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

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

The Government’s failure to pursue a reform agenda

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—

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If the first modern Australians had camped at Sydney Cove and congratulated themselves for arriving at a garden of Eden, they would have starved. If the colonial statesmen of the 19th century had been content with the social and economic progress of that time, there would never have been a Commonwealth of Australia. If the leaders of our country had not mobilised all our resources in the dark days of 1941 and 1942, Australia as we know it might not have survived the Second World War. If recent Australian governments had not tackled the economic stagnation that was threatening our country, we would not be the one developed country that has best weathered the recent international economic storm.

As the former Prime Minister, John Howard, would often say, ‘Today’s reform is the basis of tomorrow’s prosperity.’ But, by contrast, this Prime Minister’s motto might well be: ‘Today’s prosperity means that we can talk about reform without actually providing any.’

I rise today to celebrate the reforms of Australia’s two most recent governments and to applaud the courage of the leaders who drove them. Not for this side of parliament the cheap partisanship and the denial of credit where it is due, which has, in recent times, characterised this government. When Mr Hawke became Prime Minister, with Mr Keating his Treasurer, back in 1983, Australia was in the midst of a deep recession. But those statesmen did not try to spend their way out of a recession; they knew that would not work. Instead, they reformed their way out of the recession. The then Treasurer, with the then Prime Minister’s strong support, deregulated financial markets, reduced and, in some cases, eliminated tariffs and began the process of privatisation subsequently brought to fruition by the subsequent government. The former Treasurer and then Prime Minister even took a small but significant step towards workplace relations reform with his enterprise bargaining changes of 1993.

There are two important points to be made about the reforms of the former Labor government. The first is that they defied Labor Party orthodoxy. That orthodoxy of high spending, high taxing and big government, which had previously characterised the Australian Labor Party, was rejected by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. Let me say, it takes guts to reject your party’s orthodoxy. It takes guts to turn your back on aspects of your party’s history, even when it is embarrassing and even when it is wrong, but those two statesmen had the courage to do so.

The next point I make is that those reforms were all achieved with the strong support of the then coalition. In fact, given the divided nature of the Labor Party, those reforms could not have been achieved but for the strong support of the then coalition. Let me stress that point. The Liberal Party, now supposedly obsessed with neoliberalism and now supposedly in the grip of market fundamentalism—whatever that is—strongly supported the reforms of the then Labor government. According to those who now call the Liberal Party neoliberals and market fundamentalists, either there was something wrong with the then Labor government’s reforms or there was nothing really that wrong with the Liberal Party. What you cannot be is a party that is all bad supporting a government that is all good. That is the proposition which seems to have been enunciated by the Prime Minister earlier this week.

When Messrs Hawke and Keating were in power, the coalition was not content merely to criticise the government when it made mistakes or when it did not go far enough. Under John Howard, the former Prime Minister, and also under John Hewson, the former Leader of the Opposition, the coalition developed a program for further economic reform which addressed the real problems that our country faced and which reflected the important and enduring values of the Australian people. When John Howard finally became Prime Minister in 1996, with Peter Costello as his reform minded Treasurer, Australia was just emerging from another serious economic recession. We had had but five minutes of economic sunshine in 1996, as some members of this House would well remember.

John Howard did not commission 100 or more reports to tell him what to do. He did not summon 1,000 of the bright and beautiful people to Canberra to give him ideas. John Howard and Peter Costello systematically and methodically set about the reforms that the previous government had been too politically compromised by its own left-wing faction and its union affiliations to make. Peter Costello made very serious, real cuts in his first budget, amounting to one per cent of gross domestic product. Peter Reith negotiated sweeping workplace relations changes which established for the first time in our country’s history the existence of a statutory non-union contract—subject, of course, to a safety net—and reduced the scope of awards and the role of arbitration. It was on these changes that the productivity increases of the late 1990s and the prosperity that we now enjoy were fundamentally based. Those changes, I should add, were also based on the confidence that the people of this country had moved beyond the old class war shibboleths and stereotypes and were prepared to work together, workers and managers, for more productive, more profitable and ultimately more successful enterprises and that we did not need unions and other third parties constantly to hold our hands in order to make a success of our economic lives.

