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

To the Leader of the Opposition I say: how quickly they forget. Many may think I am referring to the Work Choices advertising campaign, an obscenity overseen by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer, but actually I am referring to last year's budget papers, because the climate change line item he is referring to appeared in last year's budget papers and has been brought forward into this year's budget papers. So can I say to the Leader of the Opposition, before he starts making inflammatory claims about where line items in the budget have come from, that he should perhaps do some budget study. That allocation for the climate change fund was standing in the last budget.

On the question of memory: the Leader of the Opposition of course was a very senior minister in the Howard government and he may recall the goods and services tax. He may also recall that the then Prime Minister, John Howard, announced that a full two years before he accounted for it in the budget papers. One can only assume from the reaction of the Leader of the Opposition that each and every day of those two years he was running around to the Prime Minister's office saying to John Howard, 'I just can't bear it; I can't continue to serve as a minister while this isn't accounted for in the budget.' Does anybody really think that is what happened? Well, no, that is not what happened, because of course the Leader of the Opposition is always keen to apply a standard to others that he does not apply to himself.

Let us get to the basis of this question. It is because the Leader of the Opposition would prefer to come into this parliament and continue his climate change fear campaign than deal with the matters in the budget. He does not care about a strong economy; he has got no policies or plans for one. He does not care about bringing the budget back to surplus; he has got an $11 billion black hole on his side of the ledger. He does not care about the creation of employment in our nation; he has got no policies or plans that relate to creating employment. He does not care about the future of our healthcare system; when he had the opportunity, he ripped $1 billion out of public hospitals. He does not care about the future of our schools, because he went to the last election promising to rip the best part of $3 billion out of Australian schools. He does not care about Australian apprenticeships, because he went to the last election promising a $2 billion cut to apprentices.

So there is no mystery that the Leader of the Opposition does not come into this place to debate the budget. He cannot and he will not, because he is a big risk to the budget and the nation's economic future—a risky approach taken every day. Every big call required of a leader in this nation he has got wrong, most particularly the calls necessary for the global financial crisis and keeping people in work. We will continue to get the big calls right, we will continue to manage the budget and get it back into surplus and we will continue to prioritise the jobs of Australians, because this budget is centrally about jobs and opportunity for Australians right around the nation—and the Leader of the Opposition has just turned his back on that.

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