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

The Speaker has 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 failure of the Government to deliver on its 2007 election promises to Australian families.

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

It is a very long time indeed since a new government has been such a disappointment. Not for a generation has a new government come to power and so quickly and so utterly disillusioned the people who supported it. We do not change the government lightly in this country; for the people’s mandate to be withdrawn from one party and handed to another is a big thing. But this government, in a remarkable way, has entirely squandered the trust that the people reposed in it almost three years ago. Where now the glorious February 2008! What happened to that great dawn when bliss it was to be alive and a Labor member of parliament!

We had the ratification of Kyoto, that great moment that signalled the dawn of a new era! Now we have the dumping of the emissions trading scheme and the abandonment of that which was supposed to solve not just the problem but the ‘greatest moral challenge of our time’. Then we had the apology, an overdue and noble gesture reaching out to the first Australians. Now we have a government which is conniving to rip away Indigenous land rights on Cape York, despite the passage last night in the Senate of the private member’s bill to override the wild rivers legislation of Queensland.

16:14:28 I accept that it is not easy for new governments. New governments have inexperienced ministers trying to meet impossible expectations. I accept that the Howard government struggled in its first term, and was only just returned. In 1984 Prime Minister Hawke had an approval rating of 70 per cent and yet his government came close to losing that year’s election, perhaps because of complacency. But both of those governments had solid records of achievement. Those governments were both in their own way historic. Neither government put the preservation of a superficial popularity ahead of substantial achievement for the Australian people. In its first term, the Hawke government achieved historic reforms. It deregulated the financial market. It floated the Australian dollar. The Howard government, in its first term, achieved historic gun law reform. It built on former Prime Minister Keating’s industrial legislation. It reformed the waterfront and, most importantly, it began the task of fiscal reform on which the current economic strength of this country is founded.

What has this government achieved? We all know that it was a very subdued and very unhappy caucus meeting yesterday. We all know that the Prime Minister attempted to rally his troops by telling them to go out and sell the government’s achievements. What are those government achievements? First, there is a paid parental leave scheme that is a small step in the right direction but which is basically a rebadged baby bonus, and we have a National Broadband Network, better described as a nationalised broadband network, which will hardly be noticed by the Australian people for many years and which will add billions and billions of dollars to Australia’s unsustainable debt. Oh, yes—the other achievement was avoiding a recession. The avoidance of the recession, let us make it absolutely crystal clear, owes far more to the reforms of the previous government than it does to the spending spree of the current one.

So that is it. After three years, this government has turned a $20 billion surplus into a $57 billion deficit, it has turned a $60 billion net asset position into a $100 billion net debt position, and all it has to show for it is a rebadged baby bonus, an economic slowdown, ameliorated by other people’s work, and a National Broadband Network that will not be delivered for decades. This is a government which has failed. This is a government which promised not to means test the baby bonus, but has. It promised not to means test the private health insurance rebate, but it has tried to do just that. It promised us GroceryWatch—undelivered. It promised us Fuelwatch—undelivered. Doesn’t the Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law squirm at the table when he is reminded of his own personal failures? The government promised us 35 GP superclinics and has delivered three. It promised us 260 childcare centres and, having delivered some 20, has said 240 are no longer necessary. Of course with the greatest moral challenge of our time—not just any old problem but the greatest moral, economic, political and social challenge of our time, climate change—there is no policy. There is no policy whatsoever to deal with climate change.

Prior to the election the Prime Minister claimed he was the economic conservative, and he has become the greatest public wastrel in Australian political history. This is the economic conservative in opposition who has spent his time as Prime Minister attacking market fundamentalism, attacking 30 years of neoliberalism, and in fact rejecting the serious and beneficial reforms of more courageous and more substantial Labor predecessors. Broken promises are bad, but breaking promises is not all he has done. He has wasted taxpayers’ money in a way that is absolutely unforgivable. Now he wants to destroy our economic future with a great big new tax on mining, and that is tantamount to a political crime. A Prime Minister who has so misjudged a decision of this magnitude, a Prime Minister who has so mishandled due process in coming to a decision of this magnitude, is a Prime Minister who is no longer fit to govern this country.

Only a government with no shame would have kept its pink batts program going despite more than 20 official and formal warnings from government officials, from state governments and from professional bodies. The government went on, despite these warnings, to install 240,000 dodgy or dangerous insulations which, in their turn, caused more than 150 house fires, potentially electrified perhaps thousands of Australian roofs and, shame on shame, have been linked to four deaths. This is a Labor government—a Labor government indifferent to warnings that, had they been heeded, could have avoided the deaths of four workers.

