Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker has received a letter from the Leader of the Opposition proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Government’s failure to provide leadership on the great challenges facing our nation.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The great challenges that Australia faces are being avoided and abandoned by this hollow and empty government, this incompetent government. Only today we have seen the Prime Minister claiming that a sign of his government being tough on the great challenge of terrorism—and you would think all sides of this House would be united in the common cause of taking on terrorism—is the Attorney-General giving a press conference and commenting on a trial the day before the jury has concluded its deliberations and in so doing provoking the defence counsel to apply for the jury to be discharged, resulting in getting a caning from the trial judge and completely needlessly providing grounds of appeal to the convicted persons. This sort of incompetence is cited by the Prime Minister as an example of being tough on terrorism.

Is it tough on terrorism to give appeal points to people convicted of terrorism? I do not think so. A government committed to taking on that challenge ensures that the security services and the police apprehend persons suspected of terrorism, bring them to trial and see them convicted and dealt with in accordance with the sentences handed out. What it does not do is provide appeal points for the accused persons having been convicted. Needlessly done so, out of pure incompetence, the Attorney-General put a headline ahead of taking on the challenge of terrorism and he has been defended today by the Prime Minister, who claims his government is tough on terrorism.

They are not competent enough to be tough on anything. They are not consistent enough to provide leadership on the economy. The Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance and Deregulation wander around the countryside spouting one incoherent and inconsistent line on the economy after another. Only today we had another great example of this from none other than the finance minister. I had said that the present global financial crisis was the most severe that most of us had seen in our lifetime. He denounced that; the finance minister said that that was wrong and it was exaggerated. He said I was taking things out of context and being reckless. Well, let us see where that observation came from. The International Monetary Fund in April this year in its World Economic Outlook wrote:

The financial market crisis that erupted in August 2007 has developed into the largest financial shock since the Great Depression.

The finance minister does look a bit careworn, but I think he was born after the Great Depression. Certainly, I think the IMF’s comments support what I have said, but perhaps the finance minister does not agree with the IMF. What a pity that he has not been speaking to the Prime Minister. What a pity he does not pay enough attention to the speeches of the Prime Minister. On 24 May this year the Prime Minister in a speech entitled ‘Building a modern Australia for the 21st century’ said:

The global economy is going through what the International Monetary Fund has described as the greatest financial shock since the Great Depression.

He has repeated that quote again and again. He did it again in June in Queensland.

What sort of government is this? What kind of economic leadership can this government provide if on the one hand we have the Prime Minister reflecting the views of the International Monetary Fund on the gravity of the global economic crisis—this crisis in credit and financial markets which we are witnessing and which has been worsening—but they are then promptly abandoned by the Minister for Finance? What is the government’s position? What is the scale of the challenge? Is it or is it not a serious issue? Is the IMF right or wrong? Is the Prime Minister right or wrong? How would we know? We get one incoherent, inconsistent line after another.

Of course, we have seen a transformation in the Prime Minister’s language about inflation, and indeed in the Treasurer’s. It is like Jekyll and Hyde, but I am not sure who is Jekyll and who is Hyde. However, there has been a complete transition. At the beginning of the year inflation in Australia was considerably lower than it is today. According to the Treasurer and the Prime Minister it was out of control—the genie was out of the bottle. The Treasurer, alone among the treasurers of the world, unlike any other person in his role in any other country in the world, chose to egg on his central bank to put up interest rates. He chose to talk down the economy and talk up inflation. He stood there the day before the Reserve Bank board met and said that inflation was out of control. He sent a message to the top of Martin Place: ‘Put up those rates.’ And interest rates did go up.

I was criticised then for saying that the Reserve Bank should stay its hand. I feared that the global crisis would worsen and that money, which was already getting scarcer and dearer, would become even scarcer and dearer in the months ahead. And it has. That was the Treasurer’s line and he was consistently echoed by the Prime Minister for the first seven months or so of this year. Now we have the new, mild Prime Minister. He is no longer talking about inflation monsters wreaking havoc across the nation. He says that Australia should be proud that our inflation is lower than that of the United States. Really? It is a lot higher than it was in January, and it was lower than the rate in the United States in January, too.

He says that we have to keep the economy in context. Where was the context in January? Where was context when they were running down the achievements of the Howard government while pursuing a cheap, shallow and hollow political agenda designed to score a few incredible political points? They were incredible because there is no-one in Australia—Labor or Liberal—who would not rather be living in John Howard’s economy than in Kevin Rudd’s. To that end, they talked up inflation and talked down the economy. But now they pretend that none of that happened. They want to put everything in context and speak reasonably.

I was taking some notes while the Prime Minister was speaking during question time today and I thought he was actually reading from the book written by the former Treasurer, the member for Higgins. He was boasting about the size of our surplus and going on about the surpluses that Australia had accumulated over many years; many years of good economic management had given Australia a source of stability and financial strength. So they have. But that stability was established by the coalition’s economic management. That economic management was opposed at every turn by the Labor Party when it was in opposition. That is the economic management that was run down day after day after day for the first part of this year.

