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

by leave—I move:

That standing order 31 (automatic adjournment of the House) and standing order 33 (limit on business after 9.30 pm) be suspended for this sitting.

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

Following the decision of the Liberal Party and the National Party and one Independent in the Senate to defeat the government’s $42 billion Nation Building and Jobs Plan, the government has resolved to reintroduce legislation into the House this afternoon because these measures are urgent and in the national economic interest.

The world is currently wracked by a global financial crisis which has become a global economic recession which is becoming a global employment crisis, and this crisis now affects Australia fundamentally. The government has resolved to introduce a nation-building plan and a jobs plan to reduce the impact of this global economic recession on Australia. The International Monetary Fund has concluded that we need to act with fiscal stimulus. That is the view of the Reserve Bank of Australia; it is the view of the Australian Treasury; it is the view of the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Australian Industry Group. It is the view of mainstream economists and economic analysts across Australia. It is also the view of the Australian government. That is why the government has decided to act.

Because of the global economic crisis, this government will not be deterred from taking whatever action is necessary in the national economic interest to underpin this country’s and our people’s economic wellbeing. For those reasons, I formally notify the House that later today legislation will be reintroduced to advance this nation’s national economic interest at a time of global economic crisis.

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

We are debating this tonight for one reason and one reason only: the Prime Minister has refused to negotiate. He has refused to negotiate with the men and women whose votes he sought to obtain. He has treated this parliament with so much disingenuous contempt. He stood here in this House and said this bill had to be passed within 48 hours, that if it were not passed in 48 hours the payments could not be made from Centrelink, that we did not have the time to scrutinise legislation and that we did not have the time to have an inquiry. The Senate stood up to the Prime Minister and they had an inquiry, and along to the inquiry came the head of Centrelink. What did the head of Centrelink say? ‘Oh, it could be passed this week.’ The urgency that we were told about last week had no basis in fact.

We have said from the outset, from the very outset, that we are prepared to sit down with the government and speak.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

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

Order! Those on my right!

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

The Prime Minister’s response to the opposition in this parliament has been to say, ‘Get out of the road, get out of the way.’ He has said there is no alternative to his proposal. Yet we all know, as the Prime Minister has said today in another context and as I have said in this and many other contexts, that none of us, not one of us, is the repository of all wisdom on this or any other issue. But we have a Prime Minister who in his hubris chose to present a package of spending that represents an enormous percentage of GDP, will impose an enormous debt on our children and will result in our children and their children paying high taxes in the years ahead to fund a cheque for $950 to almost every Australian. In other words, he is asking this parliament to approve measures which will see billions of dollars being mailed out to Australians for current expenditure today—all of which, every cent of which, is being borrowed from the next generation.

The Prime Minister is right and we have all been right when we have said that we are not the repositories of all wisdom, and that is why we have set out an indication of the type of stimulus we would support, of the type of package we would support. And we have sought to sit down with the government.

The Prime Minister has said that every mainstream economist in Australia supports his spending package. He has implied therefore that any economist who does not support it is not a mainstream economist. Well, one of the leading economists in the world is Dr Warwick McKibbin. He is a member of the board of the Reserve Bank. Does the Prime Minister regard the Reserve Bank as part of the economic mainstream? Does he regard the board members of the Reserve Bank as part of the economic mainstream? There you have just one example, and there are many others, of economists and experts who are questioning the effectiveness of this spending package. What did Dr McKibbin say? He said the package is too big; we are spending too much money at this time. Henry Ergas, another leading economist, described it by saying that the package was ‘too much, too early’.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He’s a consultant for you, Malcolm. You pay his bills.

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

The opposition are sitting there abusing and defaming anybody who does not agree with them. They are in a hole tonight.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

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

The government, I should say; you are quite right. Well, if you go on the way you are you will be the opposition before you know it. That is where you should be, because the reality is that the government is in a hole tonight of its own making, because it assumed that the opposition would buckle and that the Independents, and particularly Senator Xenophon, would buckle and get out of the way of its bulldozer, but we did not and Senator Xenophon did not.

The Prime Minister has failed today. His economic policy is in tatters. His fiscal stimulus, so-called, has been rejected by the parliament of Australia. It has been voted against by the opposition—an opposition with whom he has refused to speak. President Obama, fresh from an overwhelming electoral victory, was prepared to go to the congress himself and sit down with Republicans, and he won support from some Republicans. We have had no attempt from the government to sit down and discuss this with us, and yet from the moment I became the Leader of the Opposition I have said again and again that we want to sit down and talk about these issues constructively.

