Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am really happy to follow my friend, the member for Wannon. I know he is a fun guy, but he is a Victorian fun guy in denial. He was around. He actually witnessed the last election and he is trying to come into this place and say, 'We're standing on our achievements.' I am sure he did not say that too loudly in the Victorian election. When we come into this place, we are often spoken to about truth in politics. If you look at what has been achieved by that mob opposite in the last year, what they have been able to achieve has gone against everything they promised to be able to do for the Australian community.

People in the gallery will probably remember this. On the night before the election, the Prime Minister stared down the barrel of a TV camera, no doubt with his blue tie on, and said, 'I promise not to cut health. I promise not to cut education. There will be no change to the GST. There will be no change to pensions. And there will be no cuts to the ABC or SBS.' Over the last 12 months, they have delivered change in each of those areas. They have tried to repudiate everything they promised.

If you want to make a promise—this is a lesson to those opposite—and you do not want to keep it, do not do it on national TV, because four million people see it. It was on the ABC. Sometimes these things do unravel on them. Just think about it. Tony was doing all that stuff that night. What if he stood up and said, 'I will introduce an unfair GP tax. I will make you pay $100,000 for a university degree. I will slug motorists with a petrol tax. I will slash family payments. And I will cut $80 billion from schools and hospitals'? I wonder what the reaction would have been the next day for that election. That is precisely what they have done. They have delivered on that. They have brought a budget down to do that. There is only one thing stopping that from being achieved: us and the crossbenchers, whom they cannot convince to follow their unfair budget measures.

There are some achievements that we do need to refer to. This budget has produced change in our economy. Unlike what has been said by those opposite, I do not think these changes are something that you would want to go around crowing about. The unemployment rate has risen from 5.9 to 6.2 per cent since the budget. We have 42,000 more people unemployed. Jobs growth has slowed to around one-third of what it was at the beginning of the year. There has been no creation of full-time jobs. Tragically, youth unemployment has now reached a 13-year high. And what did we hear this week? There has been a lot of crowing over there about the free trade agreement. By the way, we actually support the free trade agreement on this side. But what did we hear earlier this year when the Treasurer goaded Holden to either put up or pack up and leave the shores of Australia? What did we hear last week? He had to make hard decisions to achieve a free trade agreement with Korea. He certainly was not honest with the Australian people about that. He was not honest with the people of Holden, whether they work in South Australia or in the component industry, which proliferates many of our electorates. Thousands of people are losing their jobs because he made a decision on the basis that he never communicated to this parliament and never communicated to the Australian people. That is what they believe they have been able to achieve.

I do not think that Australia can afford that as an achievement. If that is going to be their record, that leaves us in a parlous position for the future—a level of insecurity regarding jobs growth and even investment. We saw the figures only this week of what the investment agencies were saying. We have sluggish growth at the moment, despite the shine that the Treasurer was trying to put on this. The fact is that we have sluggish growth. We need to have some real change in our approach. We need to defend institutions that we hold dear. For instance, only one side of this parliament is standing up for Medicare. Only one side of this parliament is standing up for families earning less than $100,000 a year. Only one side of this parliament is standing up against $100,000 degrees. These are things that we believe are necessary. We believe that, unless we— (Time expired)

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