As well, Peter Reith pushed through reform of the waterfront—a reform that had always been too hard for members opposite when they were in government—which produced a 50 per cent increase in crane rates, an increase previously thought to be impossible. One reform that I should mention is the replacement of the old Commonwealth Employment Service with the Job Network, a network of charitable, community based and private providers which not only helped job seekers but also enabled private businesses to use their expertise to help the unemployed. This in particular is a reform that the Prime Minister should be grateful for and should recognise.

Finally, there was tax reform: the GST, a massive change which had also defeated the former government but which the Howard government was prepared to go to and win an election on. In subsequent terms, the Howard government established the Australian Building and Construction Commission in the teeth of ferocious opposition; commenced welfare reform, including massive involvement of the unemployed in Work for the Dole; launched an intervention into the disgraceful situation of Aboriginal townships in the Northern Territory, where civil society was in virtual collapse; sold the rest of Telstra; and began the process of water reform. There was a further round of workplace relations reform, which was a political mistake, but let us be under no illusions: it was economically advantageous. More than half a million new jobs were created for Australian workers, more than 90 per cent of them full time, while Work Choices was in operation.

There is one point that needs to be made about the reforms of the Howard government in contrast to the reforms that were made in the time of the Hawke and Keating governments. Every one of those Howard government reforms was opposed by the Australian Labor Party. You can say what you like about John Howard—you can say that he changed too much or that he did too little—but you cannot say he was both a neofundamentalist and indolent. You cannot have it both ways, which this Prime Minister is trying to do now.

This week the Prime Minister launched Paul Kelly’s latest book, The March of Patriots. This book studies three prime ministers, Hawke, Keating and Howard, and it suggests—indeed, I would say it demonstrates—that they had a complementary and overlapping vision of economic reform that has permanently changed this country for the better. I should say that it might equally have been titled The March of the Reformers, and the great, screaming question now is: has this march stopped? The fact that in formally launching the book the Prime Minister made the revealing—indeed, freudian—slip of calling it The March of Politics suggests that the time of reform, at least as far as members opposite are concerned, is well and truly over.

The Prime Minister inherited a $20 billion surplus. He inherited more than $50 billion in various government funds. He inherited an economy that was the envy of the world. But, having mimicked John Howard and echoed his policy pre-election, since the election he has been on an ideological crusade to vilify the best Prime Minister since Menzies. I think the Australian people are looking for bravery and generosity in their leaders. They want our leaders to be brave in tackling our real problems and generous in acknowledging that no side has a monopoly of wisdom or merit and generous in being prepared to give credit where it is due. I regret to say that I fear that in the current Prime Minister we have a leader who is at once timid, smug and partisan: timid because he cannot make a decision that does not involve giving people just what they want; smug because he thinks that Australia’s economic strength owes everything to the last 18 months and nothing at all to the previous quarter of a century; and partisan because he has completely failed ever to acknowledge the strengths as well as the occasional mistakes of the previous government. I would like our Prime Minister to be better than that. I say it as a political opponent, but the Australian people deserve a Prime Minister who reflects our best instincts, not our worst, and we have not seen that on display from this Prime Minister.

Men and women of strong conviction can usually appreciate and understand the convictions of others even when they are different. Trashing other people’s beliefs, trashing other people’s achievements, is often a sign of someone who has few real convictions of his own. That, I fear, is the problem with our Prime Minister. The evidence suggests that he still has not worked out what his real political character is. He told the Financial Review that he was an old-fashioned Christian socialist; he told the Age that he was not and never had been a socialist. When he was running against John Howard he said that he was proud to be called an economic conservative. I am a conservative and I know conservatives: he ain’t a conservative. Now he says that he is a social democrat. The truth is he is not a socialist, he is not a conservative, he is not a social democrat and he is certainly not a reformer; he is a chameleon. That is what he is—a chameleon.

Opposition Member:

Opposition member—An iguana!

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don’t mention iguanas, please! The Australian people know what they want in a leader. They want someone who is fair dinkum and I ask the Prime Minister to be fair dinkum with the Australian people from this point forward.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am grateful for the opportunity that the opposition has given me to talk about the significant reform agenda that the government has. But I am a little surprised at the line of argument that the member for Warringah has brought to this topic because I for one was expecting him to put forward some reform agenda. What we actually had from him this afternoon when he finished was just a personal rant against the Prime Minister—a litany of personal abuse, which I was surprised about given the topic of the matter of public importance. More significant, I suppose, was the way in which the member for Warringah focused entirely on the past. He is not at all concerned about an agenda for the future. He defended Work Choices. He defended Peter Reith, no less, and John Howard and looked entirely to the past for things that he might justify. He looked entirely to the past, to Peter Reith and John Howard, for the ideas that he seems to support.