It is not just the $42 billion spending package that is in tatters. The central element, the overwhelming element, of the government’s response to climate change, which the Prime Minister has called in the past ‘the greatest economic challenge of our time’ is being thrown overboard today.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

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

You should have heckled! Government members know I am speaking the truth. The government’s emissions trading scheme has been through the Garnaut review, the green paper and the white paper. We are due to get the legislation at the end of February and we are told it must be passed in the budget sittings, yet today the Treasurer has asked the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics to inquire into whether an emissions trading scheme is an appropriate response to climate change at all and to report in the second half of the year. What is going to happen if the House economics committee concludes that the emissions trading scheme is not an appropriate response and it has already been legislated for? What an extraordinary decision! You can see the government is getting ready to abandon the emissions trading scheme, its single most important and central response to climate change—‘the greatest economic challenge of our time’, as the Prime Minister said.

The government is in the hole it is in tonight because it dug it for itself. It has done the damage to itself. Its economic strategy is in complete and utter disarray—a fiscal stimulus plan which has been rejected by the Senate, which the opposition voted against and which the government demanded the opposition vote for but on which it then took no steps at all to consult, to discuss or to accommodate any of the views of the opposition. It treated the opposition with contempt. Let me say to the Prime Minister: you do not win people over by insulting them and treating them with contempt. That is what he has done. Then, to add to that, we have the great emissions trading scheme now being thrown overboard, cast into all of the uncertainty of an economics committee hearing.

We stand ready to sit down with the Prime Minister to discuss the composition and design of an appropriate fiscal stimulus package. We are committed to doing that. We are determined to do it. All he has to do is open the door. We can meet, and I am sure that with goodwill we can resolve measures that will then have the support of both sides of politics in this House.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What happened in the Senate this afternoon was that the government voted for jobs and the Liberal and National parties voted against jobs. That is what happened. What happened in the Senate this afternoon is that the Labor Party and some of the minor parties voted for nation building and the Liberal and National parties voted against nation building. This is a bit hard to comprehend, because as the Prime Minister indicated before we are in a global recession. We saw on the weekend the worst employment figures in the United States in 35 years, and this global recession is impacting upon this country and upon jobs in this country. You would have thought that, when a responsible package—a Nation Building and Jobs Plan put forward by this side of the House to cushion the impact of the global recession on jobs in this country—was put forward, any responsible opposition would have supported it. You would have thought they would have supported it.

Every reputable economist in the world is supporting substantial fiscal stimulus. The IMF is supporting substantial fiscal stimulus; ACCI, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is supporting fiscal stimulus; the Australian Industry Group is supporting fiscal stimulus; the Business Council of Australia is supporting fiscal stimulus—but not the Liberal and National parties in this House. They are not supporting fiscal stimulus because their opposition to this nation-building plan is all about the ego of the Leader of the Opposition; it is all about his self-interest—his personal political interest—and it is not about the national interest.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Mr Speaker, I ask that you direct the Treasurer to speak to the motion put before the House by the government.

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

Because of the incompetence of the chair earlier in the debate, I regret to say that it has been a much wider ranging debate than we would have expected. The Leader of the Opposition was given a lot of leeway.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The actions of the Liberal and National parties in the Senate and their actions in this House over the past week have effectively sabotaged the Australian economy. They have sent a signal that they are prepared to have higher unemployment, not lower unemployment. This is extremely serious. If all of the leading industry bodies in this country are supporting the government’s Nation Building and Jobs Plan, if the IMF is supporting the government’s Nation Building and Jobs Plan and if the Reserve Bank can cite our Nation Building and Jobs Plan as part of a coordinated strategy, why can’t the Liberal and National parties in the House of Representatives and in the Senate support this plan? Why can’t they support something that is clearly in the national interest? I will tell you why: because the Leader of the Opposition simply wants to score political points—he has put his pointscoring ahead of the national interest. That is what has been on display in the Senate this afternoon and in the House today.

The chief economist of the IMF had this to say in the last week:

Above all, adopt clear policies and act decisively … Delays in financial packages have cost a lot already. Further rounds of debate will stoke uncertainty and make things worse.