They now see the consequences of their actions and what they have wrought. We have a strong economy, we have a national government with no net debt and we have a better regulated banking system than any other comparable developed country. The coalition has put in place over many years measures that make our economy relatively stronger than others. It is not immune, but no economy is. However, our economy is relatively stronger and relatively more resilient. That was not shouted from the rooftops earlier this year. For most of this year we have had our economy run down.

Is it any surprise that we have paid a price? Consumer and business confidence around the world has declined. How could it not? But it has declined more in Australia than it has in most comparable countries. How can it be that consumer and business confidence has fallen more in Australia than it has in countries that are now in the depths of recession? How can that be? What is the differential? It is the government: if you change the government, you change the country. Australia has elected a government that does not have faith in the people of Australia; it has elected a government that instead of projecting confidence and leadership chooses to run down its own economy, talk up inflation and egg the central bank to put up interest rates. That is what happened in November last year and we are now living with the consequences.

Our strong nation has lower levels of confidence than nations with economies far weaker than our own. As a result, we pay a price. When you lose confidence, you lose credit. When businesses lack confidence, they do not borrow, lenders do not lend and people are reluctant to hire and to invest. We are paying a heavy price today because of the government’s shallow political agenda for the first part of this year. This government had no economic strategy, simply a political one.

In every respect of its policy this government has demonstrated an inability to come to terms with the real issues. Only yesterday, greeted with a new Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister, on the day after the fourth-largest investment bank in the world goes into bankruptcy, after a massive fall on Wall Street and after greater concerns than ever arising about global financial markets—we have just seen AIG being bailed out by the US government; these are events of enormous consequence—after all of that turmoil, seeks to work with me and collaborate with me on what issue? The economy? The Murray-Darling Basin? The environment? No. The republic. Really! There is no focus on the issues of today, no priorities and no commitment to the real issues of our time.

We have seen again today the contempt that this government has for pensioners. This is a government that sends its ministers out to say that they could not live on the age pension. And they could not live on it. That is how bad they see the situation. We say: ‘Right. We know you’ve got your big review. That’s fine. But let’s do something now. There has been a massive rise in prices over the last 12 months since the last coalition budget—a very substantial increase in prices across the board. Let’s act now. Let’s give $30 a week to single age pensioners. Let’s do that. We can do it right now. It doesn’t prejudice a review. It doesn’t prejudice doing other things. Let’s take some action right here, right now.’ But what do we have? Just pathetic debating points from the Prime Minister.

When we were in government, we acted to protect pensioners. We changed the indexation of the pension to the higher of either the CPI or 25 per cent of male total average weekly earnings. If we had not changed that indexation from the previous Labor system, single pensioners today would be $72.80 a fortnight worse off and couples would be $122.60 a fortnight worse off than they are today. So we took action in government to support pensioners. But do you know something, Madam Deputy Speaker? The Prime Minister should get out more, because there have been big changes. We have seen prices going through the roof. He should spend less time wandering the corridors of New York and more time wandering the aisles of shopping centres and supermarkets because he would see there what has happened to prices. He has seen what has happened to living standards. He has a report that tells him what has happened there, and he has the opportunity to act now, but he chooses to do nothing. Chauncey Gardner yet again. He likes to watch, but the watching has to stop. Watching is not helping the pensioners. It is not protecting the Australian economy. It is abandoning our nation to the lack of leadership from the hollow men that are this government.

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to say that the parliament and the public will be very disappointed with the first major speech from the new Leader of the Opposition in a debate with a title that promised so much more. It was a title that said that this matter of public importance was going to be about the government’s failure to provide leadership and deal with the great challenges of our nation. The new Leader of the Opposition, who wants to govern this country and who can speak in this debate for 15 minutes, did not mention infrastructure, health, education, broadband or climate change. How many issues are there that this new leader is going to address?

I do not deny that it is important to talk about the economy. With the background of the Leader of the Opposition, that is an important thing for us to engage on. That is why the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the Minister for Finance and others have been out there discussing the importance of our having a strong economy and of making sure that we are protected as much as possible from the international uncertainty. But what the Leader of the Opposition did not get to at all was why people want to worry about the economy. You know why people want to worry about the economy? They want it to be strong enough to keep people in jobs, to make sure that they can live productive lives and have enough money to be able to fund their healthcare needs, their education needs and their other needs. What we have seen, unfortunately, from the Leader of the Opposition is this determination to focus on such a narrow range of issues. In his first major speech as the Leader of the Opposition in this parliament, he chose not to deal with any issues, bar one, that actually have an immediate impact on the community. I think it was a strange choice.

