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 failure of the Government to provide stable and competent government at a time of increased cost of living pressures for Australian households and 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

I again congratulate the Prime Minister on her accession to what would normally be regarded as the highest elected office in the country, even though she has not at this point been elected to the prime ministership. I also acknowledge the fact that she is in this chamber to respond in this matter of public importance debate. I am pleased that she is prepared to debate me today, but I note that just a couple of hours ago the debates that we have been having every Friday morning on the Today program were cancelled by the Prime Minister. It is very disappointing that the Prime Minister is denying the Australian people that opportunity to see a regular debate between the incumbent Prime Minster and the alternative Prime Minister of this country.

It is a historic day when there is change of Prime Minister in this country, but this has not been a clean change. This is not a change that has been brought about by the will of the people; this is a change that has been brought about by the will of the union and faction warlords. Other prime ministers, I regret to say, have been assassinated by their own parties. Former Prime Minister Hawke was brought down by the machinations of a disloyal party and former Prime Minister the late John Gordon was also brought down in an internal party coup. But what has happened in this parliament overnight is historic in the sense that this is the first time in the 109 years of the Commonwealth of Australia that a Prime Minister has been brought down by his own party in a first term of government.

This was a Prime Minister who until very recently had been the most popular politician in the history of Newspoll, and he has now been politically assassinated. He was not left by a loyal and grateful party to the judgment of the Australian people; he was assassinated because of a sleazy, shoddy factional deal that said that the replacement would serve the purposes of the factions and the unions better than the incumbent. I think that the reaction to this from the Australian people, which has been flooding into the offices of Labor members and been there for all to see on Labor Party websites, is one of dismay and disgust that the methods of the New South Wales Labor Party—the methods that have brought the once great state of New South Wales to such a sorry state—have now been translated to Canberra. The methods of the New South Wales Labor mafia have now been translated to Canberra.

The leader of this country has not been chosen by the Australian public, who elected the member for Griffith; the leader of his country has been chosen by the faceless men and backroom wheeler dealers of the Labor Party, particularly the assassins of Sussex Street. The midnight knock on the door, a feature of other countries and other political cultures, has now come to Canberra courtesy of the assassins of Sussex Street. This is modern Labor—leaders elected by the people but executed by the factional warlords. No wonder people are disillusioned with politics. And for what?

According to the incoming Prime Minister, the government had lost its way, yet she has not been able to offer us any serious or substantial change that will happen as a result of her prime ministership. In the speech that she will shortly make, I challenge the incoming Prime Minister to give us real examples of how the government will be different under her leadership. In what way will policy change? How will the boats be stopped? How will the mining industry be protected? How will the fires in the roofs of hundreds of Australian houses be guarded against? How will Australian families living in houses that have been so shoddily insulated by this government be protected? How will Australian schools get value for money from taxpayers’ money under this Prime Minister, given that they were so badly let down and betrayed by her when she was the Deputy Prime Minister? How is the government going to find its way, given that the only way that has been found so far is the incoming Prime Minister’s way to the Lodge? That is all that has changed today—the Deputy Prime Minister has found her way to the Lodge. The ideals, the courage and the commitment of the former Prime Minister and member for Griffith have all been killed by this Prime Minister just so that she could find her way to the Lodge. There was no difference of principle and there was no difference in policy. All the commitments that he had, good and bad, she has signed up to. The only difference is that nothing has been allowed to stand in her way—nothing has been allowed to obstruct her path to the Lodge.

The Australian people are not mugs; they understand politics. And what they understand is that this is the same government with the same policies, the same shabby ethos, telling the same fibs, using the same recycled rhetoric and engaging in the same meaningless negotiations. All that has changed is the face that will front the television cameras on a nightly basis. And the fine words that will no doubt slip from the lips of the new Prime Minister are all very well, but they cannot be allowed to cover up for what will undoubtedly be the same incompetent government. What the factional warlords and what the union bosses are hoping is that the government can get to an election and sneak past the defences of the Australian people before they wake up to the fact that nothing has really changed, because nothing has really changed as was abundantly clear in question time today.

The big issue, by far the biggest issue, is the mining tax, which is a dagger aimed at the heart of every Australian’s prosperity. The only thing that really counts is how much extra money is the government intending to gouge from the mining industry, and the one thing this new Prime Minister made crystal clear is this: it is the same old gouge, the same old tax grab for $12 billion in these forward estimates and hundreds of billions of dollars as the years unfold—the same addiction to taxation to feed the same addiction to spending. Nothing has really changed as a result of this change of Prime Minister.