The other thing I thought, when I read the matter of public importance, was that maybe he was going to come in here and defend his own book but it seems he wants to defend some comments that were made by others at the launch of another book. Another possibility I thought of was that he might be coming in here to put forward his leadership credentials, but I certainly do not think he has demonstrated any of those today unless he thinks leadership is just about looking to the past and being full of personal abuse. I am not quite sure why their tactics committee would let him come here today and present a litany of what he might consider to be achievements by Reith and Howard and then just attack the current Prime Minister.

By contrast, I want to take this opportunity to go through in some detail the vigorous reform agenda that we are putting in place. I find it extraordinary that anyone would question the cracking pace of reform that our Prime Minister sets. I will limit my remarks to the areas in my own portfolio, where there is significant reform both already achieved and underway, but right across the government there is an extraordinary pace of reform. If there is one thing the Labor government is proud of, it is the reform that has introduced a fair system of workplace relations, a fair system of workplace relations that has got rid of Work Choices.

One of the things that have been so important to the Labor government, something I talked about in question time today, is the most significant reform to the pension system that has been delivered in the 100-year life of the age pension. From 20 September this year we are going to see 3.3 million pensioners receive an increase to their pension. These increases are long overdue and not a reform ever pursued by the previous government. Delivered within our short time in office, these pension reforms are going to mean a real and sustainable difference to age pensioners, carers, disability support pensioners, veterans—many, many people who have been waiting a long time for this pension rise.

We had to make some very tough decisions in coming to these increases and one of them was to increase the age pension age. The member for Warringah announced in his book—not that he mentioned it in the MPI debate today—that, even though he did not mention it all of the time that he was a minister in the previous government, he now thinks we should increase the age pension age more quickly and it should go up to a higher age. We of course will take a more considered approach to what was a difficult decision.

Another major reform that this government will deliver, which once again the previous government refused to do the whole time they were in office, is the first paid parental leave scheme in this country. The scheme will make sure that we do two things: encourage the participation of women in the workforce and, most importantly, give babies the best start in life. It is certainly going to be a very significant win for parents and babies and also an important win for the workforce. This is another item that has made it into the member for Warringah’s book. He apparently used to be opposed to paid parental leave, but somehow he has had a transformation. Now that he has the solitude of the opposition, he seems to embrace this idea—an idea that he was opposed to in government.

Another major area of reform for this government has been in the area of housing. My colleague the Minister for Housing, Minister Plibersek, is doing an outstanding job implementing a range of reforms, whether it is the encouragement of home ownership with the first home owners boost or the introduction of the National Rental Affordability Scheme, which is all about providing incentives to those who are building affordable rental housing. For the first time, we have seen real effort to address homelessness. It is an effort led by the Prime Minister and strongly supported by the Minister for Housing, making sure that we provide not only specialist housing for the homeless but all those specialist support services as well. We are providing the single largest investment in social housing ever made by an Australian government. Of course, when those opposite were in government they did not even have a housing minister, let alone make any of the reforms that this government has put in place.

Turning to the very important and long-neglected area of support for people with disabilities and the people who care for them, we are delivering increases in the pension to people with disabilities and to carers. We are delivering the highest ever level of indexation in the new National Disability Agreement. This is an area where we know we have a lot more to do, but with the states and territories we are pursuing a number of reforms to deliver new ways of making individualised care packages available to people and providing more supported accommodation to give peace of mind to older carers in particular. We on this side of the House are all very aware of the enthusiasm that Parliamentary Secretary Shorten has brought to this task. It was this government that ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and we are also improving building access standards. I have mentioned the improvements that we have made to the carer payment, and we introduced a permanent carer supplement—unlike the previous government, where carers had to depend on the whims of the Prime Minister. We have changed the eligibility criteria and assessment processes for carer payment (child).