The Leader of the Opposition wants to continue with the issue of pensioners, following the toing and froing that occurred under the previous Leader of the Opposition—and that is fair enough. But I think there will be a lot of people in the community who will say, ‘If a new Leader of the Opposition has 15 minutes to talk about a topic of his choice, which is the great challenges facing our nation, and does not mention what we might need to do in education, health, infrastructure and even climate change—a topic for which we know the Leader of the Opposition has some fondness, given his previous job—

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When you trash the economy there is nothing that can be done.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Deputy Leader of the Opposition is warned!

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am interested in the interjections from the increasingly shrill deputy leader, who is no doubt trying to make sure that she is going to hold onto her position on the front bench. No doubt all that positioning is going on. That is fine. Good luck to all of you. But it is particularly interesting that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition raises this issue, because one of the passing comments that the new Leader of the Opposition made was, ‘Can you believe the outrage of the Prime Minister wanting to engage the new Leader of the Opposition in a debate about the republic?’ That is just one of many things. We know from the Leader—

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is the only thing he mentioned.

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is one of the many things that the Leader of the Opposition mentioned, and I do not think it is going to be—

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Turnbull interjecting

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I listened to you in silence, which was no doubt appropriate, and I am sure that you will be able to do that while I am speaking. We know that the Leader of the Opposition has a commitment to the republic. That is good, and there has been good cross-party work on it. But now that he is the Leader of the Opposition, he and even the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, whom we know has a committed public interest in this issue, want to walk away from that. So the reason I raise this is that I am now confused about what it is that you stand for. What is it that the new Leader of the Opposition stands for?

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop interjecting

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Mackellar is also warned!

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We can talk about this all-purpose motion. It was obviously put in at the start of the day, presumably when the tactics committee had not met or had not been able to give you any advice. The new Leader of the Opposition began this all-purpose motion, which is meant to be about the challenges facing our nation, by talking about being a senior counsel, showing off his legal skills and thinking that it will make the public want to vote for him. Then he spent some time talking about a very important issue, the economy, and some time on pensioners. But in 15 minutes—

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Turnbull interjecting

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

All of the issues are important. What is staggering, and what the Leader of the Opposition will have to answer is: why is it, when we talk about the great challenges facing our nation, that we get an erudite lecture about the economy but nothing about what he wants to do as the leader to fix our health system, to fix our education system, to build broadband infrastructure or anything else like that? There is no point in the Leader of the Opposition coming in here and giving us a lecture on the economy when he is directing his senators to blow an enormous hole in every single measure that has been put forward in the Senate—particularly in health. If the Liberal Party is going to continue to oppose over $6 billion worth of expenditure in the Senate, you cannot expect people to take you seriously when you give us a lecture about inflation.

Let us talk through some of the things in the health area in particular. Obviously none of them are significant enough for the Leader of the Opposition to deign to talk about. He is not interested in the way that we might rebuild our hospitals. He is not interested in dental care. He says he is interested in pensioners, but he does not care that he has instructed his senators to vote against $290 million for dental care, predominantly for pensioners. I do think it is fair enough for us to ask why, when you want to debate the great challenges facing the nation, we have absolute silence on health. Why have we had nine major interviews in the last 24 hours that have not mentioned health at all? We had a 15-minute speech from the Leader of the Opposition which did not mention health, education or climate change at all.

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Johnson interjecting

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can say it a lot more times, because it is pretty staggering that you can actually have a new leader rushed into this position, clearly not having given thought outside his comfort zone—

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Johnson interjecting

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is fine to have a particular comfort zone, but people are now looking to the new Leader of the Opposition to offer some leadership. That will mean that he will have to have some vision on whether he is prepared to back some serious reform in health and some serious reform in education. It is going to be a serious challenge as to whether he will do that. I want to go through some of the things that, in nine months, we have already done in health—none of them with the support of the opposition—

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Johnson interjecting

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Ryan is warned.

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and many initiatives that we want to keep, but, at this stage, we do not have any support from the opposition for them. Now that you are the new Leader of the Opposition you will have to think outside your comfort zone. You will, as the new leader, have to be able to talk to us and the community about what you are going to do in these areas.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask the minister to remember to speak through the chair, please.

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Leader of the Opposition will, of course, need to think about these issues. We are proud of the program that we have got on with. We are proud that, when you look at the great challenges facing the nation, we are moving on climate change. We are proud that we are moving on the education revolution. We are proud that we are getting computers into our schools. Your current deputy says that she has never seen a school that does not have computers, and does not think that there is any need for us to implement this program.

As the new Leader of the Opposition, he has the opportunity to reshape the opposition into a constructive opposition. I am sure that there will be things that we will fight on, but there should be many that we will actually agree on. The reason that I raised the issue of the republic is that it seems that, even with things that the Leader of the Opposition has had a longstanding commitment to—more than decades long—he is now not so sure that he believes in them. This is someone who wanted to be in the Labor Party and ended up in the Liberal Party; he was a republican and he is now not sure if he is a republican. We do not know where the Leader of the Opposition stands on any of these sorts of issues. Until he starts addressing them—until some of these interviews are about more than the Leader of the Opposition himself—then we do not know where he is going to stand.

