Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Wentworth proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The dismal performance of the government during its first year in office.

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, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister may come from Queensland, but his political style is entirely New South Wales Labor. He stands in a great line of succession—Bob Carr, Morris Iemma and Nathan Rees. They all have the same formula: make the big announcement, grab the headline and then nothing. Nothing comes after the big headline. It is all spin. Right through this dismal year of bad government, we have seen one example after another of spin over substance, politics over economics, and media stunt over real achievement. Right at the beginning of the year, the government made a very big call. They decided to be the only government in the world which would talk up inflation and, as a consequence, talk up interest rates. Every other government in the developed world was anxious about the subprime crisis in the United States, which had blown up onto the scene in August of 2007. It had been getting worse in the closing months of 2007.

The member for Higgins, as Treasurer in the previous government, warned the nation about its consequences. By the beginning of the year, it was becoming all too obvious that there were going to be severe impacts. A credit squeeze around the world from the subprime crisis was starting to develop into what it has become now—the global credit crisis or the global financial crisis. The government chose to talk up inflation when every other government around the world was more focused on growth and concerned about what it could do to ensure that this credit crisis would not lead their economies into recession, where, as we know today, many of them have found themselves. They took that approach and they took it for a purely political reason, because they wanted to blacken the economic reputation of the Howard government. That was the only thing they could go for, because every other economic metric was in very good shape. Unemployment was at historic lows, growth was high, Labor’s debt was paid off and the budget was in surplus. Every other economic metric was as close to ideal as one could hope for, except that inflation was above the target range that the Reserve Bank had set. So they went for that and said it was out of control. They talked up inflation and they talked up interest rates.

Today we have just seen, in the national accounts, growth of 0.1 per cent in the months of July, August and September. The interest rate rises that were contributed to by the Treasurer and the Prime Minister talking up inflation and saying it was out of control at the beginning of the year are having an effect now. There is always a big lag in monetary policy. They managed to create a situation where we had interest rate rises at the beginning of the year, when in every other country there were interest rate reductions. Interest rate rises then had a negative impact on growth right now, in the second half of the year, precisely when we need it least. It was a catastrophic error of economic policy driven by a political agenda. There was no economic agenda; only a political agenda. There was no substance; it was all spin.

Then we look at the extraordinarily bungled initiatives. Fuelwatch—what a catastrophe! As if watching petrol prices would make them go down. As if inhibiting competition and damaging the business of independent petrol retailers would reduce prices. It was dreadfully misconceived, and I am sure there is nobody more relieved that it was killed off in the Senate than the Assistant Treasurer. Then we had GroceryWatch. What a catastrophe that has been. That is probably the best example of a total waste of government money ever seen in our history. That was $14 million for absolutely no useful output at all. It provides no useful information. It tells you what the average prices of a theoretical basket of groceries would have been a month ago, assuming you bought it at the prices available in a range of average shops over a vast geographic area. There is nothing that a shopper can find there of any use at all, but it is $14 million of our money. Why is it there? It was done because the government wanted to be able to say that they were doing something about grocery prices. It is straight from the script of The Hollowmenit is worse than the script of The Hollowmen. Every day, when we look at the actions of the Rudd government, we are reminded of Mark Twain’s very insightful comment that only fiction has to be credible. The script of The Hollowmen at least has to be credible up to a point, but that is not a requirement of the Rudd government.

Probably the most disastrous decision the government has taken this year has been the unlimited bank deposit guarantee. It was called the retail guarantee to distinguish it from the wholesale term funding guarantee. In imposing that unlimited guarantee, without speaking to the Reserve Bank—and without having the governor in the room and without even getting him on the phone—the Rudd government set in place a measure that has almost no counterpart around the world. In every other comparable country the deposit guarantee, or deposit insurance, is set at around the $100,000 limit because that is the level which, governments have felt over the years, is high enough to capture most household deposits and most small business deposits but not so high as to create real distortions in the market. So it is €50,000 in Europe and ₤50,000 in Britain, and it has been $100,000 for many years in the United States—although it has recently increased. But that is roughly the level at which it has been. We could have done that—but no. Notwithstanding that we have four of the highest rated banks in the world, notwithstanding that our banking system is well regulated and well capitalised—thanks in large measure to the initiatives of the coalition in government—the Prime Minister chose to go for an unlimited deposit guarantee.

Let us look at the damage that this decision caused. We have seen 270,000 Australians have their savings and cash management trusts and mortgage funds frozen. That is a fact—a direct consequence of the unlimited bank deposit guarantee. And, because those cash management trusts invested in large measure in the short-term debt of finance companies like GE Money, GMAC and so forth, those finance companies now cannot roll over their own borrowings. Most cash management trusts now have all their investments in guaranteed bank deposits. Macquarie Bank’s cash management trust made quite a statement about this. There is another consequence. The finance companies cannot raise money; therefore, the motor vehicle retailers and other retailers who depend on finance companies for funding are not able to secure it. We see examples around Australia, and hear of them from our constituents, of motor retailers offering vehicles at enormous discounts, because they cannot afford to hold vehicles on their lot without a finance company providing a floor plan. It has been a catastrophe for the motor vehicle industry. We have seen vehicle sales drop. All of this has flowed from that extraordinarily ill-judged decision by the government.