One of the most significant reforms—yes, for a small group of people—is for a group of people who are caring for children with profound disabilities. This is not a reform that was delivered by the previous government. It is a reform that was delivered by this government after less than two years in office. There are going to be around 19,000 carers of profoundly disabled children under the age of 16 who are going to benefit from these new arrangements. It has been this government that, for the first time, has delivered a national child protection framework. It was never delivered by the previous government, but this government is about working with the states and territories and working with the non-government sector to do everything we can to protect our children. We have an agreement with the states and territories to develop national standards for out-of-home care. Just this week I announced new protocols to allow the sharing of information between Medicare and state and territory child protection authorities. We already have that operating between Centrelink and the state and territory child protection authorities. It was never delivered by those opposite.

When it comes to Indigenous reform, we have a very ambitious program. We have, of course, reframed the public debate. We acknowledged and apologised for the injustices of the past.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, I am hearing only mutterings about these very important issues from those opposite. We have set about resetting our relationships with Indigenous Australians and we have set ourselves very tough and measurable targets right across the board because we know how important it is to improve service delivery. We also know how important it is to reset our relationship. We have decided to overhaul the way we deliver services and infrastructure, especially in remote parts of Australia. Remote parts of Australia deserve the sorts of services and infrastructure that exist in similar sized country towns in other parts of Australia. We are delivering in the areas that are so critical to making sure that children have a safe place to grow up, investing $5.5 billion in remote Indigenous housing and making sure that when we do this we deliver it with secure tenure so that we protect assets and make sure that houses are properly maintained. These are difficult reforms that are so important to the future of Indigenous people.

There is a major reform program in health for Indigenous people. The minister at the table, Minister Snowdon, is helping to drive this to make sure that we prevent and better manage chronic disease and that we address the needs of hearing and vision impairment and dental health services, particularly for children. We are establishing 35 new child and family centres in areas of need, focusing on antenatal care, pre-pregnancy, teenage sexual health programs—the list goes on in health.

It is the same in education. We understand just how important it is to deliver early childhood education to all of our four-year-olds, particularly to Indigenous children in the most disadvantaged parts of Australia. This government has significantly expanded the Indigenous Employment Program. We have reformed the Community Development Employment Projects Program to make sure that we demonstrate that we can support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people getting decent pay for a decent day’s work, not getting second-rate pay.

We have understood how important it is to do the hard things about healing, uniting and restoring human dignity and cultural pride—working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on Indigenous languages, addressing the difficult task of bringing back Indigenous remains from overseas, and making sure that we develop a new voice with a new national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representative body. We are establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation with a strong focus on the unique needs of the stolen generations.

These are just a small number of the significant reform issues that this government is pursuing with vigour and determination, unlike the nasty attack that we saw from the member for Warringah, who seems to want to bring to this House today only an attitude of negativity. We have heard not one idea from the member for Warringah that would put him forward, in any way, as a future Leader of the Opposition—which, I must say, I thought must have been behind his putting such an extraordinary item forward as a matter of public importance. This government will continue to pursue our vigorous reform agenda. (Time expired)

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

Today I want to give credit where credit is due. While there is no doubt that one of the Labor Party’s great skills is its ability to create myths and rewrite history, exaggerating its achievements and ignoring its failings, I will not be so churlish as to claim that previous Labor governments have failed to undertake any significant reforms. It has been said that the character of a government, in terms of its reformist zeal, is established in its first couple of years. It is during this time that a new government has a bank of goodwill from the voters, and a good government takes that opportunity to make some hard decisions that may be unpopular in the short term but will bring long-term benefits to the nation.

For example, the Hawke Labor government made some important economic reforms during its early years, and those reforms were supported by the coalition because they were in the national interest. They were reforms such as floating the dollar, deregulation of the financial sector and tariff reductions. Senior coalition figures have, rightly, given Labor credit for those reforms many times over the years. In contrast, the Howard government faced constant opposition from Labor to its reform agenda. Labor voted against virtually every reform of the Howard government—not just in its early years but throughout its four terms—even when Labor knew that the reforms were in the national interest.

If one judges a government and its appetite for reform by its actions in its early years, consider the coalition reforms: gun control; the implementation of the GST, which not only reformed our tax system but placed state funding on a long-term sustainable footing; reform of the waterfront to make Australia more internationally competitive; and the tough decisions to cut spending that ultimately led to the repayment of all Commonwealth net debt. The coalition took tough and often unpopular decisions and thus established the reform credentials of the Howard government very early in its life.