And there is the same lack of understanding of the fundamentals of our economy. She does not understand, any more than her predecessor, that the mining industry is responsible for 50 per cent of our exports. It is how we pay our way in the world. And, if you cannot pay your way in the world, the whole of the economy is compromised. There may not be a mine in every electorate of this country, but almost every electorate in this country has a mining industry and every electorate, every neighbourhood, every shopping centre, every suburb, every town in this country is dependent upon the mining industry because, without the income that that industry generates, the economy of this country simply does not and cannot work.

What the new Prime Minister wants to do, just as surely as her predecessor, is to increase the rate of tax on mining from about the international average to the highest in the world. She wants to increase the rate of tax on mining from about 40 per cent to about 57 per cent. Sure, there will be plenty of words, there will be plenty of fiddles, but at heart it is the same great big new tax. It is the same dagger aimed at the heart of our prosperity. It is the same fundamental misunderstanding of what makes this country and this economy work. She thinks, just like her predecessor, that any rate of return greater than what can be achieved from leaving your money in the bank is a superprofit that should be subjected to a supertax. Just like her predecessor she wants to penalise economic success. Well, it is not good enough. As I said, the Australian public are not mugs and they will see through this PR exercise.

The new Prime Minister has been part of every dud decision that this government has made. Her decisions, as much as those of the former Prime Minister, have been responsible for turning a $20 billion surplus into a $57 billion deficit, turning a $60 billion net asset position into a $100 billion net debt position. She is just as guilty as her predecessor at the flow of boats because she, just as much as her predecessor, wanted to parade her compassion credentials rather than do what was necessary to maintain the border security of our country. Just as much as her predecessor, she is in denial about the tragedies that have taken place thanks to the government’s pink batts program—even today she lacked the decency to apologise to the families of those who have died as a result of the incompetence of this government.

She is personally responsible, more so than her predecessor, for the rip-off after rip-off which has taken place as part of her school halls program. Even now, if she were to demonstrate any skerrick of concern for the taxpayer, she would suspend the final $5.5 billion outlay under this program until she has received the value for money report. If she wants to demonstrate that she really is different, that she really might be a different Prime Minister to her predecessor, that she really has learned something from the agonies that her party has been put through as a result of her ambition and the work of her assassination squads overnight, if she really wants to demonstrate that something good will come out of this, why doesn’t she stand up in this parliament and say, ‘We will not spend that last $5.5 billion until at least I have Mr Orgill’s report.’

What she is doing now is absolutely patently obvious. She is trying to trick the mining industry into believing that things are different and she is suspending the $38 million worth of ineffective government ads in the hope that she will bluff the mining industry out of their campaign, but there is nothing real in it whatsoever until she also dumps from the budget the $12 billion worth of tax revenue that the tax in its existing form is supposed to raise.

You cannot trust this Prime Minister with money, you cannot trust this Prime Minister with the economy and, I regret to say, you cannot even trust this Prime Minister with the truth. She is still recycling the same—I do not want to say ‘lies’, but certainly untruths about members on this side. Let me remind the House: Work Choices is dead; when I was the minister for health there was a 16 per cent real increase in Commonwealth funding for hospitals. She protested her loyalty to the former Prime Minister time and time again and then betrayed him, just as she will protest her willingness to negotiate to the mining industry in the hope of getting through the election and then she will betray them.

Let me make it absolutely crystal clear. If you want to stop the boats, it is not good enough to change the leader; you have to change the government. If you want to stop the tax, it is not good enough to change the leader; you have to change the government. If you want to restore cabinet processes and truth in government, it is not enough to change the leader; you have to change the government. The only risk that this country faces is that this trick might persuade enough of the people that the government really has changed. It is the same government and we must get rid of it before it does any more damage to the future of our country.

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

I rise to speak in a matter of public importance debate that was filed by the opposition and was supposedly about the cost of living pressures for Australian households and families. How can the Leader of the Opposition be so out of touch that, even though those words are written on a piece of paper, the one thing he says absolutely nothing about is cost of living pressures on working families? Instead, he chose to pose a question about what is different and what is the same today after the events in this parliament. I will speak about the cost of living pressures on working families, but let me just for a moment respond to the question that the Leader of the Opposition has really raised in this parliament: what is different and what is the same?