But the consequences go further than that. I spoke a moment ago about mortgage funds—funds that raise money from the public for on-lending to mortgagors, very often to property developers, be it of commercial or residential real estate. Those lenders who provide in total a small percentage of the total lending market nonetheless provide critical competition for developers, for the building industry, in terms of finance and, by doing that, encourage banks to keep their rates lower. They have essentially been taken out of the game—again, by the decision of the government to have an unlimited deposit guarantee. So, with competition dramatically reduced, why are we surprised to hear from business men and women around Australia that the interest rates they are being asked to pay by the banks remain very high notwithstanding the reductions in the official cash rates by the Reserve Bank? All of these are consequences of that one very foolish decision. Now the government has rolled it back. At the end of last month, after four weeks, the government rolled it back and said that the guarantee would go up to only $1 million.

Why did they do that? They did that because a letter from the Reserve Bank to the Secretary of the Treasury found its way into the hands of the press. It found its way onto the front page of the Australian. So, because of that single event, the Prime Minister had to acknowledge what the Reserve Bank had clearly been saying to him ever since he made the decision, which was that this was causing enormous distortions in the market and he had to impose a cap and, to quote the Reserve Bank governor, ‘the lower the better’. We have seen leaders of banks calling for the government to reduce that cap to $100,000 but to no avail. The government would never do that because that is precisely what we recommended in the first place.

We have seen the extraordinarily incompetent handling of the wholesale term funding guarantee, where the government for some reason decided they would enter into a contractual guarantee for banks raising wholesale money offshore but would not pass the appropriation legislation so that, if a guarantee were called upon, the government could pay it. They seemed to think that that would not have any consequence. We raised that matter privately and we raised it publicly, but we were treated with contempt and scorn, as we always are, by the government. Finally, when the banks said to the government, ‘You have to act; otherwise we’ll not be able to raise money offshore,’ they came to their senses and passed an appropriation bill.

We have seen in the course of this year incompetence not just in the economic area. Who will ever forget—sadly, nobody will ever forget—the unbelievable big-noting, vainglorious behaviour of the Prime Minister over his telephone call with the United States President? What other national leader would breach the confidentiality of a conversation like that and do so in a way that was designed to make him look clever and the president of the most powerful nation in the world, our greatest ally, look stupid? It not only caused enormous offence to the United States but served as a warning around the world that the Australian Prime Minister was not to be trusted. I fear that damage to the Prime Minister’s reputation for reliability and confidentiality will not just extend to him but affect the standing of every Australian official for many years to come.

We have seen the spin through Fuelwatch and GroceryWatch. We have seen the love of the grand gesture with the unlimited bank deposit guarantee. We have seen the Prime Minister seeking to big-note himself as smarter than George Bush, knowing more about China than the United States—all those big-noting, self-serving references in the aforementioned article. What is the theme, the thread? The fact is this: Sussex Street has come to Canberra. Senator Mark Arbib—the Labor machine man who installed Bob Carr, Morris Iemma and Nathan Rees and who installed the Prime Minister as leader of the Labor Party—according to the Courier-Mail, is now writing the Prime Minister’s economic script. Dennis Atkins tells us it was Senator Arbib who met with the Prime Minister recently to convince him to seek a leave pass to go into deficit. So the New South Wales machine man who has been behind every poor decision that has ruined New South Wales is now running the economic strategy for the Rudd government. The Prime Minister may come from Queensland but his style is 100 per cent New South Wales Labor.

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was taken during question time by the blue, which referred to the text of the MPI. I was taken in particular by its reference to the term ‘dismal performance’. I thought this might provoke a useful discussion and debate in the House today about dismal performances because, as I gazed upon the benches opposite, not only did we see something dismal but we saw something terminally divided as well. The performance of those opposite today, throughout this year and during the Leader of the Opposition’s period in office has been dismal with a capital D. We are having a debate in the parliament now about the industrial relations system of Australia. What is dismal is that the alternative government have no single position on industrial relations. That is dismal with a capital D.

What is dismal with a capital D is that, in the other debate we have been having this week on asylum seekers, we are told that their party room meeting on Tuesday went ‘berserk’ on the question of asylum seekers. On industrial relations, Alby told us that it was ‘bonkers’ to support the position that was embraced by the Leader of the Opposition. They are bonkers one day, berserk the next! On something as sensitive and as important as asylum seekers, you would think that a so-called credible political party like the Liberal Party would actually come up with a uniform, united position—but no. Of course, during the week it has been not just industrial relations or asylum seekers but also climate change and water. They are a broad church, the Leader of the Opposition tell us—that is, they were a broad church until he sacked a shadow parliamentary secretary for having a different view of what the broad church might mean!