I ask members to compare this with the current Labor government. Last year, former Labor leader Mark Latham described the first 100 days of this government as a ‘circus of symbolism’. He said:

If a government lacks policy substance early on, it is unlikely to achieve much later in its term.

Even Rudd’s strongest barrackers concede that he lacks an ambitious reform agenda. Nearly 18 months later, those observations are even more pertinent, because all this government has delivered has been relentless spin and myth-making in pursuit of a short-term, populist political agenda. It has delivered reactive measures that will leave this country burdened by the biggest debt, with the fastest and deepest budget turnaround from surplus to deficit in Australian modern history.

What significant reforms has this government undertaken in its first two years that will make a long-term and positive impact on the Australian economy? While members ponder that imponderable, let me read from a speech:

Policy innovation and evidence-based policy making is at the heart of being a reformist government.

Policy design and policy evaluation should be driven by analysis of all the available options, and not by ideology.

We’re interested in facts, not fads.

In fostering a culture of policy innovation, we should trial new approaches and policy options through small-scale pilot studies.

Who made these strong commitments to using evidence based policy and trials, small pilot programs and innovation? It was none other than the current Prime Minister, who was speaking to the heads of government agencies in April 2008.

Now let us examine how well this Labor government has lived up to these big, lofty and worthy ideals. Take Labor’s campaign promise of a national broadband network. Labor promised to spend $4.7 billion on a network but, after it hopelessly mismanaged the tender process, it scrapped it. Rather than admitting that it had made a mistake and going back to the drawing board, it announced a new proposal to spend $43 billion for a broadband plan. But there was no cost-benefit analysis, no economic modelling, no business plan, no consideration of likely take-up and no consultation with key stakeholders. It failed every single aspect of proper public policymaking as well as ignoring the very lecture that the Prime Minister had given to public servants on evidence based policy.

Another reform was to be in industrial relations. But, instead of continuing the Keating and Howard governments’ decisions to deregulate labour markets, this government has moved to reregulate labour markets in a way not seen in this country for many decades—and at a time when Australia needs to be much more competitive than ever in the global markets. This would have to be the first national government since Federation to reverse a major economic reform. The government is pushing this country off a cliff, because no-one in government has released data or done analysis to show what the impact of this reregulation will be. Will it destroy productivity? Will it destroy jobs—in what sectors of the economy and what parts of the country? But all the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations could point to was her divine intuition. She declared on the ABC last year:

We understand the economic effects of our industrial relations policy. We understood them on the day we released it last year.

Yet she refuses to share that understanding of the economic impact with the Australian people.

A third campaign was, of course, the Education Revolution. This same minister who did no economic modelling or analysis on the likely impact of turning the clock back 30 years in employment laws is now presiding over monumental waste and mismanagement in the school halls debacle. This minister committed almost $15 billion—now $17 billion—to the construction of school buildings without any cost-benefit analysis, with no consideration of whether schools wanted them or had other more pressing priorities and with no evidence that it would improve the learning environment or educational outcomes.

Reports abound of schools being forced to accept new halls, whether they wanted a hall or not; being given large grants for which they did not apply. We have had reports of schools saying that they do not know what they will do with the money, and schools marked for closure that received grants while other more needy schools have missed out. This waste, this mismanagement, this incompetence spells a lack of ministerial oversight, for which this minister is entirely responsible. No wonder the Auditor-General has had to step in. This is taxpayers’ money. This $15 billion, now $17 billion, debacle is taxpayers’ money. The Minister for Finance and Deregulation observed:

… when a government takes that tax dollar it has a very real responsibility to ensure it provides value in return.

This minister has no concept of value for money when it comes to the money the government takes off the Australian taxpayer. Last week the Secretary to the Treasury said:

Government spending that does not pass an appropriately defined cost-benefit test necessarily detracts from Australia’s wellbeing.

This government does not undertake cost-benefit analysis. This government does not undertake economic modelling. This government does not care that it is driving the country into an unsustainable level of debt from which it will not recover unless it raises taxes through the roof, which will also drive up interest rates, or—the old Labor standby—waits for the coalition to get back into government to pay off its debt and clean up the mess.