The truth is that for the Leader of the Opposition there is much that is the same. He is the same man. He is the same man who sat around a Howard cabinet table and supported Work Choices and rejoiced in its outcomes. I clearly remember being in this parliament, sitting where the Deputy Leader of the Opposition sits now, looking over here at the current Leader of the Opposition, as they would come to the dispatch box and not just defend but rejoice in examples like Billy, the minimum wage worker who lost every award condition, including penalty rates, overtime and shift loadings—you name it. That was justified. That was okay. That was Work Choices. The Leader of the Opposition is the same man who used to come to the dispatch box and say that Work Choices was good for working families, as the statistics flooded in about how young workers were being ripped off and about how women workers were being ripped off—statistics that are undeniable. It is not that the Leader of the Opposition did not know these things. I do not allege incompetence. He knew every fact; he knew every statistic; he knew the detail of every rip-off. He had the same dataset available to him as was available to us and the Australian people—and he still defended it as good.

When we on this side of the House said it was unacceptable for working families to face that kind of insecurity and indignity at work, he said it was fine. When working Australians in their workplaces came to the conclusion it was unfair and joined the Your Rights at Work campaign, he said it was fine. When the trade union movement of this country identified individual workers who had lost their rights, he said that was fine. Whilst the Leader of the Opposition poses the question—what is the same and what is different?—what is the same is his absolute commitment to Work Choices. When he sat here and defended Work Choices he told the truth. He believes in it; he is committed to it; he thought it was the right way for Australia.

The Leader of the Opposition says that he hopes there will be debates between him and me, and as we lead up to the election there most certainly will be in many, many contexts. In those debates what I would suggest the Leader of the Opposition really does is have the fortitude to present and argue for the things he really believes in. He says he is a conviction politician. Well, let’s stump up. Let’s have a red-hot go. Let’s put before the nation the real choice—the choice he believes in, Work Choices, versus the choice I believe in, Fair Work. Let’s be conviction politicians. Let’s follow those convictions. Let’s debate them long and loud right around this country. I am happy to do it. I am happy to wear my convictions on my sleeve. The one thing I ask the Leader of the Opposition to do is to have the fortitude and the guts to wear his convictions on his sleeve—and his conviction is Work Choices.

The Leader of the Opposition poses the question: what is the same and what is different? The Leader of the Opposition is the same man who took $1 billion out of our hospitals. It just seems to me truly remarkable that a man who is so keen to find fault in others and who has presented himself to the Australian people in the guise of a plain-speaking conviction politician resorts to graphs and figures and statistics about growth compared with what it could have been, or should have been or was going to be, to try to explain this $1 billion cutback. The Leader of the Opposition is a man of conviction, as he says he is and as he wants to be perceived. Why doesn’t he just front out a debate that says: ‘Yep, I took a billion dollars out of health care. I did it because I thought it was right and I would do it again given the opportunity.’ Why doesn’t he front out that debate? Why doesn’t he wear his convictions on his sleeve?

Again there is the question: what is the same and what is different? There are other things that are the same about this Leader of the Opposition. I have been opposed to him before in this parliament in many guises, including as shadow minister for health and as Manager of Opposition Business. We are back where we have been. It is a remarkable serendipity that brings us to this point, him and me, back debating as we have over so many years.

15:59:25 Let me say to the Leader of the Opposition: on the questions in the debates of the past—on the questions he seeks to raise about political honesty and being forthright—does he recall going to an election giving a rock-solid, ironclad guarantee and then taking it away? Then, after the election, having promised the Australian people that the Medicare safety net would not be cut back, he said, ‘I got rolled at Expenditure Review Committee’ or ‘Peter Costello didn’t like me’ or some mumbo jumbo. He said, by way of explanation to Laurie Oakes: ‘It’s okay, because I did consider resigning. I didn’t resign, but I did have one dark night of the soul, and surely that’s enough to square up a promise smashed as well as that one was smashed—a promise as big as that one was.’ That is the track record on honesty of this Leader of the Opposition.

Why does the Leader of the Opposition not actually own that? Why does he not go out to the Australian population and say: ‘I want to have a debate about political honesty. This is my track record; I own it and I stand for it.’ With all of this affectation to conviction, the real question in front of the Australian people from today is: who stands by their convictions, who lives by them, and who is the phoney? That is the real question before the Australian people today.