The opposition’s performance has been dismal in terms of the absolute disarray that we find in the Leader of the Opposition’s language on the temporary deficit question. I draw honourable members’ attention to this question: why has that d-word disappeared from their language all week? We have underway at the moment the old Malcolm Turnbull crab walk. Earlier this week we had the Leader of the Opposition in full flight, decrying anything which approached a temporary deficit as an absolute abandonment of economic management. Then we go to the critical interview that he had on ABC radio a couple of mornings ago, where on three to four separate occasions he was asked directly: would the opposition rule out a temporary deficit under any circumstances? And on three to four occasions what we saw was the Malcolm Turnbull crab walk. It was not completed until we had an interview—I think it was on Adelaide radio yesterday—where finally the crab walk reached its destination: in fact, a temporary deficit could be embraced if that was the last resort. He went from the position that a temporary deficit was a complete abandonment of economic management principles, through the crab walk of saying, ‘Can’t answer that question; it’s all economic theory,’ to yesterday’s position—which I thought was a beaut—that a temporary deficit could be embraced as a last resort.

Is it any wonder those opposite feel as if they are in disarray? That is what has been reflected in their shifting position on something so crucial to the current debate. But it goes beyond that. The whole debate on the economy comes about as a consequence of the global financial crisis—a global financial crisis which on one day is described as overhyped and on the next is described as the worst since the Depression. Is it any wonder no-one can find a consistent thread up the middle of what the opposition have been talking about in this chamber all year?

Then we go to the rest of the disarray within the Liberal Party on things as basic as interest rates. The Leader of the Opposition said that a rise in interest rates—the seventh rise, in fact, out of their 10 interest rate rises in a row—was being overdramatised. Then he turned himself into Captain Courageous, attacking the banks—interesting, given where the Leader of the Opposition comes from—for their posture on interest rates. Then we have the extraordinary posture he adopted in recent days which is, as reflected in his opinion piece in the Australian that we mentioned in an earlier debate today: ‘Go for the full lot, the whole bottle. Don’t worry about it. Don’t hold back. Profits are king.’ Is it any wonder that people cannot thread together the consistency of the Leader of the Opposition? And it goes on and on.

The Leader of the Opposition claims to be the author of fiscal rectitude on the one hand and then, on the other, launches into an unbridled and unprecedented political attack on the Secretary to the Treasury, authorising his leading henchperson up the back to engage in a simultaneous attack on the Governor of the Reserve Bank, accusing the Governor of the Reserve Bank, in orchestrated tactics from the office of the Leader of the Opposition, of engaging in, in effect, partisan behaviour in support of the Australian Labor Party. And it goes on and on and on. The fuel excise—one day he is against it, the next day he is for it and the third day he is against it again, and I still do not see what the final and formal position is.

If you want the epitome of disarray, I could say: look at each element of these policies, whether it goes to the global financial crisis, interest rates, the temporary deficit, asylum seekers or the rest. But it all reaches its crescendo in the person of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. Julie has had a very good week—so good a week, in fact, that according to the West Australian we have the Leader of the Opposition now telling his colleagues that he has to do two jobs: his and the shadow Treasurer’s. I have not seen the Leader of the Opposition stand up to say that that report in the West Australian newspaper was wrong.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, on a point of order: that statement was denied in the very article the Prime Minister has in his hand.

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

The Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat. That is not a point of order.

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In truthfulness, could the Leader of the Opposition say that there is not a battle royal going on within the frontbench of the Liberal Party as to whether the member for Dickson, the member for North Sydney or the member for Goldstein—anyone other than the member for Curtin, it seems—is going to be the shadow Treasurer of the Liberal Party? What is remarkable is that here they have launched a couple of weeks of attack on the economic credibility of the Australian Labor government and at the same time they cannot resolve who the Treasury spokesman of the Liberal Party is going to be. This actually speaks volumes.

But what is the common thread through all of this, apart from the Leader of the Opposition himself? It is this: there is not a single thread of consistency in any of these positions all the way through, and that goes to a fundamental truth. This government, dealing with difficult circumstances around the world—the global financial crisis—has been acting in the national interest. People may disagree with one policy or another—that is fair enough; it is a democracy and there is a debate. But what we see time after time with the shifting positions of the Leader of the Opposition on interest rates, the global financial crisis and temporary deficits—you name it—is a political leader in this country who has abandoned leadership and is instead engaged in short-term political opportunism. What we have had on one issue after the other is not the national interest being served but the political self-interest of the Leader of the Opposition.

This comes to its absolute apex in the important legislation before this House today—that is, the Fair Work Bill. This Leader of the Opposition, in the past, has gone on the public record not just defending Work Choices but shouting from the rooftops about how important Work Choices is to the future reform of the country. In fact, on 2 November 2005—the day, I am told, of one of his 27 votes in support of Work Choices legislation—he said:

Today is the day that Kevin Andrews introduced the Work Choices legislation into the House of Representatives—the single most important reform to workplace relations in any of our lifetimes.