Only a government with no sense of value for money would have wasted billions and billions on overpriced school halls. Anyone familiar with construction in this country could have gone to the Rawlinsons guide or the other standard industry guides and found out that the construction of a single-storey school building should have averaged $1,500 a square metre. But, no, that is not what this government has achieved. It gave money to independent schools, and of course independent schools managed to get the work done for $2,400 a square metre. But what did this government do with the vast bulk of the money? It gave it to the state education departments. In New South Wales, they have managed to achieve school hall construction at a price fully three times the industry average—$4,500 a square metre—but in some instances, particularly with the cubby-house size canteens in country schools, the cost has been $25,000 a square metre.

A government which cannot be trusted with public money is a government which cannot be trusted with re-election. Now, with $5.5 billion yet to spend, the government has appointed a value-for-money inquiry whose chairman has not even read the Auditor-General’s report and is proposing to spend the rest of the money before even getting that report, which will cost $14 million to produce. It is just not good enough, and now the government is targeting the most productive industry in our country with a penalty tax almost guaranteed to kill the mining boom stone dead.

Any government that thinks success should attract penalty rates of taxation and that regards a rate of return better than you can achieve by putting your money into the bank as being a super profit which should attract a super tax is a government which has no experience of how the real world works. But what should we expect from a Prime Minister who is a lifelong public sector employee, a Deputy Prime Minister who has rarely stepped outside the cabals of politics, except as a union lawyer, a Treasurer who is a lifelong party official and a finance minister who was a lifelong union official? I do not say that those are not worthy occupations in their own ways, but shouldn’t there be someone—just someone—in the decision-making counsels of this government who has some understanding of the economy on which every Australian’s prosperity depends?

Only a government with no understanding of how our economy works would think that the $53 billion of taxpayers’ money that we will be paying off for years should have been used to avoid two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Only a government with no understanding of how the real world works would think it makes sense to spend $43 billion recreating the Telecom of the 1960s without even a business plan. Only a government which is utterly bereft of any conception of due process would have told us that we were going to have root-and-branch tax reform and then not released the Henry review for months and then took just one of its 138 recommendations and distorted it, lied about it and told us that the government had achieved tax reform.

Let us be very clear about the great big new tax on mining. It is not what Ken Henry recommended. It is not going to pay for increases in superannuation. It is going to fund a lot more government spending as well as a hardly-to-be-noticed reduction in company tax. Nor is the great big new tax on mining going to build the infrastructure that Australia needs. All it is going to do is fund the continued spending spree of a government which is addicted to spending and, because it is addicted to spending, to taxation too. It is not good enough, and the Australian people deserve better.

The tragedy is that if this government is re-elected we will get more of the same, only worse. We will have a government which is all about politics and has no deep and abiding principles. We will have a government which puts its own political survival ahead of fundamental and necessary reform. We will have a government in the mood for vengeance on its critics. The Prime Minister said the other night to the mining industry, ‘We have a long memory.’ And that is exactly right. We know what the Prime Minister is threatening. We know the threats the Prime Minister is making behind closed doors to members of the mining industry, and that spirit of vengefulness seeped out last week in the Great Hall when he threatened people that he had a long memory.

We need to change the government because the alternative is different and better. I say to the Australian public: if you want to stop the boats, you have to change the government; if you want to stop the tax, you have to change the government; if you want to restore cabinet due process, you have to change the government. More and more people want to change the government because they do not want to see this government do any more damage. There is talk of risk from members opposite; the risk is that the Australian people might give this government the second chance that it certainly does not deserve.

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

What we have just heard comes from a Leader of the Opposition who says that economics is boring. The Leader of the Opposition used to work for Mr John Hewson, and Mr Hewson is well known for saying that this Leader of the Opposition is ‘essentially innumerate’—in other words, he cannot count. The previous Treasurer, Mr Costello, is well known for saying that you could not have Mr Abbott as the deputy leader because he does not understand economics. Yet this Leader of the Opposition has the audacity to come in here today and talk about risk.

This Leader of the Opposition presents enormous risk to the Australian people because he thinks that economics is boring, he cannot count and he has demonstrated today that he has not one policy that he is prepared to put up. He did not say one positive thing today in this matter of public importance debate, which is supposed to be about families. I do not think he even used the word ‘family’ in his whole 15-minute rave. It is extraordinary.