On the question of conviction, let me say to the Leader of the Opposition that I have a conviction about serving the interests of working families. I have been in the Labor Party all of my adult life because I believe in some things that I will never let go. I believe in working hard. I believe it is appropriate to work hard—to give of  your all—and I believe fundamentally in the power and the dignity of work. I believe that there is nothing more self-destructive for an individual—for their self-perception, for their perception of their role in a community and for their sense of self-worth—than to be excluded from the benefits and the dignity of work. That is why I have been driven, as a member of this government, by a conviction that if we can do things to ensure, during bad economic times, that people have the benefits and the dignity of work then we should do them. Not everything has gone right. I freely and absolutely concede that. I expect that the Leader of the Opposition will make much use of that between now and election day, but I stand by this. It is the right thing to do if you can extend the benefits and the dignity of work to working Australians to do just that. And we did.

The other conviction by which I have lived and which is the explanation of my own life is the constructive power of education. I am here as a result of great schooling. I have lived a different life from that of my father and my mother because of the power of education—education provided versus education denied. The truth is that in this country today there are kids who effectively still experience education denied. If we have the ability to change that—and it is not easy—then we should. What drives the Building the Education Revolution and what drives my passion for and commitment to education each and every day is that delivering on this nation’s promise as the nation of a fair go requires us to look at and say to each other in honesty that every child has the benefit of a great education provided and no child is held back because a great education has been denied.

I say also to the Leader of the Opposition that I, obviously, opposed him as shadow minister for health. I do not claim the great intellectual depth and fortitude of the current Minister for Health and Ageing. She is far better than I ever was with the details, the understanding, the depths and the dimension of the portfolio. She is truly remarkable. What I take from those days as shadow minister for health is that it is so important for people to know that the healthcare system is going to be there for them when they need it. That is not an easy thing in an era of an ageing community. It is not an easy thing in an age of increasingly sophisticated and expensive technologies. It is not an easy thing in a vast continent like this one, but it is a task that we are building on and working towards. Benefits have already been delivered and we are absolutely determined to deliver more. That stands in contrast to the Leader of the Opposition’s measly record as health minister. Will anybody ever bother to write the book about the Tony Abbott era of reform? The answer to that is no, but I warrant that in five, 10 or 15 years time they will be writing books about the Nicola Roxon era of reform in health.

On the question of cost-of-living pressures on working families, we have taken action to support our economy during difficult economic days. We did what had to be done in order to keep Australians in work, and we were opposed every step of the way by this Leader of the Opposition. Our efforts have obviously been rewarded in the sense that we have kept Australians in work and our unemployment rate is at 5.2 per cent, but there are families out there doing it tough. The Leader of the Opposition is so out of touch with cost-of-living pressures that he wrote down the term ‘cost of living’ on his MPI and forgot to use it. I say to the Leader of the Opposition that we want to work with working families to help them manage those cost-of-living pressures. That is what the tax cuts on 1 July are about. That is what our childcare tax rebate reforms are all about—taking the amount of that tax rebate to 50 per cent. That is what our education tax rebate is about—helping with the costs of educating kids at school.

I conclude by saying to the Leader of the Opposition that when I walked into the chamber today for the first time as Prime Minister I shook his hand and said, ‘Game on.’ I mean it.

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

Today is a historic day, as many commentators will contend. This is a historic day as the backroom operators and the union heavyweights of the Labor Party have achieved their goal of taking control of the Labor Party and installing one of their own as the Prime Minister, a person who is now beholden to their interests. This was a day of betrayal and naked ambition, a day that an elected Australian Prime Minister was brutally assassinated before he was able to complete his first term in office.

What a destabilising few months this Labor government has put the country through, with the then Deputy Prime Minister professing undying loyalty to her leader but all the time preparing to do the union bosses’ bidding. Thankfully, it is not often that the Australian public gets an insight into the ugly internal politics of the Labor machine, but today it was exposed in all its shocking glory. The union bosses decided that the elected Prime Minister would no longer serve their interests, so they installed their own Prime Minister. There is no place in the Labor Party for the national interest. Regardless of how many times the carefully scripted lines are repeated, ‘whatever it takes’ is the Labor way.

Labor shot the messenger but, sadly, for Australian families and the Australian people Labor’s message will remain the same. It is clear, as my leader said, that the ugly politics of state Labor have now come to Canberra. This poll driven party knifes its leaders rather than face the judgment of the Australian people. If history is any guide, the new Prime Minister needs to turn the polls around immediately and significantly or she will have to look over her shoulder for the inevitable knives from the backroom boys—the union bosses.

It is interesting to read the feedback from Labor’s very own website. I managed to print off just 25 pages, but there were hundreds of emails in just under an hour from people expressing their outrage that the union bosses have taken over the Labor Party and thrown out—assassinated—an elected Labor leader. People are giving their names, addresses and email addresses. One email from Queensland said:

What a bunch of cowards to slit the throat of an honest, hard-working Prime Minister just because things get tough.

