Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker! And then we had the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Tanya Plibersek, very proudly being the second speaker, strutting her stuff because she knows the Leader of the Opposition is under intense pressure for his leadership. Yes, Kevin Rudd, the man that he politically assassinated, made it so much harder to get rid of Labor leaders, but it will not be hard enough. That is my prediction. Yes, it now requires 60 per cent of the caucus rather than 50 per cent of the caucus to get rid of their leader; but, believe you me, if they can get rid of a first-term prime minister and they can get rid of a second-term prime minister, they can easily get rid of an opposition leader even if it requires 60 per cent of the caucus.

My colleague the other parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister very neatly outlined exactly what we have achieved just in two weeks alone—incredible accomplishments. But the nature of this MPI is that it calls for us to describe the promises that we have delivered to the Australian people. I would like to take us back to what we committed to the Australian people before the last election. There were five key commitments that we said until we were blue in the face, and in some respects people were sick to death of us saying these five commitments. I am sure the members of the gallery will recognise them.

First of all, we said that we would build a stronger economy so that everyone could get ahead. We now have some of the fastest growth in the OECD. We have jobs growth which is four times higher. We have retail sales up. We have almost record levels of residential housing approval. We have confidence up. We have consumer and corporate confidence up.

The second thing we said we would do—everyone remembers this one—is scrap the carbon tax so that everybody would be $550 better off, and indeed we have done exactly that.

We then said that we would get the budget back under control by ending Labor's waste, and indeed that is also exactly what we are doing. Eighteen months down the track, we have halved the debt trajectory given to us by the Labor Party. We have scrapped Labor's waste—no more $900 cheques to dead people from the Australian government, and there never will be $900 cheques to dead people from the Australian government again. We have put ourselves back onto a path to surplus, reducing the deficit by half a per cent of GDP each and every year.

Number 4 was our commitment to stopping the boats, and indeed we have stopped them. One of the absolute great moral tragedies of the former government was to unravel the system that was working that the Howard government painfully put in place to stop the people smugglers' trade, and they unravelled it. Over 1,100 people died as a consequence, and they should never forget that. The Australian people will never forget that. And yet today they will still not commit to our policies which have stopped the boats again. They will not be fit to govern until they do commit to turning back the boats as we have done.

Finally, we said we would build the roads of the 21st century, and indeed we are absolutely doing that. We have a very proud record halfway through this term. I am very proud to be a part of this government.

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