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

Mr Truss interjecting

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

I am so pleased that the Leader of the Nationals is at the table. It is extraordinary that, in this week when paid parental leave finally went through the parliament, we have no sharper or clearer example of the difference between the government and those opposite. We are the government who are delivering for families. For 12 years the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Nationals had the chance to deliver a paid parental leave scheme. We know that the Leader of the Opposition spent the whole time campaigning against it. He said that paid parental leave would only ever happen over his dead body. Well, thanks to this government, that wait is over and it is going to be low-income women who are the big winners as a result of the government’s paid parental leave scheme. The Leader of the Nationals would be pleased to know that that is especially going to be low-income women in regional areas. Just walk down the street of any country town. Think of the hairdressing shop, the food store, all the places where women are working as cashiers, food attendants. These are the women who are, at the moment, least likely to have paid parental leave and many of them would be part-time or casual workers working in a local small business. They are now going to get paid parental leave for the first time.

We know that the Leader of the Opposition does have one policy on paid parental leave, but we also know that he did not talk to his Nationals colleagues, including the Leader of the Nationals, before he made this announcement. We remember in February this year the Leader of the Opposition went out and said that there would be no new taxes. That is what the Leader of the Opposition said in February. Then along he came in March and announced that there would be a new tax on business of 1.7 per cent that will apparently pay for what can only be described as a sham paid parental leave scheme from this Leader of the Opposition. This new tax on business from the Leader of the Opposition, who a month earlier said there would be no new taxes on business, will drive up grocery prices for families. The Leader of the Nationals knows it is an unfair scheme that the Leader of the Opposition has dreamt up because it is going to see high-income earners in the city getting as much as $75,000 when they have a baby and much, much less for those low-income women in regional towns who earn a lot less. The Leader of the Nationals made this very clear on the radio last week when he owned up to the fact that he has told the Leader of the Opposition that he has some concerns about the size of the paid parental leave scheme. Plainly the Leader of the Nationals is not happy about the Leader of the Opposition’s approach.

We have heard a bit from the Leader of the Opposition today, preaching to us about broken promises. I have to say, coming from this Leader of the Opposition, it really is beyond belief. It is extraordinary. We all know that he has form on this matter. He had form in government, and now he also has form in opposition. I have just outlined the one on no new taxes and now he is up there proposing a new tax. All of us remember that when he was in government he said that he had a rock solid, ironclad guarantee that had to do with the Medicare safety net. Immediately after the 2004 election he broke that commitment. You would have to say that this Leader of the Opposition’s commitments in government and in opposition really only have the substance of fairy dust.

It was summarised most accurately by the Leader of the Opposition himself on The 7.30 Report. I do not think any of us will ever forget the memorable interview with Kerry O’Brien when the Leader of the Opposition said:

I know politicians are gonna be judged on everything they say, but sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth is those carefully prepared scripted remarks.

One thing that families know as a result of these comments from the Leader of the Opposition is they cannot trust anything that Mr Abbott says.

The Leader of the Opposition mentioned the baby bonus in his remarks. I want to draw families’ attention to the comments that he has made about the baby bonus, the commitments that the Leader of the Opposition has made in opposition about the baby bonus. This is a man who says one thing and then walks away and does another. If you look at the statements he has made, most recently the Leader of the Opposition has said on ABC Radio—this was in May, so not that long ago—that he would not be removing the baby bonus means test. He said:

Um, that’s not a commitment that I can make at this time.

Let us go back just a few months. This comment that he made in May follows repeated commitments that this Leader of the Opposition made to remove the means test on the baby bonus. This is him in the Sydney Morning Herald, quoted in December last year. He said:

Whacking the means test on was dead wrong. I’d like to see that means test come off.

He said it again in May this year, just before he went on the radio. He said this in response to a question from a journalist, who asked:

You believe the baby bonus should stay untouched?

Mr Abbott said:

I do, and it shouldn’t have been means tested the way the Government has.

It must have been one of those commitments he made in the heat of the moment; it must have been a heat-of-the-moment discussion because just a few weeks later we have had him ruling it out.

The shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey, has ruled out another one of the commitments that Mr Abbott tried to make. He tried to double the baby bonus, and I gather the Leader of the National Party wants to do that as well. Mr Abbott apparently went into shadow cabinet trying to get an agreement to double the baby bonus. He could not quite say yes or no when he was on radio. He said he could not rule things out and could not rule things in, so the shadow Treasurer had to go on the television and make it plain. I make it clear to the Leader of the Nationals that this is the current position of the opposition. The shadow Treasurer said, ‘No, we can’t take that latest idea into this election.’ How would families ever be able to believe anything that this opposition says?