Another email from Victoria said:

A very shameful day for Australian politics. The appointment of Australia’s first woman Prime Minister should have been a memorable and forward-looking occasion, not a backstabbing of the man elected by the Australian people.

Another email, again from Queensland, said:

Until last year, I was constantly disappointed that I wasn’t old enough to vote Labor. This year, with my first election, I am able to vote in this looming election and I was excited at being able to support Kevin Rudd and its honest Australian policies. Today I became a Liberal.

It goes on. This next one is again from Queensland and it reads:

I am so sad today I have actually resigned from the Labor Party. The first female Prime Minister is a great achievement if it had been obtained through an election and Julia Gillard would have had my support. Kevin Rudd did what he believed was the right thing for Australia. He’s been bullied out by his own party. It is a disgrace he was not allowed to face an election.

But that is the Labor Party. The losers from Labor’s brutal and damaging process will be the Australian people, for the change of leader does not change Labor’s policies. It does not change the mining supertax, which is causing so much damage to Australia and which will drive up the cost of electricity and the cost of building materials, cost jobs, hurt small businesses and hurt family businesses. The new Prime Minister has decided to retain the tax in all its damaging glory and has continued the same flawed rhetoric of her predecessor in claiming that mining companies have been ripping off the Australian people. This is about funding Labor’s continuing spending splurges.

The grand gesture of cancelling the government funded advertising campaign was a decision based on the fact that the advertising was not working. The Australian people had seen through it. What courage the new Prime Minister demonstrates in cancelling advertising that was actually hurting the government! This is the brave new Labor world under this Prime Minister. She lacks the courage to make the decision that must be made and that is to scrap the mining tax. We know the Labor way. Graham Richardson told us the Labor way: consult, consult, consult, negotiate, negotiate, negotiate and then do exactly what you intended to do in the first place. That is the Labor way.

The new Prime Minister has also sought to claim the moral high ground on the question of asylum seekers but has exposed her rank hypocrisy and her fake moral outrage. How does she reconcile her statements today with her infamous media release of April 2003, when the now Prime Minister described every boat of asylum seekers as a policy failure—the screaming, scare-mongering headline ‘Another boat on the way, another policy failure’? That was a year when only one asylum-seeker boat came to our shores, because the Howard government’s policies had stopped the people-smuggling trade. Yet the now Prime Minister could not resist the fear mongering—‘Another boat on the way, another policy failure’ she said in 2003. Yet, having promised in opposition to stop the boats, this government changed its policies, changed the laws, weakened our border protection and damaged the integrity of our orderly immigration program. The people-smuggling trade was reinvigorated under the gang of four and 140 boats have made the dangerous journey across the dangerous Indian Ocean to our shores. So, according to this Prime Minister, 140 boats means 140 Labor government failures—140 policy failures by this Labor government.

But the defining features of the Labor government have been waste, mismanagement and absolute disregard for evidence based policy. Among the numerous examples of ludicrous, staggering waste and mismanagement, the standout would have to be the Building the Education Revolution and that is a program for which this Prime Minister was personally and directly responsible. This Prime Minister will have the ignominy of being the minister responsible for the most wasteful spending in any federal government program in federal government history.

This was fundamentally flawed from its needlessly rushed inception and yet the now Prime Minister stuck her head in the sand and refused to take ministerial responsibility for billions and billions of dollars of taxpayers’ funds being wasted. It began as a $14.7 billion program to provide libraries and halls for schools, but it blew out by over $1½ billion. In a competent government, a minister who was responsible for a $1½ billion blow-out would have been sacked, but in this government incompetence is rewarded. The Prime Minister justified it at the time by saying, ‘It’s hugely popular. It’s a runaway success.’ But we now know that the Prime Minister was covering up the huge rorts, the rip-offs, the incompetent management and the massive waste. It has been estimated that taxpayers and schools will probably get less than $8 billion in actual value from an over $16 billion program. That is a disgrace. The Prime Minister admitted that there was no cost-benefit analysis undertaken to look at whether this program would be effective or have any long-term benefit, and no consideration was given by this Prime Minister as to whether this massive expenditure would have any impact on the quality of teaching and education or whether it would lift educational standards.