The problem, I would say to the Leader of the Opposition through you, Madam Deputy Chair, is that in this business of politics, which is a rough and tumble business, you actually have to stick with your principles. The former Leader of the Opposition who sits up the back there, Brendan Nelson—

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are so full of it.

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know you do not like this, but the former Leader of the Opposition up there, Brendan Nelson, the member for Bradfield, sticks to his guns. He has always been out there saying that they supported Work Choices and supported AWAs. This guy is a principled conservative. The Leader of the Opposition is an unprincipled opportunist. That is the difference, and that applies all the way through the policy debates that we have been having in the several months that the Leader of the Opposition has been in charge of the ramshackle, divided party—once the party of Menzies and now a ramshackle, divided lot. This characterises each and every one of the significant policy debates, because in each of them the Leader of the Opposition just changes his position, depending on the day, depending on the weather and depending on the tactical opportunity, but always casting to one side anything approaching consistency of principle. I would say to the Leader of the Opposition: that begins to sort you out as an alternative leader of the country. You have to stand for something and stick with it. The member for Bradfield has done that. We do not see any of that evident in the performance of the member for Wentworth—the Leader of the Opposition as he currently is.

I say ‘currently is’ because we have now heard rumblings about what Higgins is up to. Yond Higgins has a lean and hungry look. Yond Goldstein has a lean and hungry look as well, but he always looks lean and hungry. Higgins, it seems, is back in the circle. I wonder whether yond Bradfield is helping yond Higgins in his return. The rumblings out of Higgins these days are getting interesting, including statements among the local Liberal FEC that in fact the member for Higgins may still be for this world, may not be departing this world and may not be shuffling off. Given the deep affection which the member for Higgins holds for the member for Wentworth, we may have him back sooner than we all think—but I am sure the member for Wentworth has that under control in his party, which is characterised by the singular political unity that we have seen so much on display this year!

Throughout this year the Liberal Party, preoccupied with its own political divisions, has been on about its own political self-interest. The government, by contrast, has been faced with three major challenges for Australia: (1) honouring the implementation of our pre-election commitments, (2) getting on with the business of mapping out a long-term reform agenda for the nation and (3) wrestling with the global financial crisis, which impacts on the real Australian economy. On our commitments to the Australian people, whether our commitment to bring in $44 billion worth of tax cuts for working families or our commitment to bring about an education revolution, what we have undertaken to the Australian people we have then proceeded to implement. We promised $44 billion worth of tax cuts; in the budget brought down by the Treasurer we implemented $44 billion worth of tax cuts. We promised prior to the election that we would ratify the Kyoto protocol; we have ratified the Kyoto protocol. Prior to the election we promised that we would deliver an apology to Indigenous Australians, and we have honoured that commitment to the Australian people. Prior to the last election we undertook to provide to each school in this country funding sufficient to provide a one to one ratio for computers for years 9, 10, 11 and 12 across the nation, a longstanding reform; we are proud of it and we are honouring that commitment. We undertook to provide across all secondary schools in this country funding of $2.5 billion over time to create trades training centres in the secondary schools of this nation—each of the 2,700-plus of them—and we are honouring that commitment. We are honouring each and every one of these commitments. We promised to the Australian people that we would act to establish a national curriculum for English, for history, for maths and for science, because the working people of this nation, as they travel across this country, are crying out for that; we are honouring that commitment. We said prior to the election that we would bring in an election tax refund; the Treasurer, in his budget and in subsequent legislation, has honoured that commitment, and first payments will flow from 1 July next year. Prior to the last election we said we would implement an increase in the childcare tax rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent, and we are honouring that commitment as well.

We take seriously our commitments to the Australian people. Beyond that, we have sought to map out a long-term program of reform dealing with the long-term challenges of reforming the Federation, dealing with the long-term challenges of providing proper funding with proper incentives for better performance in the nation’s health and hospital system and wrestling to the ground the great challenges of climate change and water. These are enduring challenges for the nation; they do not disappear overnight. They do not disappear because there is a political bunfight in a party room over X, Y and Z or A, B and C. They are there and the nation expects us to act on them.

At COAG on Saturday we acted on the long-term reform of the federation. We acted on the challenge of providing proper funding for the public hospital system of this nation with $60 billion worth of long-term investment, and an annual indexation factor of 7.3 per cent, adding into it national partnership payments which bring up the overall increase to the states of something in excess of 10 per cent a year. That is dealing with what the mums and dads of this country want: a better performing public hospital system. We are undertaking that reform.