So let us stop this charade now. There is no education revolution. There has been no great education reform under this government. There has been no long-term reform. This government’s character has been exposed. This government is just like other Labor governments. It is a hollow government, populated by spin doctors from NSW Labor Right—which has so fundamentally failed the people of that state and now infects federal Labor. After almost two years, the character of this federal Labor government has been exposed—characterised by waste, mismanagement, an addiction to debt and an utter failure to embrace the economic reforms of governments of all persuasions over the last 30 years. (Time expired)

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Employment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to say that I could not believe it when I saw this MPI. I thought: accusing the Rudd government of not having an agenda is like accusing the Liberal Party of being united. Accusing this Rudd Labor government of not having a reform agenda is like accusing the National Party of believing in climate change. It is like accusing Kyle Sandilands of having tact. If there is one thing that this government have been criticised for over the last 18 months it is that we are doing so much and reforming so much. There are arguments from the media and elsewhere that we are trying to tackle too much at once.

I was surprised that the opposition consider that the matter of public importance that the Australian parliament should debate today is the history of the last 25 years. I would have thought that a recitation of history would be best placed somewhere else. What it shows is that the opposition have given up the policy debate and they just want to look backwards. Well, if you want to look backwards, if you want to have a look at the last 25 years, then let us have a look at Paul Kelly’s book. At page 266, he says:

The origins of the economic model that defined Australia’s long expansion from 1991 to 2008 belong with Hawke and Keating. John Howard did not create the model; he adapted the model. Its creation lay with Hawke and Keating in the post-1983 reform era and this creation is one of Labor’s epic monuments.

What Kelly is talking about there are things like universal superannuation, floating the dollar, deregulating the financial sector, competition policy and reducing tariffs.

To be fair, the Howard government did have its own reform agenda—though we did not agree with most of it. Kelly’s major criticism in his book is a criticism of the Howard government’s failure to tackle reform in its last term. At page 268 he says:

Howard’s most serious economic failure [was] his refusal to maximise the boom year revenues in the cause of long-run reform and productivity gains.

At page 4 he says:

Howard had failed to value sufficiently investment in education and in human capital; he had been too slow in responding to global warming and too reluctant to better coordinate infrastructure investment.

There are three things there: education, climate change and infrastructure investment. It was the failure of the Howard government to invest in skills and infrastructure that caused 10 interest rate rises in a row because of capacity constraints in the economy. And it was the failure of the Howard government to do anything about climate change and its overzealousness when it came to reform in workplace relations that were the reasons that it was ultimately thrown out. It is these three areas—education, climate change and infrastructure—which form the cornerstone of the reforming agenda of this government.

Let us take them in that order. First, climate change. This is one of the biggest reforms that any government will embark upon in the next decade. It is certainly the biggest issue that the 42nd Parliament of Australia has to grapple with. It has been developed over the last 18 months. And the opposition still do not have a position on it, not because they do not have a view but because they have 55 different views. I feel sorry, in a sense, for the Leader of the Opposition.

Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, no!

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Employment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, I do. He has a tougher job than Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations. It will be easier to get the countries of the world to agree on climate change than it will the Liberal party room. That is the problem that he has. They voted against the climate change legislation a couple of weeks ago because to do otherwise would have meant that the climate change sceptics would have attacked him in the party room and threatened his leadership. And they will vote for the same legislation when it comes back in a few months time because they are worried about a double dissolution. It has nothing to do with policy. It has nothing to do with long-term reform. It has nothing to do with the environment. It has nothing to do with the economy. It is all about saving the Leader of the Opposition.

Let us look at the second issue that Paul Kelly criticises the Howard government for, which is education. He says that the Howard government failed to invest sufficiently in education. Over the next four years this government will invest $62 billion in school education. That is double the amount that was spent on school education in the previous four years. Not just are we building infrastructure; we are building skills. And this is the key point here. This is what is going to drive the reform and drive productivity—the sort of productivity that Paul Kelly was talking about in his book. The sorts of things that I am talking about here are universal access to education, universal access to preschool for children aged four, 90 per cent of students finishing high school by 2015, halving the number of adults without a certificate III qualification or higher by 2020, increasing the number of 25- to 34-year-olds with a university degree to 40 per cent by 2025 and making sure that 20 per cent of university students come from poor or disadvantaged backgrounds by 2020. These are bold objectives and they are needed to reform the economy. They are needed to drive the sort of productivity that Paul Kelly talks about in his book.