Another defining, stand-out policy that has been an absolute disgrace is the $2½ billion Home Insulation Program. It has been nothing short of disastrous. This government is incapable of implementing a government program. There have been four deaths and more than 170 house fires, and 240,000 homes have substandard or dangerous insulation. But it should not escape anyone’s attention that this Prime Minister was the senior minister responsible for the training component of this disastrous pink batts scheme. The government has to find hundreds of millions of dollars to fix this scheme, but this Prime Minister was responsible for the training component that failed young people in Australia so disgracefully. It was this Prime Minister’s responsibility to ensure that a proper training program was put in place. She failed the Australian people, as this Prime Minister has failed the Australian people with her record over the last two years.

We can list the blow-out in the school halls program, the dumping of her commitment to build childcare centres, the dumping of the computers in schools program and the promises there, and the delivery of only a couple of trade training centres out of the 2,650 promised. Given this pattern of failure, why would Australia trust this Prime Minister? (Time expired)

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

I welcome the opportunity to talk in this matters of public importance debate about competent government and cost-of-living pressures. We have had yet another demonstration from the Leader of the Opposition of what a risk he would be to our national economy should he come to be on the government benches. He revealed yet again his complete ignorance of economics. As Peter Costello said, the Leader of the Opposition is bored by economics—and didn’t it show in those comments we heard earlier. As the Prime Minister pointed out, this is supposed to be an MPI about cost-of-living pressures. Not once in his 15-minute contribution did the Leader of the Opposition talk about one cost-of-living pressure.

Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He’s out of touch.

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

I am not surprised about that because, yes, he is out of touch. I have a vivid memory from shortly after we were elected to government, early in 2008. He had been in hibernation for some time, although he was on the front bench. His most significant early remark as an opposition frontbencher was to complain that because he no longer had a ministerial salary and was only on an MP’s salary he could not afford to live. That demonstrates just how out of touch he is. He is completely out of touch. That was demonstrated by the complete absence of any discussion about what life is like around the kitchen table, what are the policy issues that impact on the cost of living—nothing, because he does not have a clue about what life is like around the kitchen table for an average Australian family. He would not have a clue about what it was like out in Penrith or down in Tasmania or up in Dobell or over in Petrie. He simply would not have a clue, living as he does, and has done for all of his life, in the leafy North Shore of Sydney. It is pretty good if you can get it. It is a great place to be and to go to, but most Australians do not live like that, do not earn the those salaries and do not live in those suburbs. They live right across the country, on modest incomes, trying to get by.

The hide of him to come in here and talk as if the Liberal Party care about jobs! It would make a cat laugh! People on this side of the House remember vividly what happened in this House back in February 2008 when we were trying to get the second stimulus package through this parliament. It was rejected and fought against tooth and nail by every one of the Liberal and National Party members who sit opposite. This is the package that saved Australia. It was rejected in the Senate on the first run through, then it went back up and finally it went through. But I vividly remember the night we were here debating it. It was about four or five o’clock in the morning and they were still fighting it. They were saying things like, ‘It won’t create a single job.’

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s right: not one.

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

Not one single job. They did not care about employment then and they do not care about it now. Nor do they have any understanding of what must be done in the uncertain international environment to support our small businesses and to broaden the economy. Not only that, they have little knowledge of what we must do as we go forward to reform and strengthen the economy. They have no knowledge about any of that.

I would have to check this—I think my memory is pretty correct—but I do not think that the Leader of the Opposition even spoke in that debate. At the time he was the opposition spokesman on family and community services but he could not come into the parliament to debate one of the most significant economic initiatives in the history of this country.

David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was in the dining room!

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

I have just been reminded and, in fact, it is coming back to me now. He was actually in the dining room with two other people, the former Treasurer and who was the third? I cannot remember who the third was.

David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Andrews.

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

Andrews, that is right! They were up in the dining room having a few drinks while we were down here debating the future of employment in Australia. They only bothered to walk into the House, in a dishevelled state, when the vote was on. So much for their concern for employment!

Because we acted, because we are competent, because we are concerned about employment, because we understand economics and because we knew the threat that was coming from elsewhere in the world, where is Australia today? Australia today is one of the strongest advanced economies in the world. It is one of the strongest developed economies, which is celebrated by everybody on this side of the House. And what does it mean? It means low unemployment. What is absolutely critical to coping with the cost of living, to making ends meet and to educating your children and getting health care and housing is a decent job.

