Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2015-2016 and related bill before the House propose financial appropriations from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the activities of the government. It is the money that keeps the government running, and that begs the question: what is this government doing? Where is the government's agenda? In particular, where is the economic agenda of this Prime Minister?

When Malcolm Turnbull announced his challenge for the leadership of the Liberal Party and the prime ministership, his critique of the member for Warringah was that he had failed to articulate a coherent economic plan for the nation. The member for Wentworth told his colleagues and the nation:

… the Prime Minister has not been capable of providing the economic leadership our nation needs.

I had some sympathy for this argument. The Abbott government's economic agenda was a mass of contradictions, accentuated by daily displays of incompetence.

After telling voters throughout the 2013 election campaign that we faced a 'debt-and-deficit disaster' the Abbott government proceeded to double the deficit once it came to government. The former Prime Minister promised Australians at the 2013 election that there would be 'no changes to the pension' and then proceeded to increase the pension age to 70 and made a series of changes to pension indexation, the assets test and pensioner concessions. The former Prime Minister promised no cuts to health and education during the 2013 election campaign, then cut $80 billion from health and education in the 2014 budget. The former Prime Minister promised not to increase fees for university students or to change the funding structure for our universities during the 2013 election campaign, then sprung the biggest change in higher education policy in this country for 30 years on the Australian people in two lines in the 2014 budget speech—introducing full university fee deregulation without a skerrick of consultation with anyone.

For a Prime Minister who had promised, as opposition leader, to run a 'no surprises' government, I can understand the member for Wentworth's critique of his predecessor. I can understand the member for Wentworth's desire to 'restore responsible cabinet government' after the chaos of the member for Warringah's 'government by captain's call'. I can understand the member for Wentworth's argument that Australia needed 'advocacy, not slogans' in the face of the patently unsustainable three-word slogans proffered by the member for Warringah and former member for North Sydney in the place of economic leadership and advocacy.

But five months later, what has changed? What is different about Australia as a result of the ascent of the member for Wentworth to the prime ministership? How has the economic agenda of the government changed? We all know the sticker price for the member for Wentworth's ascent to the prime ministership; we know the deal he had to do with the extreme right wing of the coalition in order to be accepted into the role.

We know that he had to sell out his long-term beliefs on issues like marriage equality and climate change. So we know that as a result of that deal the $160 million plebiscite into whether we should allow same-sex marriage in Australia—Tony Abbott's marriage equality policy—remains Malcolm Turnbull's marriage equality policy. We know that in climate change Malcolm Turnbull, despite his long-held principled support for an emissions trading scheme and a price on carbon, was forced to sacrifice this and commit to continuing to implement Tony Abbott's Direct Action policy—Greg Hunt's magic-bean acquisition fund—

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