Beyond that, on climate change and water, we undertook to implement an emissions trading scheme. Our Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is being drafted. It has achieved much more progress in 12 months than our predecessors ever dreamt of in 12 years. And for the first time this government has committed to and has executed the buyback of water entitlements to save the much threatened Murray-Darling Basin system. That is action in the long-term reform interests of the nation. We, the government, have got on with the business of implementing our pre-election commitments and implementing our long-term reform program. We have done all of this in the context of a global financial crisis where we have had to guarantee bank deposits and inject stimulus into the economy in order to provide sustenance for growth and jobs into what will be a difficult year in 2009.

This is a solid agenda for a government. It is a solid agenda of leadership for a government. It represents a consistency of principle. I would say to those who are engaged in this debate today to reflect on it as they contrast with it the dismal and divided performance of those who pretend to be the alternative government of Australia. (Time expired)

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the end of the Prime Minister’s first year in office when called upon to defend his record and to tell the Australian people what he has achieved all we get is the man down in the gutter—political name-calling; all talk no action. The simple question we asked today was: after 12 months in office who in this country is better off for having a Labor government? Who in this country is better off for what the government has achieved in the past 12 months? The reality is no-one. No-one is putting up their hand to say, ‘I am better off; my country is better off because of this government’s performance.’

Paul Keating is a man I do not often quote, but once he said that governments start dying the day they are elected, and that is so true of the Rudd Labor government and their first year in office. We have bumbling ministers with no vision and no leadership from the top. We have a government more interested in travelling the world than talking to Australians about our problems, a government that made scores of promises but has in fact delivered nothing of note.

Yes, we have seen the symbolism of the ratification of the Kyoto accord but is there one less tonne of CO2 gas in the atmosphere as a result? It was symbolism—a stunt with no results. Yes, we have seen an apology to the nation’s Indigenous people but where is the Aboriginal Australian who is better off as a result? It was a stunt that delivered no action and no results. There has been the 2020 Summit, a thousand people of goodwill getting together to commit their ideas, but where is the vision for a bigger and stronger Australia arising from the summit? Indeed the government promised that they would respond to the ideas put forward at the 2020 Summit before the end of this year. They have 28 days to do it and that includes Christmas—another broken promise. There has been no government response; not one of the ideas has been acted upon—another stunt with no results for the people of Australia.

There have been 170 or 180 reviews and task forces announced, but how many of them have delivered results? Just yesterday, we had the latest green paper on aviation and now that is to be followed a year later by another policy document. What about the poor people in general aviation who had their action agenda delivered to them only months after the new government came to office? They were told that the results would be left until the green paper. Now they might well have to wait another year before the policy might be developed. In the meantime, that industry, like so many others, goes backwards.

We have been promised an emissions trading scheme. The targets and the details were to be announced before Christmas—again another target that simply has not been met. We have had plenty of rhetoric, wars on drugs, wars on inflation, wars on whalers, wars on disadvantage, wars on doping in sport, wars on bankers’ salaries, wars on obesity and wars on skinny models—plenty of wars have been declared, but where are the results; where are the actions?

The government came into office promising that they would fight inflation, but inflation is actually at the highest level it has been for 17 years. They said that they would cut taxes, but this budget was the biggest taxing budget in our nation’s history with $19 billion of new taxes from a government that said they would lower taxes. They said they were the party for the environment, but the new Caring for our Country program actually spends $1 billion less on environmental programs than the previous government’s Natural Heritage Trust and national action plan. They said they were going to save the whales, but they have wimped out on the promised legal action. They said they supported alternative energy, but they axed a whole range of renewable energy programs, solar panels and the like.

They said they would be open and transparent, but they slashed the Auditor-General’s budget and scrutiny of billions of dollars of government expenditure is covered up by the excuse that they were simply Labor election promises and therefore they will be delivered whether they are good or bad. They said they would give every student a computer, but we know how this program has hit the rocks, tragically underfunded. Yes, you can have a computer, but you will have to share it with two or three others and only if parents are prepared to pay for the electricity or the state government is prepared to connect the fast broadband or make the commitments for air conditioning and all the other add-on expenses that will be required. Another promise made but simply not delivered.

They said they would protect workers, but strikes are up by over 800 per cent since the election of this government. The stock market has plummeted. The people smugglers are back in business because the government have gone soft on border control. The budget says unemployment will rise by 134,000, but we all know that that figure is only half what will in fact happen. Consumer confidence has fallen to a level not seen since the recession of the early nineties, the recession that Prime Minister Keating said we had to have. They said they would end the blame game, but in three-quarters of all the answers to questions they blame somebody else; it is always somebody else’s fault. Now they are blaming the Senate for blocking some of their initiatives. We are not allowed to have any scrutiny of what is being proposed. We are all expected to blindly accept whatever rubbish the government turn up.

The reality is that this government has failed to deliver on its election commitments. It has failed to deliver for the people of Australia. Clear evidence of that was present again today when the national accounts figure was released: 0.1 per cent growth. You cannot get much lower growth than 0.1 per cent, I can tell you. The Treasurer told us it was a positive outcome. Well, he is not telling a lie—it was marginally positive but only just. There will probably be worse news ahead under his economic management. The growth genie seems firmly back in the bottle. He let out the inflation genie by his outrageous comments but the growth genie is well and truly back in the bottle.

