Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Today we are debating a very serious matter of public importance: the government's repeated failure to deliver on its election promises, including its failure to deliver honest and accountable government. We have had, day after day, week after week, month after month, broken promise after broken promise. The government that said before the election that there would be no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no cuts to the ABC or SBS and no threat to pensions has threatened every one of those things. The government that said that they would be a government of adults, that they would be accountable and that they would be transparent have been running interference for weeks now for the Assistant Minister for Health and the stench around her chief of staff and his dealings.

Before the election the Prime Minister said they would be a government of no surprises and no excuses. Since then he has said, 'There has been no broken promise and there will be no broken promises under this government.' If only that were true. Let me start with the assistant health minister. The coalition promised before the election in their real solutions booklet—do you remember that one?—to 'restore accountability and improve transparency measures'. What we have seen this week in parliament, what we saw the previous week in parliament and what we have seen right through Senate estimates is obfuscation and unwillingness to answer questions. From the Prime Minister today, question after question was left unanswered.

Not just that—the government has refused to release incoming government briefs and information on border protection and has refused to comply with Senate orders or even, in most cases, to return journalists' calls. The Prime Minister said in October last year that what he wants is a government that is transparent and open, yet the Assistant Minister for Health's chief of staff was a junk food lobbyist and was employed by a company that got a $16 million grant from this government, and the Prime Minister is refusing to answer any questions about the relationship of that lobbyist, his role in securing a grant and whether he personally or his company benefited from that grant.

Today we heard the news of job losses at Qantas. All of us on both sides have a great deal of deep concern for those workers who are going home today to talk to their families about their future. My father worked for Qantas for 21 years and I know how we felt about the security of his job. He would come home every week in the days of the cash pay packet and hand over the envelope with cash in it to mum. That was everything for us: that was the roof over our heads, food on the table, me being able to go on a school excursion and mum being able to buy me school shoes. That pay packet paid for all of that. Our whole family knew how important it was. That is one of my earliest memories. Because the people at Qantas do not know who will lose their jobs there are thousands of Qantas employees going home today who can no longer give their family that security, who can no longer be confident of their economic future.

Let us compare this government's rhetoric before the election campaign with their practice since the election. Before the election they said they would create one million jobs. What has actually happened since their election? One job has been lost every three minutes. Every time a minister on the other side fails to answer a question in this place one job is lost. For every answer not given, for every obfuscation, there is one job lost. Up to today there have been 63,000 jobs lost and, with Qantas's announcement today, another 5,000 jobs will be lost. Contrast that with when we were in government. There were one million jobs created while we had the worst economic circumstances in three-quarters of a century—the global financial crisis. What do we have from the Prime Minister? We have: 'I know nothing. I can do nothing.' The lack of—

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