The third issue of reform that he says the Howard government failed to deliver on was the coordination of infrastructure investment. How does what the Howard government did compare with what this government is doing? As soon as we came to office we appointed an infrastructure minister—the first time an infrastructure minister had been appointed. Within a few months we set up Infrastructure Australia, a new national body whose job it is to identify and implement projects that will benefit the whole Australian economy, not just a few marginal seats. And anyone who knows how the Australian economy operates knows just how important investment in our cities is. Seventy per cent of Australians live in our cities. They are responsible for about 80 per cent of economic development. But they were ignored by the Howard government. Cities are the engine room of our economy, which is why we are investing in infrastructure in our cities. That is why they form part of this government’s reform agenda.

How does all of that compare with the reform agenda that is being proposed by those opposite? We did not hear anything about that. We did not hear anything of that from the member for Warringah today. There was nothing on education, nothing on climate change and nothing on infrastructure. That is the great hypocrisy of this debate. We are apparently being criticised for not having a reform agenda when none exists on the other side. The only big reforms that the opposition have offered up are a tax on cigarettes and a discarded tax cut on fuel excise. Oh, and there is one more: a secret plan for a flat tax. Now, remember this one. Back in the eighties, Joh Bjelke-Petersen had this plan to become prime minister and he campaigned on a flat tax. And in the nineties we had Pauline Hanson here and she was campaigning for a flat tax. Now, in the 21st century, the Leader of the Opposition has a secret plan with a secret report, commissioned last year and due to be finalised at the end of last year by Henry Ergas, which includes a flat tax. The policy love child of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Pauline Hanson is alive and well and living in the bottom drawer of Malcolm Turnbull’s desk.

Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ugh!

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Employment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know it is a scary thought, member for Fowler, but we know it exists. We know that that is the only policy, the only reform agenda, that exists on the other side of the House—that plus an ongoing love affair with Work Choices.

Paul Kelly is right. The Howard government in its final term failed to reform, and now this opposition are frustrating this government’s efforts for reform. They failed to reform in the areas of education, infrastructure and climate change and now they are frustrating our attempts to reform. They are frustrating our attempts to implement a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. They are frustrating our attempts to implement the stimulus package and they are opposing the Education Revolution. All they have left is a love affair with Work Choices and a flat tax. Next time you bring an MPI to this chamber, before you bring an MPI about an apparent failure by the government to have a reform agenda, get one of your own.

John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Rudd government is very fond of reviews, white papers, green papers and committees, but the lack of a reform agenda can perhaps best be highlighted by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, who is fast gaining a reputation as a ‘gunna’. He is always gunna do something but never quite does so. The minister played an integral part in the Labor circus that masquerades as a government in our state of New South Wales. I am not surprised that, as a made man in the New South Wales right wing in the Labor Party, he has been distracted from implementing any sort of reform agenda in agriculture, fisheries and forestry—certainly no positive one. Prior to entering federal parliament, the minister was a member of the New South Wales Labor government, which is about as dodgy as a bucket of prawns after a week in the sun. Who would not wonder about the judgment of a person who owes their position to people like Joe Tripodi, Reba Meagher and Eddie Obeid.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a trifecta.

John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely: quite a trifecta. Agriculture, fisheries and forestry industries have been lumbered with a party hack from the New South Wales Labor government, and it shows. Having spent $6 million of taxpayers’ funds on just two extremely important areas within his portfolio responsibility, namely drought and quarantine and biosecurity, he has done nothing in over 12 months to implement the Beale recommendations. The $4.7 million Beale report into quarantine and biosecurity has been sitting on his desk since 30 September last year. It has been ignored and very deliberately ignored. The only recommendation enacted has been to axe the 40 per cent AQIS rebate on export inspections. This new tax will cost our exporters dearly. The Austrade submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport inquiry into the removal of the rebate leaves no-one in any doubt as to the stupidity of such an action. Austrade notes that the removal of the 40 per cent fee rebate on the AQIS export certification functions increases costs for Australian exporters and could adversely affect the competitiveness of many of our exporters and ultimately impact trade growth in established markets.