I want to run through the other major achievements that this government has delivered for families. We have delivered Australia’s first Paid Parental Leave scheme. One of the most important achievements of this government was keeping Australians in jobs, because nothing is more important to a family than knowing that mum or dad or both are in a job and that they can therefore put food on the table for their families. It was this government that got rid of Work Choices to make sure that families have decent working conditions, and all of this we did in the face of the global financial crisis. This government is delivering tax cuts to all taxpayers, so important to families. This will include a doubling of the low-income tax offset. In 2010-11, a person earning $50,000 will pay $1,750 less tax than they did in 2007-08. It is this government that has delivered an increase in the childcare rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent to make sure that child care is more affordable for parents. That is delivered—it is in the pockets of parents—and we made sure that we pay the childcare rebate more frequently. It is this government that has delivered the Medicare Teen Dental Plan so that eligible teenagers get annual preventive dental checks, and more than 80,000 dental checks have been undertaken so far, delivered by this government. In the face of the global financial crisis, we delivered economic stimulus payments to two million families to fend off the impact of the global financial crisis, to help those families and also to help the economy. It is this government that has also delivered an education tax refund—up to $750 for a primary school child and $1,500 per high school child—to help with the costs of education. These things did not exist under the previous government. There was not an education tax refund. There was no Medicare Teen Dental Plan.

Just this week, as well, we have delivered very, very significant welfare reforms to fight passive welfare and to do everything we can to make sure that welfare is spent in the interests of children so that the essentials of food and clothing are provided by families. It is this government that has also delivered Australia’s first National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children. Never before has the Commonwealth provided the sort of leadership that is needed in the area of child protection. It is this government that has introduced learn or earn conditions for payment of family tax benefits for young people aged 16 and over.

I finish on the critical issue of housing. Those opposite, of course, did not even have a minister for housing. It is this government that has put in place the National Rental Affordability Scheme, to make sure that low- and middle-income renters have a better chance of affordable rental housing. It is this government that delivered during the global financial crisis the first home owner’s boost, helping over 250,000 Australians to buy their first home. It is this government that has put in place first home saver accounts to help people save for their first home. And, of course, there is the very, very significant increase in investment in social housing. We are also delivering the Housing Affordability Fund, to make sure that we are able to deliver savings to homebuyers through the improved planning and development reform. These are the extensive changes that we have put in place, all of it delivered by the government.

My final point has to be about what we did, which the previous government refused to do, for pensioners. Age pensioners, disability support pensioners and carers, who waited for 12 years, finally got an increase because of this government. (Time expired)

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

This is a very important matter of public importance—the government’s appalling record of broken promises—led by the Leader of the Opposition, a demonstration of its gravity. But where are those on the opposite side who made the decisions to respond to the charges of the Leader of the Opposition? Not one of the kitchen cabinet bothered to turn up to respond to the charges against them of having broken promise after promise of Labor’s election platform. All they could produce was a long forgotten former Deputy Leader of the Opposition, a person whose only capacity to contribute from a firsthand perspective to this debate is as one amongst the many who have broken election promises. She is amongst the many who have wasted taxpayers’ money. She is amongst the many who need to stand to account for their dismal performance and the failure of this government.

Let’s look at one of the government’s fundamental election promises. When in opposition the Labor Party promised to build 750 new houses for the Indigenous community, to refurbish 2½ thousand more and to rebuild 230 others by next year. Well, $180 million later, what have we got? Thirteen houses have been completed—$180 million gone and only 13 houses built. One hundred and fifty-five refurbishments have been undertaken, and none of them has met an acceptable standard. So this minister, the minister who was chosen to respond, is just as culpable as the others, but none of the senior ministers were prepared to even turn up to explain their appalling behaviour. If the Prime Minister and his chief of staff had spent as much time consulting with the mining industry and the community as they do in consulting with their Labor colleagues to save the Prime Minister’s own job, then this government might not be in the mess that it is. What an incredible mess it is.

This government came to power on the back of a campaign promising the Australian people everything from world peace to cheaper grocery prices. It promised trade training centres at every school, computers on every desk, fast broadband to the homes of 98 per cent of Australians—and all that simply has not been delivered. They are all broken promises. The government governs by decree rather than consultation and cooperation. It is a government that promises big, spends big and taxes big—but it is all talk and no action. There is no delivery. ‘Where has all this money gone?’ the people of Australia have every right to ask. For generations they will be paying it back, and what do they have to show for it? This is a scandal of international proportions. There is no government like this one for the way in which it has managed to destroy the birthright, to squander the birthright, and now leave to next generations substantial amounts of debt.