Well, that is what the Liberal and National parties have done in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. They have stoked uncertainty, and that in itself is damaging. That is why we say that there is no economic responsibility on that side of the House. They have become economic wreckers. (Time expired)

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to talk a little bit about the process that the government has undertaken in its failure to deliver—

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

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

Order! Those on my right will come to order!

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, what an embarrassing day for the government!

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

Order! Reluctant as I am, I remind members on my right that if I take action against them it will not make the whip happy because he needs a certain number of people later on!

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government spent some weeks preparing its spending package and then it came to this House, after announcing the package, and gave the opposition 45 minutes notice. When the government on the following day introduced six bills—and at that time it was not sure whether there were five or six bills—even as the first bill was introduced the government said to the opposition, ‘This parliament, this chamber, will sit continuously until the six bills are passed because there is an urgency about this spending package.’ How embarrassing this is for the government, after having guillotined the bills through this place at five o’clock in the morning while the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were still asleep. This package was so important to the nation that it had to go through an all night sitting. We then discovered when it went to the Senate that there was filibustering by government senators because they could not get the numbers in the Senate to support their own legislation. The Senate had an inquiry—the inquiry that the government said could not be done because there was an urgency to the legislation. That Senate inquiry found numerous technical flaws in the legislation. It also identified that the legislation in fact failed to be the stimulus package that the government had promised.

In the meantime, the Prime Minister was more focused on gaining public support than he was on gaining the support of this, the people’s parliament. He gave up on the people’s parliament. He chose to believe that the House of Representatives and the Senate would simply rubber stamp six bills. How wrong the government was. How embarrassing for the Prime Minister that he called all the premiers and chief ministers to Canberra and had a big consultation with them, and then the bills failed. How embarrassing for the Prime Minister that he called hundreds of business leaders to Canberra and the bills failed. Today the government, with egg all over its face, has found that it is a whole new world out there when you have to make hard decisions.

The Leader of the Opposition, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the National Party have offered the government on numerous occasions the opportunity to sit down with the opposition in the same way that President Obama chose to sit down with members of congress and members of the US senate on a significant stimulus package in the United States. President Obama is a real leader with an enormous mandate from the American people, and he had the courage to do that—but not our Prime Minister. Our Prime Minister will not do that. Our Prime Minister will sit down with everyone else, anticipating that ‘his’ parliament will rubber stamp the bills. Lo and behold, when he does not get the rubber stamp from the parliament he simply comes back on his bulldozer and demands that the bills go through in another late night sitting. This is panic from the government. This is not reassuring for the Australian people. This does not build confidence in Australia. It is panic on panic. Even at the time question time was scheduled for today, the government did not know that it did not have the numbers in the Senate. I sat in the Senate for an hour and a half and it was perfectly clear they were not going to get the numbers because the government panicked on this spending package. The parliament has spoken for the Australian people in rejecting bad legislation.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In concluding this procedural debate I make a very simple point: we are at the logical end point from last Wednesday when the Leader of the Opposition rose to his feet in this parliament and said that the Liberal Party in both the House of Representatives and the Senate would vote against the government’s Nation Building and Jobs Plan.

One thing that the Liberal Party appears not to be prepared to understand is that political decisions come with responsibility. When your leader made that announcement on your behalf you were saying that you wanted this plan to fail. You have achieved what you wanted and you now must take the political responsibility for that. And the political responsibility is that a stimulus package the nation needs is being denied to it. You have a few hours to change your mind, and what you ought to do in those hours is ring some people in your electorates. You should ring a school principal—

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Deputy Prime Minister is referring to ‘you’ as being the person that killed off this legislation—

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

The member will resume his seat. The Deputy Prime Minister will direct her remarks through the chair.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before voting later this evening each member of the Liberal Party should consult some people in their electorate. They should ask them whether or not they believe the Liberal Party should vote in favour of jobs in these difficult days. They should ask them whether they think the Liberal Party should vote in favour of nation building in these difficult days. They should ring a business person and ask them what they think about the contemporary economic situation and the need for fiscal stimulus and, having got that feedback from the outside world, later tonight they should come into this parliament and do what they ought to have done last week and vote for these bills. Do not seek to evade the political responsibility of what your leader committed you to. You are at the logical end point of that. If you want to deny the nation this stimulus package, take the political responsibility for it. But I suggest to every member of the opposition that they consult someone in their electorate and they will get a very different view.

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

Order! The time allotted for the debate under standing order 1 has expired. I now put the question that the motion moved by the Leader of the House to suspend standing order 31 and standing order 33 be agreed to.