The government’s decision to return to full cost recovery for this service has the potential to significantly impact on the category of exporter and in particular may have an adverse effect on regional exports and business development. The only reform actually introduced by the minister other than to cut his department’s budget by 32 per cent in the last budget is costing jobs and will reduce our competitiveness and have an adverse effect on regional exports and business development. Only last week the minister was forced to admit that AQIS had misled a Senate committee and blamed a data entry mistake for the claim that 8.8 tonnes of hamburger beef had come from New Zealand not China. Another of his reforms. Another day, another review. Perhaps if the minister actually enacted the Beale review recommendation to spend an additional $260 million per annum on our quarantine and biosecurity services, instead of cutting nearly $40 million from the budget and cutting 125 jobs, his department would not make such basic, fundamental mistakes.

What about Senator Penny Wong’s idea of reform? Senator Wong, the Minister for Climate Change and Water, has all but declared war on communities in the Murray-Darling Basin. Her idea of basic reform is to take an axe to the livelihood of the two million people who live in the Murray-Darling Basin. The Oxley column in the Land last week said it all. In a visit to the western Riverina, Senator Wong:

…went one further than the usual political tricks for avoiding or ignoring unpleasant questions—she specified that all queries be supplied ahead of time for vetting, before deigning to offer scripted answers for those regarded as acceptable. Welcome to open and accountable democracy …

The minister for agriculture is obviously junior to Minister Wong and junior to the minister for the environment. His reform is to cut his budget. His reform is to ignore reports which sit on his desk.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Calare, who was formerly the honourable member for Parkes.

Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am always pleased to hear the opposition talk about reform agendas, particularly when the honourable member for Warringah acknowledges that it was only on the back of the reforms of the Hawke and Keating governments that the Howard government was able to make any changes—changes, I might add, that were driven by a vicious ideology. Whether it was the waterfront being invaded by men in balaclavas or attacking the Australian worker through Work Choices, it was overwhelmingly rejected by the Australian people at the last election.

The people of Australia want real reform now, not a rant and rave from an aspiring Liberal leader. Time and again the former Howard government, of which the honourable member for Warringah was a key member, failed to initiate reform or respond with reform They rested on their laurels. They built up a budget surplus and then they failed to do anything about it. The coalition failed to act in important areas like infrastructure, health care or education. The Australian people would like to know why.

It has taken the election of the Rudd Labor government to set the reform agenda in many portfolio areas. Families, housing, community services, Indigenous affairs and the voluntary sector needed action. I am pleased that I am a member of the Rudd Labor government because it is delivering for the people of Australia in these key portfolios as well as in other areas. The Rudd government does not just talk about reform as if it is an abstract concept. Reform for the better is physical and real, and impacts on the lives of every Australian.

One major area of reform has been pensions. We have responded to the concerns of older Australians by first having an inquiry and then swiftly following up the recommendations, bringing the largest reform to Australia’s pension system in 100 years. Where did the honourable member for Warringah stand on this issue? He was nowhere to be seen. The coalition want the Australian people to believe they are a party of reform. Like Saul converted on the road to Damascus, the honourable member for Warringah wants to appear to be a champion of reform. However, let the honourable member’s own words on 2GB in February of this year convict him. He said:

Many pensioners are doing it tough, but a $35 a week increase is an enormous hit on the revenue. We’re talking here about possibly $6 billion a year. The economic circumstances of Australia are much different now than they were 12 months ago.

The coalition have never been interested in pension reform. In reality, they cannot see beyond the bottom line. The coalition were not interested when they were in government nor are they in opposition, except when they attempt to mischievously create embarrassment for the government. Hence, the coalition’s botched attempt to prematurely introduce a pensions bill into the Senate, an appropriation bill that even a student-at-law would have known had to be initiated in the House of Representatives. The Leader of the Opposition is certainly no student-at-law.

The Liberal Party talk about reform but they do not carry out reform. On 20 September 2009, some 3.3 million age pensioners, disability carers, wife or widow pensioners and veteran income support recipients will receive an increase in their pension payments. Pensions are not the only area of reform on the government’s agenda. A cracking pace has been set on reform for: carers; paid parental leave for families; improving existing social housing and building new stock to prevent homelessness—unlike the former government, who did nothing for the homeless people of this country; improving the lives of Indigenous Australians with more and better housing; improving health outcomes; ensuring children receive an education; and improving access to better community and social services. Healthcare reform is a priority on the Rudd government’s agenda. The honourable member for Warringah need only pick up a newspaper, read a media release or visit a website, like millions of other Australians do, to see the reform agenda of this government. The Rudd government is all about reform—reform which will better the lives of the Australian people.