Where are we in Australia today? As I said, our economy is one of the strongest in the developed world. Our unemployment rate is 5.2 per cent, but it is in double digits right across Europe and just around nine-plus in the United States. We are creating jobs while the rest of the world has been losing jobs. In fact, we have created something like 280,000 jobs in the past year—something everyone in this House is going to be proud of for a long time. When the economic history of this country is written in the fullness of time it will say that the decision to put in place that stimulus package was absolutely critical. It is not just for jobs but also for business and for small business to keep their doors open. And it is still keeping the doors of tens of thousands of small businesses open right around this country in projects which are denigrated in this House day after day by those people who are sitting opposite.

They said it would not create a single job. I will never forget Malcolm Turnbull at the Press Club who said it would never create a job. They may have those views, but there is a lot of support for what Australia did, which is recognised as being first class. This is what a number of people had to say about it. The Governor of the Reserve Bank said stimulus had, ‘worked a treat’. The Governor of the Reserve Bank does not make those comments lightly. The OECD said:

… in no small part shielded businesses and citizens from the initial damaging impacts of the global recession.

The chief economist at Deutsche Bank said, ‘The absolute reliance of the Australian economy on policy stimulus since the second half of 2008 has been absolutely critical.’ The evidence is in. This government has a fine record in supporting employment, in supporting small business, in underpinning confidence and in understanding the nature of the threats that this country faced in the past and faces as we go forward. Of course, we have done all that and we have come out the other end with the lowest deficit and the lowest debt of any advanced economy.

I listened very closely to the Leader of the Opposition. He did not once in his critique of everything that had gone wrong even acknowledge that there has been a global financial crisis let alone a global recession. It simply passed him by. Well, I suppose it might if you lived where he lives. It may well have passed you by. But I tell you what, it did not pass by Australians the length and breadth of this country. They knew what the challenge was and they got behind it and so did so many of the employers in this country.

We on this side of the House understand the future challenges as well. We understand we are going to be in the Asian century. We understand that there are great opportunities coming for this country and we do need to reform our economy. We also understand that there are many people who are not doing as well even in an economy which is in as good shape as ours is compared to everybody else.

Not everybody is sharing in that and that is why we have continued with our tax cuts. The third lot are coming through next week. They are modest tax cuts but because we understand that many people around the kitchen table are doing it tough we introduced the education tax rebate. When you are trying to send your kids back to school it is a difficult time of year. It is a bit of extra cash to help you get by when all the bills come in after Christmas, when the kids are going back to school and you have to get the uniforms, and when the credit card bills are coming in. The education tax rebate is a big help for those people. Do we ever hear mentioned by those opposite what we have done in terms of child care? All of these things are vitally important because we understand cost-of-living pressures.

Then there is what we did with the age pension. It was something they could not find the whit to do in over 12 years despite the fact that it was raining gold bars at the time they were in government. They could not find time for pensioners below the poverty line. They did not care. They did not give a toss. They just simply do not understand the cost-of-living pressures facing families. That is why they are such extremists when it comes to Work Choices; they simply do not get it. (Time expired)

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

I begin by congratulating the Prime Minister on her election. While we will be working as hard as we possibly can to make her term as short as possible, the reality is she has been given the great honour of a being a prime minister of this country, and I am sure that she will treasure this day.

Even in amongst her own celebrations she must be feeling a bit uncomfortable in her stomach about the way in which she got where she is. She is there as Prime Minister today because of the intervention of the New South Wales Labor mafia. If you are relying on the mafia, the faction bosses, the union thugs and the factional warlords to keep you in office, one day they will knock on your door too. One day it will happen to this Prime Minister as well. Just as the New South Wales thugs and factional warlords came across from Sydney to mount a coup in the national capital, one day they will come again and this Prime Minister will face a similar fate.

This is the kind of behaviour you might expect in a Third World dictatorship where people unelected, union bosses and factional thugs, think that they can override the decision of the Australian people, ignore our democratic processes and put in place somebody of their choice to be Prime Minister. These people, still with blood on their hands from the last political execution in New South Wales, came across to do the same thing in the national capital. And their people quickly got behind their factional leaders and knocked on the Prime Minister’s door and within hours he was gone.

