Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

After one of the most extraordinarily graceless prime ministerial performances in question time that this House has seen in many a long year, it is worth reminding the House of the words of the current Prime Minister just a few years earlier. Just a few years ago in 2006 the now Prime Minister, then a senior Labor frontbencher, said:

We have to remember that question time is supposed to be one of our key accountability mechanisms. If there is a big scandal or a corruption allegation, you are supposed to be able to get the matter in question time, and it is not serving that role now.

That was the statement by the member for Lawler—then a frontbencher, now a Prime Minister—and she should be judged and condemned by her own words. We have seen an extraordinary display today: a bristling, petulant performance from the Prime Minister, who is trying to insist that, of all people, George Brandis—the shadow Attorney-General—in some way has serious questions to answer and serious statements to make on the subject of improper behaviour and that the member for Dobell does not. Also, the claim was seriously advanced by the Prime Minster today that Senator Mary Jo Fisher, who suffers from depression and is facing her day in court, is somehow equivalent to the member for Dobell, who has run away from his day in court and got the Labor Party to pay his legal fees. It was an absolutely disgraceful performance by this Prime Minister in question time today.

This week marks the first anniversary of the election that nobody won, least of all the Australian people. In the 12 months since last year's election, thanks to the Greens and Independents, who put this government back into office, we Australians have been saddled with a bad government that is getting worse every day. The great economist Adam Smith said that 'there is a lot of ruin in a nation', and indeed a bad government eventually produces very bad outcomes for the Australian people. Increasingly in recent months we have seen the dividends of an incompetent government that has the Midas touch in reverse. We have seen out of control borders—I remind the House that over the last 12 months we have seen 99 boats with more than 5,600 illegal arrivals come to our shores. We also have a Prime Minister with out of control integrity—she said before the election that there would never be a Pacific solution from this government and that detaining illegal arrivals offshore was 'costly, unsustainable and wrong as a matter of principle'. Yet what is she doing now? As we learned today, she is proposing to send boat people who arrive in this country back to Malaysia, where, according to reports, they are subject to increasing brutality from Malaysian police and others.

We have had the surplus that will never happen, and $150 billion worth of deficits that have well and truly happened. We now have waste on an epic scale. We thought that the school hall waste could not possibly be repeated, but now we have the biggest white elephant of them all: the National Broadband Network. Not only did the infrastructure tender to collapse but also the Chief Financial Officer of the NBN Co. has today been forced to resign, which surely presages more waste and incompetence. Then, of course, there is that which most grieves the Australian people: increasing evidence of serious job losses to come in the manufacturing industry. There are the BlueScope job losses, the OneSteel job losses, the Qantas job losses and the Westpac job losses. What is this government doing about the steel industry? The steel industry advocate position has been unfilled for nine months, and the Steel Industry Innovation Council did not meet for six months. This government has a Prime Minister in hiding and a member in protection, and, increasingly, it is paralysed in the face of the problems which bedevil this country because of its own incompetence.

This government is lurching from crisis to crisis. It has a Prime Minister who lacks the courage or the integrity to force the member for Dobell to answer elementary questions—the questions which Kathy Jackson of the Health Services Union knows need to be answered. What did we see from the Prime Minister in question time today? Nothing but contempt—she has not the slightest shred of sympathy or the slightest skerrick of fellow feeling for a brave woman who wants to see the right thing done. What is the Prime Minister doing? Nothing but vituperation and stonewalling. It is graceless, unbecoming and demeaning of the high office which the Prime Minister holds.

The government is rapidly revealing all of the dysfunction and lack of principle which characterised the late New South Wales Labor government. So why should we be surprised when we see the Prime Minister and other senior members of the government lining up now to excuse the inexcusable and defend the indefensible that we have seen reported in connection with the member for Dobell? It is New South Wales sleaze which has now come into the heart of this government and which this Prime Minister and senior members of this government are so desperate to defend. This is a government which has no plan for our country. It has a plan to survive, not a plan to govern, and the Australian people deserve so much better.