I know Australia is being buffeted by the worldwide financial situation. We have had those sorts of situations before; indeed, our government faced them on a number of occasions. But we did not buckle over; we knuckled down. We got on with the job. We dealt with the global pressures, and our nation emerged much stronger and prouder as we came out on the other side. Indeed, we delivered to this government a legacy of a $20 billion surplus and $60 billion in the Future Fund. The $20 billion surplus is already gone and we are probably already in deficit, but none of the problems have been fixed. Everybody is going to get these nice cheques next week, but the pension is still too low. They have not fixed the pension problem. They have done nothing for carers. They have not resolved the issues. A bit of guilt money this week is not going to make any difference to the long-term crisis confronted by these people—people who were told their grocery prices would go down and that GroceryWatch would protect them from the evils of the big multinational food companies. GroceryWatch has been a failure, like this government has been a failure.

They started right early to try and talk down the economic achievements of the previous government because they want to diminish the contrast between the failures of their government and the successes of their predecessor. We built for the future. We repaid Labor’s $96 billion debt. We put aside $60 billion for the future and we committed money for roads and rail. Labor, for all of their talk about an infrastructure-led recovery, have slashed funding available for roads and rail. They are actually going to spend less than the previous government had committed—and this is their way to try and beat inflation! Labor are in fact trying to spend their way through, but the reality is they have no plan and no vision for the future. They have already spent the whole of the surplus in a Whitlamesque spending spree. They have all the fiscal discipline in Treasury of Jim Cairns. And next thing we will have the Prime Minister going over to the Middle East to try and borrow some money from Khemlani to fund his new bank—a new bank to make up for the growing budget deficit; the ‘Kevlani’ bank that Labor are about to set up to try and save themselves from their own fiscal ineptitude.

The reality is this is a lost opportunity. Labor came into office with the resources at their fingertips to make a difference, if they had the courage, the will, the wit or the brains to be able to deliver. They have failed in their first year. The Prime Minister has given a dismal performance today in trying to defend his record for the past 12 months. They cannot deliver. They have no idea how to manage an economy and, sadly, all Australians are suffering today. Where is the Australian who is better off as a result of the election of the Labor government? I fear that next year may be even worse. (Time expired)

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an extraordinary performance from the Leader of the National Party. He made a number of extraordinary claims during that contribution. One, with regard to economic growth, was that you cannot get lower than 0.1 per cent. I say to the Leader of the National Party: have a look at what is occurring in industrialised countries overseas—in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Europe—and compare the impact of the global financial crisis. In one sentence he managed to accuse the government of spending too much but also to say we were not spending enough when it came to transport infrastructure. That is an extraordinary claim from someone who I guess is torn between whether he is in the Liberal Party or in the National Party now that he is a member of the Liberal National Party with his friend and close ideological colleague the member for Groom. The third thing that was extraordinary was that he opposed the government’s Economic Security Strategy when he spoke about pensioners, carers and veterans getting ‘guilt money’ this week. That is the way he described the government’s Economic Security Strategy.

He argued that the government has not delivered on its commitments, whereas we know that this government has been characterised by delivering on all the election commitments which saw us return to the government benches. We said we would ratify the Kyoto protocol. We did it. We said we would apologise to the stolen generation. We did it. We said we would abolish John Howard’s extreme workplace laws. We did it. We said we would withdraw all Australian combat troops from Iraq. We did it. We said we would remove discrimination against same-sex couples from a range of Commonwealth laws including superannuation, social security and taxation laws. We did it. We said we would embark on a nation-building agenda and establish Infrastructure Australia. We did it. And we have done it all in the context of a global financial crisis. We have done it all while also taking action to ensure that the economy can continue to grow.

At COAG just last Saturday, we announced a $15.1 billion package to help create 133,000 jobs, to stimulate the economy and to drive significant reform, particularly in education, health and housing. But this followed the $10.4 billion Economic Security Strategy that will be delivered in the coming weeks—something that the other side opposes. There was the $55 billion Working Families Support Package in the last budget, which included $46 billion of tax cuts, increased the childcare tax rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent and provided $2.4 billion in support to help older Australians and carers with household bills by giving them one-off payments. We introduced a 50 per cent education tax refund. We also have made sure that we have delivered economic growth by establishing a $6.2 billion plan to make the automotive industry more economically and environmentally sustainable. Here in Parliament House a couple of weeks ago we had the first meeting of the Australian Council of Local Government, where we delivered $300 million divided up not according to the way people vote but divided up fairly so that every council in Australia will receive a stimulus to their local economy and a stimulus to local jobs.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Chester interjecting

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would say to any of the members of opposite, including the member for Gippsland, who is on the record here suggesting that the councils in Gippsland do not deserve that money and should not be given it—if that is his view—that we have not just acted on the economy. We acted on the environment and water, including the Murray-Darling Basin plan. We introduced a $480 million National Solar Schools Program, to which over 2,200 schools have already signed up. In education, we have the $2.5 billion Trades Training Centres in Schools Program. Since its launch in February, $90 million has already been allocated to 34 lead schools, and it will benefit a total of 96 schools. We have got the digital education revolution, which has delivered more than $116 million for 116,820 new computers to 896 secondary schools, those being identified as most in need. We have delivered half a billion dollars to the Better Universities Renewal Fund.