Last year the Prime Minister unveiled his $42 billion cash splash, and he was quite clear at that time that there would be no need for any new taxes to pay for it. He even also made it very clear that it was not a good idea to increase taxes. Let me quote the Prime Minister. He said:

We could try to keep the budget in surplus by raising taxes, but that would shift the burden of the global recession onto Australian businesses and taxpayers.

He was right then. Why isn’t he right now? Why isn’t he doing exactly the same thing now? He should have followed his own advice. Having designed his $13 billion a year Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme tax—which is just asleep on the back counter—what he is waiting for now is another great big new tax, this one on the mining industry, the very industry that has helped Australia through these difficult times. What is the logic of this government in putting a big new tax on the productive sector? The Prime Minister said, when he introduced the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, that that was a tax to encourage us to reduce our CO2 emissions. We had to have a new tax on cigarettes so we would smoke less. We had to have a new tax on alcopops so we would drink less. But, when it comes to a new tax on mining, that is supposed to make us mine more. What is the logic in this government’s explanation? It is simply beyond belief.

Let me convey to the Prime Minister a bit of advice from Sir Winston Churchill, who once said:

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

Can you envisage the kitchen cabinet jumping in the bucket and trying to lift it up by the handle? That is about the logic of the tired and tortured government that we have, trying to extricate itself from problems of its own making. Professor Warwick McKibbin, Reserve Bank of Australia board member and ANU academic, described this tax yesterday as ‘a really badly designed resource tax’. It has been an example of a government out of its depth, completely unable to address the issues of this country. And of course it is another broken promise, because the government said it believed in balancing budgets and it believed in being conservative. He was a fiscal conservative, the Prime Minister told us—but he has not delivered.

Then Professor McKibbin went on to talk about some other things, like the $43 billion National Broadband Network. He said it was ‘a gigantic white elephant waiting to happen’. The government has been trying to criticise the Nationals in particular for being critical of this scheme, saying that we were denying the country people of Australia access to fast-speed broadband. However, the government’s promise excludes two million people from rural Australia. Everyone who lives in a town of under 1,000 people will not even get it. They are second-class citizens. Labor is proposing a scheme for which they have no business plan. They have no idea how it is going to be built, but it is only for those people who live in the densely populated areas. So this government has no right to be critical of those on the other side in relation to the provision of high-speed broadband. It is, sadly, another example of Labor’s spin, deception and broken promises.

When the Prime Minister said in 2007 that he would turn back the boats, did anyone really think that he meant turning back the bulk coal carriers or the LNG tankers? Did anyone think he was going to operate a water taxi service where the asylum seekers arrived close to Australia then rang 131008 and expected the taxi service to come and pick them up? This is the government’s policy. Canada’s mining man of the year is also the people smuggler’s man of the year because he has opened the floodgates and, sadly, people are coming in from all over the world. When Kevin Rudd said he would put a school computer on every desk, did we really think he meant only every third desk? When he said he was an economic conservative, did we think he would deliver the biggest budget deficits in our nation’s history and then spend a whole lot of money on cash splashes that left us with little more than some plasma screens and overpriced school halls? This is the record of this government: consistently broken promises.

Let’s remember a few more, like 2,650 trade training centres in Australian schools. After two years, there was just one completed. Remember GroceryWatch? Thirteen million dollars wasted. Fuelwatch? Twenty-one million dollars wasted, and it has not happened. Let’s never forget their promise to spend $100 million to re-engineer the Menindee Lakes to save 200 billion litres of water a year from the Murray-Darling. Nothing has happened. There were going to be 500 new Australian Federal Police officers. There are only 100. They have also wound back the air marshals program and cut the AFP budget. Two hundred and sixty childcare centres were to be built in schools and TAFE colleges. Only 38 will be built. What about the promise to provide rainwater tanks to all of Australia’s 305 surf lifesaving clubs? Forty-five have been provided, and the program has been axed. What about the promise to close the gap on Indigenous disadvantage? The secondary report to parliament showed there was little or no progress. What about the promise to increase X-raying and inspections of containers from overseas ports? They have cut the Customs and the quarantine budgets.

If you want the ultimate example of Labor’s deception and dishonesty when it comes to the Australian people, it is the Prime Minister saying on 17 March 2008: ‘We will honour every promise made to the Australian people.’ That is another promise broken. They made one more promise only a couple of months ago: there will be no cash splash before the next election. Watch this space. That will be another broken promise on top of a litany of broken promises, which will be the legacy of this government to the people of Australia.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For the purpose of those people who are in the gallery and those who might be listening to this debate being broadcast, I would like to draw their attention to the fact that the terms of the matter of public importance put by the Leader of the Opposition are about the government’s record on Australian families. Neither the Leader of the Opposition nor the Leader of the National Party could even bring themselves to utter the word ‘family’ throughout the entirety of their contributions. They could not even talk about Australian families. That is just how out of touch they are.

