastation to come, when the people of Queensland and Brisbane were looking at their houses filled with filthy floodwaters and wondering how they were ever going to clean up? There was the Leader of the Opposition on the Gold Coast in front of the Liberal Party faithful, trying to work out how he could surf these floodwaters into Kirribilli. That was the main thing on his mind—all about his political interest. Could he use this somehow to put pressure on the Independents to make a different decision about the composition of the government? It is narrow political interest every step of the way.

I say to the Leader of the Opposition: people would take him more seriously if the narrow political interest had also not been on display in putting together his so-called alternative package. When we laboured over the $5.6 billion funding package, we laboured in the interests of the nation. The Leader of the Opposition and his team laboured over the reports of focus groups to help them work out what was in their political interest, as reported in the newspaper. Were they studying documents to work out the national interest or studying documents to work out his political interest? We all know the answer to that.

Let’s just go through the hypocrisy that is driving the Leader of the Opposition’s campaign. He is not opposed to tax. He was a member of a government whose tax as a share of GDP was as follows. The tax to GDP figure of the Howard government when they left office was 23.5 per cent.

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