We have just announced $64 billion in health and hospitals funding over the next five years. In housing affordability, we have increased the first home owners grant, we have established the $512 million Housing Affordability Fund, we have established the First Home Saver Account to help people saving for their first home as well as, of course, announcing $10 billion for the National Affordable Housing Agreement. We have done all this.

In my portfolio of infrastructure, we have not only honoured all of Labor’s pre-election road and rail commitments but done more. We have already established the Building Australia Fund—as long as those opposite do not block it in the Senate. We have established the Major Cities Unit to once again engage the Commonwealth with our cities, the great generators of economic growth in this country.

But what do we have opposite? We have more positions than in the Kama Sutra on any given issue. On the deficit, position 1 of the Leader of the Opposition was ‘it is a failure of economic management’. That is what he said about a temporary deficit at the National Press Club on 24 November. Of course, we know that just this week—indeed, yesterday—he said ‘the deficit should be a last resort’. He is doing the crab walk across, as the Prime Minister has indicated. The opposition has two positions on the impact of the GFC. Position 1 is where the Leader of the Opposition said on 19 October that it was ‘all hype’. The next day he said it was ‘the worst, gravest global financial crisis we have seen since the great Depression’. That position lasted one day.

On predicting the global financial crisis there are at least three positions. On 30 September, the Leader of the Opposition said, ‘Nobody could have seen it coming.’ On 1 October he said that ‘the worst passed three months ago’. It was over—the events of the last weeks would not have been predicted a few months ago. Then position 3 was on 15 October when he said, ‘Regrettably, Mr Rudd’s government missed the warning signs at the beginning of the year.’ Three positions in one month!

On the first home buyer boost, there are four positions. On 14 October, he said that the housing market was softening. On 15 October the shadow minister said that our housing market is actually quite strong. On the same day the Leader of the Opposition said that the grant should be higher. And then the shadow housing minister, on the same day, said, ‘I think the government does have questions to answer about what the First Home Owner Grant for existing dwellings is doing in this package.’ So it was just for new housing. Four positions! He cannot get an answer from his own leader. The opposition have had five positions on the Economic Security Strategy—all over the place—and, of course, multiple positions on their attacks on the Secretary to the Treasury and our economic institutions, let alone the multiple positions they have had on bank deposit guarantees.

This government has a big agenda for the nation. The opposition are simply obsessed with themselves, fighting over the spoils of opposition to see who will be the shadow Treasurer or who will be the spokesperson and who will get to sit further up the queue over there. We can see the dissent and it is characterised most severely by their dissent on Work Choices. We know that, were they to return to the Treasury bench, Work Choices would be back because they have an absolute commitment to those principles. (Time expired)

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an enormous disappointment that just was. I have come in here to give my 100th speech for the year, and I have even brought a cricket bat, courtesy of the member for Swan, signed by Barry Richards, arguably the world’s greatest batsman. I fear I now have to ask the member for Grayndler to assume the position, because that was disappointing in the extreme, and perhaps there is a better use for the cricket bat that we could see here today. As we reflect here on the government’s performance over the past 12 months, the bat will not rise.

This government hit the ground reviewing. There have been over 160 reviews, summits, commissions, inquiries and conferences. There is no compelling narrative and no central ground; just hollow words from hollow men. There is no political or economic strategy; just the declaration of 12 wars: wars on drugs, cancer, inflation, unemployment, global unemployment, whales, Aboriginal disadvantage, downloads, pokies, alcopops, doping in sport and bankers’ salaries—individually worthy issues.

I suggest the PM has actually read Sun Tzu, because Sun Tzu says, ‘All war is based on deception,’ and that is what the Prime Minister’s wars are. There is no action in these wars. They are hollow wars. He has deployed no troops in these wars. They have not even left the battleground. The troops are sitting there waiting for some direction. But again Sun Tzu may have the answer when he says, ‘Though we have heard of stupid waste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.’ There are long delays in these wars and there is no cleverness.