He did not do anything on the first day of his leadership. I do not require this on the first day of assuming the leadership, but he did not direct his senators to support a dental care measure which would have supported hundreds of thousands of pensioners across the country—and he had the opportunity to do that. He did not revisit the completely ridiculous decision of the opposition to oppose our excise on alcopops. This is the measure that the previous Leader of the Opposition agreed with, then disagreed with and then thought he might agree with.

They have had so many different positions, it would not be an embarrassment in this instance for the Leader of the Opposition to change the position. They have had so many that it would not be a surprise, but it would actually mean that they were taking the matter of passing the budget seriously and making sure we have finances to invest in preventive health care and other important measures. It would mean that we had some money to properly establish the $10 billion Health and Hospitals Fund, which the Liberal Party are putting at risk by refusing to pass billions of dollars worth of measures in the Senate.

We have heard nothing from the member opposite about whether he supports us putting a billion dollars back into our public hospitals—after he was a member of the cabinet and sat around that cabinet table and let them pull a billion dollars out. We have to, step by step, rebuild these things. But if we are going to meet opposition every step along the way—even for important measures that will protect young people from binge drinking and give us finances to invest further in significant preventive healthcare measures—then we have just changed leaders but we have not got any new impact. Today’s presentation to the public—I was almost going to say ‘summing up to the judge’ because that is what the first bit of it sounded like—still gave us no information about what the Leader of the Opposition is going to pursue in these many other areas of great national challenge. We have to invite him to join us in seriously tackling some of these challenges.

Health is my portfolio area, the one I am most focused on, where significant changes are needed to the way the states and the Commonwealth operate together, where new investments are needed, and where we have to look at Medicare differently. We want him to be able to engage in the education debate. There is an opportunity for the Leader of the Opposition to say that he is prepared to leave behind the Howard legacy. The previous Leader of the Opposition was not prepared to do that. Any time there was anything that challenged the last 11 years of history—mistakes from the Howard government, things that they did not do, opportunities that were missed, lack of investment—we had Dr Nelson, the member for Bradfield, when he was at the front table as the Leader of the Opposition, defending to the death every single decision that the Howard government made. The new Leader of the Opposition has a choice. Is he going to be just another defender of the Howard legacy, or is he going to be prepared to chart a new course? I thought we might see some of that today. I have a bit of time for the Leader of the Opposition. I thought that, if he was going to talk about great challenges facing our nation, we might have got a little bit of personal insight into what motivated him and why he wanted this job.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She’s kept this to herself for a long time.

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sorry that has come as a surprise to you, but it is true and I am prepared to admit that—at a safe distance across the table. I think there is an opportunity for the Leader of the Opposition to be prepared to step outside a mould which has just been vandalism in the Senate for the last period of time. There is an opportunity to say, ‘We can do things differently.’ But he will not be able to do it if he is going to trash everything he has ever believed in before—and that includes the republic. It is but one issue amongst many, but it is a sign that he is going to be a hollow leader. It is a sign that he is not going to be prepared to stand for anything seriously, and I think that is a real problem for us and for the country.

I want to take this opportunity to ask the parliament to encourage the Leader of the Opposition to reconsider three measures: one that was rejected by the Senate yesterday, one that will be voted on by the Senate in the coming weeks and one that will be before the Senate in the next few months. These measures relate to dental care, the Medicare levy surcharge and the alcopops excise—a mixture of measures that (1) provide relief to working families’, (2) provide relief to pensioners and (3) help us battle the scourge of binge drinking in this country. I think if we are going to be serious about this, if the Leader of the Opposition wants to say that he comes from humble means and is not representing privilege, he has an opportunity to distance himself from industry. He has the opportunity to say, ‘I don’t have to take this view on alcopops just because the distillers tell us this,’ and ‘I don’t have to take this view on the Medicare levy surcharge just because the insurers tell us to do that.’ I am not sure who it is that is telling them to defend the dental program the way they are. I suspect it is just a hangover from 12 years of a determination to ignore our public dental schemes across the country. But there is an opportunity for the Leader of the Opposition to take a different view. He has not, so far, but there is time for him to do that.

Over the next couple of days, the Leader of the Opposition will have had time to settle into his position and to decide who is going to be on the front bench. I did wonder whether those who were in here listening to the new leader were all jockeying to get their new positions and get a chance. I did see that the member for Ryan was here—perhaps hoping that this was his opportunity to move onto the front bench—and that everybody is sticking close to the Leader of the Opposition, just for this period of time. Unfortunately, I have more experience in leadership challenges than I would have chosen to have had, and I can tell the Leader of the Opposition that the next couple of days before he announces his frontbench will be the only period of time that everybody in his party will be happy with what he is doing. So he should make the most of it and actually announce a few of the policies that he as the leader believes in—actually stamp his mark now while he has a chance, before he has industry telling him what he has to do and before he has some of his frontbench saying, ‘Defend the Howard legacy at all costs.’ If we are going to deal with the great challenges that face us, I hope that we will hear from the Leader of the Opposition a little bit more about health and education and a little bit less about— (Time expired)

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Labor Party came to office last year having carefully cultivated the expectation that it would be a responsible economic manager. In fact, it went so far as to undertake an expensive television advertising campaign that proclaimed that Labor was the party of economic conservatives. Even the Deputy Prime Minister—

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Roxon interjecting

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister was given the courtesy to be heard in silence, and I would expect the same courtesy to be shown.