Only a few short years ago in this chamber, the then Prime Minister John Howard sought to berate Australian families concerned about cost-of-living pressures. He made the now infamous comment: ‘Australian families have never been better off.’ I was here in the chamber when he said that, and I remember it well. He said it in the context of having introduced the most antifamily industrial relations system we have every seen, where penalty rates, capacity to refuse changed working hours and basic rights to protection from unfair dismissal were stripped away. He said it in the context of Tony Abbott having stripped a billion dollars out of the health system, which saw access to general practitioners become even harder, hospital and dental waiting lists blow out and private health insurance, which everyone was encouraged to take out, become more expensive. He said it in the context of having done nothing to try and address the issue of housing affordability. He said it in the context of having done nothing to try and make child care more affordable. In fact, the then government’s policies exacerbated the problem by allowing the childcare market to be concentrated into the hands of on operator, the now failed ABC. He said it in the context of having denied families the opportunity of a paid parental leave scheme. The now Leader of the Opposition, who was one of the prime blockers in the 12 years the coalition were in government, said, ‘Paid parental leave over his dead body.’

Now we have the Leader of the Opposition—who has been part of a government that saw Australian families go backwards and that sought to lecture Australian families on how they should be truly grateful for all they received from the benevolent Howard government—claiming in this place that he is some sort of friend of Australian families. I am proud of this government’s record when it comes to families. During the 2007 election we made a commitment to Australian families to deliver a fairer workplace relations system and a paid parental leave scheme. We promised to increase the childcare rebate to 50 per cent and also to increase access to kindergartens for every four-year-old. We promised to deliver tax cuts to families and to introduce an education tax rebate. We promised to improve maternal and child health services and to provide opportunities for lower income and first home buyers to enter the housing market. Finally, throughout the term of this government and particularly in the context of the global financial crisis that we never anticipated when were in election mode in 2007, we have worked to protect the jobs of ordinary working families during the global financial crisis. We have delivered on every single one of these promises.

Just one year after the election of the Rudd government, we honoured our election commitment to get rid of Work Choices. During the 2004 election, members opposite failed to mention to Australian families that they were introducing extreme Work Choices laws. Australian families told us these laws were not fair. They did not support families in their employment. They were archaic and they were wrong. With the Fair Work Bill we delivered on our commitment to rectify the attack that those opposite made on the jobs of Australian families. We now of course know that, at the very first opportunity, Tony Abbott will reintroduce his antifamily Work Choices legislation.

In addition to the abolition of Work Choices, we committed to go even further in supporting families in the workplace and at home, with the implementation of a paid parental leave scheme. I spoke in this House last month about how delighted I was to be part of a government that was delivering on its commitment to implement this scheme. The Paid Parental Leave scheme provides families with real choices about how they balance their work and family responsibilities. It takes pressure off particularly women to return to work too early after the birth of their child. And while the former government had more than a decade to introduce such a scheme to support families, they decided to sit on their hands and do nothing. The Rudd government’s Paid Parental Leave scheme passed through the parliament last Thursday and represents a real win for families. I am not convinced that the Leader of the Opposition’s road to Damascus conversion on Paid Parental Leave is a real one. It is clear the scheme does not have the support of all members of the Liberal Party and nor does it have the support of the National Party. It has been roundly criticised by business. in my view, it is a policy on the never-never.

We have supported families by increasing the childcare rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. Access to child care for children can be costly for parents and the government, through its measures, is trying to relieve these costs. We have recognised that parents want to provide the best possible start for their kids. That is why we have acted to provide 15 hours of early kindergarten education to all four-year-olds over the next five years.

In the budget we have implemented our promise of the third round of tax cuts for families. These tax cuts come into effect next Thursday and will be welcome news for many families around the country. This is the third round of tax cuts in the three years of this government. We have introduced the education tax rebate. Eligible families now have access to that refund, which provides up to $750 per primary school child and $1,500 per high school child to help with the costs of their education.