Just as a succession of New South Wales premiers are simply there as puppets of the factional leaders, this Prime Minister is simply a puppet of the New South Wales Labor machine. When they are sick of this Prime Minister—when the merry-go-round does another turn—they will be over again to knock on the door and to say, ‘Your time is up.’ Wasn’t it disgraceful to see on television last night the gloating Paul Howes. Who was he? No-one had even heard of him. He was not elected by the Australian people to the parliament. But he was gloating on television about how he was deposing the Prime Minister and he went on about class warfare and the like. He said there was nothing wrong with the way Labor was governing. If that is the case, why was he so determined to get rid of the Prime Minister? In fact, a lot is wrong with Labor in government. Higher electricity and food prices mean real costs to the Australian people. The debt and slashed services will be an additional burden for future generations of Australians. And, of course, the decline in hospitals and health care and other services is simply a national disgrace in a country with the potential of Australia. Labor it is that is now the problem, as it has always been. No matter who the leader is, it is the same lemon: a new face but still bad policy.

The Labor faceless men who wanted the emissions trading scheme and then wanted it dumped now seem to want it back. The only climate that these powerbrokers care about is the political climate and their chances of electoral survival. From day one, the current Prime Minister was part of the kitchen cabinet of four—now down to two—that decided all of the government’s agenda over the past three years. She is just as culpable as the man she deposed for the government’s performance. She is just as much to blame. Indeed, her own portfolio mismanagement has been at the top of the pile of Labor troubles. The reality is that she has wasted more taxpayers’ money in her department—with her BER and all sorts of other programs—than anyone else. If the left-winger Julia Gillard tries to pretend she is an economic conservative, nobody will believe her. If she makes the same promise about how she cares about all Australians, no-one will believe her. I have been trying over the last hour or so to find any connections she has with regional Australia and I cannot find any.

Opposition Member:

She flies over it!

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

Yes, she flies over it. She goes past it but she has no commitment to people who live outside the capital cities. That was very evident when it came to the way she trashed the independent youth allowance so that people living in regional Australia could not get fair and affordable education. It is a change of face, but what we need is a change of government. (Time expired)

Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on this matter of public importance, although I did have to check what the matter of importance was about. We have had the Leader of the Opposition, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and now the Leader of the Nationals and not one of these three speakers has mentioned the cost-of-living pressures, which is actually listed as their matter of public importance. We heard the Leader of the Opposition making the statement, ‘The Australian people are not mugs.’ The opposition are trying to make comparisons and trying to identify similarities between the current Prime Minister and the previous Prime Minister of this government. The Leader of the Opposition has got one thing right: the Australian people are not mugs. They know they can expect the same thing no matter who is speaking on the opposition side, which is the same old scare campaign. They also know that Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, is the same man who applauded Work Choices, the same man who said he would introduce paid parental leave over his dead body and the same man who said, ‘You cannot trust what comes out of my mouth unless it is in writing.’ This is the man who holds himself out as the alternative Prime Minister.

I am going to talk about cost-of-living pressures. I am going to talk about what this government has done since being elected to assist families and households with cost-of-living pressures. It has increased the childcare benefit by 50 per cent, paid quarterly, to help families. The most important way of assisting with cost-of-living pressures is to support jobs in this country. That is what this government has done and will continue to do. We supported jobs through the global financial crisis. We made sure that over 70 per cent of the stimulus that was put forward to invest in public infrastructure in this country went to supporting jobs—infrastructure both small and large, including in our schools.

Let us talk about what losing a job does to cost-of-living pressures. If The Leader of the Opposition got into government and scrapped the building of halls, libraries and trade training centres, what does he think that would do to jobs and cost-of-living pressures? If he scrapped the roads to recovery program and the jobs that are created in fixing those roads and building new roads, what would that do to cost-of-living pressures? The opposition, when in government, squandered the revenue that they got from the resources sector. They did not invest in infrastructure, they did not invest in education and not only did they not invest in health but also they pulled money out of the health system. The opposition’s idea of assisting or supporting cost-of-living pressures would be to, when in government, reintroduce individual agreements. They will once again rip away unfair dismissal protections for workers. They think that creating job insecurity is somehow going to improve cost-of-living pressures. This is the gospel truth from the Leader of the Opposition. Another way they are going to help cost-of-living pressures is to scrap the National Broadband Network, which will create tens of thousands of jobs in this country.

What this government has done is provided three lots of tax cuts—including tax cuts coming on 1 July—for households, increased the pension with the largest increase we have seen since the pension was introduced, created additional support payments for carers and provided affordable housing and new social housing in our suburbs across this country. That is how this government is supporting households; that is how this government is dealing with cost-of-living pressures. This government, with its leadership, its executives and its members, will go forward and continue to support families, pensioners and householders across this country at a time when they need support because of cost-of-living pressures. That is what this government is about: supporting jobs and looking after families and those most in need in our community—unlike those on the other side.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this discussion has now expired.