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This expensive television advertising campaign was to proclaim that Labor was the party of economic conservatives. Even the Deputy Prime Minister—the secretary of the socialist forum, the old leftie from Victoria—actually came out and said that she was an economic conservative. She would have the Australian public believe that she rushed to university to join the Young Labor movement because it was the party of economic conservatives. What a joke! The public were then led to believe that the Rudd government would not be like the great economic vandals of the previous Labor governments under Whitlam and Keating. The public were led to believe that the Rudd government would not be like the incompetent do-nothing state Labor governments which have so undermined the strength of the states in this country.

It is safe to say that the Australian public were seriously misled. The Rudd government is in fact an old-style Labor government—anti-business, obsessed with the politics of envy, absolutely focused on spin and more concerned with ideology than the creation of opportunities and fairness for the Australian people. This is demonstrated by the actions of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, who were so intimidated by the record of the Howard government that they decided to trash that legacy as their first action after the election. That is the first thing that they did. And we had the reckless language used by the Treasurer, as the Leader of the Opposition said. The day before a meeting of the Reserve Bank, the Treasurer of this country was historically claiming that the inflation genie was out of the bottle, that inflation was out of control—and that had a profound impact on confidence in the leadership of this government.

Since the Rudd government came to power, business and consumer confidence has collapsed to lows not seen since the previous Labor government in the early 1990s. Declining confidence has been reflected in downturns in retail turnover, housing finance commitments, residential building approvals and demand for credit. There have also been large and well-publicised lay-offs from some larger companies and many others in manufacturing and financial services and from small business. Despite these signs of slowing growth, the fundamental strength of the Australian economy has continued due to the legacy of the Howard government. But this cannot be taken for granted—and it is the ongoing reckless language of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer that has the potential to cause further damage.

In recent weeks, the resilience in the labour market has looked increasingly shaky. The Reserve Bank’s most recent statement on monetary policy, released on 11 August, forecast employment growth of only 0.75 per cent over the next year—well below the long-term trend of 2.5 per cent—and the National Australia Bank expects employment growth to slow dramatically. Of most concern is that forecasts for rising unemployment are getting worse. The budget forecast 134,000 job losses in the next 12 months, yet the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations cannot or will not say that figure. She refuses to confirm her own budget papers that forecast 134,000 job losses within the next 12 months—the forecast that dare not speak its name. The Reserve Bank has since forecast an additional 100,000 job losses, and there are expectations that unemployment will rise from 3.9 per cent earlier this year to six per cent in the next two years.

Many Australians could be forgiven for believing that the Rudd government is on track to repeat the experience of the last Labor government, when unemployment reached 11 per cent and almost one million people were unemployed. So much for being heroes of the working class! Prime Minister Paul Keating presided over an economy that saw one million Australians out of work, and this government is on track to repeat that experience. The most recent Sensis consumer report revealed the increasing concerns of Australians about their financial future. In particular, the report’s author noted:

Unemployment has not been on the nation’s radar for some time, but since May, it has risen more than any issue …

This is the government’s own leading indicator of employment for September and this was released by the department of the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. It confirmedemployment prospects are worsening. In fact, the indicator has now fallen for eight consecutive months. The downward trajectory of the indicator has become more pronounced in recent months. The continued low unemployment rate is a testament to the resilience of the Australian economy but also to the resilience of the Australian labour market.

Before the election, Labor vowed to back the Liberal workplace relations reforms which had helped to deliver benefits such as low inflation and the lowest unemployment rate in more than 30 years. You will recall that Labor vowed to retain right-of-entry laws, secret ballots, prohibited content—all Howard government reforms that were designed to keep in check the job-destroying unfettered power of the unions. Today at the National Press Club the minister for workplace relations outlined how she intends to bring the unions back into as many workplaces as possible, hidden inside a trojan horse of so-called ‘workplace fairness’. The minister for workplace relations should be honest and admit that her plans are actually about the reintroduction of union power through pattern bargaining, giving unions the green light to freely enter any workplace and allowing content in agreements that will bring the unions back into every aspect of the workplace whether they are invited or not. This is about putting the unions in every negotiation in every workplace whether there are union members there or not.