It was pleasing to hear yesterday Minister Roxon speak further on the government’s commitment to improve maternal and child health services. The government announced yesterday a new pregnancy, birth and baby helpline. The helpline will provide support to prospective parents, those who are pregnant and those who are new parents. There will be advice and support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to support families through this important time in their lives. This measure will make a real difference to new families. On top of this, the government is providing 24-hour support for breastfeeding services—something that was forgotten under the former government. In addition, we have introduced a perinatal depression support service to assist women during their pregnancy and during a child’s early life. And of course our expansion of Medicare rebates to midwifery services is making a real difference to parents today.

Housing affordability is another significant achievement of the government and is a significant concern for Australian families. Measures like our Housing Affordability Fund and the National Rental Affordability Scheme are assisting real families today by providing opportunities for lower income earners and first home buyers to enter the housing market. This is on top of our $5.6 billion Social Housing Initiative as part of our nation-building plan that is assisting families who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.

The Rudd government has delivered a fair workplace relations system and the Paid Parental Leave scheme in the midst of the global financial crisis. We have worked hard to combat the impact of this financial crisis. The government has acted decisively to protect jobs through its economic stimulus plan. While other advanced economies have experienced a recession, massive job losses and long-term budget deficits, Australia has avoided a recession, has created 225,000 jobs and will return the budget to surplus early. The measures that we have put in place have kept Australia’s unemployment at around half the rate of the United States and of Europe, but if we had listened to those opposite we would have seen around a quarter of a million people out of work.

I hear the members opposite actually laughing at the comments I am making. I find it absolutely extraordinary that those members opposite think that having half the rate of unemployment of the US and of Europe is something to be laughed about. I find it extraordinary that they fail to recognise that Australia has managed to do better than almost every other developed country in the world. We have managed to do better not by accident, not by mistake. We have managed to protect the jobs of ordinary working families because we acted decisively to address the global financial crisis. I find it extraordinary that those members opposite somehow think that having a lower unemployment rate is something to be laughed about.

These have been real decisions that have a real consequence for working families. The Rudd government understands the challenges faced by Australian families. One of the things I am very proud about that this government acted to do was to increase the base rate of the pension. It was an appalling circumstance that every year at budget time pensioners and carers had to wait to see whether they were going to be subject to government largess. Now they do not have to wait for that. The base rate of the pension is there now, in perpetuity, in every single budget going forward. People do not have to wait to see whether a benevolent government will be able to help them each budget time.

The Rudd Labor government understands the challenges faced by Australian families. Unlike the former Prime Minister, John Howard, we will not be heard using such hubristic terms as ‘Australian families have never been better off’. We know that there is a long way to go in helping Australian families, but we are very proud of the record that we have to date. We have delivered on a fairer workplace relations system, we have delivered on a national paid parental leave scheme and we have worked to protect jobs during the global financial crisis. We have delivered tax cuts and also assistance with child care and with education. The government has a proud record when it comes to families. We do know that there is more to be done, but I will back our record any time. (Time expired)

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

Much has been published recently about the apparent psychoses that are lurking deep within the recesses of the Prime Minister’s mind. Indeed, it has become a national pastime to analyse the disturbingly complex and erratic behaviour of this Prime Minister: his temper tantrums over trivial inconveniences; his propensity to profanity in the most inappropriate circumstances, clearly designed to offend all in earshot; his deep-seated anger; and his thirst for revenge on those who might disagree with him. But it is his compulsion to make grandiose announcements that he has no intention of fulfilling that really hurts the Australian people. Sure, it hurts his credibility, but this Prime Minister is damaging our economy and hurting Australian families.

The celebrated psychoanalyst Carl Jung once said—and, indeed, he could have had this Prime Minister in mind—that ‘the man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing’. Rarely, if ever, has anyone assumed the high office of Prime Minister with the high expectations of this Prime Minister—expectations built on his flimsy platform of grand rhetoric. The Prime Minister was everywhere as Leader of the Opposition before the election, promising to intervene in every aspect of society. He was promising to fix every social ill. In every aspect of the lives of Australian families, the Prime Minister would be there intervening. There was nothing that the government could not fix, nothing that would not have the Prime Minister’s magic wand of intervention waved over it and be fixed. We would have an education revolution with laptops for all. He would fix the public hospitals. He would decrease the waiting lists. Labor hailed this new Messiah who was going to take us to the Promised Land of milk and honey, where there would be lower petrol prices and lower grocery prices and all the state premiers would sit around with the Prime Minister singing Kumbayain Mandarin.

This nirvana has not come to be, but the Prime Minister went on. Not content with promising the undeliverable, he declared war. He declared war on binge drinking, he declared war on poker machines, he declared war on unemployment, he declared war on drugs—on doping in sport—and he declared war on inflation and on executive salaries. This was a man out of control. But the ultimate would have to be his statement that climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our age. He asked, he begged, he pleaded the Australian people to believe him. He truly believed that climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our age.

