Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am telling you she reminds me of it every year. So I would suggest to the member for Indi, if, heaven forbid, they do bring in a change to the parental scheme, that they have more than a nine-month lead-in, which is a good suggestion. I was not sure of her vote at the 2010 election after we changed that. But, obviously, we should not be handing out money to federal politicians, which is effectively what the baby bonus used to do. Federal politicians should not be receiving money from cleaners, road workers and the like. That is inappropriate. We have seen the contribution from the member for Indi somehow trying to defend the opposition leader's $3.2 billion scheme that she thinks is going to be funded like the magic pudding. But we all know about the opposition's tax on 3,000 companies, the 1.7 per cent tax or levy, or whatever you want to call it, will be passed straight on to the poorer people of Australia, the people that go to Woolies, Coles and the like. They will pay for that. We are trying to give tax breaks to companies and what does the opposition leader want to do? He wants to tax them more.

We heard the contribution about a price on carbon. They really need to wake up and realise that the world has changed. Sure, Kyoto to Copenhagen might not necessarily have been humanity's greatest hour but we are changing and from Durban and beyond humans are stepping up and realising that the world is a place that we need to look after.

Then we have heard their contributions on the NBN, which, as every economist will tell you, is our greatest hope for increasing productivity in this country. It is not just 'work harder and cut penalty rates'—that is the simplistic approach of those opposite. We know about increasing productivity. Productivity was at zero when the Rudd government took office. As every economist knows, that means there is something going wrong with the car's engine but they just said, 'Crank up the music and ignore it' when the reality is we have to do more—and the NBN is part of the way that we are going to address that problem.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is something historic that is wanted by so many people in my electorate and throughout Australia. But those opposite want to take an axe to that. Then we have the most simplistic of ideas, the mining tax. Our minerals—not Clive's, not Gina's—are being dug out of the ground and once they are sold they are gone forever unless we distribute the profits that come from all that. That is the reality.

I come to the Leader of the Opposition's $70 billion black hole. We have already heard a lot about that in question time today, about the reality that there are some serious problems going on on the other side of the House. I was interested to read an article by the former Treasurer, Peter Costello, in the Age. It was a strange contribution. Talk about people challenging. This is from the eternal bridesmaid. I have seen digital clocks with more ticker than Peter Costello—fair dinkum! But he did make a contribution where he was talking about what Australia needs to do. To his credit, Peter Costello—although there were rivers of gold flowing into the government coffers—did balance the books. I am not sure that he was the most energetic Treasurer in the world and I note that Paul Keating, who was once called the world's greatest Treasurer, said that he was the laziest Treasurer ever. Unfortunately, the Leader of the Opposition has broken that tradition, that Liberal commitment to actually being prepared to balance the books. That $70 billion black hole is incredible. We hear reported today that his colleagues are telling him he must drop this ridiculous commitment, this paid parental leave scheme. The sort of money that he would be committing would go a long way in Queensland—and I see the member for Capricornia here and the member for Blair and the member for Petrie, who are all Queenslanders who supported doing something sensible. I see the member for Herbert. The member for Herbert unfortunately did not vote the right way when he came to the flood levy. He was one of the 21 Queenslanders who voted against it. Bob Katter, who is not a member of the government, voted, like a true Queenslander, to pour some money into reconstruction.

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