The minister can scaremonger about Work Choices as much as she likes, but the truth is that Work Choices will be in operation for longer under the Rudd government than under the Howard government—and doesn’t the minister for workplace relations hate it when she is reminded of that! When the minister does finally achieve her ideological goal, it will be at the expense of Australian jobs and real wages. What is at stake was made clear a few months ago by the Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens, who commented about why 1970s-style stagflation—high inflation and low growth—should not occur today in Australia. He said:

A key difference today, thus far, has been the behaviour of labour costs … If you go back to the mid-1970s, you had the government leading the charge in pushing wages up, you had a very different balance of power between the unions and business, a different quasi-judicial industrial relations system, and we had a serious wage-price problem back then. … We don’t have that at the moment, and we must make sure we don’t get it.

The government is very fond of talking about Reserve Bank warnings, but you are not going to hear them repeating this warning. The balance between employers and employees in the workplaces of Australia is what is now at stake. The importance of efficient, flexible labour markets in achieving macroeconomic goals has been made clear in a series of OECD economic surveys during the years of economic success unde the Howard government.

The coalition understood the central importance of workplace relations to the economic wellbeing of the country and the community. Real wages were increased by more than 20 per cent during the years of the Howard government. Inflation was kept between the band of two and three per cent as set by the Reserve Bank. During the years of the Hawke-Keating Labor governments, real wages fell by almost two per cent and inflation averaged more than six per cent. The very real danger, as the Rudd government winds back the gains and the benefits of the Howard years, is that we will enter into a wage inflation spiral the likes of which we have not seen since the last time Labor was in government. It is greatly concerning that the minister for worplace relations and her department have made it clear that, in the 10 months since she has been minister for workplace relations, no analysis has been undertaken on the effects of Labor’s workplace relations policy on unemployment, inflation or economic growth.

The minister is like the fabled ostrich: she is burying her head in the sand, hoping to avoid any uncomfortable truths from the world around her. The minister has been negligent in her fundamental duty to the Australian people, which is to ensure that there are as many job opportunities as possible. What we have seen with this government has been nothing about fairness— (Time expired)

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I read this matter of public importance today around lunchtime, I was a bit surprised. In every way it relates far more to the last government than it does to this one. When the election took place on 24 November last year, on this side of politics there was of course considerable elation towards the end of the night. I am sure for many of us, as we looked at forming government and the work that needed to be done, there was also a rather deep sigh and a slight depression that so much of the previous 12 years—and 16 years of unprecedented growth—had been wasted in such an appalling way due to a lack of leadership to address the challenges that faced our nation.

Remember back to that time. The world did change very quickly overnight: a sense of optimism emerged and we moved very quickly on various issues. But remember back to the preceding weeks and where we were as a nation, thanks to the lack of leadership or any vision from the previous government. Climate change still largely did not exist as far as the government was concerned. There was no action on that. The relationship between white and Indigenous Australia was in a very sad state. Australia’s government spending on public education was the second lowest among developed nations. Innovation as a share of the economy over the past 15 years had dropped and was falling below developed and emerging nations. The Reserve Bank had warned over and over again that the capacity constraints around infrastructure were causing bottlenecks. Our trade performance was abysmal. There was growing pressure on families. It was hard to see any community infrastructure—either tangible or intangible—that had been left behind. There was very little to see after 16 years of unprecedented economic growth and 12 years of the Howard government—except, of course, Work Choices. However briefly, Work Choices was there.

Perhaps there is a cultural difference between what we on this side of the House expect and what the previous government expected. There are great cultural differences in what we value. People sometimes think we are the same, but really we are not. We have quite different value systems. But I do not think it is that. I think that, over the last years of the Howard government, they just did not notice that so many circumstances had turned for the worse. They certainly did not notice—or, if they did notice, they denied—the effect of 10 back-to-back interest rate rises on working families. We certainly noticed it. We raised it and we talked about it. We certainly noticed the skill shortages that were growing over those 12 years. We noticed the 20 warnings from the Reserve Bank. We noticed them but those opposite did not. And now, they are not noticing the action that is being taken. They are just discovering that maybe they left some problems behind, but they are not noticing that anything is actually being done.

But, in fact, things are being done. Unlike the members opposite, we believe that interest rates have been a problem for quite some time. I remember the former Treasurer, the member for Higgins, saying just last year, when the coalition were in government, that inflation was exactly where they wanted it. I remember the member for Wentworth, the current Leader of the Opposition, also saying last year, after one of the later interest rate rises, that a quarter of a per cent rise would not cause much of a problem because it was very small. I also remember the denial that there was any problem at all with inflation. I remember the Treasurer, in the last year of the government, saying that inflation was a good problem to have. We on this side of the House knew it was a problem. But what did they do? They spent like drunken sailors. They did nothing about the capacity constraints. While the screws tightened on working families, they spent like drunken sailors, putting upward pressure on inflation. We noticed; they did not.

We are doing the work now—unlike the previous government. Just to put into perspective the claims from the other side, this is what we have done. We have brought immediate relief to working families through our $55 billion Working Families Support Package, which includes tax cuts for those most in need—unlike the two previous tax cuts, which were aimed at higher income earners. Those of us in this House did very well from the previous two tax cuts, but many working families will do well from the cuts we delivered in the recent budget. The budget also included an investment of $4.4 billion for a new education tax refund, which has benefited 1.3 million families, and lifted the childcare tax rebate for working families from 30 per cent to 50 per cent for out-of-pocket expenses of up to $7,500. And of course we are still working on raising the threshold for the Medicare rebate, which will also benefit working families. But those opposite, with their new-found concern for working families, are doing their best to block that.