The Australian people are reasonable. They give a new government a fair go. That is borne out by history—there has only been one government voted out after one term. The honeymoon given to the Rudd government has been exceedingly generous. The trust the voters had in the Prime Minister to fulfil the promises he made was evidenced by his rise in the polls. But it is now clear that an increasing number of Australian people have come to the realisation that they were duped in 2007 by slick Labor marketing machines, backed by union scare campaigns, and a politician who sought to seduce the Australian people with his shiny new promises. The seducer has now betrayed the Australian people. The grand promises, the towering rhetoric, have turned to dust. This Prime Minister has failed to deliver on his promises to date, and there is little hope that he will ever deliver on any of his promises.

It is worth remembering that this was a Prime Minister who promised to govern as an economic conservative. He inherited a $20 billion budget surplus and turned it into a $57 billion deficit, one of the highest deficits on record—this from a Prime Minister who said he would keep a rein on spending. He promised to commit to evidence based policy making—and what a cruel hoax that has turned out to be. The hallmarks of the waste and reckless mismanagement would be the home insulation scheme, the school halls program, the rorts, rip-offs and reckless spending. That program now has the ignominy of being the most reckless spending program in Australian political history. What of his promise to turn aside the asylum-seeker boats? People smugglers now have our Navy on speed dial. We have a record number of boats coming to our shores—and the Prime Minister promised to turn the boats back. (Time expired)

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be speaking on this matter of public importance because no government has delivered better for families than this Rudd Labor government. We have seen, very interestingly, that this MPI today is about the failure of the government to deliver on its election promises for Australian families but the opposition has not mentioned families once. In fact, in his contribution the Leader of the Opposition was reminiscing about the early Howard years and talking about the great achievements of those years being gun control, industrial relations and economic reform. There was nothing about families, and that is because the Howard government achieved nothing for families. We have achieved more in three years for families than the previous government did in 12 years. What I took away from the Leader of the Opposition’s contribution was that he not only finds economics boring but he also finds families boring.

A lot of this debate has been about broken promises. I certainly remember a promise by the previous government that they would keep interest rates at record lows. Instead, what we saw were 10 interest rate rises in a row putting a huge strain on families at the same time that the previous Prime Minister was telling families they had never been better off. That was a significant broken promise by the previous government. But the broken promises did not stop at the broken promises for families by the previous government; they also begin with this Leader of the Opposition. As we famously know, it depends on whether something has been written down as to whether or not it is a promise or a broken promise or the gospel truth—it is hard to know with this Leader of the Opposition. We have seen a huge backflip from him: he said he would not introduce any new taxes and then, quite soon after, we saw the Tony Abbott big new tax on everything. If he were to be elected, bread would cost more, milk would cost more, and this would have a very big impact on Australian families.

We did not hear anything about families either from the Leader of the National Party or from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. That is because they have no coherent plan for families. They are erratic and cannot be trusted to deliver for Australian families. Instead, it is the Rudd Labor government that is getting on with delivering on its election promises and making sure that it is easing the cost of living for families.

I will point first of all to the tax cuts. There have been three sets of tax cuts over three years which have had a huge impact on many families. Our education tax refund has had a big impact on reducing the cost of education. We have heard a lot about school buildings, computers and trades training centres. In my electorate of Kingston, trades training centres are being delivered on the ground. Computers are being delivered into schools. What we do know is that if the Leader of the Opposition became Prime Minister, these important programs that help families and help kids get a good education would get an asterisk: ‘discontinue’. This would have a significant impact for many families who want to give their children the best start to life. Many families in my electorate cannot necessarily afford a laptop or high-tech technology, so their children need access to that at school.

Not only have we been delivering on the education tax refund; we have also invested in the area of health. We have seen GP superclinics right around the country. I was very pleased to be with the Parliamentary Secretary for Health in my electorate turning the first sod of the $25 million GP superclinic that will provide essential health care to families living in my electorate. Again, we know that the Leader of the Opposition is not interested in health and just wants to cut this very important program, along with many other health programs that we have heard health ministers talk about.

Most importantly, we know that the opposition opposed our intervention when there was a global financial crisis. They opposed our intervention to make sure that people had jobs in our community. They would have preferred the unemployment queues to get longer and longer, with families suffering without paid employment. It was this government that was decisive in acting and making sure that families had jobs—

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

Order! The time for the discussion has concluded.