Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

They used to say the Leader of the Opposition was all tip and no iceberg. Now I say he's all tip and no isotope. There are no details on any of his plans, there are no clear costings on anything he puts forward in this place or out in the public, and he can't tell the Australian people when his nuclear reactors will arrive.

I can tell the Australian people when they got their tax cut. It was on 1 July. The Leader of the Opposition can't tell us, for supermarket workers, when he will nationalise their workplaces or how much they will be paid under his nationalised supermarkets. I can tell those workers when they got an increase in the award wage. That happened on 1 July. The Leader of the Opposition can't tell Australians how much power bills will go up under his costly reactor plan. I can tell Australians that they will get power bill relief starting from 1 July. The Leader of the Opposition also can't tell Australians how many jobs there will be in his reactors. I can tell every working Australian that they got more paid parental leave, starting on 1 July, with an additional two weeks.

What we've seen from those opposite is that they've gone from free marketeers to angry Marxists. They say that they believe in the free market, except when it comes to supermarkets. They want the free market except when it comes to nuclear. It's something that they said stacks up and will be cost-effective—so cost-effective that they want the Australian people to write a big blank cheque for their nuclear reactor obsession.

I saw a lecture by the Leader of the Opposition saying, if he was Prime Minister, he would spend prudently. Well, wouldn't it have been nice if he started spending prudently when he was sitting around the cabinet table for nine years, as they racked up billions of dollars after billions of dollars, leaving Australians with a trillion dollars of debt. If that's what the Leader of the Opposition says is 'spending prudently', then Australians should be very, very worried.

When it comes to the lectures, and we just received from the Leader of the Opposition on bipartisanship, the Australian people see what the Leader of the Opposition does in this place every day and every week, and he does not act in a bipartisan manner. So often they invoke Robert Menzies. Well, I'd encourage the Leader of the Opposition to go back and think: 'Would Robert Menzies have stood by silently, encouraging secret ministries? Would Robert Menzies have stood by and said, "Yes, a trillion dollars of debt is the right way to go"? Would Robert Menzies have said we need to nationalise our supermarkets and nationalise our electricity grid?' It's an incredible place for the opposition to find themselves at the end of this winter sitting.

But let us have a look through the experience that the Leader of the Opposition has had over the course of these six months as we get here to the middle of the year. What is really clear is that he is not a serious parliamentarian, nor is he a serious person putting himself forward to be Prime Minister. We saw, on 7 January this year, further revelations about his work to undermine, in cabinet, the fair share of the GST for Western Australia. We saw, on 11 January this year, the Leader of the Opposition coming out of the block strong, calling for a boycott of Woolworths, wanting 200,000 people to lose their jobs. We had the Leader of the Opposition give his strong backing to his deputy when his deputy said that they would oppose the tax changes before they'd even seen them. He was so strong in backing his deputy that he then came into this place and voted for those tax changes! That was January.

Then we get to February, and an impressive thing happened. We saw a number of members of the coalition share their own thoughts about one another in a small ABC program called Nemesis. We saw Malcolm Turnbull—and people in this room served in his cabinet. To quote the Sydney Morning Herald, 'Malcolm Turnbull described Peter Dutton as a thug.' This was the former leader of the Liberal and National parties, the former Prime Minister they chose. He also warned as to why he spent so much of his energy as Prime Minister trying to stop the Leader of the Opposition ever becoming Prime Minister. Malcolm Turnbull said:

I thought Dutton would run off to the right, and I thought he would do a lot of damage as prime minister of Australia in a short period.

And the damage that the Leader of the Opposition seeks to do from opposition is a good indication of that. We saw, on 7 February, as Nemesis rolled out, the Leader of the Opposition being interviewed on the ABC 7.30 program to tidy a few things up. He assured us there would be a new tax policy before the next election, but he refused to provide any details. I'll come back to that.

We then get into April. The Leader of the Opposition stays in his fact based comfort zone where he says that Australia is the only G20 country without nuclear power. When he says 'G20', I don't know what he's referring to. There are, in fact, five countries—Australia is one of them—that do not have nuclear energy. Australia doesn't. Germany doesn't. Italy doesn't. Indonesia doesn't. And Saudi Arabia doesn't. They are all members of the G20.

Sticking into his fact based principles, the Leader of the Opposition showed what great credentials he has. On 11 April, he said we're getting the 'closing down of Australian manufacturing'. Again, he misses the fact. There are 80,000 new manufacturing jobs under this government. We also saw some incredible comments from the Leader of the Opposition when he made some terrible comparisons to the Port Arthur massacre. Even members of his own side were questioning whether that was a wise judgement. That was, again, a very interesting decision from the Leader of the Opposition.

In April, he thought he would make one more decision. His staff members claimed some $6,000 of allowances so that the Leader of the Opposition could attend a private birthday party. The only good thing about that was that it was a visit of the Leader of the Opposition to Perth; the bad bit was that he only spent 45 minutes there. In April we saw the Leader of the Opposition again choose to back Elon Musk over the Australian government—a very interesting choice. On 16 May we got the Leader of the Opposition's budget reply, without a single costing for any of his budget initiatives. On 8 June the Leader of the Opposition said we should pull Australia out of the Paris climate agreements, and on 16 June we learned that those opposite would indeed slug Australian taxpayers with the bill for their entire nuclear plan. Finally, we see the truth.

Now, we know they're all over the place when it comes to the economy. While the Leader of the Opposition came out and said they were going to slug Australian taxpayers for their nuclear plan, just one month earlier—with not even a full month in between—we had the shadow Treasurer ruling out subsidies for nuclear power. With the carefully coordinated policy development happening in the coalition, we then saw the shadow Treasurer make a 'shambolic' post-budget appearance talking about his views on the migration numbers.

All the way back in February, the Leader of the Opposition promised us that we'd have a tax plan, but last week, when he was speaking to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, he said that it would be too costly to propose tax cuts now, and he went on to argue that he would need the help of Treasury to formulate his own tax policies. Obviously, they've got the A-team over there, as the Treasurer has pointed out a number of times, but the biggest endorsement the shadow Treasurer gets from the Leader of the Opposition is that he's 'not incompetent'—such warm and kind endorsements of the senior members of his team!

We do have a good idea of what those opposite are proposing to the Australian people. They have a tax policy to roll back tax cuts. They have an IR policy that's about lowering wages. They have a fiscal strategy that will rack up debt for their nuclear reactors. They have a housing policy that will wreck the superannuation of millions of Australians. They have a health policy that will destroy Medicare. And they have a nuclear reactor policy of which the only practical outcome will be that it jacks up power prices.

I'm really proud of what we've done in this government. We're not waiting until 2050. We've already ensured a 25 per cent increase in renewables in the grid, with 330,000 new rooftop solar installations last year. We've green-lit 50 renewable projects since the last election, and our tax cuts, which came into effect on 1 July, mean that 13.6 million Australians are getting a tax cut. That's 2.9 million more Australians than would have got a tax cut under the old plan that the Leader of the Opposition endorsed when he sat around the cabinet table. Further, 5.8 million women—90 per cent of women taxpayers—will now receive a bigger tax cut than they would have got under the Leader of the Opposition's plan. Even in the electorate of Dickson, 79,000 Australians will get a tax cut, with an average of $1,604 for those— (Time expired)

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