We have also built a strong surplus to keep downward pressure on inflation. We have reined in expenditure—unlike the previous government, who spent like drunken sailors. We worked incredibly hard in those first months to rein in expenditure and build a strong surplus. We made room in the budget to support working families and we built a strong surplus. We laid down the foundations for $40 billion worth of responsible investment to build our nation’s growth for the future. It is an extraordinary contribution to the future of this nation. We have already acted on this.

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If I could actually be heard over the shouting from the other side, it would be rather pleasant. Infrastructure Australia was formally approved by the cabinet on 21 January 2008. We have set aside $20 billion for an arms-length infrastructure program—not a slush fund but a carefully planned and managed investment in the future of this country. About a month later, Sir Rod Eddington was appointed to head Infrastructure Australia. A month after that, the parliament approved the establishment of Infrastructure Australia. In May, 11 members of Infrastructure Australia were appointed. In June, Mr Michael Deegan was appointed as Infrastructure Coordinator. That is an extraordinary achievement over six months—and Infrastructure Australia called for public submissions on 31 August. So, eight or nine months after the election, we have already profoundly changed the capacity of this nation to build for the future.

Similarly, Skills Australia was an incredibly important piece of work for us. It puts skills at the forefront. We will provide $1.17 billion over four years for a skills package. The first 20,000 training places were already available in April. Again, there is still an incredible amount of work to do in both of those areas, but work has been done very early, as we promised in the election campaign. Infrastructure and skills are two areas that the Reserve Bank—and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and every credible economist—has said over and over again are bottlenecks which are putting upward pressure on inflation. Again, the last government did nothing about it. In fact, quite late in the picture, they were still denying that there even was a skills crisis.

Another area on which we are moving in relation to the skills crisis is education. This is incredibly important not only because Australia is one of the lowest spenders on education as a percentage of GDP but also because retention rates have stagnated at 75 per cent for the last 10 years. That means one in four children in this country is not graduating from high school. After an unprecedented 16-year economic boom and 12 years of a Howard government that claimed to care for working families, one in four children of working families is not graduating from high school. That figure stagnated for the entire time of the Howard government. Kids who are now 16 were four years old when the Howard government came to power. Their entire education took place under the Howard government—and the retention rate had stagnated.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Finance, Competition Policy and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Have you heard of state governments that have state education systems?

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The interjection reminds me that something else was at an all-time low when the election came around on 24 November: the relationship between the federal and state governments.

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Because they were all Labor!

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it is a condition in Australia that often happens. But it is your job when you are in government to actually work with state governments because they are elected by the people. It is your job. It is about what is called leadership—what this MPI is all about—when a government works with other governments that are elected by the people. (Time expired)

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last November, the Labor Party was left with one of the strongest economies in the world—the ‘Wonder Down Under’. How quickly—and, sadly, how rapidly—that has all changed. The Rudd government, like all other Labor Party governments before it, both federal and state, cannot manage an economy. Give Labor something in good working order and it will not be long before it is broken: the stock market has plummeted, the budget says unemployment will rise by 134,000, consumer confidence has fallen to a level not seen since the recession of the early nineties—the recession that then Prime Minister Keating said we had to have—inflation is at a 17-year high and strikes are up by 800 per cent. This government is completely incapable of managing the economy that it inherited and delivering good governance for our nation. The reality is that Labor inherited a wonderful legacy. In 12 years the coalition’s policies had reduced tax and other such revenues by a net $214 billion. In the nine months under Labor, taxes have already risen by $19.7 billion.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members—How much?

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Taxes have gone up by $19.7 billion, after taxes had gone down by $214 billion under the previous government. Under 12 years of the coalition’s economic management, the Commonwealth budget net asset turnaround was $141 billion. We paid off $96 billion worth of debt and we passed over to the new government $45 billion in accumulated assets with probably another $20 billion on top of that from this year’s surplus.

Labor have inherited an economy in which they do not have to pay $8.6 billion a year in interest and redemption. That is $8.6 billion that surely they could provide to help support people receiving $273 a week—the single age pensioners, the people who are being sympathised with by ministers who say they could not live on an amount like that. Yet Labor will do nothing for the people who are living in this sort of poverty. They said through the election campaign, when they were in opposition, that they would protect the aged, but they have ignored pensioners in the budget, they have cut benefits to self-funded retirees and, of course, there is something like $75 billion or more already gone from superannuation funds. That is the kind of support that Labor are offering to those who are most disadvantaged in the community. They have been unable to provide any kind of effective response to help these people.

