Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Two hundred and twenty new regulations for every one that they have abolished. Remember they said they would establish a department of homeland security? It was never delivered. They said they would have an independent election debate commission. That was never delivered. What a grandiose claim computers in schools were. There has been a $1.2 billion blowout and they have not delivered a computer on every desk. With childcare centres the former Prime Minister promised to end the double drop-off. They promised 260 childcare centres. They delivered just 38 and then they had the Minister for Sport announce they were not going to continue with the program.

With private health insurance, the former Prime Minister gave an ironclad guarantee to the Australian people he would not touch private health insurance. Then he had a backflip and wanted to introduce a means test. Of course, speaking of means tests, the Labor Party said they would not touch the baby bonus, but of course they touched the baby bonus. They had their little socialist mitts all over the baby bonus and that was the end of it.

The minister at the table, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, knows this one because she has contributed to it: the Commonwealth public bureaucracy. The Labor Party promised they would cut the red tape and cut the bureaucrats. Since they were elected 20,000 extra public servants have been employed in Canberra.

But there is more. There is a set of steak knives coming down the path. The government said it would not touch employee share schemes and then it had an on-again, off-again attack on employee share schemes. I forgot about this next one. The government promised green incentives, including a $50 green rewards card. I completely forgot about that but so did Labor. It was never delivered. Then there was GROCERY choice. You remember old Swanee used to have a list of a basket of goods from the local Franklins that he would take out each week. He would say how hard Australians were doing it. He said, 'We're going to bring down those grocery prices because we're going to watch them.' GROCERY choice, promised in 2007, was abandoned in 2009. They promised there would be no cap on the bank deposit guarantee 12 days before they introduced one.

Then they said they would impose no new taxes. This is perhaps the most breathtaking of their broken promises. They promised no new taxes and now, after four years, Labor have introduced or increased 19 taxes. The most substantial backflips have been on the things that matter most to the Australian people, and that is where it hits their hip pocket.

The government said that they needed for moral purposes to have an emissions trading scheme. It was the greatest moral challenge of our time. Then they broke that commitment. Even worse, the leaders behind that broken commitment were the now Prime Minister and the now Deputy Prime Minister. So I can understand the grim face of the member for Griffith when he walks into this chamber each day and has to suffer the fact that it is the now Prime Minister who sits near the dispatch box, because she was the lady who advised him to dump the emissions trading scheme. It was the then Deputy Prime Minister who advised him to dump the emissions trading scheme. So he is wondering: how does that work? Not only does the policy come back, but these guys get promoted after they misled me.

This indicates that there is a continuum in relation to this mob, which is that they need to impose a tax where they see a problem. When they see the problem of alcohol consumption by young people, in comes an alcopops tax. When they see that the Australian car industry is doing it tough, they increase the tax on luxury cars. When they see that the health system is suffering because there is not enough money going into it, they try to impose additional costs on private health insurance. When the government see that the mining industry is driving business investment—it has gone from 15 per cent of every dollar invested in Australia 10 years ago to nearly 60c in every dollar now—what do the government do? They whack a tax on it.

Of course, when it comes to carbon emissions, the government's great big solution to that is to whack another tax on it. But of all the new taxes, of all the insidious acts of this government, I truly believe that the one that most riled the Australian people was when the Prime Minister asked the Australian people to give generously for the flood victims in Queensland. After they donate money, organise community fund­raisers, have telethons—after Australians go out of their way to give whatever discretionary sums they have available to help their mates in Queensland—what does the government do? It whacks a tax on it. No wonder the Australian people are so cynical, because this means that now the Australian people do not trust their Prime Minister and their Treasurer.

It was Kevin Rudd at a press conference on 29 February 2008 who said:

Trust is the key currency of politics …

Little did he know that he would become a devalued currency. He would become the peso of the Pacific as soon as trust became the key currency of politics. But it goes further, because in down time at night, when I am suffering a little bit of insomnia, what do I turn to? I turn to the words of the current Prime Minister. I dug out these words from the current Prime Minister on 10 May 2005:

… the Labor Party is the party of truth telling.

I believe the words still stand. Come on, Bill, rush to her defence!

The government is so inept that, when the Prime Minister took the job in the night of the long knives, with barely a year to go, she said:

I asked my colleagues to make a leadership change, a change because I believed that a good government was losing its way.

The good government that was losing its way is now a bad government that is still losing its way. The bad government that is still losing its way is having an impact on the confidence of the Australian people. The bad government which has lost its way is now causing so much concern to Australian consumers that, according to latest Westpac-Melbourne Institute Consumer Sentiment Index, confidence fell to the lowest level in two years last month. So we have unemployment falling, we have economic growth improving, we have the best terms of trade in 140 years, and everyday Australians have less confidence than they did two years ago in the wake of the financial crisis.

Do you know what, Mr Deputy Speaker? It is reflected in the fact that Australians are cocooning themselves, wrapping themselves in a security blanket, afraid of the instability coming out of Canberra. Household savings have increased to 11½ per cent of disposable income, a level not seen since the global financial crisis back in 2007-08. Australians are wrapping themselves up. Their discretionary spend is down remarkably, and why? Because of the incompetence of this government, because of the inconsistency of this government, because of the fact that this government cannot hold a policy from midnight to dawn. It cannot even hold a prime minister from midnight to dawn, let alone hold a policy from midnight to dawn. This is a government that has no trust. It does not trust itself, so how can it expect the Australian people to trust it? How can it expect the Australian people to believe what it says?

Mr Shorten interjecting—

And here we have the chief spear chucker.

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