Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is fascinating to sit in the chamber and listen to the Assistant Treasurer talk about how the Labor Party is the party of hope. It is fascinating to stay in the chamber and hear about how the Labor Party espouses a policy that looks to the future with confidence, that recognises that our best days lay ahead of us. If you actually took on board what the Assistant Treasurer had to say, you would think that maybe the Labor Party offered the people of Australia some real alternatives. But the reality is that, consistent with Labor Party policy, every step of every day when it comes to swapping their positions on policy, what we heard from the Assistant Treasurer today was yet another example of saying one thing but doing something completely opposite.

I turn my mind to an article that was published in the Australian on 26 March 2011 which contained the most recent speaking points from the Labor Party organisation and which went to every backbencher and every frontbencher on the Labor Party side. These were some of their talking points—let us call them the talking points of hope; let us call them the talking points of not making sure the Australian people are fearful but, rather, that the Australian people are inspired. Let us look at some of the gems they had that inspired the Australian people. There were talking points like:

Without action on climate change average temperatures across Australia could increase by between 2.2C and 5C by 2080. People in northern NSW will feel like they live in Cairns.

Without action on climate change the average snow season in Australia is expected to contract by between 85 and 96 per cent by 2050, and disappear by the end of the century.

No more snow in Australia. But these are not the politics of fear; these are the politics of hope and inspiration!

Without action, climate change is expected to reduce the value of irrigated agricultural production in the Murray-Darling Basin by 12 per cent in 2030 and 49 per cent by 2050.

And:

Temperature rises and population growth mean the number of heat-related deaths in our capital cities is expected to more than triple to between 4300 and 6300 a year by 2050.

What a great message of hope! What a great message of inspiration for the Australian people! The Assistant Treasurer is right: the Labor Party are not in a scare campaign; they are about a vision for the future. What absolute rubbish. That is the reason why the Australian people look upon the Labor Party and the Assistant Treasurer as complete and utter frauds. They are frauds in the same way that the Assistant Treasurer comes into this chamber and dares to lecture the coalition about engaging in the politics of hope but then voices and condones talking points like those I have mentioned. That is the reason why we will stand up to the Labor Party. That is the reason why we will reject every step of the way their ridiculous policy to make this country less competitive—a policy that, importantly, will do nothing to change the global environment and the global temperature.

But, importantly as well, this is a government that, entirely consistently, every day since it was first elected in 2007, has chopped and changed when it comes to policy. Let us cast our minds back to the 2007 election. Does everyone remember the hype about the Kevin 07 campaign? There were videos and YouTube advertisements, and there were television advertisements in which we saw a very earnest looking member for Griffith put his hands together and say: 'Are you concerned about the cost of living? So am I.' As part of that campaign what we saw from the member for Griffith on behalf of everyone in the Labor Party was a resolute promise to do something about the cost of living. The tag line that the Labor Party used—it is on YouTube; I would encourage people to have a look at it if you want to kill a minute of your life—was, 'If the economy is doing so well, why aren't we?'

That was four years ago that the Labor Party campaigned on doing something about the cost of living. Who can remember the centrepiece of their policies? Fuelwatch—to bring down the price of fuel. GroceryWatch—to bring down the price of groceries. What have we found over the last four years? We have seen that the Labor Party have forgotten all about the cost of living. They have completely forgotten about it in the same way that they have forgotten about the member for Griffith. They turned their back on GroceryWatch and they turned their back on Fuelwatch. Instead, we had a Deputy Prime Minister who, after promising that it was more likely that she would be a full forward for the Western Bulldogs, rose up only a matter of hours later and actually slit the throat of the member for Griffith and took over the leadership of the Australian Labor Party.

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