Where are Labor on all the big issues? It is spin, spinning and more spin. The Prime Minister was recently described as Australia’s ‘first federal premier’ because he is trying to behave like the state premiers. I think that is probably an apt description. He has been a champion of friendly failure. Labor were going to end the blame game. They have done that all right—the states and the federal government all agree that ‘we’ll do nothing and we just won’t blame anybody’. So the public just suffer, the pensioners do without and the people who need some support and help get nothing.

What about the people of the Murray-Darling Basin communities like Mildura and Deniliquin and also the Riverland, in South Australia? They are facing a major economic depression. The number of homes and properties for sale has doubled in the past 12 months as a direct result of the drought and, more particularly, the uncertainty about this government’s water buybacks and its lack of structural adjustment funding. One irrigation district has offered itself for sale—lock, stock and barrel—because it is in so much despair over the way in which this government is responding to its needs. The government has stopped the coalition’s plan to refurbish the Murray-Darling Basin, it has stolen 75 gigalitres of water for Melbourne and there is nothing to help the people of those communities to rebuild in these difficult economic circumstances. The reality is that Labor is failing the people of Australia. Our economy has turned down dramatically in just nine months, and Labor has absolutely no answers. Don’t make the pensioners suffer! As the Prime Minister trips off again overseas, he will spend on his grog bill on the trip more than what pensioners will get in a week. He has no answers for the people of Australia. (Time expired)

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In this matter of public importance debate we have been talking about challenging times. It is interesting that we have had those opposite suddenly starting to say that the world changed on 24 November last year and that the state of the economy since then is all our fault, yet they have not looked at the legacy that they really left us. Because of their lack of leadership and their lack of vision, they did not spend on vital infrastructure to clear bottlenecks around this country. There was a lack of strategic investment by those opposite when they presided over 12 years of inaction. They did nothing about the skills shortage, unless you count the money they ripped out of the universities. They did nothing on climate change and nothing about broadband, but they did give us Work Choices, ripping money out of the pockets of working Australians. They also left us with underlying inflation at a 16-year high of 3.6 per cent. Australians did endure 10 interest rate rises in a row. The government’s real spending, when those over there were in government, grew at an average of four per cent a year over the last four years. They had $40 billion in new spending and not a single dollar of savings in their last budget. That was their leadership of and their legacy to this country.

In stark contrast, this government is showing some leadership. We are acting to assist all Australians out there during this challenging time. We are acting now for the long-term future. We are showing strong leadership. We are preparing for our prosperous future and we are strategically planning for this country’s future, unlike those opposite. That is why we have put $41 billion into long-term nation-building funds. That is why we have put $20 billion into the Building Australia Fund, $11 billion into education infrastructure and $10 billion into health infrastructure. In addition, we are spending $26 billion on other road and rail infrastructure. We have ratified Kyoto. We are committed to introducing a carbon pollution reduction scheme. We are building a national broadband network. We are addressing years of neglect in our schools with an education revolution. We are acting. We are investing in trade training centres. We are putting computers in schools. We are investing in universities to help address the skills shortage.

Yesterday the Rudd government announced a plan for some of Australia’s most disadvantaged children. This government wants to offer educational support to very young children from disadvantaged families, including in the community of Clarendon Vale in my seat of Franklin, and I welcome this vision and this leadership from our government. It really does beggar belief that the opposition leader, in only day two in the job, has the audacity to question this government’s leadership. Those over there are only worried about counting numbers in their own party; they are not worried about the numbers in the economy and the people of Australia. They failed to show any leadership in the 12 years they were in government, and in opposition they continue to show a lack of leadership. This can be clearly demonstrated by their recent actions in the Senate. They continue to be obstructive, and Liberal senators are failing to support the working families, the carers, the pensioners and those doing it tough by their actions in that chamber. They have blocked the Medicare levy surcharge, leaving nearly 500,000 Australians without tax relief, and this measure is worth around $1,200 for an average-income family. They have sided with luxury car makers, they have sided with the alcohol distillers and last night they let down the thousands of people who will now not be able to get access to dental care. Is that something to be proud of? Is that what they call leadership? I call it irresponsible politics.

The Liberal Party is blocking legislation not for strategic policy reasons, not because it is something it truly believes in but for cheap political point-scoring. We want to maintain a strong budget surplus. We want to ensure we can invest substantially in Australia’s future, and the member for Wentworth, the new Leader of the Opposition, should show some leadership. He should break down those barriers in the Senate and support this government rather than continue to block important measures in the Senate and smash a hole of over $6 billion in the budget. That is not economically responsible. That is not leadership.

This government is investing in health infrastructure, education and the economy. They are the great challenges facing this nation at this time. This government had the foresight to listen to the Australian people. We listened to what they wanted. During the election campaign we heard they wanted a party to show leadership in health, in education, in climate change, in broadband, in the economy and in a fair go for workers when it comes to industrial relations laws, and this is what we have done and we will continue to do. But the blocking by the opposition of our budget measures is not helping those people who voted for this government. (Time expired)

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is concluded.