We have seen the Prime Minister become ‘Voyeur 08’, because he is watching everything. There is Fuelwatch, GroceryWatch, whale watch, inflation watch and childcare centre watch. He is watching but not doing. Then, of course, we come to the economic responsibility of the Prime Minister and the government. Every government in the developed world was concerned about the subprime fallout late last year. The member for Higgins stood and warned the nation, but what was our trusty Prime Minister doing? In the final report of the Australia 2020 Summit, at page 387, we get a view, because it says:

By 2020 Australia will be well placed to survive as a functioning and safe nation and society because our geography and policies protect us from the global chaos created by the pandemic of 2012, the financial crash of 2013, and the oil war of 2016.

Well, Prime Minister, the crash came in 2008. You were five years too late. When the financial crisis was gaining momentum, you were having a summit with all of your friends. When the final report came out, did you mention the current financial crisis? No, you referred to a hypothetical one in 2013.

You started the year by attacking inflation because you thought it was the achilles heel of the previous government, yet the IMF advice, which every other nation apart from us apparently followed, was to lower taxes, seeing a lowering in interest rates and an increase in spending. But what did this government do? It increased tax by $19 billion. It decreased spending. The Treasurer, that nervous little man, rolled up and said that the ‘inflation genie was out of the bottle’ a day before the Reserve Bank met, only backed up by his Prime Minister, who said the ‘inflation monster was wreaking havoc across the nation’. Is it any wonder that interest rates were raised the next day?

Growth projections in the budget were over three per cent. In the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook they were two per cent. Three weeks later they were less than that and they were 0.1 per cent for the September quarter. We have a naked short selling ban bungle, with the government changing its view three times. We had a $10.4 billion stimulus package with no modelling and a bungled bank guarantee that has left 270,000 people in this nation with accounts frozen. We are the only nation on the planet whose response has made the nation worse off because of what the government has done. This is a dismal performance of the government in its first year.

The Prime Minister held aloft a computer as the new toolbox of the 21st century. He is now only delivering it to half as many students at twice the price—and he is an economic conservative! It is shameful. The nation-building funds that he promised totalled $26.3 billion—every cent from the Howard-Costello years. This government has not even thrown in five cents. If the member for Solomon could just throw over 10c, at least this government would have contributed something to the nation-building funds. But as it is you have contributed nothing. It is a dismal performance. (Time expired)

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the Leader of the Opposition for giving me the opportunity to talk about the benefits the Rudd government has brought to the whole of our country in its first year of office, and particularly to my constituents. It is ironic that we see in this matter of public importance raised by the Leader of the Opposition the term ‘dismal performance’, because the fact is that the only dismal performance in this House, in this parliament, during this year has been that of the opposition.

There are at least two possible measures of performance for a government. One of them would be to compare the first year in office of the Rudd Labor government with the first year in office of the previous government, and another would be to compare the performance of the government with that of the opposition during this very year. On either measure, the Rudd government is looking very, very solid indeed. The Leader of the Nationals—if he is still in the Nationals; it is not altogether clear whether he is Liberal or National—the member for Wide Bay asked who in Australia is better off, and I say resoundingly that we are all better off to have rid this country of the tired old Howard government, which had run out of ideas and had run out of energy.

When I ran for election a year ago, I wanted to be part of a new Rudd Labor government because I understood that the changes that we would bring about would make Australia a better place, would make Australia a safer country, would make Australia a more secure country and would in particular make Australia a fairer country. When millions of Australians voted a year ago to kick out the Howard government, they wanted a government that would deliver a safer, more secure and fairer country, and this government has delivered for all Australians. We have honoured the promises that we made at the last election.

I will now compare our first year in office with the performance of the previous government in its first year of office. The No. 1 thing that you would point to is that we keep our promises. We have kept our commitments; we are serious about keeping our promises—unlike the former government, which introduced the unfortunate phrase to Australian political life of ‘core and non-core promises’. There is a long list of promises that we made at the last election that we have already honoured in our first year in office.

One of the best examples is in the industrial relations legislation, the Fair Work Bill 2008. The previous government said nothing to the Australian people before the 2004 election about its intentions to introduce an extraordinarily harsh industrial relations regime—nothing at all. It did not tell the Australian people that it was planning to introduce the harsh Work Choices laws. We told the Australian people with absolute clarity what we were going to do with the Forward with Fairness policy that we took the last election, and we have seen in the last week the introduction of the Fair Work Bill. That shows how we honour commitments. We honoured our commitment to a return to fairness in Australian workplaces. That is what the Fair Work Bill does.

And we can go down a long list of other promises to the Australian people which we have honoured, including: the apology to Indigenous Australians and starting work on closing the gap, and signing the Kyoto protocol and working on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. We are tackling the hard issues which confront this nation: computers in schools, trades training centres, a national curriculum for schools and the Murray-Darling Basin—the list goes on and on. This has been a year of sensible management, of honoured commitments and of honoured promises.

This has been a year of sensible management in public finance. In particular, I refer to the Rudd government’s first budget, which sensibly and cautiously provided for a substantial surplus to be ready for downturn. We were ready and are ready to face the challenges that we are being confronted with through the global financial crisis. (Time expired)

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is now concluded.