Since December 2007, the cost of living pressures on the forgotten families of Australia have only got worse. Since December 2007, electricity prices around this country have gone up 49 per cent. Water prices have gone up 46 per cent. Education costs have gone up 24 per cent. Health costs have gone up 22 per cent. Rent has gone up 22 per cent and food has gone up 15 per cent. Mortgage repayments now cost $500 a month more for the average home loan than they did just a couple of years ago. It is no wonder that the Australian people look back to the time of the former government as a golden age of economic growth that has now been lost, because, since members opposite came into power, GDP-per-head growth has been less than one-half of one per cent a year compared to well over two per cent a year under the former government—and it is just going to get worse with the big new taxes that this government has in store for us. The carbon tax is going to go up and up and up. It is a bad tax based on a lie; yet this is at the heart of this government's plan for our country. Even on the government's own figures, the carbon tax is going to leave well over three million Australian households worse off—and these are not rich people, by any means; these are not people who are importing yachts and motor cruisers. Take, for example, a school teacher married to a shop assistant. They will be worse off under the government's carbon tax package, even on the government's own figures. A policeman married to a part-time nurse will be worse off under the government's carbon tax, even on the government's own figures.

But the worse thing about this carbon tax, which is going to wreak havoc with the way every single Australian lives and works, is that it is not actually going to do its job. The whole point of a carbon tax is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. What is the point of a carbon tax if it does not actually reduce carbon dioxide emissions? Yet here in black and white on page 18 of the government's own document, Strong growth, low pollution—modelling a carbon price, we are told that our emissions are 578 million tonnes now and in 2020, with a carbon price of $29 tonne, they are not going down; they are going up to 621 million tonne.

Members opposite like to boast—oh, don't they like to boast!—about their 'fantastic target'. Everything this government does is 'the best thing that has ever happened'—it is historic; it is magnificent; it is stupendous! Gough Whitlam never did anything, Bob Hawke never did anything and Paul Keating never did anything! Nothing happened until this mob came along—aren't they great! But do you know what we are going to get in 2050 with a carbon price of $131 a tonne? A carbon tax of $131 a tonne is going to reduce our emissions from 578 million tonne now to, wait for it, 545 million tonne. That is not an 80 per cent reduction.

I thought this had to be a misprint. I have been looking every day for erratum slips to start appearing in the government's own documents. But, no, this is what they are going to achieve. They are going to impose a $131 a tonne carbon tax—more than five times what it is proposed to be in the middle of next year—for what? For a reduction in our emissions of about six per cent. They want to turn the way we live and the way we work upside down—for what? A six per cent reduction in our emissions. How is that going to save the world? If people knew what this mob were planning, they would laugh them out of office this very instant.

But it just gets worse. The Prime Minister tells us that this carbon tax is going to create jobs left, right and centre and transform the steel industry into something magnificent. You can just imagine a steel mill run on solar power and a motor plant running on windmills. Aren't we going to have a great steel industry and a great car industry in this country? Look at the government's own figures. On the government's own figures, our gross national income per person will be nearly $5,000 less under a carbon tax than it would otherwise be. This is a carbon tax that is going to cost jobs big-time and wreak havoc with the standard of living of the Australian people. It is not going to reduce carbon emissions and it will, on the government's own figures, impoverish us. This is an act of economic lunacy; yet it is all this government has to offer.

But we know that in her heart of hearts not even this Prime Minister believes it. We know what she really believes, because during the break Geoff Kitney told us. What she really believes is that you can achieve a five per cent reduction in emissions through the coalition's direct action plan. That is what she really believes. That is the secret memo that she gave to other members of the inner cabinet just before she conspired to politically assassinate the former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

This is a truly bad government. Members opposite like to say that everything they do is historic. Well, this is a historic government all right! It is historically the worst. It is historically the worst we have ever seen. Those people who merely say that it is the worst since Gough Whitlam are wrong. They are being totally unfair to Gough Whitlam—who did not lack idealism and who never sold his soul to the Greens and Senator Bob Brown. This is the worst government ever. It lacks integrity; it lacks ideals; it lacks honesty; and it should be gone—and, increasingly, that is what the Australian people want. Be gone!

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