Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, I can congratulate you on your election yesterday to the office of Deputy Speaker; I am sure you will be very good—and given that I seconded the motion, I am very confident about that.

I am going to reverse today's MPI, Mr Speaker, to make it much more relevant and much more real. I am going to change the MPI and talk about the Prime Minister's excellent leadership, the excellent leadership that he has now shown for close to a year. And I will go through some examples.

Let us start with a topic that is always very important to us in this federal parliament, and that is economics and our country's economy. The member for Hume very recently mentioned a lot of figures and a lot of facts about leadership and economic management, under both the previous Labor administration and this current administration, in both the last parliament and in this one. We are very, very clear on this side of the parliament that the way we manage this nation's economy, and how we leave the economy and where we leave it with things like deficits and net debt levels, is very important, not necessarily to us but—as we keep saying—to our children and grandchildren. We often hear from the other side the word 'sustainability'. The word sustainability comes out of their mouths a lot when they are talking about things like the environment, which is important, and about other things. Very rarely do you hear the word sustainability come out when they are talking about debt levels and the economics of this country, and that is a very important subject.

Another example is jobs: we talked a lot about jobs in the election, and it is a very important thing as well. We have good jobs growth in this country. We also announced at the election, through the Prime Minister, the jobs and investment package, which is about encouraging companies to move, especially to rural and regional areas, and also to this country. And that was a very popular and well thought-out package, and great leadership from the Prime Minister.

I think we need to look also at the character of people. The Prime Minister has said many times that we as a country, and many businesses, are facing great disruption. You do not have to go too far in any of your local electorates to run into businesspeople who are running into great disruption about how their businesses or how their industries are getting set. Now, who would I put my faith in—and indeed, who would I put my money on—to manage that? Would I put my money on an individual like our Prime Minister, who has started up his own companies and who was a successful businessman? Would I put my money or my faith in someone who has that track record, in someone who has the track record of a smart businessman and someone who has been able to manage companies from small companies to big companies? But would I have my faith in that person—a person who understands that—or would I have my faith in a person who is a union hack? I think it is a very easy decision to make. On unions, the Prime Minister again has shown great leadership with the ABCC Act, and with looking to stamp out union corruption—something that the other side do not seem to have a lot of interest in.

There are other things the Prime Minister has done: we have one of the biggest infrastructure spends that is happening in this country, with things like the Pacific Highway in my electorate, which are very important. He has shown great leadership in that. The defence white paper which we announced late last year; again, the Prime Minister led, and led very well. I cannot believe that the Labor Party talk about the NBN. The NBN designed by Senator Conroy was a debacle. Our current Prime Minister, when he was the Minister for Communications, cleaned up the NBN—and we now have more sign-ups to NBN in a month than they did in six years. I am always amazed that they bring that subject up.

But let's look at the alternative. The Leader of the Opposition talks about fear campaigns. Every member of the other side of this House should hang their head in shame because in election campaigns we should debate real things. Things like negative gearing? Yes, we should have debated that. Things like the company tax cut that we were proposing should be debated. The fact that you brought up the mediscare campaign and wanted to have a debate about a policy that did not even exist means that you should hang your heads in shame. This was a new low, a new low in Australian politics and a new low in federal campaigning that you ran on a policy that did not even exist. You should all hang your heads in shame on that.

As the Prime Minister has said—and this morning we laid on the table many things as well—this is going to be a term of delivery. We look forward to delivering a more stable economy, to more job growth and to a growing economy for the Australian public.

See this speech in context