Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Materiel) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I congratulate you on your election as Speaker today.

I have to say the thing I like about the Leader of the Opposition is that you always know what he is going to say in these debates. He is a bit like McDonald's: wherever you go to McDonald's, you always know it is going to be the same. Whether it is Manuka McDonald's, Bankstown McDonald's in my electorate or the Caloundra McDonald's in the Speaker's electorate, you always know what you are going to get. A Big Mac always tastes the same. The thickshake always tastes the same. The fries always taste the same. It is a bit like that with the speeches of the Leader of the Opposition. Just like McDonald's, they are always cheap and nasty, and if you swallow too much of it then you get that negative feeling in the pit of your stomach. He is the Ronald McDonald of Australian politics: just cheap and nasty insults, and if you hear too much of him then you might just throw up. There is nothing positive, no ideas, no plan for Australia's future—just oppose everything that moves. It is just rancid, unrelenting negativity. Imagine what would happen if one day he said yes to something. Streamers would fall from the public gallery, confetti would rain in this place, a mariachi band would come from the press gallery, and I would probably have to order some Super Hornets to fly over Canberra to celebrate the great event. But the chances of that happening are not very high.

He is so negative that he even opposes a mining tax that the big miners support. He is so negative that now he opposes not only this government's policies but his own policies. He has a policy of cutting carbon emissions by five per cent by 2020, and a couple of months ago, when he was in Queensland, he said that policy is crazy. So he is so negative now that he thinks his own policies are crazy. His policy on asylum seekers is to place asylum seekers in Nauru. There is legislation before this parliament that would allow him to do that if he ever became Prime Minister, and he is opposing that. So he opposes not just government policy but now even his own policies.

He is so negative, Mr Speaker, that he even opposed you and issued an order that no-one from the coalition should stand for the position of Speaker, and he had no-one on that side of politics support your nomination or your election as Speaker of this parliament. He is that negative. He opposes our policies, he opposes his own policies and he even opposes you.

This is a debate about public policy. Let me tell you a little bit about what this government has been doing. We have put a price on carbon. After a debate that has now taken almost 20 years, it is this government that has been able to put a price on carbon. We are rolling out the National Broadband Network. We are delivering the first Paid Parental Leave scheme in Australia's history. We are delivering a national health agreement and $5.8 billion in a flood package to help rebuild Queensland and Victoria. We are delivering a budget that delivered 99 per cent of our election promises and keeps on track for a return to surplus in 2013. Finally, this week we have legislated through this parliament to introduce a minerals resource rent tax.

The Leader of the Opposition comes here and talks about the importance of good policy. I will tell you what good policy is: good policy is making sure that we stop Australia going into recession, and good policy is making sure that we do not have an unemployment rate such as you find in the United States or in Europe, of 10 or 20 per cent. It is about making sure you do not have a million people on a dole queue and all the strife that you see in other parts of the world. That did not happen here in Australia, because of the action that this government took, because we made the right economic decisions with the right policies—policies that were opposed by the Liberal Party and by the National Party and criticised by them all along the way. That is the difference that a Labor government makes.

There are five pillars that this country is built on, and each of them has been built by the Australian Labor Party, and this government is building on each and every one of them. The first pillar is the US alliance. Our alliance with the United States might have been signed by a Liberal Prime Minister, but it was built by a Labor one. Prime Minister John Curtin forged it in the darkest days of World War II. This relationship not only turned the tide of war in the Pacific but has underpinned Australia's security ever since. It was built by the Labor Party, and it is this government that is building on that with the announcement that we made with the President of the United States here only a week ago.

The second pillar that modern Australia is built on is our open and competitive economy, responsible for more than 20 years of uninterrupted economic growth built by the Hawke government and the Keating government. They are the ones who floated the dollar, opened our banks to competition, cut tariffs, developed competition policy and introduced superannuation for the first time for all Australian workers. It is this government that is building on that pillar. We are doing that by rolling out the NBN, by introducing a price on carbon and by increasing the superannuation that all Australian workers will receive from nine per cent—where the Howard government chose not to implement what the Keating government had promised—to 12 per cent. This makes sure that the average Australian worker out there—someone who is 30 now and on 50 grand a year—will have an extra $108,000 in their pocket when they retire.

The third pillar on which Australia is built is fair industrial relations. This is the party that helped to establish workers compensation, the old age pension and the disability pension, and we are building on that by getting rid of one of the worst pieces of legislation ever introduced into this parliament, Work Choices. The member for Mayo knows it well because he is the architect of it. He is the guy who drafted it. He is Dr Frankenstein, the man who created the monster that killed his own boss. We are the party that is building on that pillar, building a fairer workplace by getting rid of Work Choices and introducing the Fair Work Act.

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