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

I rise to talk about why this motion to suspend standing and sessional orders should not be agreed to, and I remind the House what this motion is about. It is about giving priority to parliamentary time. We say something to this nation about how we use our time in this parliament. We say something about what drives us, we say something about what we stand for and we say something about what we care about in how we use the time of this parliament. In that regard, I note that the time we are taking now is time that would normally go to the debate on a matter of public importance. And I note that today's matter of public importance, from the member for Lyne, is about the natural disaster relief payments for flood damage in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland and the assistance being made available urgently by governments. I do wonder what Australians looking at this chamber would be thinking about when they see members of the opposition—but not the Leader of the Opposition, because there are some things that are even too grubby for him—coming to the dispatch box with a stream of abuse, holding up debates about important national questions like dealing with flood damage in our nation.

More broadly, it is of no surprise to me that this is the opposition's topic today. They walked into question time today knowing that because of unwise statements by their economic spokespeople their economic strategy, which was always a shambles, has now been revealed as a shambles to the Australian people. They were determined to do anything today to distract from the real debate before our nation—the debate about the economy, about jobs, about running the economy in the interests of working people and getting them a fair share, about making sure that our nation is ready for the future. They knew that if the parliament focused on that today it would devastate them. We came into this parliament today and saw from the opposition inconsistencies everywhere about things that truly matter to our nation's future. The first inconsistency the nation should be focusing on today that matters to the nature's future is the incredible inconsistency across the opposition frontbench over the slashing of benefits to working families and over how many billions of dollars they intend to slash them by.

We have seen the spectacle of the shadow minister for finance on more than one occasion verifying upfront that, yes, they are going to cut $70 billion out of the budget—$70 billion that could only come out of the services that families need. Then we were treated to the spectacle of the shadow Treasurer, who originally adopted that figure and was then on the run from it, denying he had even said it whenever he was asked. Finally, today the shadow Treasurer actually managed to burble out that, yes, he had said that figure but it was a mistake.

I would say to the opposition frontbench that in its plans to cut $70 billion out of services for working families—whether they are plans to slash Medicare, cut the pension or slash family payments—it needs to answer these questions. But they did not want the spotlight on that today. They did not want the spotlight on their inconsistencies about how much of an attack they plan to make on working families if they are ever elected. And then, of course, they walked into this parliament today with a huge inconsistency.

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